We gave you power, we can take it away. Watch us.

April 17, 2017 8:43 AM

Despite sizable turnouts around the country for Tax Day marches, the majority of U.S. voters recently polled disapproving of most of Trump's actions, and his polls still close to his record low numbers, Trump continues to pull in money for his 2020 campaign, with a significant portion paying for use of his own properties. Meanwhile, Gorsuch's time on U.S. high court will begin with three cases, and the public focus may be on if he recuses himself from one of those cases, and there is a lot of speculation on Steve Bannon's future in the White House, and what happens if he's ousted.

Days after Trump’s Syria strike put America at the precipice of another Middle East war with at least 10 consequences and side effects, the Air Force dropped non-nuclear 'mother of all bombs' in Afghanistan that is reported to have killed "many militants" and destroyed their weapons, as well as part of a tunnel system. Meanwhile in northern Syria, U.S. military said a misdirected airstrike in killed 18 allied fighters.

Speaking of allies, New York Times documented the LGBT Trump Fallacy, how some have supported the Trump administration as one for all Americans, only to have Trump's appointments and nominations of key officials fly in the face of those claims.

While Trump's travel ban is on the back burner in courts, it's still front burner for universities, and Tennessee’s attorney general is now among a coalition of officials from 15 states supporting President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban. Elsewhere, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly called on Congress to fix the nation's immigration laws.

He also suggested that neither he nor ICE could be blamed for an uptick in deportations during the Trump administration. He did, however, acknowledge that some undocumented immigrants who wouldn't have been deported under the Obama administration will be now, saying the "the spectrum of criminality [where] we operate has changed."

"You have to remember that there's a system, a legal justice system in place," Kelly said. "And the law deports people. Secretary Kelly doesn't. ICE doesn't. It's the United States criminal justice system or justice system that deports people."

But what of the southern border? the $20 BILLION border wall is drastically underfunded at this time - there are only $20 million currently available, and Congress hasn't made funding the wall a priority.

That amount of cash would not go very far to build a real wall — existing fence along the border costs roughly $2.8 million per mile.

Instead, the agency plans to spend the money on eight model walls, planning, engineering and early-stage land acquisition.

The two-day conference in a cavernous convention center packed with border security gear like aerial drones and radar-equipped pickup trucks was an opportunity for CBP officials to detail plans for Trump’s border wall — and also the hurdles to its construction.

The contracts for the prototype walls — some made of concrete, some made of other material, all to be “aesthetically pleasing” per Trump’s wishes for a beautiful wall — will be announced later this summer.

The prototypes will guide construction for more permanent walls that will be built along 14 miles in San Diego and another six miles in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, on land the agency has plans to build on or has already obtained.

And that's the waaaaay the news goes!

posted by filthy light thief (2801 comments total)

Post title modified from the Arcade Fire and Mavis Staples collaboration, "I Give You Power" from earlier this year.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:45 AM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

Only 1296 days until the next presidential election.
posted by Pendragon at 8:45 AM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

Only 1296 days until the next presidential election.

But lots less until the entire House is up for re-election in 2018, and less still until any state and local races this November.
posted by Gelatin at 8:49 AM on April 17, 2017 [59 favorites]

That Arcade Fire track is the best thing they have done in years. The presence of Memphis soul goddess Mavis Staples really elevates it, and the band rises to the occasion.
posted by vibrotronica at 8:49 AM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

I was at the Tax March in NYC (a few pics)! It was a great day- great weather, great crowd, great organization, and SO MANY great signs.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:50 AM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

I didn't get a picture of my favorite sign, which was just a huge picture of Maxine Waters giving some royal side-eye.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:51 AM on April 17, 2017 [26 favorites]

"I want the future we were promised, not the one we deserve."
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:52 AM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

Hawkeye predicted this several years ago.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:53 AM on April 17, 2017 [24 favorites]

And that's the waaaaay the news goes!

Graaaassssss...tastes bad!
posted by middleclasstool at 8:53 AM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Thanks filthy light thief!
posted by yoga at 8:56 AM on April 17, 2017 [14 favorites]

Josh Marshall: people in the region are more worried about rash action from President Trump than North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which is really quite an achievement if you think about it.
posted by diogenes at 8:56 AM on April 17, 2017 [73 favorites]

If only we could find something impeachable on this guy! (Hint: new congress required)
posted by benzenedream at 8:57 AM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

We gave you power

"...and my profit on it is, I know how to tweet"
posted by thelonius at 8:59 AM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

Speaking of tweets, thelonius, Trump blasted this at 5:17 in the AM today: "The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election. Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!"

Given that the mainstream media's coverage of his NK fandango hasn't been as bad as some of his other scandals and fiascos, I'm wondering if there isn't something coming down the pipe that he's desperate to preemptively deflect.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:02 AM on April 17, 2017 [24 favorites]

For Lent one of the things I gave up was "reading about Donald Trump on the Internet," so the fact that I wake up Easter Monday to an inexplicable drive to war with North Korea is doing wonders for my mood.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:02 AM on April 17, 2017 [20 favorites]

Perfect(ly awful) vignette from today's Easter Egg Roll:

"A kid asks Trump to sign his hat at the White House Easter Egg Roll. The president signs ... and then tosses the hat into the crowd." (Politico)
posted by marshmallow peep at 9:04 AM on April 17, 2017 [117 favorites]

"You have to remember that there's a system, a legal justice system in place," Kelly said. "And the law deports people. Secretary Kelly doesn't. ICE doesn't. It's the United States criminal justice system or justice system that deports people."

Oh and this feels like it was an entry for Trump Administration or mid-level Nazi? Madlibs.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:04 AM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Wait what? I mean I know he does far more awful things on a daily basis, but is he also snatching their Easter candy too?
posted by corb at 9:05 AM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

i can't tell if that hat thing is reflexive cruelty or further signs of his mental deterioration
posted by murphy slaw at 9:05 AM on April 17, 2017 [88 favorites]

Given that the mainstream media's coverage of his NK fandango hasn't been as bad as some of his other scandals and fiascos, I'm wondering if there isn't something coming down the pipe that he's desperate to preemptively deflect.

Maybe he saw the last SNL?
posted by Artw at 9:06 AM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Do we have an update on who is wearing the Easter Bunny suit yet?
posted by zachlipton at 9:07 AM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Despite rhetoric, Trump plan focuses more on staff cuts than good government
Barry Rabe, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, said the document is “clearly driven by an agenda of reducing staffing,” while giving lip service to performance. ...
Efforts to cut the workforce overlook the steep fall in feds per capita. The nation’s population increased 67 percent during the past 50 years, while the workforce grew by only 10 percent, according to the Obama administration’s fiscal 2017 budget.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:08 AM on April 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

is he also snatching their Easter candy too?

Say, that sounds like a larf.
posted by Servo5678 at 9:08 AM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

JudicialWatch has filed a FOIA lawsuit for EPA correspondence over Signal (link to the Complaint)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:10 AM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

"You have to remember that there's a system, a legal justice system in place," Kelly said. "And the law deports people. Secretary Kelly doesn't. ICE doesn't. It's the United States criminal justice system or justice system that deports people."

So do guns kill people now? Or is that still the responsibility of the people wielding them?
posted by dbx at 9:11 AM on April 17, 2017 [35 favorites]

"A kid asks Trump to sign his hat at the White House Easter Egg Roll. The president signs ... and then tosses the hat into the crowd."

never let it be said that Trump did nothing to bring any joy and laughter to my heart
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:11 AM on April 17, 2017 [58 favorites]

Nevada Senator Dean Heller and Congressman Mark Amodei (NV-02) are in Reno today hosting their first town hall. The camera work is very shaky, but it is being streamed by Action Together Nevada on Facebook here.
posted by memento maury at 9:13 AM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm betting more on senility than cruelty with the hat. Though, of course, with Trump you never know.

Here's what puzzles me: are the theoretically sane Republicans, both in the White House and in Congress, actually of the opinion that Trump's essentially random (but always bellicose and chaos provoking) bloviating on foreign policy is a good thing? Or are they convinced that it doesn't matter because [reasons]? Or are they just too afraid of the Trump Cultists to object?

I mean, from my POV it seems as if Trump is all but deliberately dragging America into the deployment of tactical nukes as a prelude to WWIII, yet the various theoretically sane and sensible Republicans seem blithely unconcerned. Do they know something we don't know, or are they just stupid and/or in favor of a war?
posted by sotonohito at 9:13 AM on April 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

And live twitter from Dean Heller's town hall
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:14 AM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm betting more on senility than cruelty with the hat. Though, of course, with Trump you never know.

I'm betting it was just that pathologically Trumpian impulse to turn every moment - no matter how inappropriate - into an opportunity for seeking adulation from a crowd.

See also his speech to the kids, which was incoherent unless you see it as a desperate attempt from his lizard brain to inject the moment with yet another opportunity for self-adulation.
posted by darkstar at 9:18 AM on April 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

i can't tell if that hat thing is reflexive cruelty or further signs of his mental deterioration

Like whether Meliana having to nudge him to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem is a sign of his fundamental lack of patriotism or incipient senility?
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:18 AM on April 17, 2017 [60 favorites]

Meliana having to nudge him to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem

But the bunny is standing in exactly the right spot in that video!
posted by zachlipton at 9:20 AM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

Do [theoretically sane and sensible Republicans] know something we don't know, or are they just stupid and/or in favor of a war?

They are stupid and venal and in favor of war. They believe a war will not negatively affect them personally and in fact will likely enrich them. They also like swinging the USA's big foreign policy dick around, and think that the country can do so indefinitely with no repercussions.
posted by tocts at 9:20 AM on April 17, 2017 [49 favorites]

a sign of his fundamental lack of patriotism or incipient senility?

Given how oblivious and uninterested he is about almost everything, it's quite possible he's just clueless about social behavior. Or maybe all of the above.
posted by Fleebnork at 9:23 AM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

...waiting patiently while the Russia story simmers.
posted by davebush at 9:24 AM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

JudicialWatch has filed a FOIA lawsuit for EPA correspondence over Signal

Countdown to elimination of FOIA by EO in three... two...
posted by Room 641-A at 9:32 AM on April 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump

Everyone has an eye, whether or not we see ourselves as photographers. What we choose to photograph and how we frame subjects always reveals a little about how we perceive the world. For someone like Melania, media-trained, controlled and cloistered, her collection of Twitter photography provides an otherwise unavailable view into the reality of her existence. Nowhere else — certainly not in interviews or public appearances — is her guard so far down.

posted by monospace at 9:32 AM on April 17, 2017 [50 favorites]

> Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump

Wow. I'm genuinely taken aback by these photos. There are really a striking number of them from the back. It's a very interesting look behind the curtain - even if, I'm sure, there's selective editing at work in the article.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:40 AM on April 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

that melania article seemed a little bit overcooked in the "over-extrapolating someone's inner life from a narrow slice of external evidence" vein

but the striking thing to me is that anyone would spend that much time inside of Trump's Schlubby Gilded Xanadu when all of new york city is literally an elevator ride away
posted by murphy slaw at 9:40 AM on April 17, 2017 [16 favorites]

New York is not exactly going to want to hang out with her. Maybe they could get her a nice quiet apartment somewhere out of the way where she isn't a massive security cost and she doesn't have to see Trump?
posted by Artw at 9:44 AM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Here are a couple of Washing Post articles regarding the Popular Vote Loser's rapidly diminishing poll numbers. The gist is that people, across most demographics, are becoming less favorably disposed to his the lies and broken promises.

The number of Americans who think Trump keeps his promises is plummeting

A new poll from Gallup released early Monday finds that a majority of Americans no longer view Trump as keeping his promises, with poll numbers on that question falling from 62 percent in February to 45 percent in early April, a stunning tumble of 17 percentage points. The drop was seen across every demographic group: women, men, millennials, baby boomers and people with political leanings of all kinds. While numbers sank the furthest among respondents who identified as a Democrat or liberal, independents who said they thought Trump kept his promises fell from 59 percent to 43 percent; even among Republicans, the numbers fell, from 92 percent to 81 percent.

The poll, which was taken between April 5 and April 9, showed that Trump's ratings fell on all six presidential leadership characteristics that Gallup measures. The percentage who think he is a “strong and decisive leader” also took a big hit, falling from 59 percent to 52 percent. So did the share of people who think he can “bring about changes this country needs,” which fell seven percentage points, too, to 46 percent. Just 36 percent see him as “honest and trustworthy,” compared with 42 percent in February.

This brutal new poll shows that fewer and fewer people believe Trump’s lies

It’s important, however, to drill down with more precision on what it really means that Trump is failing to “keep his promises.” There are several ways this is occurring, and they are distinct from one another. First, Trump is explicitly adopting policy goals that contradict black-letter promises (the GOP health-care plan that he championed would roll back coverage for 24 million people and deeply cut Medicaid, after he vowed “insurance for everybody” and promised not to cut Medicaid). Second, he is failing to unite the party to accomplish generally promised goals (Republicans have yet to pass anything that can satisfy the baseline need to be described as “repeal and replace”).

Third, other general promises may be in the process of running aground, or just disintegrating, now that the difficulties of translating them into detailed policy are proving that the original promises were unrealistic, rooted in bad faith or outright fantasies.

The Popular Vote Loser is operating on the same level he always has--grandiose promises not grounded in reality, then a rapid about face where he will try to offload the cost and blame onto everyone else. This guy is a typical Dixiecrat-Republican--pluto- an kleptocratic with amplified racism and xenophobia typical of Jefferson Sessions, Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott, and David Duke.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 9:47 AM on April 17, 2017 [41 favorites]

Heller is using Rep. Mark Amodei as his shield in this town hall, he dodged the ACA question and let Amodei answer. Amodei's district is PVI R+7 and has never been held by a Democrat.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:49 AM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

For a minute I felt bad for laughing about the poor kid who got his signed hat tossed into the crowd, but then I realized that in the long run, retelling this anecdote will probably provide far more joy and value to his life then the actual hat would.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 9:49 AM on April 17, 2017 [80 favorites]

T.D. Strange: Despite rhetoric, Trump plan focuses more on staff cuts than good government

Cross-posting from near the end of the prior thread: Democrats fear that Trump has barred key federal workers from speaking to them (Washington Post, April 15, 2017)

The issue started in January and grew into such a concern that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) to track Democrats’ correspondence to the executive branch that have gotten no response. So far, Sarbanes said, there are more than 100 cases from the House.

...At the end of a list of complaints, Carper stated that “I am even more disturbed by the explicit statements made by GSA officials during this briefing that, beginning on Jan. 20, 2017, the Trump administration changed GSA’s long-standing practice of providing certain documents requested by minority members of Congress.

“During the briefing,” Carper continued, “agency personnel stated that its new practice only assures that such documents will be provided to the committee’s chairman.” Both congressional chambers and their committees are controlled by Republicans, putting Democrats at a disadvantage that did not exist during previous administrations.

...Grijalva said he was told that Fish and Wildlife workers couldn’t speak to minority staff unless they were called as a witness at a hearing. “I’ve been on this committee going on my 15th year,” Grijalva said. “This kind of response is unprecedented.”

Yup, the best government is one that dies from atrophy, then you don't have to draw a bath and hold it's head.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:50 AM on April 17, 2017 [40 favorites]

The poll, which was taken between April 5 and April 9, showed that Trump's ratings fell on all six presidential leadership characteristics that Gallup measures.

I wonder how last week's bomb throwing will influence those results.
posted by monospace at 9:51 AM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump

I thought about posting this here last night, and ultimately decided not to (that's not meant as a criticism of you monospace, just where I ended up). I mean, this nicely suits my view of them:

In three years, Melania only posted one picture of herself and Trump. He dominates the frame; her face is in shadow and cropped out. It is both a selfie and an erasure, a depiction of her placement within their world.

But some of the conclusions are just annoying. Plenty of perfectly empowered, independent, and active parents avoid putting pictures of their kids' faces on social media. And this paragraph bugs me:

The public reason that Melania gave for staying in New York that she wanted to let Barron finish his school year. She didn’t want to disrupt his life. This is nonsense, an absurdity that she might have considered before supporting her husband’s run for president.

Why is not wanting to pull your kid out of school in the middle of the year "nonsense?" It's a perfectly reasonable question whether taxpayers should be on the hook for the consequence of that decision, but that's different than questioning the idea. And if she's responsible for the decision to stay in New York for now, doesn't that give her more agency over her life than she's being given credit for?

Ultimately, it's using very little data to a paint a picture of her that––I don't know, it's not absurd, but veers pretty far into fairy tale character territory instead of "real person in 2017" land.
posted by zachlipton at 9:52 AM on April 17, 2017 [18 favorites]

Why is not wanting to pull your kid out of school in the middle of the year "nonsense?"

I think the point is that surely his father running for and being elected president is much more of a disruption than switching schools in the middle of the year.
posted by something something at 9:54 AM on April 17, 2017 [23 favorites]

I noted with interest this morning that Trump was going after Jon Ossoff on Twitter:

The super Liberal Democrat in the Georgia Congressioal race tomorrow wants to protect criminals, allow illegal immigration and raise taxes!

At least we know we've got his attention.

This also made me realize how utterly out of the ordinary it is for a sitting president to campaign for a congressional seat by insulting the opposing party's candidate instead of showing up on the stage with his party's candidate to draw the crowds.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 9:55 AM on April 17, 2017 [35 favorites]

Ultimately, it's using very little data to a paint a picture of her that––I don't know, it's not absurd, but veers pretty far into fairy tale character territory instead of "real person in 2017" land.

I completely agree with that, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Here's the new First Lady of the United Sates, and we know next to nothing about her. We are reduced to essentially cyberstalking her Twitter feed in order to get a glimpse of what drives her.
posted by monospace at 9:59 AM on April 17, 2017 [16 favorites]

While numbers sank the furthest among respondents who identified as a Democrat or liberal, independents who said they thought Trump kept his promises fell from 59 percent to 43 percent; even among Republicans, the numbers fell, from 92 percent to 81 percent.

Wow, a ten-point drop among Republicans is significant, though inevitable when Trump keeps letting his mouth write checks he can never cash, Look for Trump to continue his bellicosity in order to make up the dearth of approval with the adulation for military action among the so-called "liberal media." But also, Congressional Republicans have to be wondering how closely they want to tie themselves to the sinking ship that is the Trump Administration.
posted by Gelatin at 10:02 AM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Reminder: The March for Science is Saturday; besides the main one in Washington, here's a list of satellite marches.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:07 AM on April 17, 2017 [28 favorites]

I'll be at the March for Science in Indianapolis. I already have the T-shirt and everything.
posted by Gelatin at 10:08 AM on April 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

Heller is using Rep. Mark Amodei as his shield in this town hall, he dodged the ACA question and let Amodei answer. Amodei's district is PVI R+7 and has never been held by a Democrat.

He's shitting himself because he's going to be out in 2018. If he was smart he'd stand up for his state and it'd make his state more competitive. But he's toeing the party line which means he's pretty fucked in 2018. Nevada is getting bluer as more of the hispanic electorate comes online and he'll most probably be a casualty of it.
posted by Talez at 10:11 AM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Think I'll go to our one here in Pittsburgh. It'll be my son's first march, which is a bit of a milestone. He still likes to "play canvassing" which breaks my heart a little bit every time.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:11 AM on April 17, 2017 [34 favorites]

This also made me realize how utterly out of the ordinary it is for a sitting president to campaign for a congressional seat by insulting the opposing party's candidate instead of showing up on the stage with his party's candidate to draw the crowds.

I'm not sure that Trump could stand not being the active center of attention long enough to stump for someone else.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 10:22 AM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

Until Congress is no longer GOP-controlled, Trump is going nowhere. The only solution is bottoms-up replacement which the GOP has carefully gerrymandered into impossibility. The time for activism was a long time ago.
posted by tommasz at 10:22 AM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Vox: 7 reasons why today’s left should be optimistic

It’s time for the left to realize that pessimism is an absolutely terrible selling point — and to downplay that aspect of left self-presentation. If things were terrible yesterday, are worse today, and are likely to get even worse tomorrow, this does not motivate the typical person to engage in heroic struggle to change the world. It is more likely to make them cautious, guarded, and determined to hold onto what little they have. To the extent the left wallows in a slough of despond about the state of the world, it only manages to undercut its ability to mobilize ordinary people.

Optimism, by contrast, mobilizes people. It allows people to raise their heads from the daily struggle for existence, envision something better, and believe it’s actually possible to get there. That makes the project of joining together with others to make positive change seem worth the effort it typically entails.

posted by monospace at 10:25 AM on April 17, 2017 [23 favorites]

The only solution is bottoms-up replacement which the GOP has carefully gerrymandered into impossibility. The time for activism was a long time ago.

Defeatist and not helpful. The Kansas race was much closer than expected, even if the Republican wound up winning. Democrats have to improve their messaging and run for every damn office in every city, state and county that they possibly can. We don't say "welp, hopeless!" turn tail and give up. I'm sure the Republicans would just love it if we did, but we're not gonna.

African-Americans, LGBT people, women, and other historically disenfranchised and oppressed groups didn't realize their gains by waiting for nice white men to hand them their rights. They demanded them, and that's what got results. "We Shall Overcome" is a rallying cry; "It's Too Late" is not.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 10:32 AM on April 17, 2017 [90 favorites]

I'm not optimistic that Ossoff will pull off the win in GA. It's that same gut tug I had in the run up to Nov 8.
posted by yoga at 10:37 AM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

The only solution is bottoms-up replacement which the GOP has carefully gerrymandered into impossibility.

Let's not do the "oh, no, the gerrymander!" thing, OK? Gerrymanders cut both ways. When you slice your advantage among a bunch of districts, that lets you carry it further, sure... but it also means that when things shift against you, you end up threatened everywhere at once instead of losing marginal seats and holding your strongholds. This is where we are today, and we can take advantage of a turning tide as the Republicans squander goodwill. Retaking the House in these circumstances is far from impossible.
posted by jackbishop at 10:38 AM on April 17, 2017 [45 favorites]

"A kid asks Trump to sign his hat at the White House Easter Egg Roll. The president signs ... and then tosses the hat into the crowd."

Correction: Teen leaned way over to get his hat signed, and Trump tossed it back to him. You can see in this second angle he was throwing it to the hat's correct owner. So in this one, specific, isolated incident Trump's not as bad as he's being portrayed.

I think it's important we don't spread unsupported negative stories. They just make it easier for Trump supporters to dismiss all the truly heinous things he's actually doing. I mean, surely there's enough terrible and true facts going around that we don't need to invent some.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 10:40 AM on April 17, 2017 [89 favorites]

He wants targeted murder of innocent civilians to be part of our military strategy, but he does throw hats back to the right people. Come on liberals, admit it, he's not all bad.
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:50 AM on April 17, 2017 [33 favorites]

See, that's just the sort of crap I'm talking about, 0xFCAF, spreading spurious inaccuracies like that.

I mean, I'm sure he'd be OK if there was no targetting being done at all.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 10:56 AM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

I'm not optimistic that Ossoff will pull off the win in GA. It's that same gut tug I had in the run up to Nov 8.

This seat shouldn't even be in question for the GOP and yet here we are. Ossoff has an uphill battle but he can win this seat.
posted by azpenguin at 11:03 AM on April 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

This seat shouldn't even be in question for the GOP and yet here we are. Ossoff has an uphill battle but he can win this seat.

I hope he does, because the narrative will be even more potent, but the fact that a Democrat is even in contention has to make Republicans nervous. It remains to be seen if the media will pick up the "Republicans running scared from their unpopular president" narrative they did when they fell for the whole tea party rebranding.
posted by Gelatin at 11:12 AM on April 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

Don't get me wrong, I hope Ossoff wins, too. I just....I don't know, call it intuition or whatever, but watching chrysostom's early voting updates and then seeing the gap close is giving me flashbacks.
posted by yoga at 11:16 AM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Optimism, by contrast, mobilizes people.

The DNC was totally positive. The RNC was totally negative. Fear motivates people too.

The thing is there's no single bullet that will mobolize all the people we need in all the places we need. The big benefit to the 50 state strategy is that it allowed us to approach each region in a way that motivated that region. Great if we can have an overall positive and honest message (like we did this year), but we have to be willing to get down and dirty in the districts where Trump won by fear and chicanery.

So, yes to truth and hope. But also yes to playing dirty in the places where that is going to help knock out Republicans.

And hell yes to taking over every state house and senate everywhere. Who is on that? Why isn't that a huge push?
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:17 AM on April 17, 2017 [16 favorites]

I think the point is that surely his father running for and being elected president is much more of a disruption than switching schools in the middle of the year.

I don't really care that much about where any Trump family members live except that I don't think the public should have to pay for it. We already cover the expense for one nice mansion and the security there. On the other hand, can you imagine the nationwide freak out if we had a female president with an 11-year-old kid that she basically never saw?
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:22 AM on April 17, 2017 [41 favorites]

Surprise Spicer! He said this administration is going to "follow the law, unlike the last administration" re: visitor logs

I think I'm tired of calling him a bumbling idiot. He's a Holocaust denying creep.

Oh and he just said Trump's tax returns are still under audit.
posted by Yowser at 11:27 AM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

I will be busking before the Boston March for Science, and I will be playing a set of science-themed songs (including a Nuclear War Synthpop Medley). After 8 November I've been donating my tips to various causes when possible, and this time I will donate to Science Club for Girls. If you're in a position to donate, I invite you to do the same.
posted by pxe2000 at 11:28 AM on April 17, 2017 [29 favorites]

Democrats don't even need to "play dirty" so much as acknowledge that non-upper-middle-class-white people even exist, and work toward breaking gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement.

Like, why is there all this effort to keep from doing those things? Why all these convoluted hang-wringings about reaching the hearts and minds of white conservative-centrists while completely ignoring "red states" and "red counties" because obvs the demographics there are 100% upper-middle class racist white people (who, wait, were the target audience to reach like five seconds ago anyway?...) and not like 80% disenfranchised poor people of color who'd love to see locked-in Republicans ousted or anything, that's just silly, we have data showing just how silly it is, a better strategy is to just ignore most of the country...
posted by byanyothername at 11:32 AM on April 17, 2017 [17 favorites]

If you want to be President, or married to the President, you're going to have to forgo some convenience and maybe live somewhere you'd prefer not to live. Too bad. Seriously.

We regularly give the spouses and children of our military personnel zero deference on this kind of thing, for a job that puts their lives in danger and pays 1/20th as much. I think it's fine if Melania has to put up with the same problems the spouses of thousands of servicemembers do every year. Shared sacrifice, right?

This is all to say nothing of the thousands of New Yorkers who are inconvenienced by Trump Tower regularly being a high security zone. Why does Melania get to put her preferences over theirs? They didn't choose to live next to the other other White House.
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:34 AM on April 17, 2017 [62 favorites]

CAIR has come out with a new site, Islamophobia.org, which outlines Trump Administration individuals' "Islamophobic rhetoric and behavior. The record starts with the president and continues in alphabetical order. This is followed by a list of individuals who are either being considered for positions, or who formerly held positions, within the administration. Finally, brief summaries of groups within the Islamophobia Network which possess close ties to the Trump administration are provided."

I'd like to have more clickable links for some of the reports, but I'm sure they've got their hands full throwing it all together and keeping up with events. It's a great start anyway, gathering all this hateful info in one place.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 11:34 AM on April 17, 2017 [15 favorites]

Don't forget "35 miles from the DMZ", is measuring from the city center. You can ride the subway up to the DMZ without leaving the city.

I just got back from a visit with family who live just north of North Korea. People in the region don't normally like to talk much about politics, because they remember the horrors domestic and international politics have caused that they have lived through. Wars and occupations by Russians, Americans, Japanese, Koreans, Guomindang and Communists have been a regular occurrence for the past 100+ years and only finally settled down in the 80s with the end of the Cultural Revolution and relative stability of the Koreas. However, almost everyone I talked to brought up Trump and their fear of him causing chaos and death in their homes. They would really like to go back to having the biggest worry be North Korean illegal aliens stealing jobs.
posted by wobumingbai at 11:37 AM on April 17, 2017 [17 favorites]

I'm not optimistic that Ossoff will pull off the win in GA. It's that same gut tug I had in the run up to Nov 8.

Price had been winning by typically 30-point or more margins. Even a ten point loss for Ossof would bode real fuckin' poorly for Republicans.

The sense we get of 2018 is all that really matters for this race. It would be nice for Ossof to actually win, but having the House go -1R/+1D in June is going to affect neither diddly nor squat.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:37 AM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

Every single day of this administration is another round of "Surely this... ...No? Okay, then."
posted by lumpenprole at 11:38 AM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

We regularly give the spouses and children of our military personnel zero deference on this kind of thing, for a job that puts their lives in danger and pays 1/20th as much.

Actually, as a former military member, this is categorically untrue. If you are separated from your spouse for whatever reason, including "they just feel like it", your housing allowance will go to the separated spouse and you will be moved back into the barracks in most cases. The military is extraordinarily accommodating of spouse and family needs. Just not yours, which is okay, because you signed up and they did not.
posted by corb at 11:39 AM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

We can let Donald sleep in a cot in the Pentagon, then, and use the White House for other stuff.
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:42 AM on April 17, 2017 [18 favorites]

The military is extraordinarily accommodating of spouse and family needs.

But if you get orders for a base then your spouse is expected to move, not stay at the base where you had been deployed just because they don't feel like moving.
posted by winna at 11:43 AM on April 17, 2017 [18 favorites]

Trump has spent one out of every five minutes of his presidency in Palm Beach

Note that this doesn’t include the time spent on Air Force One getting to Palm Beach: This is solely time once the plane lands in Palm Beach or departs from there. (We did, however, include Trump’s visit to his golf club in Jupiter, Fla. on Feb. 11.)
posted by futz at 11:48 AM on April 17, 2017 [32 favorites]

But if you get orders for a base then your spouse is expected to move, not stay at the base where you had been deployed just because they don't feel like moving.

Pretty sure that in that case they just send your BAH-or-whatever-enlisted-get to your wife (or rarely husband) and don't otherwise formally give a shit, though they might well punt you out of base housing if that's where you are.

Unless the quality of base housing has improved dramatically, this would not ordinarily be a hardship.

Of course, people will notice that your wife and kids are back home in $TOWN instead of with you at Kaiserslautern, and gossip about that. And it won't help your career that your wife is back home instead of socializing with Mrs. Col. Unit-Commander like she "should be." This is where the expectation really is.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:53 AM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

The sense we get of 2018 is all that really matters for this race. It would be nice for Ossof to actually win, but having the House go -1R/+1D in June is going to affect neither diddly nor squat.

Well, a win would be better, and it's worth fighting for when it's this close to in reach. If he does win, Ossof will immediately be the most vulnerable Democrat in the House, and having a bit of time to build up whatever incumbency advantage he can though anti-Trump votes and being seen in his district would be huge for 2018, when Dems will need every +1 they can get.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:58 AM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Racism motivated Trump voters more than authoritarianism
posted by futz at 11:58 AM on April 17, 2017 [17 favorites]

Racism motivated Trump voters more than authoritarianism

...but not, significantly, instead of.
posted by Gelatin at 12:00 PM on April 17, 2017 [38 favorites]

Leaked Trump administration plan to close Chicago EPA office puts 1,000 jobs at risk
The Region 5 office oversees environmental protection in six states surrounding the Great Lakes: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. “It would be devastating to environmental protection in Region 5, the office that is the steward of the Great Lakes,” Cantello insisted.

Just a fantastic job again, Michigan and Wisconsin.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:12 PM on April 17, 2017 [41 favorites]

North Korea to launch a missile every week, declare all out war of but messed with.
posted by Artw at 12:17 PM on April 17, 2017

I am travelling to DC for the science march. Will any Mefites be there?
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 12:24 PM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

...even among Republicans, the numbers fell, from 92 percent to 81 percent.

The fact that someone like Trump can still get an approval rating of over 50% with Republicans is evidence of a political system beyond repair.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:25 PM on April 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

This is your regular scheduled reminder that there are races happening in 2017 and you should double check your locale and start talking to people

The primary for the NJ Governor's race is in just seven weeks. The seat should ultimately, rightfully, go to the dems, given Christie and all, but the state dems are pushing forward a corporate guy, Phil Murphy, and I'm afraid he's the one guy who could lose it for us. The other Democratic candidate is a Berniecrat, John Wisniewski. I'll likely be volunteering for them in two weeks.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 12:29 PM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

The fact that someone like Trump can still get an approval rating of over 50% with Republicans is evidence of a political system party beyond repair.

That's more like how I see it.
posted by Gelatin at 12:31 PM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

Just left Sen. Dianne Feinstein's town hall. I took some notes and will have a longer report, but the short takeaway is I really hope she doesn't run again.
posted by zachlipton at 12:32 PM on April 17, 2017 [56 favorites]

The primary for the NJ Governor's race is in just seven weeks. The seat should ultimately, rightfully, go to the dems, given Christie and all, but the state dems are pushing forward a corporate guy, Phil Murphy, and I'm afraid he's the one guy who could lose it for us. The other Democratic candidate is a Berniecrat, John Wisniewski.

There are 6 Democratic candidates in total- I'm leaning toward Jim Johnson. I heard Wisniewski speak at a local event and was not impressed. I'll end supporting whoever the Dems nominate!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:35 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

but the short takeaway is I really hope she doesn't run again

She was okay for a Senator assuming office in 1992. But California has changed radically in 25 years. She's no longer okay.
posted by Justinian at 12:38 PM on April 17, 2017 [34 favorites]

The fact that someone like Trump can still get an approval rating of over 50% with Republicans is evidence of a political system party beyond repair.

That's more like how I see it.

You simply cannot contain the full spectrum of political opinion in a rigidly two-party framework. So yeah, system.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:38 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

You simply cannot contain the full spectrum of political opinion in two formal parties. So yeah, system.

Who said anything about containing the full spectrum of political opinion? Your quote was about Republicans approving of Trump, and that one opinion reveals something terribly wrong with their party.

I have no interest in re-litigating the fact that the American system tends to result in two dominant political parties and so is not a European-style multi-party democracy.
posted by Gelatin at 12:45 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

> Think I'll go to our one here in Pittsburgh. It'll be my son's first march, which is a bit of a milestone. He still likes to "play canvassing" which breaks my heart a little bit every time.

If it helps with the heartbreak, I can tell you that you now have empirical proof that this anecdote can give even an ontological nihilist hope for the future.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:47 PM on April 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

Metafilter: declare all out war of but messed with.
posted by spitbull at 12:48 PM on April 17, 2017 [17 favorites]

The White House Snapchat can't spell "education" (as in "Secretary of")
posted by zachlipton at 12:54 PM on April 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

Pentagon Clashes With Civilian Aid Workers Over Planned Military Assault In Yemen: The Defense Department is in favor of providing logistical and intelligence support for an ambitious operation led by the UAE military to retake the Houthi-controlled city of Hodeida. But key bureaus inside the State Department and the US Agency for International Development oppose the initiative, believing it will trigger a full-blown famine in the country by closing the port where most of the humanitarian aid in the impoverished country enters.

During the meeting on Thursday, convened at the request of aid agencies, a Pentagon official tried to ease those concerns by floating the possibility that the operation could be “clean” and result in the Saudis taking full control of the port in “four-to-six weeks.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:58 PM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

"The Saudis will take full control of the port in four to six weeks, after which they will show their legendary generosity at last to the people their blockade - with our support - has starved. Triple-tap airstrikes will give way to sextuple-tap aid-strikes, and Yemen's children will rise from the dead in their families' joy."
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:10 PM on April 17, 2017 [18 favorites]

When you see those polls about "81% of Republicans support Trump," keep in mind that fewer and fewer people are willing to identify themselves to pollster as "Republicans" or "Democrats" these days.

When you see that 79% of Republicans support Trump, those "Republicans" are in some cases only 23% of the poll's respondants.

As Trump's approval rating has dropped, so have the number of people willing to self identify as Republicans.

Also, in terms of a political system broken beyond repair... Things have been a lot more broken in the past. Keep in mind that within my grandmother's lifetime women didn't have the vote at all, and in practice neither did many African Americans. We had actual slavery (which, okay, took a war to end) but we also had Jim Crow, robber barons, child labor in sweatshops, Standard Oil, the Yellow Press, Teapot Dome, Watergate... America has always been pretty broken, but imperfect as our system is, people have succeeded in making things better before, and usually without an actual civil war.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:12 PM on April 17, 2017 [90 favorites]

Having spent all my time in Korea living in the Gangnam/Apgujeong region, I can't visualize "better off driving it," even when it's true. I frequently think what a bizarre one dimensional view of the country I have, even after living there for so long.
posted by wobumingbai at 1:13 PM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Indeed, OnceUponATime. I was just thinking the other day about the 1960s...we killed a president. And his progressive attorney general brother. And a civil rights leader who was going to lead us to the promised land. A lot more riots than there are now. Yeah, we've always been pretty broken.
posted by Melismata at 1:15 PM on April 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

Trump has supposedly called Erdogan (per the Turkish government anyway, so who knows who to believe, that's the problem with having a White House with zero credibility, other countries can say whatever they want) to "congratulate" him on the referendum. That's the referendum criticized by international monitors as one that "did not live up to Council of Europe standards."

Did the call start with "hey, so can you tell me more about how this becoming a dictator thing works?"
posted by zachlipton at 1:15 PM on April 17, 2017 [38 favorites]

The Hill: A senior North Korean official said Monday the U.S. has created “a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any minute.”

North Korea has decided that merely rattling their saber in its scabbard is insufficient, and has just chucked it into a washing machine on the spin cycle.
posted by murphy slaw at 1:16 PM on April 17, 2017 [16 favorites]

I guess the question of whether the recent weirdness in Turkey was Russian backed is answered.
posted by Artw at 1:24 PM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

Dear Republicans;

Everything you allow Trump to do, you give licence for the next Democratic President to do as well.

Remember that.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 1:32 PM on April 17, 2017 [16 favorites]

Welp, clearly the madman theory of foreign policy isn't stabilizing things.
posted by angrycat at 1:37 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

It would seem to me that North Korea should probably demonstrate an ability to detonate a thermonuclear device before threatening thermonuclear war. As far as I am aware they've only managed to blow up basic fission weapons and their attempts at thermonuclear weapons have been fizzles.

Not that someone killed by a fission device will feel a sense of superiority over NK's crude nukes in the fractional instant before they are incinerated.
posted by Justinian at 1:38 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

When you see those polls about "81% of Republicans support Trump," keep in mind that fewer and fewer people are willing to identify themselves to pollster as "Republicans" or "Democrats" these days.

Yep. I remember during later years of W. Bush's second term, as the Republican brand was growing more toxic with the Great Recession and the ongoing wars, there was a precipitous drop in the number of folks willing to call themselves Republican. But if asked, there was little movement in terms of who people were voting for.

Lots of people wish to conceal their affiliations so they become "Independents", for a variety of reasons (shame, coyness, intent to deceive, desire to appear moderate, desire to remain relevant or profitable to partisans of both parties, disgust with party politics, etc.), but probably retain quite vehement views about which political party they would vote for and which one they would never vote for. (E.g., Ken Bone.)
posted by darkstar at 1:38 PM on April 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

I guess the question of whether the recent weirdness in Turkey was Russian backed is answered.

Forgive my ignorance, but I haven't been able to keep up as well as I would have liked. Is this suggesting that Russia was behind Erdogan's autocratic play, or the coup against him?
posted by Existential Dread at 1:40 PM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

It would seem to me that North Korea should probably demonstrate an ability to detonate a thermonuclear device before threatening thermonuclear war. As far as I am aware they've only managed to blow up basic fission weapons and their attempts at thermonuclear weapons have been fizzles.

To be fair, if they detonated a fission bomb we would almost certainly respond with a thermonuclear weapon, at which point their claim is essentially correct.
posted by murphy slaw at 1:42 PM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

Forgive my ignorance, but I haven't been able to keep up as well as I would have liked. Is this suggesting that Russia was behind Erdogan's autocratic play, or the coup against him?
posted by Existential Dread at 15:40 on April 17 [+] [!]

y not both
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:42 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

the nice thing about being an international actor with an M.O. of sowing chaos is that people start seeing your handiwork everywhere regardless of what happens
posted by murphy slaw at 1:45 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

N. Korea dared the U.S. to cross their line and Trump said they better not say anything about his mom.

Good stuff. 8th grade level diplomacy.

'The Era Of Strategic Patience Is Over'

Fucking idiots.
Is Jakarta a real place? Anyone heard of it beside me? *slams head into desk* Some kind of shooting there recently?

So we chest thump at N. Korea, tell Indonesia (who are basically the other thing keeping N. Korea stable other than China) they’re screwing us out of money, and we send Pence there, because he wants to kick their ass over Freeport-McMoRan (mining) while there’s hardline Muslim protests (in the normally moderate country)

Nice. Perhaps he could bring some beautiful chocolate cake for Ramadan.

Y’know, the main reason why conspiracy theories don’t work – and this one is basically “big mining company colluding with the administration to rig foreign policy and make profits and laying off risk – like war, unrest, religious divisiveness, intolerance, etc – pug simple – but the gigantic levels of stupid make it seem implausible.

I mean Iran-Contra, yeah? Missiles, cocaine, black ops, lying to congress, all that. And Ollie North – whatever else was involved in – doesn’t know dick about his environment.
Who would have thought? I mean that seriously. It’s astonishing how utterly incompetent one can be and blatantly go forward with appalling projects with your whole ass hanging out.

That’s not hyperbole. Hitler in 1922 said “ Once I am I in power , my first and foremost task will the annihilation of the Jews” plenty of other uses of “liquidate” and so forth years before WWII. Mein Kampf he talks about gassing thousands of them as a good plan.
And then suddenly it’s a big secret at Wannsee?
How does that historical narrative not explode people's heads?

So, follow me here – China consumes a lot of copper (IIRC they’re #1) . That’s slowed down lately. (say, Freeport-McMoran, just as an asspull, shares are down 60% from three years ago) Trump meets with China. Talks tough about N. Korea. Puts Indonesia on the shit list. Then Pence is about to go on his eastern tour while a major American-Indonesian mining company (as an asspull, say a company that took a hit for bribery ) is closing a deal in Indonesia.

Hm. Is a levered macro play a thing? IDK much about money, so it’s probably just tinfoil hat craziness to think people would kill, manipulate politics, or manage a president, just for billions of dollars in resources


Rachel Maddow covered some of this

But it’s not as complex as it looks. Carl Icahn (et.al ) is one of the boys. He’s got a lot of shares of the company, the Trump family extorts(we got Uge bombz!) Indonesia (and China) and piggybacks some extra swag (resorts ‘n shit) on the deal.

Tense. Pfft. Yeah, they throw babies out of incubators out there. They gas people. Gotta kil’im!

I mean - the North Koreans don’t know they’re a joke. They’re not in on it. Yeah, they’re probably not going to do anything too stupid, but you don’t know for sure do you? Indonesian hardline Muslims aren’t getting cut a check. They actually do worship allah and believe in not drinking and so forth. It’s not a dodge, and they’ll kill or die for it.

And who has to fight them off if that happens? yeah.

It’s a stage managed crisis that could go seriously awry because these dunderheads know nothing about foreign affairs. They only know greed. And rackets.

I mean a lot of people have the "my country right or wrong" ethic working for whatever government, but the U.S. too.
Plenty of folks would cut someone's throat if it furthered the interests of the United States so morals and ethics here - completely off the table for purposes of my ...er...wtf, comment? 1/2 ass post? Manifesto? Screed? IDK.

Point being, it's not the moral thing that truly bugs me. Someone wants to make money on the side while serving the country, hey, I liked Peter Falk in "The In-Laws", made me laugh, ok, whatever. The morals are important but it's a political argument. We want to elect a dictator and screw ourselves, that sucks.

But some people will screw you even if you’re trying to work with them.


Like the scorpion and frog thing. I made money, but I'm going to fuck everything up anyway.

(Ray Liotta frames this mindset perfectly starting at 1:02 – short version : “He’s a douche”
posted by Smedleyman at 1:46 PM on April 17, 2017 [21 favorites]

Request for Comments on the Executive Order 13777 aka "Trash the EPA" is now open.
posted by H. Roark at 1:50 PM on April 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

Everything you allow Trump to do, you give licence for the next Democratic President to do as well.

You're mistaking Republicans for a group that plays by the rules or follows logic. If the next Democratic President did half of what Trump has done, they'd be impeached already.

Unfortunately, I'm no longer willing to bet on whether the voting US populace will reward that or not.
posted by Candleman at 2:00 PM on April 17, 2017 [19 favorites]

Not that someone killed by a fission device will feel a sense of superiority over NK's crude nukes in the fractional instant before they are incinerated.

let my final words be "well, actually--"
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:02 PM on April 17, 2017 [61 favorites]

I worry more about NK lobbing conventional exposives at local targets resulting in a escalation that leads to chinese nukes more than NK ones, TBH. I'm pretty sure those work.
posted by Artw at 2:16 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Jesus, it's only Monday.
posted by ovenmitt at 2:39 PM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

> But lots less until the entire House is up for re-election in 2018

Only 568 sleeps...
posted by enfa at 2:40 PM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Jesus, it's only Monday.

Of Week 12.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:42 PM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

Dear Republicans;

Everything you allow Trump to do, you give licence for the next Democratic President to do as well.

The Guiding Principle of Conservative Politics is IOKIYAR - that whatever you do, Its OK If You Are Republican.

There is no deeper logic or reasoning involved.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:47 PM on April 17, 2017 [35 favorites]

Dear Republicans;

Everything you allow Trump to do, you give licence for the next Democratic President to do as well.

Remember that.

Yeah, no, it doesn't work that way. At all.
posted by Rykey at 2:47 PM on April 17, 2017 [14 favorites]

Apropos of nothing, I had a hankering to read some Stephen King this week so I cruised past a used bookstore and picked up The Tommyknockers. Verdict: even blitzed on booze and coke in 1987 and writing on autopilot, he still sounds like Stephen King. Anyway, on page 88 (hah!) of the paperback, one of our viewpoint characters has an interior monologue about how broken American politics is. I read this a few days ago as some recent avalanche or other of mendacity was issuing from the Current Occupant:

You talked to people who had lived through one administration after another in which their elected officials told one lie after another, then lied about the lies, and when those lies were found out, the liars said: Oh, jeez, I forgot, sorry -- and since they forgot, the people who elected them behaved like Christians and forgave. You couldn't believe there were so fucking many of them until you remembered what P.T. Barnum said about the extraordinarily high birth rate of suckers. They looked you square in the face when you tried to tell them the truth and informed you that you were full of shit, the American government didn't tell lies, not telling lies was what made America great...

(italics in the original, bold added by me)

Off by only one word, thirty years out. Not bad.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:49 PM on April 17, 2017 [19 favorites]

let my final words be "well, actually--"

At least we'll have died doing what we love.
posted by diogenes at 2:53 PM on April 17, 2017 [30 favorites]

Off by only one word, thirty years out. Not bad.

I've been reading the entirety of Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory series, which posits an alternate history where the CSA won the civil war. It's... not noble prize winning literature, but it's entertaining enough.

Except one of the major plot points minor spoilers is the formation of a Nazi-analog government in the CSA behind a fascist leader backed by populist rage and their own stab-in-the-back stories and racist hatred and scapegoating of blacks. And so many of his speeches include literal phrases about "making the Confederate States great again", I've almost had to stop reading a time or two. Too close to home...
posted by jammer at 2:56 PM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

The Region 5 office oversees environmental protection in six states surrounding the Great Lakes: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. “It would be devastating to environmental protection in Region 5, the office that is the steward of the Great Lakes,” Cantello insisted.

Coincidentally, I am sure, the steel industry in Indiana, the veep's state, has just been caught spilling toxins into Lake Michigan for probably the millionth time.
posted by srboisvert at 2:58 PM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

Lots of people wish to conceal their affiliations so they become "Independents", for a variety of reasons (shame, coyness, intent to deceive, desire to appear moderate, desire to remain relevant or profitable to partisans of both parties, disgust with party politics, etc.), but probably retain quite vehement views about which political party they would vote for and which one they would never vote for.

I'm an independent partly because in my state it lets me vote in either party's primary as I choose. Given that these "internal" contests of "private" political parties are run and supported by the government, and it all happens on town-owned property, I actually think I (and everyone else) should be able to vote in both primaries at the same time.
posted by XMLicious at 2:59 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Ok. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's town hall in San Francisco.

To set the scene, the event was held at 11am on a Monday at a fairly inconvenient location. Tickets sold out fast, but the room wasn't full, even after they let the overflow room into the main hall. When she said "one last question," the local politician and Democratic Party staple who moderated the event (Bevan Dufty, for those who know the local scene) made her take all four that had been called up (people were invited to ask questions by lottery). So I'd summarize the overall approach as begrudging. Overall, this is a crowd that still broadly respects and appreciates Feinstein's work (she was greeted with good applause as she came out, for instance), but people quickly grew frustrated with her inaction and passivity.

Things didn't get off to a great start with her introductory remarks. I think a lot of people were looking for some degree of a "what's happening is not ok, and I'm going to fight" message. Even Nancy Pelosi a couple weeks ago, with her incredibly longwinded speeches, knew that was the message we wanted to hear and threw some red meat to the base. Instead, we got a bit of a complaint about how it's unfortunate that the nature of the Senate has changed and things were better before.

Then she held up a couple of pie charts and explained that mandatory spending is now most of the budget, crowding out discretionary spending, and this is a big problem now. To which I say three things. First, it's a political event at 11am on a Monday; most of us who made it are broadly familiar with the basic contours of the federal budget. Second, congratulations on identifying the main point that pretty much everyone who has looked at the federal budget in the last decade has noticed. And third, why the heck did you just grab the third rail of entitlement spending without even being asked? And if she's going to talk about entitlement reform for absolutely no reason whatsoever, at least she has something to say about it, right? Some kind of plan or proposal? Nope. She just thought she'd let us know it's a problem I guess.

I'd like to go into some detail on two related exchanges that took place, because I think it really sums up the entire theme: Sen. Feinstein operating in a very "politics as usual" mode and an audience that believes the situation is not normal and calls for, well, more.

One man stood up and said "everything you've been talking about is politics as usual." He gave an impassioned description of his mother's time in several "holocaust centers" and related them to Spicer's comments, Bannon, Miller, and Gorka ("an actual Nazi...in the White House in the United States"). "We knew a long time ago that politics as usual was over; we had a funeral outside your office for the death of politics as usual." She then tries to ask "what would you substitute it with?" He explains that she previously talked about the "red line" on Syria and now he wants to know if there's a red line for Democrats in Congress where they will refuse to work with fascists, because this is not normal.

Her response: "you've given me an idea, so I'm going to explore that idea" and asks for his name and phone number. Then she just says "ok. Next." Um. What now? It seemed as if this was the first time someone suggested she fight Nazis and she's going to have a good think on it. After a lot of shouting of "answer the question," she pretty much said it is going to be politics as usual: "you need the votes, so you can sit here and pound your fists and I can show you what I've done, and you can take a look at it, and I'd be surprised if you found too many Senators if any that have gotten more done...But I don't get there by making statements I can't deliver. I get there through some caution, some discussion, some smart help...and we generally get where we're going."

When a guy is talking about how many concentration camps his mother was shuffled between and is asking pretty literally whether she'll fight Nazis, "some caution" is really not what he, or anyone else, was looking for.

A bit later, another questioner was kind enough to follow-up on that. He reminded her that she can do things besides try to cautiously get the votes to pass a bill: she has the power of her voice. He told her that when someone gets up and asks her if she's going to fight fascists, we want to hear from her "loudly and strongly."

And in a really revealing moment, she responds: "wait, wait wait wait, does anybody believe that I am the least bit for fascism or anti-Semitism? My whole record indicates exactly not." Then she said the Judiciary Committee will have a hearing after the recess on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The questioner spoke for me, and I think most of the room, saying that he, of course, doesn't think she personally supports these things, but that we aren't hearing her voice in pubic against them, because the situation is not normal, and it calls for her to speak up.

When he suggested she has the ability to go on the news and draw attention to these issues, she explained that the networks have to call you. Which, of course, ignores the fact that clearly nobody is calling her cause she's not saying anything. Somehow, California reps like Rep. Maxine Waters and Rep. Ted Lieu are developing national reputations by saying far more than Sen. Feinstein, and they don't seem to have a problem making their voices heard. The problem here is that she's not speaking up, not the size of the megaphone.

Another troubling point came when she discussed health care (she punted quickly on single payer, except to say she doesn't want a government takeover of healthcare). She pivoted to talk about Republican efforts to halt the cost sharing subsidies, saying that she just learned about this and read some memo last night about the House lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in late 2014. It's been a pretty significant story. While I don't expect her to know every policy nuance on every topic, breathlessly announcing that she just read a thing last night about how Republicans are trying to sabotage the ACA really gave the impression that she was uninformed.

Foreign policy was as contentious as you'd expect a discussion on foreign policy between a San Francisco audience and Dianne Feinstein to be (broad theme: we're not real fans of war). With regard to Syria, she made a show of saying that Trump now needs to put together a military strategy and go to Congress for approval, but I suppose she hasn't considered what will happen when that obviously doesn't happen (nothing, of course).

The other theme, which came up a few times, was essentially that she's one of a hundred and "you're asking an individual Senator to do something." Which yes, is what we're asking for, since she is our Senator. Nobody is asking her to unilaterally fix everything, but she fundamentally didn't seem to grasp that this is a new game now, and centrist consensus dealmaking is not the mode the Republicans are operating under. Everything had to be couched in cautious terms: we're looking at Russia in our committee, hopefully we can get more investigators; we're looking at putting together a lawsuit on Trump's ethics issues, if we can find out how much it will cost and get the money together; we're looking at use of government funds for the Trump kids' travel, we'll see if there's anything we can do. Every talking point felt five years out of date; every action too little and too slow. This was pretty well summed up when she said "it's just still April." People are looking for something more and something faster.

There are increasingly strong reports that Feinstein will run again in 2018. I really hope she doesn't. Leaving age aside entirely, people clearly want somebody who's going to fight, and she has time-after-time again indicated that's not who she is. Sen. Feinstein has been my representative almost my entire life. Every time I get particularly mad at her, I think back on one of the most haunting videos I've ever seen, her announcing the City Hall shootings, and I remember what a long legacy of public service she's held. But at the end of the day, California needs a Senator who we don't have to ask if she'll fight fascists. California needs a Senator who doesn't respond to that question as if it was a novel concept. To use the theme of the day, California needs a Senator who understands this isn't "politics as usual." From what I saw today, that's not Sen. Feinstein.
posted by zachlipton at 3:02 PM on April 17, 2017 [199 favorites]

I was just remembering back in the halcyon days of December when people genuinely thought that faithless electors would flip on Trump if they just listened to and quoted Hamilton enough. Unfortunately life turned out to not be like musical theater.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 3:04 PM on April 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

I knew exactly who Feinstein was when I sent her an email asking her to filibuster Gorsuch and got placed on her mailing list, and the first mail I got from her was about this bullshit, The Protecting Kids from Candy-Flavored Drugs Act of 2017, co-authored with Chuck Grassley.

She's dangerously out of touch and seems totally unaware of the unprecedented historical moment she's operating in.
posted by murphy slaw at 3:14 PM on April 17, 2017 [39 favorites]

Not for any political purpose, but just because there is omedy in it, I sort of want a mash-up video of every time Melania shows obvious dislike or discomfort with Donald set to the tune of "Separate Lives" by Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:16 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Women Ironworkers Will Get Six Months Of Paid Maternity Leave
The new deal gives women in the industry a maternity package that few outside of Silicon Valley can currently access.

Bill Brown, CEO of Ben Hur Construction Co., called the benefit "an investment, because we want our well-trained ironworker women to come back to work."

posted by Room 641-A at 3:16 PM on April 17, 2017 [53 favorites]

Zachlipton: thank you for posting your notes from the Feinstein town hall! Flagged as excellent, and much appreciated.

I think one can appreciate Feinstein's many years of public service, and at the same time say that it's time for her to step aside. California, of all states, can afford to run a firebrand for Senate. And, as I've said before, California can set an example and pave the way for other states to follow suit. Maybe states with a majority of conservative, religious, white people will not be as far left as Cali for the foreseeable future, but they can be encouraged to maybe tiptoe leftwards a teensy bit.

If Ted Lieu chooses to primary Dianne Feinstein he has my vote!
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 3:21 PM on April 17, 2017 [36 favorites]

Since Sen. Feinstein is having trouble understanding that this is not normal, file this report under "not normal thing #10072591": White nationalist claims Trump directed rally violence

A white nationalist leader accused of assaulting a young African-American woman at a Donald Trump campaign rally filed a countersuit on Monday claiming the president directed him and other supporters to remove protesters.

Matthew Heimbach claims in his federal court filing that he “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President,” and that, if he’s found liable for damages, “any liability must be shifted to one or both of them.”

posted by zachlipton at 3:33 PM on April 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

Matthew Heimbach claims in his federal court filing that he “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President,” and that, if he’s found liable for damages, “any liability must be shifted to one or both of them.”

Also from the article:

Heimbach, who is representing himself in the case, did not answer a phone call Monday afternoon, nor did he respond to an email message seeking comment.

Uh, LOL if you think you're gonna be able to offload your liabilities to the President, particularly one with this delightful penchant for fucking the little guy. The little guy who represents himself in court.

Noting that Trump is “a world famous businessman” who “relies on various professionals including attorneys and other professional advisors,” Heimbach writes that he relied on Trump’s reputation and expertise in doing the things alleged.

Extra LOLOLOL
posted by Existential Dread at 3:41 PM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

Oof. This is a tough read.

WaPo: The night Clinton said what she never expected to say: ‘Congratulations, Donald’: “You’re going to come up short,” Schale said, stunning aides in Brooklyn who were, until that moment, comfortably cradled in the security of their own faulty analytics.

The call with Schale marks the beginning of a riveting account of the final, dreadful hours of Clinton’s long pursuit of the presidency, as told by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in their insidery new book, “Shattered.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:48 PM on April 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

Seconding Rosie M. Banks, flagged as fantastic, zachlipton.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:59 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

More on "Shattered," the new insider's post-mortem on the Clinton campaign.

NYT review

Excerpt in The Hill
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 4:03 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

I will read that book someday...but not in the near future. Too painful.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:06 PM on April 17, 2017 [58 favorites]

There are increasingly strong reports that Feinstein will run again in 2018.

She all-but-announced back in January. I haven't seen any sign of a "Draft Lieu" campaign fund yet but will throw money at the first one that surfaces, or really at any credible challenger.
posted by contraption at 4:13 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Tom Cotton booed at town hall for defending Trump on tax returns.

Cries of "do your job!" and "Time to repeal and replace you!" were heard.

All Representatives and Senators who are not doing their jobs should be confronted with chants of "Do Your Job!" like Cotton and like Jason Chaffetz.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 4:19 PM on April 17, 2017 [32 favorites]

The leader of 'Calexit' just announced he's abandoning the movement and settling permanently in Russia

Louis Marinelli, who has spearheaded the Calexit campaign since 2015, set up a makeshift embassy in Moscow in December in partnership with far-right Russian nationalists who enjoy Kremlin support while promoting secessionist movements in Europe.

"I have found in Russia a new happiness, a life without the albatross of frustration and resentment towards ones’ homeland, and a future detached from the partisan divisions and animosity that has thus far engulfed my entire adult life," Marinelli wrote on Monday. "Consequently, if the people of Russia would be so kind as to welcome me here on a permanent basis, I intend to make Russia my new home."

Welp.
posted by futz at 4:24 PM on April 17, 2017 [51 favorites]

"I have found in Russia a new happiness, a life without the albatross of frustration and resentment towards ones’ homeland, and a future detached from the partisan divisions and animosity that has thus far engulfed my entire adult life"

Is that Russia abandoning and attempting to scuttle CalExit, or is it the opening salvo of their CalAnnex movement?
posted by contraption at 4:28 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

I suppose a one-party authoritarian autocracy is one way to avoid partisan division!
posted by Justinian at 4:28 PM on April 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

Warren on Trump administration: 'God, it's like dog years'

"Donald Trump has only been here, not even 100 days yet — God, it's like dog years or something, it feels like so much has gone on. We've got to get focused on what we're going to do in the next week, in the next month. This man is truly dangerous," she said.
posted by futz at 4:28 PM on April 17, 2017 [69 favorites]

Is that Russia abandoning and attempting to scuttle CalExit, or is it the opening salvo of their CalAnnex movement?

It should be noted that California's economy is nearly twice the size of Russia's economy. We're not particularly afraid.
posted by Justinian at 4:30 PM on April 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

It should be noted that California's economy is nearly twice the size of Russia's economy. We're not particularly afraid.

Well, it goes to show that some of the momentum behind the calexit proposal was part of Russia's playbook of identifying and exploiting grievances in populaces to destabilize rival foreign nations. I understood the appeal when a number of my lefty friends began sharing various calexit memes and articles on social media. Why should California (and Oregon, and Washington, and and and) be abused by an obviously hostile administration and political party?

But the underlying idea was incredibly flawed and unachievable to begin with. Setting aside the political impossibility of severing from the Union, water insecurity, an unstable nuclear power next door, and a host of other issues would have the potential to cripple any form of exit.

Russia pulling back now probably simply indicates that they recognize this effort to be largely ineffectual and not worth the resources.

Also, extra LOL:

Marinelli, who campaigned for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders but said he ultimately voted for President Donald Trump, described Yes California as a progressive initiative aimed at establishing a "liberal republic" independent of the United States.

posted by Existential Dread at 4:41 PM on April 17, 2017 [17 favorites]

Marinelli, who campaigned for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders but said he ultimately voted for President Donald Trump, described Yes California as a progressive initiative aimed at establishing a "liberal republic" independent of the United States.

This is what happens when you base your entire political knowledge on memes.
posted by Talez at 4:46 PM on April 17, 2017 [36 favorites]

Further support for my choice for the left's 2018 campaign theme, "Medicare For All:"

Catherine Rampell, WaPo: Sorry, Republicans, but most people support single-payer health care

A recent survey from the Economist/YouGov found that a majority of Americans support “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.” Similarly, a poll from Morning Consult/Politico showed that a plurality of voters support “a single payer health care system, where all Americans would get their health insurance from one government plan.”

Divining the longer-term trend in attitudes toward this idea is difficult, as the way survey questions on the topic are asked has changed over time. Views of a health-care system in which all Americans get their insurance from the government single payer vary a lot depending on how you frame the question. Calling it “Medicare for all,” for example, generally elicits much stronger approval, while emphasizing the word “government” tends to depress support.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:47 PM on April 17, 2017 [17 favorites]

So, the Trump Platform is: Russian Fools, White Anglo Fear and Dread.
posted by effluvia at 4:47 PM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

R. Eric Thomas, the guy who writes all the great articles on Maxine Waters for Elle, finally got to meet his idol, and he wrote a lovely article about her.

Auntie Maxine ought to be tired. I'm tired just writing those sentences, but from all appearances she is, to borrow a phrase from another iconic Democrat, fired up and ready to go.

So strong is her passion for justice, so deep is her commitment to getting the truth about the president, so ingrained is her skill as a community organizer, that staying home just isn't an option. Maxine Waters knows that this moment of viral lift is a rarity; she knows that 20- and 30-year-olds don't normally buy clothing with their congressional representatives on them. And so she's taking advantage of what she calls the millennial excitement to rally a generation for change.

It's working. Y'all may have had a good time at Coachella this weekend, but ain't no party like MaxineCon. Busboys and Poets is filled to the doors well before the event begins. An immigrant-owned space that calls itself a "community where racial and cultural connections are consciously uplifted," the popular chain is the perfect place for the diverse, energetic, and largely young crowd that Maxine Waters brings in. When she takes the stage, the windows shake with the cheers. You would think Beyoncé was there. She was, actually. Maxine Waters is Political Beyoncé.
posted by triggerfinger at 4:54 PM on April 17, 2017 [35 favorites]

> Marinelli, who campaigned for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders but said he ultimately voted for President Donald Trump, described Yes California as a progressive initiative aimed at establishing a "liberal republic" independent of the United States.

Okay I know it's silly to pick out one bit of wrong from all this wrong, but, like, what the hell? What's the point of being from California if you can't even insist on the distinction between liberal and left? Sheesh.

This nitwit's from SoCal, isn't he? He better be from SoCal...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:55 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Rosie M. Banks: If Ted Lieu chooses to primary Dianne Feinstein he has my vote!

I'm still trying to make "In Lieu of Feinstein" happen. (As a slogan, since I'm not in California and can't force him to actually primary her. If I could, though...)

I just realized I haven't made guacamole since the election.
posted by Superplin at 5:00 PM on April 17, 2017 [23 favorites]

She all-but-announced back in January. I haven't seen any sign of a "Draft Lieu" campaign fund yet but will throw money at the first one that surfaces, or really at any credible challenger.

How is every Democrat in California not lining up to primary her? I know party institutionalism is huge, but she's horrible, and I highly doubt she's up for a heated primary fight or would fare well against an energized, motivated and informed challenger. There's a huge opening for anyone who decides to take it, Lieu or anyone else.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:01 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

How is every Democrat in California not lining up to primary her?

Very few Dems have the nationwide political recognition she does. Of the ones who do, Jerry isn't running for office again, and Gavin wants to be governor. Plus, I wouldn't put it past her to be a brutal campaigner against another Democrat.
posted by suelac at 5:09 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

Feinstein does have her supporters. I remember several years ago my aunt mentioned the only politician she liked was Feinstein. I didn't hear much from her about anything political for a long time after that until she (knowing I was into politics) mentioned how much she loved Sarah Palin. And casually threw in something about Obama being a supersecretmuslimkenyan. So Feinstein does have her base in California. But...
posted by downtohisturtles at 5:12 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

> Plus, I wouldn't put it past her to be a brutal campaigner against another Democrat.

bring it.

When I meet Ted Lieu, should I meet Ted Lieu, I'm going to have to try real hard not to greet him with "give me a position tell me where the ammunition is"
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:15 PM on April 17, 2017 [19 favorites]

To take it one step further than suelac; they aren't lining up to primary her because she's probably going to win.
posted by Justinian at 5:15 PM on April 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

It's no Korean Nuke Nightmare but today the President of the United States tweeted a recommendation for a book titled "Reasons to Vote For Democrats" by Michael J. Knowles, and that's interesting because he's not usually a book guy, but turns out it's just a bunch of blank pages lol get it
posted by theodolite at 5:16 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Only 1296 days until the next presidential election.

But lots less until the entire House is up for re-election in 2018, and less still until any state and local races this November.

This doesn't mean a thing if people don't vote. And for some ridiculous reason, a good number of Democrats can't be bothered to get out and vote in off-year and special elections. It's not convenient for them.

Here's a story from my local NPR station that covers why some folks didn't vote in our last gubernatorial election. You know, that's the one where the winner is now doing his best to close the last clinic in the commonwealth that can provide abortions.

I guess it's easier to just kvetch about it.
posted by SteveInMaine at 5:16 PM on April 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

"Consequently, if the people of Russia would be so kind as to welcome me here on a permanent basis, I intend to make Russia my new home."


Does it look like I'm taking crazy pills if I point out that coming home to roost was literally part of the resolution in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy?
posted by Slackermagee at 5:16 PM on April 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

Primarying Feinstein is perfect though, because of the way CA's elections are built; there's a decent chance it'll be two Dems in the final anyhow. So yeah, In Lieu of Feinstein.
posted by nat at 5:17 PM on April 17, 2017 [16 favorites]

National Treasure Alexandra Petri, WaPo: Fun facts and scenes from the White House Easter Egg Roll and Tax Return Hunt (with pictures)

• Fabergé eggs were NOT initially considered but rejected as too Russian-seeming. This is a baseless rumor, just as everything to do with Russia is.

• The rumor that one of the eggs issued in the roll contains Steve Bannon’s soul — and if it cracks, he will vanish as if he had never been here — is also just a rumor.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:17 PM on April 17, 2017 [28 favorites]

> To take it one step further than suelac; they aren't lining up to primary her because she's probably going to win.

I am willing to wager that there is at least one Democrat and/or leftist entryist in California who does things not because they are easy but because they are hard.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:17 PM on April 17, 2017 [14 favorites]

Matthew Heimbach claims in his federal court filing that he “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President,” and that, if he’s found liable for damages, “any liability must be shifted to one or both of them.”

I'm OK with this.
posted by ocschwar at 5:30 PM on April 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

Plus, I wouldn't put it past her to be a brutal campaigner against another Democrat.

Well CA has jungle primaries which makes it difficult because you can be attacked on all sides.

If I wanted to unseat Feinstein I'd either go with well known Silicon Valley personality or Hollywood celebrity. Marisa Mayer was just unceremoniously dumped from Yahoo so she has a lot of free time on her hands. She's well spoken, reasonably attractive which, despite strides made, still makes it easier to get a female elected even in 2017. Ditto Sheryl Sandberg and Elon Musk wouldn't be the outside the realm of possibility. Going down a tier you have your Sam Altman and Jack Dorsey. Socal you have Clooney as an obvious choice, Affleck although he's going through a nasty separation right now, Kevin Johnson, Maria Shriver, hell even Ahhnold might want to give federal politics a go. Zuck? He's been umming and ahhing about 2020. You don't run for CA in '18 to go for President in 2020.

Now you can't get elected to the senate in California without the D (in b4 phrasing), so even if you're a libertarian or moderate Republican in principal just bite the bullet and run as a D. Once you're in you have incumbency advantage even if you piss a lot of leftists off. Hell, look at Pelosi. She consistently pokes the bear in San Fran-fucking-cisco and doesn't get punished for it.

I mean it's not insurmountable. But without Clooney or Sandberg you're probably pissing away a hell of a lot of cash.
posted by Talez at 5:31 PM on April 17, 2017

The rumor that one of the eggs issued in the roll contains Steve Bannon’s soul — and if it cracks, he will vanish as if he had never been here — is also just a rumor.
Steve Bannon has no soul. We regret the error.
posted by MikeKD at 5:34 PM on April 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

Muslims, LGBT advocates prepare to fight Mark Green's nomination as Army secretary

-- “The administration could not have picked a worse nominee,” said David Stacy, government affairs director of the Human Rights Campaign.

-- President Donald Trump nominated Green, a former Army officer, a little more than a week ago to become Army secretary to replace Eric Fanning, the first openly gay man to lead a branch of the military.

-- It’s his political views that are the source of opposition to his nomination as Army secretary. His appearance at a Chattanooga Tea Party event in September has given his opponents lots of ammunition.

At that event, Green said he would not tolerate students learning about Muslim beliefs and religious practices and claimed erroneously that Muslims don’t believe Jesus “was born from a virgin.”

In the same address, Green called transgender men and women “guys or gals with question marks,” suggested Tennessee should not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and insinuated that permissive attitudes that legalized same-sex marriage could eventually open the door to using taxpayer dollars for infanticide.

Every nominee is a shitstain. This is infuckingfuriating.
posted by futz at 5:39 PM on April 17, 2017 [57 favorites]

A primary fight against Feinstein would be so damn ugly. There isn't really a single obvious challenger, especially not one with strong support both north and south. The heavy hitters are lining up to run for governor and likely aren't inclined to give that up to challenge one of the state's Democratic Party institutions, but it's possible that one of them decides there's way too many people fishing the gubernatorial pond and jumps ship. I feel like folks like Reps. Schiff or Lieu aren't going to want to burn every bridge they have with the party trying this if it doesn't work. Beyond that, it comes down to someone out of left field (read: someone with lots of money), a Tom Steyer or a Mark Zuckerberg or somebody.

Feinstein has decades of support from a lot of institutions in the state. A primary challenge would quickly start pitting, say, the nurses' union against the teachers' union, and it would start to look a lot like the 2016 primary all over again. I'm not sure people have the stomach for it.

And, of course, the money. It's a big state with some of the most expensive media markets. Who's going to pour millions into a Dem-on-Dem primary challenge? And thanks to California's jungle primary system (top two vote getters go on to the general, regardless of party), you don't just need money to win the primary and then coast; you need to sustain it all the way through the general.

Part of Feinstein's trick is that her centrism plays fairly well even down in Republican districts in the Central Valley. Given California's top-two election system, a firebrand leftist challenger is going to bleed support both from Feinstein loyalists in the deep blue parts of the state and from the redder areas.

The alternative is that she somehow doesn't run again. There's a small part of me that thinks someone on her staff is making her do these town halls to show her that times have changed and people aren't so thrilled.
posted by zachlipton at 5:43 PM on April 17, 2017 [30 favorites]

From the NYT article linked above: “Mook had made the near-fatal mistakes of underestimating Sanders and investing almost nothing early in the back end of the primary calendar,” Parnes and Allen write, and the campaign seemed to learn little from Clinton’s early struggles.

This is exactly what happened in 2008. Exactly. Obama racked up win after primary win because Mark Penn expected in to be over by January and had no plans for when it wasn't.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:00 PM on April 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

"A kid asks Trump to sign his hat at the White House Easter Egg Roll. The president signs ... and then tosses the hat into the crowd." (Politico)

In the words of Bill Maher, this is a perfect example of liberals shooting ourselves in the foot.
posted by notreally at 6:02 PM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Zachlipton - thank you for that rundown. It was fantastic. Also, I think Feinstein will absolutely be primaried out. I'm behind Ted Lieu 100%. Today he posted a sit down with Chelsea Handler, entitled "Colluding with Comrade Chelsea Handler over coffee in Santa Monica" (facebook link) So I think he's definitely considering his options.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:05 PM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

In the words of Bill Maher, this is a perfect example of liberals shooting ourselves in the foot.

How so? i am not grokking.
posted by futz at 6:06 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Is that Russia abandoning and attempting to scuttle CalExit, or is it the opening salvo of their CalAnnex movement?


Just quietly showing other traitors that Russian residency is an available safety hatch in case the alternative involves lethal injection.
posted by ocschwar at 6:09 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

there's a decent chance it'll be two Dems in the final anyhow.

Which seems like an advantage for Feinstein. She still picks up a lot of Dem votes (incumbency, name recognition, money all big advantages) and is much more likely to pick up R-leaning independents and Republicans who would rather have her over a much more left-wing opponent. They either vote for her or abstain.

This last year we had two fairly liberal women running for Senator, so there wasn't a big advantage for either one. But Feinstein vs Liberal Challenger is one where there's a more clear "moderate" candidate to go for.
posted by thefoxgod at 6:11 PM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Every nominee is a shitstain. This is infuckingfuriating.

I remember in the Good Times when some crackpot Alabama state rep would propose a bill to ban sharia abortions and there'd be an outragefilter post about it where everyone said 'relax, this will go nowhere' and now those guys are running the entire federal government
posted by theodolite at 6:14 PM on April 17, 2017 [37 favorites]

It should be noted that California's economy is nearly twice the size of Russia's economy. We're not particularly afraid.
posted by Justinian

...that actually checks out. So, could someone please explain to me how in the hell Russia has a nuclear arsenal roughly on par with ours? I know there's considerable speculation re: degradation due to budget cuts following the Soviet collapse, but China has fully 10x Russia's GDP and Russia has 10x China's active nuclear warheads. So the relative GDP:Warhead ratio for the two is off by 100:1...
posted by Ryvar at 6:15 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

oh yeah everyone loves Steyer and Zuck and Leaning In. That is the transformative change that California is lining up behind. Brilliant idea.

1: Silicon Valley is a tiny part of the state
2: Silicon Valley twerps are crap at political campaigns (see: whatshername who hand-wrestled with Ted Cruz that one time)
3: Everyone hates Silicon Valley. Even Silicon Valley hates Silicon Valley. The place is a sprawling monument to the high-strung self loathing of the people working there.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:17 PM on April 17, 2017 [29 favorites]

in the words of donald trump, merdre

no wait, that was pere ubu

i'm easily confused these days
posted by pyramid termite at 6:18 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

...that actually checks out. So, could someone please explain to me how in the hell Russia has a nuclear arsenal roughly on par with ours? I know there's considerable speculation re: degradation due to budget cuts following the Soviet collapse, but China has fully 10x Russia's GDP and Russia has 10x China's active nuclear warheads. So the relative GDP:Warhead ratio for the two is off by 100:1...

You know how poor people have TVs and refrigerators? In some cases they weren't always poor and in other cases they're forty year old hand-me-downs.

Russia is both.
posted by Talez at 6:20 PM on April 17, 2017 [23 favorites]

Like basically what y'all are doing is equivalent to brainstorming for candidates for NYS Senate and coming up with a thousand hedge fund managers and no one else. The people you are naming have name recognition, but only because they're wildly unpopular.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:21 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Oh, come on. Diane Feinstein is the best Republican in the Senate.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:21 PM on April 17, 2017 [8 favorites]

The alternative is that she somehow doesn't run again. There's a small part of me that thinks someone on her staff is making her do these town halls to show her that times have changed and people aren't so thrilled.

I like to think that she's trying to call people out, like, "What, you got somebody better?" As much as my politics don't match hers, she's been in DC for a long time and knows the game, and thereby is a good wing to be taken under. Her successor wouldn't need to be 100% DiFi (but would probably have to be able to fake it), but you gotta climb the ladder, even if you're jumping over from the next one over.
posted by rhizome at 6:22 PM on April 17, 2017

oh yeah everyone loves Steyer and Zuck and Leaning In. That is the transformative change that California is lining up behind. Brilliant idea.

I was, to be clear, not in any way advocating either of those people should run for public office. I do not want either of those people to run for office.

But it seems that anybody who could primary Feinstein has to be: 1. a major statewide figure like a Gavin Newsom, for better or, usually, for worse; 2. a Congressman or local official who doesn't care about burning their bridges with the party; or 3. a wildcard non-politician with a lot of name recognition and money.

People who think they're 1 want to run for Governor. People in category 2 have a tough fight because they have regional support but no statewide base, which means they get squeezed from the left and the right in the general. Category 3 has huge problems––are we really going to get the Bernie Sanders grassroots to pour their hearts into a billionaire's campaign? This, in short, is presumably why we're not seeing much movement to run against her.
posted by zachlipton at 6:29 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yeah too bad there's no firebrand congressmember from socal who has been building up a statewide base by using twitter to tell an orange fascist to go fuck himself. If only we had someone like that.

This thread is full of 2016 thinking. Hell, it's full of 2004 thinking. It's the wretched year 2017 now, and California is ready for war. Things have changed. I'll eat all kinds of cake if any corporatist billionaire gets through the primary here.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:37 PM on April 17, 2017 [43 favorites]

All I ask is please, no Elon fucking Musk
posted by Existential Dread at 6:42 PM on April 17, 2017 [33 favorites]

Another troubling point came when she discussed health care (she punted quickly on single payer, except to say she doesn't want a government takeover of healthcare).

zachlipton, is this accurate? or hype?

Sen. Feinstein booed at town hall for not supporting single-payer

Feinstein got one of the worst reactions from the crowd when she refused to support single-payer healthcare.

“If single-payer healthcare is going to mean the complete takeover by the government of all healthcare, I am not there,” she told the audience. They didn’t care for that, or her approval of Trump’s decision to launch 59 missiles at a Syrian airbase.
posted by futz at 6:42 PM on April 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

Yeah too bad there's no firebrand congressmember from socal who has been building up a statewide base by using twitter to tell an orange fascist to go fuck himself. If only we had someone like that.

If CA could elect Ted Lieu to the senate it would send me to my happy place. Fingers crossed he eventually gets a chance.
posted by Talez at 6:43 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

“Mook had made the near-fatal mistakes of underestimating Sanders and investing almost nothing early in the back end of the primary calendar,” Parnes and Allen write, and the campaign seemed to learn little from Clinton’s early struggles.

It hardly had any impact as Sanders' Team didn't seem to be aware that a) the Southern primaries were a thing b) they were early on in the schedule c) Sanders would have to win some of them to continue to be viable.
posted by asteria at 7:02 PM on April 17, 2017 [9 favorites]

In the words of Bill Maher, this is a perfect example of liberals shooting ourselves in the foot.

How so? i am not grokking.

Futz. His theory is that by making a big deal out of picky political feel good attacks on Republicans we are losing the war of influencing voters because it just makes us look like a bunch of pussies in the eyes of Trumps minions some of whom we must convert to be successful in future congressional elections.
posted by notreally at 7:04 PM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

zachlipton, is this accurate? or hype?

It happened fairly quick, as she pivoted quickly, but it's not all hype.

To be clear, the video clips posted in that article aren't about single-payer at all: there was one man who wanted the town hall to be all about him, and the crowd was not having it, with chants of "throw him out" (insert major grumbling here about how quickly many people were calling for the police to use force). He eventually quieted down after another warning. None of the shouting in the videos has anything to do with healthcare policy; it was all just about whether the man in the black jacket was going to interrupt all the time.

With healthcare, the quote is accurate, though she mumbled through it a bit. Checking my poor-quality audio recording, there was a short round of boos after, and then she went on from there to say "if single-payer means trying to work out some of the problems that are existing, we've got immediate problems coming up" and then pivoted to the House lawsuit about cost sharing subsidies, which she apparently just learned about last night. That is, of course, not what single-payer means by any stretch of the imagination. I'd also note that the question was explicitly about helping people, and not insurance companies, but she focused on the CSR subsidies, which are payments to insurance companies (they do, of course, help people indirectly).

I don't know that she explicitly praised the Syria strike (I may be misremembering), but she was broadly supportive, speaking about Assad's use of chemical weapons and criticizing Obama for doing nothing after he crossed the "red line." There were chants of "no more war" and she was called a "hawk," to which she asked that we avoid namecalling. One person asked a "question" that boiled down to: after North Korea nukes us here in San Francisco, I might be dead and Trump won't care about us, but please do not "seek vengeance or retribution" for me.
posted by zachlipton at 7:04 PM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

can someone use small words to explain a scenario where the jungle primary would be anything but deeply annoying
posted by murphy slaw at 7:05 PM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Am annoyed that CalExit is giving up. There's room for a replacement movement, but it's not likely to happen. (I got their petition-things to be signed. They have spots for 2 signatures per page; the rest is the required explanation text - arranged poorly enough that you only have space for 2 signatures on the page.)

I knew - know - that California hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of seceding. But I would love to see broad discussions about how that might work, what kind of economy we (or any state) could have, without federal interference.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:11 PM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

can someone use small words to explain a scenario where the jungle primary would be anything but deeply annoying

Sure. In 2016, a whole bunch of people ran who I've mostly forgotten, except the two winners, Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez, who are both democrats. So it was guaranteed that our next Senator would be a democrat, and then the general election happened, and a democrat got elected. The end.

(Seriously though, not to dismiss legitimate concerns with jungle primaries, but it can come out OK when one party both has higher state-wide support and focuses on a small number of candidates.)
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 7:14 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

From the R. Eric Thomas artcle linked above:

Now, as the night is ending and not even a cup of tea can salvage her voice, I ask her one last question. "Why should we have hope?" In the face of all that is against us, despite everything that is happening around us, why should we hold on to hope?

Maxine Waters' eyes light up; she sits up straight and fixes me with her gaze. "We should have hope because we've earned it," she says resolutely. "We've worked for it! It's ours." And despite the fact that I haven't even worked a fraction of the amount that she has, that the things she's earned for our culture and our country I could never repay, in this moment I believe her and I feel that hope. After all, when Maxine Waters gives you the word, you'd better listen.
posted by petebest at 7:14 PM on April 17, 2017 [47 favorites]

California hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of seceding. But I would love to see broad discussions about how that might work

It would stop at Step 0, because it's unconstitutional.
posted by rhizome at 7:22 PM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

That said, I think a case could be made that you just can't go back afterwards and then try to litigate stuff that happened during the secession. So, it would have to be a permanent thing I guess. Look, broad discussion!
posted by rhizome at 7:24 PM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

In the words of Bill Maher, this is a perfect example of liberals shooting ourselves in the foot.

How so? i am not grokking.

Futz. His theory is that by making a big deal out of picky political feel good attacks on Republicans we are losing the war of influencing voters because it just makes us look like a bunch of pussies in the eyes of Trumps minions some of whom we must convert to be successful in future congressional elections.

not to even mention that this hat throwing went viral and got posted all over the place as an example of T-RUMP cruelty, when
in fact he threw it right back to the kid it belonged to as shown on a video from a different angle. But that video just isn't getting much attention.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 7:26 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

what if everybody in california stopped bathing and they let us exit because they couldn't deal with the stench and besides we were embarrassing them
posted by murphy slaw at 7:27 PM on April 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

I knew - know - that California hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of seceding. But I would love to see broad discussions about how that might work, what kind of economy we (or any state) could have, without federal interference.

That makes one of us.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:28 PM on April 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

what if everybody in california stopped bathing and they let us exit because they couldn't deal with the stench and besides we were embarrassing them

If they can put up with Trump embarrassing and looting the country to spite liberals I assume the stench of a bunch of liberals hundreds or thousands of miles away is water off a duck's back to see us squirm.
posted by Talez at 7:33 PM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

i mean i see the emotional appeal of secession but on the other hand i'd much rather drag the rest of the country along to the fully automated luxury communism future because, as a socialist, the only thing i like better than helping people reach a better world is doing it to spite them
posted by murphy slaw at 7:36 PM on April 17, 2017 [59 favorites]

Calexit is literally, no-fooling a Russian plot to destabilize and diminish the United States, and that includes a newly independent California. You. Want. No. Part.


Instead you want Puerto Rico and the West Pacific and Washington DC as states, and a constant drumbeat to revoke statehood to ND, SD, WY, MT and AK, as they have not grown their populations and economies enough to warrant ongoing statehood.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:54 PM on April 17, 2017 [74 favorites]

Trump will sign an executive order reviewing high-skilled H-1B immigration visas

Note that he doesn't seem to be going after H-2B workers, which his properties use for staff.
posted by zachlipton at 8:03 PM on April 17, 2017 [25 favorites]

fully automated luxury communism future

Important: it's fully automated luxury GAY SPACE communism. I'd ask Contact to send another GCU to explain it but they're all OH NO THAT'S THE CONTROL PLANET and MAYBE IN A HUNDRED YEARS and HEY LOOK I MADE MY GENITALS INTO A BONG WOOOOOO.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:04 PM on April 17, 2017 [33 favorites]

As I posted in the last thread, I think it behooves a state with the power of California to consider the circumstances under which it would reject the federal government.

I feel like people here haven't engaged with this idea very much, just treated it with reflexive dismissal. There are a lot of ways that California "secedes" without Ted Lieu climbing to the top of the CA statehouse to yell, "I declare secession!" For example, the Trump threat to cut off federal funding to states which he views as harboring undocumented immigrants is still "live", and it's reasonable to imagine that if that happened, CA might initiate an economic secession. Even if #calexit is risible as a brand, the idea of resisting the federal government is important to keep.
posted by TypographicalError at 8:07 PM on April 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

> You want Puerto Rico and the West Pacific and Washington DC as states, and a constant drumbeat to revoke statehood to ND, SD, WY, MT and AK, as they have not grown their populations and economies enough to warrant ongoing statehood.

Oooh, is this where I say that I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter? :)

(To be clear, I love the idea of forcing some empty states to combine or revert to territory status, but with two senators each, it's just not going to happen.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:14 PM on April 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

and HEY LOOK I MADE MY GENITALS INTO A BONG WOOOOOO.

Goddammit. I had one original money maker idea and you just went and ruined it...Unless I beat you to the patent office.
posted by futz at 8:14 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Instead you want Puerto Rico and the West Pacific and Washington DC as states, and a constant drumbeat to revoke statehood to ND, SD, WY, MT and AK, as they have not grown their populations and economies enough to warrant ongoing statehood.

I assume the second half of this plan is a joke, but if it's not, there's kind of a problem, inasmuch as there is no Constitutional mechanism whatsoever for the removal of states from the Union, either by expulsion or by their consent. Congress is explicitly granted the power to admit states to the Union in Article IV, Section 3, but no branch of the Federal government is explicitly empowered to undo such an admission, and I don't think any attempt to interpret the broadly defined powers of either the executive or legislative branch as including such powers would pass judicial review.

Basically, to revoke statehood, you'd first need to amend the Constitution to create such a revocation power, and then exert it.
posted by jackbishop at 8:18 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

Last GA-06 updates!

* Late poll from Emerson:

Ossoff 43%
Handel 17%
Gray 15%
Moody 9%

In head-to-heads, Ossoff trails by 3-5 points, but all within MOE.

* Final thoughts from 538. Basically: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. They do point out that in the second round, you not infrequently see the "add up the party votes" loser actually go on to win.

* New Yorker write-up.

* If it goes to round 2, Handel is the most likely opponent. Most polls have Ossoff edging her. Anecdotally, people seem pretty underwhelmed with her skills. I've seen "the Martha Coakley of Georgia" more than once.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:21 PM on April 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

So I'm hearing we can unite with the ultra conservatives for a referendum for such a thing and watch as Putin laughs at the ensuing shitshow as both conservative states like Texas and liberal ones like Oregon and California all break away from the federal government, depriving it of the West coast and sections of the southern half of the united States.

Insanity ensues. I need more weed for these crazy times.
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 8:22 PM on April 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

secession was dumb when the south tried it and its dumb now that people 'just want to discuss' a russian plot to break california from the union. if you want to discuss a californian economic embargo with the federal government, then by all means do that, but dont do it under the brand of calexit.
posted by localhuman at 8:39 PM on April 17, 2017 [44 favorites]

Can I just grumble again about the futility of a "50 state strategy" and wanting to win elections in Montana, KS, etc... while simultaneously talking about secession or actually taking statehood away from some rural states?

You don't like or care about these people? You don't want to share a country with them, or give them a voice in government if we must share? I sure hope you aren't counting on their votes any time soon, then.

Even when less explicit, people in these states pick up on this kind of contempt coming from our side. And they will not vote for people who feel contempt for them. Would you?
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:42 PM on April 17, 2017 [19 favorites]

Basically, to revoke statehood, you'd first need to amend the Constitution to create such a revocation power, and then exert it.

I figured that was implied. Pass an amendment to the Constitution mandating contiguous states with less than 2% (or whatever) of the population of the country be combined into larger states, with it kicking in every 40 years or something. That would make complete sense, improve the functioning of our democracy, and therefore has absolutely no chance whatsoever of actually happening.
posted by Justinian at 8:47 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

I was attempting to parody the futility of it with my comment but to no avail. A /s tag should go with that.

In all seriousness, what is the mechanism/precedent for a popular vote to amend the Constitution? Something like that could galvanize the liberals to redraw the House districts or any number of other things that would actually improve our lives.
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 8:51 PM on April 17, 2017

In all seriousness, what is the mechanism/precedent for a popular vote to amend the Constitution?

There is no mechanism for a popular vote to amend the Constitution. It would take passing a Constitutional Amendment to make it possible to do so. The only way to amend the Constitution is for 38 of the 50 states (75%) to ratify an Amendment proposed by either 2/3rd majorities in both Houses of Congress or those proposed at a Constitutional Convention called by 2/3rds of the States.

Note that Republicans are right on the verge of being able to propose amendments in a Constitutional Convention but are still 7-8 states short of being able to ratify those amendments.

The doomsday scenario for the United States is for geographic sorting to result in Democrats and aligned parties being a strong majority of the country (55%+) but being so clustered as to be majorities in only 10 or 11 states, such that Republicans are able to pass Constitutional amendments by dominating 38 or 39 states which consist of mostly empty farmland and wilderness. I don't see how civil war would be avoided in such a case.
posted by Justinian at 9:00 PM on April 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

You don't like or care about these people? You don't want to share a country with them, or give them a voice in government if we must share? I sure hope you aren't counting on their votes any time soon, then.

No, they can have a voice. But we want a system where they don't win total control of every branch of government anyway despite losing the popular vote at every single level.

This isn't some tyranny of those smug liberals, the fucking rurals are oppressing us.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:02 PM on April 17, 2017 [19 favorites]

He's violated at least 4 articles of the Constitution. What is lacking is the political will in Congress to impeach him. Until you have that, your left with either violent overthrow, or get used to President Trump.

Take your pick.

And marches mean nothing if voter turnout is as low as the last election.
posted by prepmonkey at 9:06 PM on April 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

Pass an amendment to the Constitution mandating contiguous states with less than 2% (or whatever) of the population of the country be combined into larger states, with it kicking in every 40 years or something.

I don't know how much people care about this, but... in anything but a totally uniform distribution of people among states, it is to be expected that some states will fall under 2% (which is 1/50th) of the population. With the real population distribution as it stands, the bottom 32 states each fall below 2% of the total population.

If we expect state populations to follow Zipf's law, the least-populous of 50 states would be expected to be about 0.4% of the population. Even so, the 10 least-populous states fail even that standard.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:08 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

Mod note: Folks, this isn't a secession thread and this derail has gone on for a while. Let's rein it in. Thanks/
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:08 PM on April 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

Hey so y'all are doing math that has nothing to do with the workings of real power, and it's confusing that you're doing it, and it's confusing why you're doing it. It's Utopian, in that you're presenting an argument for the rationalization of the workings of power without proposing any mechanism whatsoever that could bring that rationalization about, but it's not Utopian, in that the particular rationalization in question doesn't in any way make for a more pleasant society. I don't get it.

proposals for schemes that would require a revolution to happen should be at least as appealing as the standard "worker's councils establish workplace democracy -> workers arm in the name of the councils -> smash the bourgeois state" fantasy, or there's no point to the proposal. That's the floor. No one's going to do anything that would require a war (like your proposal would) unless it's at least as good as the orthodox Leninist scheme.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:31 PM on April 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

You may want to consider that not everyone finds the orthodox Leninist scheme an appealing outcome.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:43 PM on April 17, 2017 [14 favorites]

regardless, it beats the pants off of "fight war to strip statehood from several sparsely populated states." like what is that even.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:47 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

This isn't some tyranny of those smug liberals, the fucking rurals are oppressing us.


Hi, I live in a rural town in a red state and this is exactly the kind of rhetoric that makes me embarrassed to be a Democrat.

Lumping together everyone in a state, whether it's New York or Wyoming, and assuming they all have the same attitude and politics is really not helping make things better here.
posted by mmoncur at 9:51 PM on April 17, 2017 [39 favorites]

My favorite political fantasy at the moment is the one where Democrats learn something from Hilary's loss and Feinstein gets an energetic primary challenger.
posted by BeginAgain at 9:53 PM on April 17, 2017 [15 favorites]

Would you be less embarrassed to be a Democrat if socialists took it over from the inside asking for a friend.

but yeah I'm so relentlessly city that I don't know how to drive and I'm embarrassed by this "strip statehood of sparse states" stuff. it's silly. if you had enough power to do that bad thing you're talking about you could just give the economy a thorough Piketty-ing instead and spare the world some misery.

p.s. the new kim stanley robinson is great
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:55 PM on April 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

You only have to take a quick look at the writings of Will Rogers to know that Democrats can't seem to learn anything.
posted by Quonab at 9:57 PM on April 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

NYT: Trump’s Unreleased Taxes Threaten Yet Another Campaign Promise

As procrastinators rushed to file their tax returns by Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, emphasized again on Monday that Mr. Trump had no intention of making his public. Democrats have seized on that decision, uniting around a pledge not to cooperate on any rewriting of the tax code unless they know specifically how that revision would benefit the billionaire president and his family.

And a growing roster of more than a dozen Republican lawmakers now say Mr. Trump should release them.
[…]
Polls show that a majority of Americans, including most Republicans, would like Mr. Trump to release his tax returns, according to the Republican pollster Frank Luntz. However, the issue is a low priority for voters.

“You’re not going to change someone’s opinion of Trump merely by what’s in his tax returns,” Mr. Luntz said.

I think Luntz is wrong. Swayable Trumpists are already coming around on healthcare and budget issues, and if they find out that he's not a billionaire it might be be the last straw.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:33 PM on April 17, 2017 [13 favorites]

WaPo: Two plaintiffs join suit against Trump, alleging breach of emoluments clause

CREW had originally filed suit against Trump in federal court in January, alleging that — by continuing to own his business, which rents out hotel rooms and meeting spaces to other governments — Trump had violated the constitutional provision that bans “emoluments” from foreign powers.

Legal experts had said that the case faced a serious hurdle: It wasn’t clear that the watchdog group actually had standing to sue in the first place. What harm had it suffered, specifically, because of Trump’s actions?

The new plaintiffs are intended to offer an alternative answer to that question. Both say that, as direct competitors of Trump’s restaurants and hotels, they may lose foreign clients, who may book with Trump properties to curry favor with the president.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:37 PM on April 17, 2017 [32 favorites]

Swayable Trumpists are already coming around on healthcare and budget issues, and if they find out that he's not a billionaire it might be be the last straw.

Hm. I doubt that'd matter.

In modern America, successfully acting like a billionaire is probably more respected than actually being one. It speaks right to that aspirational thing that makes people cheer for winning sports teams and worship the wealthy in the first place.

That is, how the Kardashians act is what makes them, not their bottom lines.

Pardon the pun.
posted by rokusan at 10:48 PM on April 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Women on Supreme Court Are Interrupted 3 Times More Often Than Male Justices, Study Says - And Ruth Bader Ginsburg is stopped mid-sentence six times more than Samuel Alito or John Roberts

After mansplaining, the next worse thing for a woman is to be repeatedly interrupted by a man. Especially if you are a female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But female Supreme Court justices are being interrupted by the male justices at approximately three times the rate of their male colleagues during oral arguments, according to a new study to be published in the Virginia Law Review this fall.

Male justices are not the only ones interrupting the women justices.

“Our findings clearly establish that women on the Supreme Court . . . are interrupted at a markedly higher rate” by “both male justices and male advocates,” Northwestern Law School professor Tonja Jacobi said in the report she co-authored with Northwestern Law School student Dylan Schweers.


The court has a rule against interrupting justices, but Chief Justice Roberts does not routinely enforce it when the female justices are interrupted, the study says.

-- “Indeed, the more women on the Court, the more they are interrupted,” the study says. “This suggests that rather than getting acclimated to having to share the Bench with women, men may be becoming more hostile to the incursion of women into their traditional domain.”

Jacobi and Schweers say that this is “consistent with social science literature showing that traditional elites, such as legislators, feel threatened by the entry of nontraditional members into their realm and act more aggressively to the interlopers in an attempt to protect their privilege.”

The male-female interruptions are not just bad manners; they can skew the outcome of court decisions toward a conservative outcome, the report argued.

If I flip an already flipped table and it lands on its legs is it still a flipped table or does it violate the spirit of flipping a table which is to upend the table and render it useless?

I agree with me in this case and will flip all already flipped tables until they are FUBAR'd. Dilemma solved.
posted by futz at 10:54 PM on April 17, 2017 [88 favorites]

You may want to consider that not everyone finds the orthodox Leninist scheme an appealing outcome.

Trotskyist, are ya?!?
posted by msalt at 11:36 PM on April 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Eric Trump: 'The world will be a safer place because of my dad'

-- "They all got it wrong. Every single one of them," he says of America's liberal media. It's a remark delivered with the same satisfaction as if the victory was only yesterday.
"You know, we were a family who has never had anything to do with politics… so the learning curve was amazing."

The biggest lesson he learned was "how dishonest and disconnected the media were from the American population. I also realised how mean the process is. It's something that is not spoken about enough".

-- What is the one thing that is said which hurts his father the most?

"The falsehoods. He is the one person who did not need this job. He is a man who has achieved every aspect of success - wealth, family - in fact so many people often come up to me and talk about him and the concept of the American dream. He is the epitome of the American dream."

The best personal advice his father gave him, he says, is: "Loyalty. He is the kind of guy who is immensely loyal to a fault."

And on the flip side he says: "He never forgets disloyalty. There are a lot of people who are on the middle of that bell curve but he is on one side or the other. He would give the shirt off his back for someone who was loyal and he would give the shirt off his back for his family."

This is really weird for many reasons:

One notable influence that helped to shape Eric and his siblings was the fact that the Trump kids, Ivanka, Eric and Don Junior, were reared with the help of two Irish nannies, Dorothy Curry from Cavan and the late Bridget Carroll from Co Kerry.

-- Illustrating their bond, he says, "She was part of the group. My wife is pregnant, and when we announced it and called the family, she is pretty much the only person outside the family (she's inside the family) but who is non-blood, that knew at the same time.

"So I feel like I have a lot of Irish heritage in me based on her, based on the fact that I was coming over here with her every single summer. And, again, it wasn't like I was going to Dublin and staying in some hotel. I mean this was real Ireland. She would take a car and we drove all over Ireland together - it was a lot of fun."

For a family who talks about their superior genes to claim that they have Irish heritage via osmosis/diaper changing is...odd. That aside, who refers to someone in terms of blood or non-blood relations and means it sincerely as a description? Ya, you know who.

No one has been able to solve the problem of North Korea. Does he think his father is the man do it?

"Yes. I think he will. Quite frankly, I don't think anybody tried to solve the problem [in the past] and one thing I can say, and who knows what happens, again I have nothing to do with the administration, I don't discuss these things with the administration, no different than I don't discuss business with him

SO many lies in 2 sentences.
posted by futz at 11:43 PM on April 17, 2017 [22 favorites]

So the takeaway from that is that Eric Trump is at least as detached from reality as his father. not surprised by that, but it's worthy of note.
posted by Archelaus at 12:27 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

In an earlier thread I defended proposals to add states, increase the total number of reps in the House, or even (though I am least comfortable with this one) "pack" the Supreme Court, as "not table-flipping, but rather trying to keep the table flippers away from the game." All of those moves are both historically precedented and constitutional, I believe. Moreover, they don't strip anyone of their rights or representation (though they change the balance of power), and they don't destroy the Union or require us to disregard or even to ammend the Constitution. And they might be necessary at some point to fix the systematic under representation of city-dwellers. Because yeah, that's bad.

Secession or "stripping statehood" are different. Unprecedented, unconstitutional, and profoundly disrespectful of our fellow Americans and their rights and voice our government. That kind of thinking leads to hatred, terrorism, and civil war in other places, and has historically in the US as well. Ugh.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:35 AM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

I find it hard to imagine that Xi didn't cover the death of Kim Jong 'I told you I was' Il.

Trump also made two references in the interview to “this gentleman” in North Korea, who he said had “outplayed” both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The late North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il died in 2011. His son, Kim Jong Un, is the country’s current ruler.

“But, you know, they’ve been talking with this gentleman for a long time,” Trump said. “You read Clinton’s book, he said, ‘Oh, we made such a great peace deal,’ and it was a joke. You look at different things over the years with President Obama. Everybody has been outplayed, they’ve all been outplayed by this gentleman. And we’ll see what happens. But I just don’t telegraph my moves.” [TPM]

Yes, it does look a bit like senility.
posted by jaduncan at 12:41 AM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

Trump Diplomacy can be expected to be the same massive success as Trump Steaks... or Trump University... or the Trump Taj Mahal. Kim won't need any atomic bombs to destroy Seoul; Trump will do for it what he did for Atlantic City.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:56 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Honestly, the most astounding thing about that quote is that Trump professes to have knowledge of something inside a book. I mean, he completely botches it up to the point that he has no clue who runs North Korea, but still he actually cites a book without his own name on the cover.
posted by zachlipton at 1:03 AM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Didn't Reagan also show a lot of signs of senility? Granted, the winner of that particular popularity contest had come to fame by playing cowboys, rather than the guy who shuts down the orphanage on Christmas Eve, but
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:29 AM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Sadly, not for a very long time. This is our life now.
posted by Justinian at 2:15 AM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

Ignore, ignite, both acceptable
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:13 AM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

For some weird reason I feel like some people may need to reread this meta about being respectful to people in rural areas. This meta happened partially because of a recurrent problem of people making dismissive comments that could be summed up as "fuck Florida" or "fuck the south" and this whole statehood revocation thing sounds to me like the same thing times 100.
posted by heatvision at 4:27 AM on April 18, 2017 [23 favorites]

Depressing link:

New Mexico Gov. Martinez vetoes higher education funding. All of it.

Actual Facebook comment on that depressing link:

"Yeah, but it's in New Mexico, so, who cares, right? New Mexico is one of the trash states. We don't really need that one, it's just .. there."

Encouraging link:

7 reasons why today’s left should be optimistic

Seriously guys. Let's go out and get votes in New Mexico and Montana and North Carolina and Florida. We can get 'em! My Kansas friends hate Brownback and my Oklahoma friends want their kids' schools funded! It's election day in Georgia and the Democrat actually has a shot (stolen voting machines not withstanding...) But we have to respect those voters to get their votes. So just keep it together, okay?
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:35 AM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

Mod note: A couple deleted. Reminder from earlier: not a secession (revocation, etc.) thread.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:40 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

That happened before the 2016 election.

It sucks, but, if you live in a red state -- and I do now -- we hurt our country in ways it will take perhaps generations to recover from. Expecting liberals to not be angry with us is almost like asking us to coddle up to abusive family members. (Actually, as a liberal, I'm being expected to not be angry with a *ton* of people on both the left and the right. I think the only thing I could bash without being checked is the people I support, which is a really disturbing dynamic.)
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:42 AM on April 18, 2017 [35 favorites]

zachlipton: But at the end of the day, California needs a Senator who we don't have to ask if she'll fight fascists. California needs a Senator who doesn't respond to that question as if it was a novel concept. To use the theme of the day, California needs a Senator who understands this isn't "politics as usual." From what I saw today, that's not Sen. Feinstein.

Please send that quote, verbatim, to Feinstein's primary opponent.
posted by Gelatin at 4:54 AM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

I think YCTAB has promised to primary her. [fake, until it isn't]
posted by corb at 5:01 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

“When I meet Ted Lieu, should I meet Ted Lieu, I'm going to have to try real hard not to greet him with "give me a position tell me where the ammunition is"”

I could outfit a bunch of revolutionary manumission abolitionists.


“When a guy is talking about how many concentration camps his mother was shuffled between and is asking pretty literally whether she'll fight Nazis, "some caution" is really not what he, or anyone else, was looking for.”


I think the "but I'm just..." limp dick no power excuse is a recognition that the system can't be changed by people who's livelihoods are invested in it.

Well, perhaps it could, but no one is going to risk it. Otherwise they would have joined the military or been a firefighter or paramedic, nurse, teacher, etc - done something else more self-sacrificing for a living than being lauded ethically simply for not taking bribes.

Or rather - they're so much a part of the machine, they can't see the flaw. This is/was one of my problems with Clinton. The Democrats are this incarnate.

Kurt Godel outlined this (it's a good read). Yes, he's thinking about the constitution, but his broader idea(s), that a system cannot prove its own consistency is much like government proving its own legitimacy.
It can't be done through the system of laws (which is the GOP position - albeit taken to a bizarre extreme) and if you try(the Dem position) the system will reveal - or rather won't reveal but has - a self-destructive downward spiral into dictatorship.

Granted Godel was talking about the Constitution specifically, but we've already begun fundamentally amending the way the Senate handles Supreme Court appointments in what was supposed to be the slower, deliberative body of congress.

There's nothing preventing rule by decree - according to Godel - except a rule which is itself amendable. Which means the rule can be amended to allow rule by decree with enough votes.
But it's worse than that, there's nothing preventing rule by decree - as a practical matter - in the same way the war powers of the President have creeped to where congress hasn't declared a war since December 8, 1941.

Truman gave a Sarah Palin type "I'll get right back to ya" answer as to where congress had given him the power to go into Korea and everyone just sort of muttered and ignored it.
Congress even tried to shut that down with the War Powers Act. But Nixon and pretty much every president afterward just sort of skirted it so now, as a practical matter, the president has the power to declare war regardless of what the constitution says.
He's got the military power, he could roll right over anyone domestically if he really wanted to (and if it were handled right - Order 66, say), law be damned.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong to bomb Syria or anywhere else. But this whole "well, it's precedent" idea, no one wants to stop because then they'll be called on their own b.s.
Like passing phony $20s around, people just pretend they don't know it's counterfeit and pass it along.
That's what Feinstein's doing. And everyone else. And eventually there's no real money in circulation and the system collapses and everyone points elsewhere.

It's not fighting the GOP (well, it is but) it's fighting the system that we have to do. To make it less self-reciprocating and more adapted to the state of those to be governed by it.

It requires constant revision, the whole blood of patriots and tyrants thing, exactly because this is the result if we don't, regardless of the political ethos.
(Reversing Citizens United , campaign finance reform, transparency in campaigns, public finance for campaigns, a new McCain-Feingold type act, all that)
Otherwise, doesn't matter how bad it gets. Even with literal (or at least analogous) "nazi" administration, no one in government is going to fight them no matter how altruistic they are.

"Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum." - Darwi Odrade
posted by Smedleyman at 5:01 AM on April 18, 2017 [24 favorites]

Seriously guys. Let's go out and get votes in New Mexico and Montana and North Carolina and Florida. We can get 'em! My Kansas friends hate Brownback and my Oklahoma friends want their kids' schools funded! It's election day in Georgia and the Democrat actually has a shot (stolen voting machines not withstanding...) But we have to respect those voters to get their votes. So just keep it together, okay?

The problem with being a big tent party is that factions are totally willing to take their balls and go home if things aren't perfect enough. Democrats could probably sway moderate Republican voters by saying "We will fund schools instead of overzealously cutting taxes. We will not touch abortion, gun control, or gay rights" but then voters on the left would stop showing up.
posted by Talez at 5:05 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

This Mississippi liberal is headed to Democratic Party poll-watching training this morning. Getting off my duff and trying to do something rather than just running my yap, and that's mainly due to y'all and these enlightening, frustrating, encouraging, interminable threads.
posted by thebrokedown at 5:37 AM on April 18, 2017 [58 favorites]

So, MeFi, are we still doing the thing in US politics threads where we say it's someone's birthday, and we wish for something based on the day's events? Because it's my birthday, and I'm not sure if I should be altruistic and global and wish for everyone to back the eff down in NK, or be selfish and local and wish for a big ol' pile of Dem votes north of Atlanta. Suggestions?
posted by martin q blank at 5:53 AM on April 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

I'm the youngest person by fifteen years at the poll-watching training, and the only white person. Which I expected, but is still disheartening.
posted by thebrokedown at 6:00 AM on April 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

Archelaus: So the takeaway from that is that Eric Trump is at least as detached from reality as his father. not surprised by that, but it's worthy of note.

I wonder how many times the interviewer muttered "gobshite!" under her breath while speaking to this cretin.

"What's that you said, little lady?"

"Gobshite, Mr. Trump. It means, uh, a person of high regard..."

"So you're saying I'm a... gobshite?"

"Maybe the biggest one I've ever met. Now, on with the next question..."
posted by hangashore at 6:01 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

people who inherited vast sums of money detached from reality? whooda thunk it
posted by entropicamericana at 6:14 AM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

martin q blank, get a cake - your favorite kind - and at the end of the business day write the best one on there. Something good will happen and we're celebrating all of 'em. Happy birthday too!
posted by petebest at 6:15 AM on April 18, 2017 [8 favorites]

The problem with being a big tent party is that factions are totally willing to take their balls and go home if things aren't perfect enough. Democrats could probably sway moderate Republican voters by saying "We will fund schools instead of overzealously cutting taxes. We will not touch abortion, gun control, or gay rights" but then voters on the left would stop showing up.

I think this is a good point - the old "pout and flounce" is a problem with the Democrats, not just because they/we are a big tent but because the Republicans are authoritarian in a way most Democrats are not these days. (The authoritarian wing of the Democrats has largely defected to the Republicans.) Authoritarians will vote in lockstep even if they themselves have misgivings, Because Authority Said So And I Must Obey.

Whereas Democrats, and liberals in general, don't have that authoritarian streak, which is a good thing in general, but it means that you can't compel them to fall in line and vote in lockstep because you (politician "you") told them to do something.

I believe the important thing is not to make Democrats more submissive to authority but to get the purists to realize that they can't have everything and a pony, and just hold their noses and vote, dammit. Political Santa Claus isn't going to hand out gifts and the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

And that leads me to third parties - if the Dems are too big of a tent and people want to go for a third party, the Greens or Libertarians or Peace and Freedom or even (gasp!) Socialists, they need to leave the Presidential elections the hell alone for now and start at the bottom with the local elections. I sound like a broken record, but: liberals in general have ignored local politics at their peril. This is the biggest damn mistake we have made, and I mean bigger than anything Hillary Clinton could possibly have done in her campaign. The Presidential races are big and flashy and sexy but the local, boring, workaday offices are where the biggest differences can be made. If there were more Democrats at the local and state levels in North Carolina, would a bathroom bill have had a chance? Maybe, but it would have had far less of a chance, and Roy Cooper might not have made the watered-down compromise he did. And in Kansas - more Dems in the legislature might have passed the health care bill. Etc., etc., etc.

tl;dr: the 50-state strategy works and is what we need.

P.S.: thebrokedown, go you! You are making a difference.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 6:20 AM on April 18, 2017 [44 favorites]

And on the "State Politics Matter" subject: Nevada ranks near the top in percentage of women's representation: What Happens When Women Legislate (NY Times)
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 6:30 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

"I think the 'but I'm just...' limp dick no power excuse..." Really, Smedleyman? I appreciate that these are important topics but that comes across as awkward at best and misogynistic at worst.
posted by ElKevbo at 6:43 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm the youngest person by fifteen years at the poll-watching training, and the only white person. Which I expected, but is still disheartening.

This is a big problem (or feature, if you're a Republican) in our system in that many people with other responsibilities are largely precluded from participating. By design the one day election puts strain on working people with jobs just to get to the booth, much less take off the whole day to volunteer, or take off several days for training and pre-election GOTV, outreach, whatever. So much of the real work falls to retirees, younger people without established careers, and spouses. Those people are heroes, but part of the Democratic voting access strategy should include things like election day as a holiday, or even something like union official time for political participation. A world where having a job didn't restrict your participation in democracy to the weekends, and where we could get turnout to 80%-ish would be entirely different.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:45 AM on April 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

And on the "State Politics Matter" subject: Nevada ranks near the top in percentage of women's representation: What Happens When Women Legislate (NY Times)

So 5 points to Gryffindor for pointing to Kelly Dittmar, and minus a billion for not noticing that Kira Sanbomatsu exists. Or Jen Lawless. Or Tracy Osborn. Or Kris Kanthak. Or, or, or.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:54 AM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Prince himself told several people that while he was not offering his advice in any official capacity, his role was significant.

Well, that's another one to add to my list of things that will inevitably be subtitles to books about this administration.
posted by Etrigan at 7:21 AM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

zachlipton: When he suggested she has the ability to go on the news and draw attention to these issues, she explained that the networks have to call you. Which, of course, ignores the fact that clearly nobody is calling her cause she's not saying anything.

And this isn't some Catch-22: you speak up and speak out at every opportunity. You use social media platforms, and if you're uncomfortable there, that's why you have staff to handle your media.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:29 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Maybe the staff for Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters can give Dianne Feinstein pointers on how to be loud and proud. Now is not the time for compromise, now is not the time to be humble.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:35 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

The problem with being a big tent party is that factions are totally willing to take their balls and go home if things aren't perfect enough. Democrats could probably sway moderate Republican voters by saying "We will fund schools instead of overzealously cutting taxes. We will not touch abortion, gun control, or gay rights" but then voters on the left would stop showing up.

I think you're confusing "problem" with "partisan identity".

Yes, if hte Democrats became Republican then they could attract Republican votes! This is not an especially valuable insight. You see, we already have a Republican Party and they can out Republican any would be Republican current-Democat because they've had a lot more practice at Republicaning.

And of course the current batch of Democratic voters would abandon ship if the Democratic Party formally and officially became yet another branch of the Republican Party. What, exactly, is the point in having a different Party if it doesn't have different policies?

The Democrats could probably also get a lot of Republican votes if they endorsed a Federal ban on abortion and mandatory Christianity. That the current Democratic voters would abandon the Party if it did that is a feature, not a bug.

The Party exists for us, not the other way around. We on the liberal/left side wanted a Party that reflected our values, and we created the modern Democratic Party. This means, necessarily, excluding from that Party people who don't share sufficient values with us.

"The Democrats aren't getting Republican votes" is not a problem. If you think it is, I'd argue you've got a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole point of having political parties.
posted by sotonohito at 7:35 AM on April 18, 2017 [21 favorites]

Archelaus: So the takeaway from that is that Eric Trump is at least as detached from reality as his father. not surprised by that, but it's worthy of note.

Members of cults tend to share the same warped worldview.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:41 AM on April 18, 2017

Trump not knowing the difference between 김정은 and his father 김정일

I am going to make a giant leap and guess he gets the transliterated names...and I think that when threatening war with a nuclear nation, actually knowing who was and is in charge is not a high bar.
posted by jaduncan at 7:42 AM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Make no mistake, there's a Sword of Damocles hanging above Seoul, but it'll fall if and only if some idiot unfamiliar with the whole situation, like Trump, starts firing live ammunition at the rope holding it up.

This is not nearly as low-probability an event as you seem to believe, or as I'd prefer, by many orders of magnitude.

There have been people I love living in Seoul for a decade and a half now, and like every Korean does, you learn to live with the fear for their lives. But the knot in your stomach never fully goes away — not entirely. And with Donald John Trump and now decorticated Ken doll Mike Pence flouncing around the theater, that knot has decided to remind me of its presence 24x7. The symptoms are remarkably unpleasant.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:45 AM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

No, the senate isn't proportional by design.

You want to apply that same concept to the house though. Basically, figure out the average number of constituents represented by a congressperson and use that to determine how many reps are needed. It's come up a couple of times in these threads, someone has already done the math so I won't waste more space rehashing it here.

But yeah, a better approach to proportional representation would help a lot.
posted by VTX at 7:48 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

This is what I call the World of Warcraft Problem.

Before WoW was invented, the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG (MMO) market had a wide variety of games and playstyles. Then WoW came out and it was huge. Even today, with the MMO market shrinking and WoW being positively elderly in gaming terms, it is not merely the biggest player in the MMO market it practically is the entire MMO market with all the others being also rans.

As a result the MMO market underwent a massive shift. While formerly there had been a wide variety of game styles and game mechanics with the tremendous success of WoW every company looking to make an MMO saw WoW's incredible subscription numbers and said to themselves "hot damn, if we could skim off even 10% of WoW's playerbase we'd be rolling in cash!"

So every MMO developed since WoW was, when you stripped away the setting details, basically WoW with a few tweaks and a different setting.

And they all failed.

Because if a player wants a game like World of Warcraft then they can just go play World of Warcraft! By making all MMO's World of Warcraft with a different setting the MMO makers guaranteed failure.

Yes, being different, trying new things, is a risk.

But trying to replicate the success of someone else is an almost guaranteed way to fail.

Just as no MMO will ever get big by copying World of Warcraft, so too the Democrats will never get big(er) by copying the Republicans. If the voters want a Republican style set of policies and politics then they can vote Republican. But they won't vote for ersatz Republicans in any significant numbers because why should they? And trying to be fake Republicans will drive away people who want real Democrats.

Or heck, it's the New Coke problem. Coke wanted to attract Pepsi drinkers, so they added a whole shit ton more sugar to Coke. It flopped, as you may recall. The Coke drinkers wanted their fucking Coke, not this super sweet Pepsi knock-off that Coke was trying to push on them, and Pepsi drinkers saw no compelling reason to switch to a Pepsi knock-off when they could just buy real Pepsi.
posted by sotonohito at 7:50 AM on April 18, 2017 [32 favorites]

I've put together a post on my blog portraying the 19th century serial killer H.H. Holmes as someone who could succeed in today's real estate market. Without mentioning Trump, I go into:

1. Holmes often stiffed paying the workers and suppliers who built his buildings.
2. Holmes was ahead of his time in branding his construction projects with his name: "Holmes Castle."
etc.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:52 AM on April 18, 2017 [17 favorites]

And on the subject of Korea, not only is the Pussy Grabber in Chief busy trying to restart the Korean War and get Seoul glassed as a result, he just sent Pence to antagonize the South Korean government.

Following his policy of pissing off every ally the USA has, Trump is now threatening to undo the USA/ROK trade agreement in his fruitless and pointless search for yet more factory jobs that no longer exist.

Pence, a man so stupid that even the voters in Indiana (who are so tolerant of stupidity in politicians that they voted for J. Danforth Quayle four times!) were about to reject him has been shoved into current chaos of ROK politics to unravel our alliance with that nation and drive them further into the arms of China and Japan.

Heck of a job Trumpie!
posted by sotonohito at 7:56 AM on April 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

Please send that quote, verbatim, to Feinstein's primary opponent.


Also cc Dianne Feinstein. 2018 is still quite some time away and we need her to do the work in the meantime.
posted by TwoWordReview at 7:58 AM on April 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

busy trying to restart the Korean War and get Seoul glassed as a result, he just sent Pence to antagonize the South Korean government.

Yeah, saber rattling with North Korea while simultaneously picking an unnecessary fight with South Korea is an interesting strategy...
posted by diogenes at 8:12 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

But isn't that baseline TrumpCo strategy? You get everybody riled up, and you sit back behind the table, pooch your bottom lip out and nod your head a lot, move some stuff around (on the table and elsewhere) and then collect a check.
posted by valkane at 8:16 AM on April 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

I'd like to see the senate moved to a proportional model if we change it. You could sell it as giving a voice to all of the red voters in California, etc, and giving the libertarians a chance.
posted by fomhar at 8:18 AM on April 18, 2017

Drop of Mock Nuclear Weapon by Sandia Lab is First of New Flight Tests

I don't like the New Cold War.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:19 AM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

sotonohito: "Because if a player wants a game like World of Warcraft then they can just go play World of Warcraft! By making all MMO's World of Warcraft with a different setting the MMO makers guaranteed failure."

This isn't an MMO thread so I'm not getting into it, but as someone who has played or followed almost every MMO ever created, I really think your analysis is super-wrong. Observers take it as you will.
posted by TypographicalError at 8:21 AM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Rick Perry Wants to Know if Wind and Solar Are Killing Coal

Jesus wept, asshole.

Perry goes on to express concern about "the diminishing diversity of our nation's electric generation mix."

The incredibly moronic Energy Secretary is worried that solar and wind are reducing the diversity of our energy mix. Incredible. Hey Rick, if you want to know what's killing coal, ya might want to look at fracking and ultra-cheap natural gas, dipshit.

Anyway, QFMFT:

Did policies that encouraged the rollout of renewable generation contribute in some way to the declining profitability of large coal and nuclear plants? Yes -- to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the location. But rolling back portfolio standards and tax credits won't suddenly make the 1970s business model profitable in today's economy, just like rolling back carbon dioxide regulations won't save coal.

The DOE has every reason to continue studying the reliability of the grid amidst a changing fuel mix. But there's a difference between launching a fact-finding mission and a quixotic quest to Make Baseload Power Great Again.

posted by Existential Dread at 8:25 AM on April 18, 2017 [33 favorites]

Rick Perry Investigates the Decline of Buggy Whips. "I'm just asking questions here," says Perry. [fake]
posted by valkane at 8:33 AM on April 18, 2017 [19 favorites]

Trump’s Tax Secrecy Will Haunt Republicans in 2018
Trump’s tax returns will play a starring role in 2018 if for no other reason than that they symbolize the concrete stakes of the midterms: that only the Democrats will reveal his returns, if so empowered by voters; and that only Democrats will get to the bottom of Trump’s corruption more generally. It is an issue that will continually resurface until the election, after which the White House had better hope Republicans still control Congress. Because if they don’t, the potential consequences for their party in 2020 are nearly bottomless.

It is very likely that none of the people running interference for Trump have any idea whether he is legitimately under audit, or what he’s concealing by refusing to release the returns. But they have all placed themselves on the hook for whatever happens when the long fuse of the tax return story is finally lit.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:34 AM on April 18, 2017 [19 favorites]

Dianne will never, ever in a billion years be Maxine. Maxine cannot teach Dianne anything because Dianne is unwilling to learn. She is cemented in 1989 and she needs to retire. Maxine, on the other hand, cannot become our senator. She is 79 years old and while a very young 79, someone with a little more sticking power needs to be our next senator from the great state of California. Ted Lieu is definitely one of those contenders. Perhaps we'll see someone else head into the fore in the next year, but it's (unfortunately) not Auntie Maxine.
posted by Sophie1 at 8:42 AM on April 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

I'm surprised - to the extent that I am still capable of that emotion - that the 'no taxes due audit' argument is still being made, despite it being proven fallacious.

I know why, of course, in that there's nothing else they can say. Perhaps this will really be the issue on which the conflict between the reality espoused by the WH and that known to the voters on all sides finally fissions.
posted by Devonian at 8:42 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Rick Perry Wants to Know if Wind and Solar Are Killing Coal

There are entire populations within the Department of Energy who have spent their entire lives wanting to, then actually, working their entire careers for the Department of Energy. Careers they are decades into, building upon the works of their mentors.

Dipshit Rick Perry isn't going to rewire the whole department's priorities. He may paint the tip of the iceberg, and we can quibble about the Department's alignment over the years, but I just don't think he can stop the momentum of science and declare coal viable.
posted by rhizome at 8:46 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

^ I think Feinstein's behavior can best be explained if you consider our intelligence community, and possibly the Russia's too, has something on her. I have long assumed everyone in Congressional intelligence oversight is similarly neutered.

Alrighty, adding "Dianne Feinstein is a Russian psyop" to the list of theories unironically suggested.
posted by indubitable at 8:51 AM on April 18, 2017 [15 favorites]

Swayable Trumpists are already coming around on healthcare...

Heck of a band name, right there.
posted by rokusan at 8:53 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I saw them open for Inspiral Carpets.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:00 AM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

The constant fantasizing about primarying DiFi from the left is all well and good (although I could do without the CalExit hoohah thnx), but I'd sure much rather see some of that ink and effort spent on e.g. Democratic states with R governors (e.g. MD), or getting rid of people like Chuck Grassley or Rob Portman.

Hell, Louisiana and TX should be in play. I love CA, but there's a lot more low-hanging fruit out there, and exchanging a moderate D in the senate for even a slightly more progressive D doesn't really add up for the other 7/8ths of us who don't live in CA.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:06 AM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

I think Feinstein's behavior can best be explained if you consider our intelligence community, and possibly the Russia's too, has something on her. I have long assumed everyone in Congressional intelligence oversight is similarly neutered.

This is way too television for my tastes. Feinstein is 83 years old. What could they have on her that she would be so afraid of? It's not like they're gonna let an 83 year old Senator rot in jail. If Feinstein isn't stepping up and being courageous it's either because there's nothing for her to do, OR she's working behind the scenes, Or she's not a courageous person.

The same goes for McCain. What's the worst they could do to either of them? Keep them from winning reelection and force them to stop being Senators for the twilight of their lives? If that's all they're afraid of, then compromat or none, they're just cowards.

I think it more likely that the people who could save us aren't going to save us not because the intelligence services have some dirt on them, but because they aren't the people who would ever have saved us.
posted by dis_integration at 9:12 AM on April 18, 2017 [40 favorites]

I'm willing to believe that Russian psyops are behind an incredible number of current events, but the actions of Diane Feinstein aren't among them.
posted by diogenes at 9:21 AM on April 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

Grassley and Portman were literally just reelected in the great Democratic fail parade of 2016, neither one faced even a remotely credible challenge from Schumer's zombie retreads Ted Strickland and Patty Judge. And Iowa and Ohio are the two states trending fastest from purple to bright, bright red. Focusing on them right now is beyond pointless, and in 6 years Ohio and Iowa could easily look like Arkansas. And Larry Hogan is the most popular Governor in America, hard to see a lot of room for optimism there either.

Texas should absolutely be a battleground, even Ted Cruz's own supporters hate Ted Cruz, and Texas demographics will get to competitive levels one of these years. But most of the Democratic action this cycle will necessarily have to be on the House side, outside of Nevada and Arizona which are both tough too, the Senate is mainly going to be defending incumbent seats.

The governor's races will be big too, but Illinois, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, and possibly Wisconsin, Ohio or Georgia all look like better opportunities for flipping to Dem control than Maryland.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:25 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

And Iowa and Ohio are the two states trending fastest from purple to bright, bright red. Focusing on them right now is beyond pointless...

Unless one wants to stop that trend.
posted by Etrigan at 9:27 AM on April 18, 2017 [30 favorites]

The governor's races will be big too, but Illinois, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, and possibly Wisconsin,

Illinois is going to be won/lost on one issue: The budget crisis.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:28 AM on April 18, 2017

Dianne Feinstein has been a disappointing corporate Dem for my entire adult life, reaching back into the 90s. Her anodyne, middle-of-the-road centrist stances are classic Feinstein, no kompromat or Russian psyops required. Same for Schumer.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:31 AM on April 18, 2017 [26 favorites]

And I think the actions of Diane Feinstein and really other similar politicians can best be explained not by conspiracy, but by anchoring. Her views and beliefs are anchored to the moment she got politically active.

And more to the point, wasn't she the one who discovered one of the bodies in the Milk/Moskone assassinations? I think it's much more likely, having direct and personal contact with political violence in this country, she's trying to calm tensions rather than trying to raise it up. Maybe poorly, but I think her heart is in the right place.

2017, In Which I Empathize With Dianne Feinstein.
posted by corb at 9:38 AM on April 18, 2017 [25 favorites]

I haven't seen any evidence supporting the notion that we have to choose between these blue-state primary challenges and the purple/red-state flips. All of these races are important - the 50-state strategy is not a red-state strategy, it's a fifty-state strategy. It's important to gain seats; but also, if even California can't get a Senator that reflects the current democratic base, what hope is there for less liberal places? Who our current party leaders are is really important from a signalling and messaging perspective.

We got 3M more votes in 2016, there are so many people on our side who are engaged and have money and time but do not have the right to vote, Democratic strongholds are the centers for economic activity, we have a ton of wealthy celebs on our side who have been increasingly willing to dive into politics with their time and/or pocketbooks. We don't have to choose. We can do all of it; we have the capacity.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:39 AM on April 18, 2017 [30 favorites]

Instead of building an actual wall along the US-Mexico border, the US government should borrow a sight gag from "WKRP in Cincinnati" and use masking tape to suggest where a wall should be built.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:53 AM on April 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

The zero sum argument about targeting red vs purple vs blue doesn't survive any level of scrutiny. Competing in tough districts energizes volunteer and voters, which adds resources that can be used in those races, or even redirected to the races you think are more important. It's vital to show up everywhere. How you allocate those resource once you've maximized your outreach is a question none of us can intelligently speak about because we can all cherry pick scarce data points when the races in 2017 and 2018 are relatively low turnout compared to Presidential years, which we still can't come to an agreement about despite having more data.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:53 AM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

And I think the actions of Diane Feinstein and really other similar politicians can best be explained not by conspiracy, but by anchoring. Her views and beliefs are anchored to the moment she got politically active.

Yeah. Those wheelchair generals are the best.
posted by valkane at 10:14 AM on April 18, 2017

I think Feinstein's behavior can best be explained if you consider our intelligence community, and possibly the Russia's too, has something on her. I have long assumed everyone in Congressional intelligence oversight is similarly neutered.

I think it's time to turn off MSNBC and close the Talking Points Memo tab, my dude. I'm all for abolishing the intelligence community and cutting the military budget to something approaching the global average, but the idea that centrists are centrists because of CIA/FSB blackmail is ludicrous.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:24 AM on April 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

I think Feinstein's behavior can best be explained if you consider our intelligence community, and possibly the Russia's too, has something on her. I have long assumed everyone in Congressional intelligence oversight is similarly neutered.

I think it's time to turn off MSNBC and close the Talking Points Memo tab, my dude. I'm all for abolishing the intelligence community and cutting the military budget to something approaching the global average, but the idea that centrists are centrists because of CIA/FSB blackmail is ludicrous.

I will say that this kind of statement and its rebuttal are why YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST FULLY AND PUBLICLY INVESTIGATE things like the Russian involvement in the election, Iran/Contra and even Benghazi and actually punish or exonerate the wrongdoers. When you let actual conspiracies go uninvestigated and/or unpunished you open the floodgates for everything to be distrusted always.

How to do it with hyper corrupt partisan politics involved though? [shruggie]
posted by srboisvert at 10:36 AM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

Adam Curtis interview on Alternet: "Donald Trump Is Stepping for the First Time into the Real World"

JS: We're more than 70 days into Trump's presidency, just a few weeks short of the juncture when historians and political analysts begin to assess an office in earnest. Do you see America sliding into authoritarianism or fascism, or are the evils of this administration more banal than that?

AC: America is not sliding into fascism. That's just hysteria by the liberals who can't face up to the fact that they lost the election, so they either have to blame the Russians or giant historical forces. Basically, a right-wing president has been elected, and he's created a brilliant machine that captures liberals and keeps them completely preoccupied. What he does is he wakes up in the morning, tweets something that he knows isn't true, they get very upset and spend the whole day writing in big capital letters on social media, "This is outrageous. This is bad. This is fascism." What they're not facing up to is the real question, which is why did Donald Trump win the election? What other forces in the country had they, the liberals, not seen?

They weren't defeated by something as grand as fascism. They were defeated by a man who's connected with a disaffected group in America, like the people who voted for Brexit in my country. I think there's a great deal of narcissism which Mr. Trump has worked at how to play on beautifully.

...

What I was trying to argue, or imply in this film gently, was that we may be in a very similar situation where we know that the system has become somewhat corrupted. But more than that, we know that those in charge don't really believe in the system any longer, have no vision of the future. And what's more, they know that we know that.

What Trump is doing is playing with the fakery. It may be instinctive. He's saying things that he knows that we know aren't true, at which point everyone gets locked into a game of what's true and what's not true. This misses the real point of politics, which is to tell a powerful story that offers a vision of the future. I don't think Trump has a vision of the future. I think he's the last of the old politicians.

...

AC: I think you should pay more attention to the traditional, hard-right-wing people who have risen to power with Trump. Donald comes from the world of finance and he is doing what finance wants to do. I would argue that actually it shows that really nothing has changed, which is a very hypernormal situation.
...
Steve Bannon? I don't know. We have a phrase in Britain, which is "All mouth, no trousers." He's a degraded clash-of-civilizations man, and he's a bit late to the table on that one because [Jean-Marie Le Pen] tried that in 2004. It didn't work. I'm far more interested in what I would call real power, which is the power of finance.

posted by Apocryphon at 10:43 AM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

Also from Apocryphon's link:

Secondly, such an intervention leads to the question, who are the goodies and who are the baddies in this war?
...
The truth is that we in the West have so simplified our vision of the world, into a battle between good and evil, that we now find it impossible to understand the reality.

Jesus wept.
posted by TypographicalError at 10:55 AM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Today I learned only being the 17th most liberal member of the Senate marks you as a Russian stooge!

Like I said earlier, 17th most liberal is no longer appropriate for Senators from the great state of California but seriously come on.
posted by Justinian at 10:55 AM on April 18, 2017 [8 favorites]

"tweets something that he knows isn't true"

[citation needed]
posted by mhum at 10:57 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

look I know the Russia stuff is a little sketchy but we have to try every angle here because once we defeat the monster Feinstein we'll finally have our country back
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:00 AM on April 18, 2017 [8 favorites]

That's just hysteria by the liberals who can't face up to the fact that they lost the election, so they either have to blame the Russians or giant historical forces.

I love this blow off that ppl are doing these days, like, "The Russians interfered with your election? Quit whining!" As if this isn't a big fucking deal? Like, one of the biggest fucking deals? And we're suppose to sit back and shrug it off? Fuck this guy.
posted by gucci mane at 11:00 AM on April 18, 2017 [75 favorites]

By the way for those people who don't have house district maps memorized (plebs!) it may not be apparent, but Ted Lieu, Maxine Waters, and Adam Schiff are from geographically contiguous districts. Los Angeles suffers from an embarrassment of riches in terms of our representation.

Come here, it's great.
posted by Justinian at 11:01 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

They weren't defeated by something as grand as fascism.

Liberals were defeated by things even "grander" (at least, in a "much more pervasive" sense): racism, misogyny and xenophobia.


They were defeated by a man who's connected with a disaffected group in America,

...by preying upon their economic insecurities and tribal fears through employing those classic tropes of - again - racism, misogyny and xenophobia.

It's not that complex, really.
posted by darkstar at 11:02 AM on April 18, 2017 [22 favorites]

> I will read that book someday...but not in the near future. Too painful.

Political Media Loves Gossipy Book That Ignores Political Media’s Role In Election.

The Comey letter (which almost certainly changed the outcome of the campaign) and Russian interference (which might have, but the impact is much harder to measure) are given the usual yadda-yadda graf that makes no effort to determine how important they were and is written in a matter that suggests that even bringing them up is whining. On the other hand, resource allocation decisions that we know were not decisive (insufficient resources dedicated to WI and MI) are asserted to be crucial causal factors. But, again, the problem is that neither campaign devoted much attention to Michigan, and Clinton fought hard and consistently outspent Trump in Pennsylvania. The latter case is crucial, not only because WI and MI are meaningless without PA, but the outcome in PA shows that you can’t just assume that dedicating more resources would have changed the outcome. But, of course, the acknowledging that campaign tactics are a rather minor factor in determining the outcome of presidential elections would completely undermine books that argue that campaign tactics are massively important. [...]

Does the Clinton campaign need self-examination? Sure. But so does the media, and all signs are that we’re never getting it.

posted by tonycpsu at 11:02 AM on April 18, 2017 [30 favorites]

rhizome: Rick Perry Wants to Know if Wind and Solar Are Killing Coal

The head of the Department of Energy wants to know if all of those renewable energy policies cropping up around the country are guilty of hastening the demise of coal and nuclear.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry spelled out these concerns Friday in a memo to his chief of staff (PDF), which was rapidly obtained by Bloomberg News.
...
The only diminishment at play currently is the closure of coal and nuclear plants before their expected retirement dates. Wind and solar barely register as a share of the national energy mix, but they've dominated new deployments, while coal and nuclear saw a net decrease. The explicit statements regarding "baseload power" shed light on Perry's perspective.

That term hearkens back to the second half of the 20th century, when the regulated utilities of the day, for reasons both cultural as well as economic, decided that the best way to produce power was with increasingly massive, centralized power plants. These mammoth facilities capitalized on efficiencies of scale, and the timelines and costs weren't a huge issue because the monopoly utilities didn't have to worry about competition.

We live in a very different world now.

Also, you best look at those retirement dates for coal and nuclear plants, because there are many aging facilities are nearing the end of their design lives.

Anyway, Rick Perry was recently seen as a spot of hope for renewable energy, with his push to expand the energy portfolio of Texas. In fact, Texas was touted as a big renewable energy pioneer in August 2016 by the Wall Street Journal, and more recently Georgetown, Texas, was recognized as one of the first all-solar cities in the U.S. (NPR, March 8, 2017)

Mayor Dale Ross, a staunch Republican who attended President Trump's inauguration, says that decision came down to a love of green energy and "green rectangles" — cash.

When Georgetown's old power contract was up in 2012, city managers looked at all their options. They realized wind and solar power are more predictable; the prices don't fluctuate like oil and gas. So, a municipality can sign a contract today and know what the bill is going to be for the next 25 years.

That's especially appealing in a place like Georgetown, where a lot of retirees live on fixed incomes.

"First and foremost it was a business decision," Ross says.

City leaders say the debate over renewables never even mentioned climate change, a wedge issue in Texas politics.

So how did Rick Perry play a part in all that?

Perry previously served as governor of Texas where he led an expansion of renewable energy sources across the state. Texas leads the nation in wind-powered generation capacity with more than 18,500 megawatts, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

However, as a key member of the Trump administration, Perry will no longer be overseeing a national program comparable to Texas’ successful Competitive Renewable Energy Zones initiative that spurred the construction of electric transmission lines to connect with renewable energy facilities. Instead, the former Texas governor has been tasked by President Donald Trump with prioritizing fossil fuels and nuclear energy over renewables.

Energy secretary targets wind, solar after overseeing renewables explosion as Texas governor (Think Progress, April 17, 2017)

#SaveArbys (joke hashtag I just made, 'cause the U.S. coal industry employs fewer people than Arbys).
posted by filthy light thief at 11:04 AM on April 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

Emoluments lawsuit could force Trump to cough up his tax returns

In other words, for every property or income source Trump has, litigants may be found to assert that they have been harmed by the advantage he receives in exploiting his status as president to obtain monies from foreign governments. This is the essence of the emoluments clause, which was created to prevent foreign governments from corrupting our elected leaders. For now, Trump is refusing to release his tax returns, but keeping them secret in the face of metastasizing litigation is another thing entirely.
posted by futz at 11:08 AM on April 18, 2017 [25 favorites]

I love this blow off that ppl are doing these days, like, "The Russians interfered with your election? Quit whining!" As if this isn't a big fucking deal? Like, one of the biggest fucking deals? And we're suppose to sit back and shrug it off? Fuck this guy.

AC: Russia has been the Other ever since about 1951 for America, and then everyone tried to make it be Islamists. By about 2007 that wasn't working, and everyone now seems to have switched back to Russia. When Barry Goldwater was running for president, the John Birch Society was saying that the president was probably controlled by the Soviet Union. If you listen to the liberals now, they sound remarkably similar.

I am sure that the Russians probably did hack into the Democrats' computers. And I am sure that they may have leaked stuff to meddle with the election and to mess with confidence in the whole democratic process. I would also not be surprised if Donald Trump, and people around him, have had all kinds of dealings with dodgy people in Russia. Given the weird mixture of business and politics in that country, it might be quite likely.

But to an outsider, the way the Democrats and their supporters are obsessing with Russia looks very strange and hysterical. From a distance it seems as if they are desperately trying to avoid facing up to the very powerful reality that was revealed by the election. Instead they seem to be retreating into a kind of magical thinking. Looking for something, anything that will be like a magic wand and wave President Trump away. And then they can go back to normality. It can’t help crossing one’s mind that maybe the Democrats are looking for an excuse that will mean they don’t have to change, that they don’t have to give things up in today’s unequal, brutal and unfair society.

posted by Apocryphon at 11:09 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Political Media Loves Gossipy Book That Ignores Political Media’s Role In Election.

Partisan Democratic Blog Hates Gossipy Book That Pays Attention to Partisan Democrats' Failures.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:10 AM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Please, please, kids, stop fighting. Maybe Lisa's right about America being the land of opportunity, and maybe Adil's got a point about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 11:12 AM on April 18, 2017 [30 favorites]

China OKs trademarks for Ivanka Trump's company on day she met with Xi

These fucking people!
posted by futz at 11:15 AM on April 18, 2017 [22 favorites]

Apocryphon: They weren't defeated by something as grand as fascism. They were defeated by a man who's con...

...ned the voters by telling them what they wanted to hear even though he knew it wasn't true?

...nected with a disaffected group in America, like the people who voted for Brexit in my country.

Oh.
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:15 AM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

I mean, did the FSB hack James Thompson's servers too?
posted by Apocryphon at 11:15 AM on April 18, 2017

Garcetti is profiled in the latest Vogue:

Deflecting talk that he might leave his office early to run for a higher one (why lie?), he says he has equally big plans for his second term, from turning that transportation bill into actual metro lines to making a huge dent in homelessness.

Mm-hmm.

Let's see who's hosting meet-and-greets in Brentwood and Hancock Park, and for which candidates.
posted by Room 641-A at 11:18 AM on April 18, 2017

That's just hysteria by the liberals who can't face up to the fact that they lost the election

But to an outsider, the way the Democrats and their supporters are obsessing with Russia looks very strange and hysterical.

this is some trenchant analysis here, A+++ would be condescended to from his lofty perch again
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:19 AM on April 18, 2017 [36 favorites]

That's just hysteria by the liberals who can't face up to the fact that they lost the election

Mmm-hmmm. Meanwhile, conservatives can't face up to the fact that they only won the election by getting in bed with the Russians.
posted by Gelatin at 11:21 AM on April 18, 2017 [25 favorites]

Wait isn't China the place that knockoffs come from? Maybe they plan to flood the market with fake Ivanka merch.
posted by emjaybee at 11:21 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Instead of building an actual wall along the US-Mexico border, the US government should borrow a sight gag from "WKRP in Cincinnati" and use masking tape to suggest where a wall should be built.

That's only $297,000 in yellow masking tape (case price from Amazon)! This can easily be done within the $20MM actually allocated for the project!
posted by tomierna at 11:23 AM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

HyperNormalisation devotes a good deal of time covering Russian propagandist Vladislav Surkov. He directly compares Surkov's work in obfuscating Putin's involvement in Syria to Trump's social media rise. (More here). It's not as if Adam Curtis doesn't understand the power of Russian psyops lmao
posted by Apocryphon at 11:24 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I can't wait to hear Spicey explain why the aircraft carrier that the Administration said was headed to the Sea of Japan as a deterrent to North Korea was sailing in the opposite direction.
posted by gladly at 11:24 AM on April 18, 2017 [21 favorites]

In 2020 when the NYT is again running the wikileaks oppo drops of Trump's opponent daily and without comment on the sourcing, we're going to look back and remember, huh, if only liberals had faced up to losing the election.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:27 AM on April 18, 2017 [20 favorites]

I can't wait to hear Spicey explain why the aircraft carrier that the Administration said was headed to the Sea of Japan as a deterrent to North Korea was sailing in the opposite direction.

Of all the things that I don't have the mental capacity to deal with, chief among them is the fact that the U.S. President is now too stupid and senile to control the military and as a result we've fallen into the sort of bad anarchy where we can't be thought of as a conventional nation-state anymore.

I mean on the bright side the U.S. President is also too stupid and senile to control the bureaucracy, so there's seeds of a real government waiting to bloom, but nevertheless right now we're stuck with bad anarchy.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:29 AM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

In 2020 when the NYT is again running the wikileaks oppo drops of Trump's opponent daily and without comment on the sourcing, we're going to look back and remember, huh, if only liberals had faced up to losing the election.

Maybe they could have convinced the DNC that Thompson's campaign in Kansas wasn't a lost cause, and that he should have been funded and supported adequately to defeat Estes.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:29 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Wait isn't China the place that knockoffs come from?

More and more "originals" are actually made in China.
posted by monospace at 11:29 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

If we're going to make a masking tape wall at the border, we might as well mask off squares for cats to sit in while we're at it.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 11:29 AM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

In 2020 when the NYT is again running the wikileaks oppo drops of Trump's opponent daily and without comment on the sourcing, we're going to look back and remember, huh, if only liberals had faced up to losing the election.

Maybe they could have convinced the DNC that Thompson's campaign in Kansas wasn't a lost cause, and that he should have been funded and supported adequately to defeat Estes.

Yes, because KS-4 is just as important as 1600-Penn.

We get it. You like Curtis's article. Maybe let it stand on its own for a bit instead of facing all comers.
posted by Etrigan at 11:33 AM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

And this isn't some Catch-22: you speak up and speak out at every opportunity. You use social media platforms, and if you're uncomfortable there, that's why you have staff to handle your media.

I didn't go into it in my report since it was too long as it was, but I think there's something telling here, so a brief supplement. When the second questioner (an SF Indivisible guy) told Feinstein that we need to hear her speak up on this stuff, after clarifying we didn't think she was a supporter of fascism or anti-Semitism, she responded by asking him "do you like tweeting?". After some shouts of "yes" from the crowd, he said yes. She asked him "why?" and he responded "honestly, I said yes because everybody else said yes, but I actually don't like Twitter because I don't think it's as powerful." And Sen. Feinstein replied "I don't think so either." He then explained that she can go on the news and drive the conversation in other ways though, which is what caused her to say that the TV networks have to call you first.

From my perspective, I think it's swell not to like Twitter––Twitter is obnoxious––, and I'm not expecting her to become the next great shitposter, but the problem is that we're not hearing her voice through any medium. Dismissing social media entirely, instead of realizing it as a tool with strengths and weaknesses, is not endearing in 2017. More significantly, it shows she's still stuck in the mode of the Senate as some kind of congenial compromising body, and that thinking is downright dangerous in an age where McConnell will flip the table over at any opportunity.

When you came into the town hall, they had a table with her office's press releases and stuff; the table was labeled something like "Sen. Feinstein opposes Trump policies." As I walked in, I noted how you're not doing a very good job if you feel the need to explicitly advertise that. It should be a given.
posted by zachlipton at 11:33 AM on April 18, 2017 [32 favorites]

Shouldn't it be concerning? Shouldn't it be worrying?


The people who are normally concerned with Great Power style meddling are too thrilled to see the US taken down a peg to stick to silly things like "principles" which were never more than a post hoc justification.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:39 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Yes, because KS-4 is just as important as 1600-Penn.

You're missing the point. The DNC has been losing election after election and their incompetence cannot go unanswered. Russian involvement in the presidential election does not explain Democratic losses elsewhere. And if the presidential campaign had been better run, better managed, then maybe that last bit of effort would have been enough to win both the electoral college and the popular vote, and any Russian involvement would have been rendered moot. Lubyanka Square cannot be solely be blamed for Trump.

We get it. You like Curtis's article. Maybe let it stand on its own for a bit instead of facing all comers.

Maybe people should read it in full and consider it rather than making his point of "retreating into a kind of magical thinking."

Shouldn't it be concerning? Shouldn't it be worrying?

Sure, and by all means conduct investigations and figure out the answers. But it's not going to blow the current administration wide open, and putting their hopes on that. Proving that Trump won with Russian assistance isn't going to convince Republican voters that the Democratic Party is who they should vote for.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:39 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

Un-fucking-believable. So as I'm understanding the timeline it's:

(1) Tuesday, PACOM tells WH that it's deploying. The content of this message is unknown-ish.
(2) Wednesday, Tillerson says that the deployment is routine, SPECIFICALLY SAYING that there was "no particular objective" to its course and that he "would not read too much" into the fact that it's headed towards North Korea.
(3) In between then and now, growing concern over saber-rattling causes more questioning of WH over their direction. White House says that ordering the Carl Vinson to the Sea of Japan is a powerful deterrent signal and will give Trump "more options" to deal with NK.
(4) But the carrier wasn't IN the Sea of Japan
(5) Because Trump never ORDERED IT into the Sea of Japan
(6) and furthermore whoever IS currently giving our Navy orders both never sent it to the Sea of Japan AND never corrected the White House when they started saying they HAD
(7) Until yesterday, when somebody took a fucking picture of it floating between fucking Java and Sumatra on a TOTALLY ALREADY KNOWN-ABOUT joint exercise with the Australian Navy.

Like: there's lying in order to deceive, right? To hide culpability, to throw people off, to feign strength, whatever. But then there's lying as pathology, and all it would have taken is a single person, anywhere in the chain of communication, to say "hey wait I don't know the answer to this question I'm getting about the fucking USS Carl Vinson and our incredibly wobbly foreign policy, I should ask somebody" instead of MAKING SHIT UP AS THEY GO.

It's incredible. It's an unfathomable, inexcusable level of incompetence.
posted by penduluum at 11:39 AM on April 18, 2017 [106 favorites]

My new go-to link for Green Party people.

It's like a who's who of Russian lackeys.
posted by Justinian at 11:39 AM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

GEN. DODONNA: Well, the Empire doesn't consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the battle sta--

REBEL 1: Look, before we do this, we really need to deal with the failures of Mon Mothma's leadership.

REBEL 2: She straight up ordered us to abandon that Dantooine base. We could have held it.

REBEL 1: All this hysteria about so-called planet-destroying superweapons just makes us look desperate to avoid facing the reality that the Emperor has figured out how to connect with disaffected galactic citizens, and we haven't.

[Four hours of debate later, YAVIN IV is blown up by the DEATH STAR]
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:39 AM on April 18, 2017 [75 favorites]

Er...

I am sure that the Russians probably did hack into the Democrats' computers. And I am sure that they may have leaked stuff to meddle with the election and to mess with confidence in the whole democratic process. I would also not be surprised if Donald Trump, and people around him, have had all kinds of dealings with dodgy people in Russia.

...and...

But to an outsider, the way the Democrats and their supporters are obsessing with Russia looks very strange and hysterical. Instead they seem to be retreating into a kind of magical thinking. Looking for something, anything that will be like a magic wand and wave President Trump away. And then they can go back to normality. It can’t help crossing one’s mind that maybe the Democrats are looking for an excuse that will mean they don’t have to change, that they don’t have to give things up in today’s unequal, brutal and unfair society.

How do you, in one paragraph, bluntly acknowledge that Russians surely hacked Dems' computers, and selectively leaked info to "meddle with" the election (i.e., tip it to Trump), and that Trump probably has directly relevant financial interests with "dodgy" Russians, AND THEN in the very next paragraph dismiss the Democrats' pointing to all of the above as signs of corruption as "hysterical" and "retreating into a kind of magical thinking"?

Seriously, is this guy a fucking idiot?
posted by darkstar at 11:40 AM on April 18, 2017 [64 favorites]

In which the NCAA falls for North Carolina's crappy fake "deal" on HB2 and schedules championship games in the state.
posted by zachlipton at 11:42 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

In which the NCAA falls for North Carolina's crappy fake "deal" on HB2 and schedules championship games in the state.

Bad move.
posted by Gelatin at 11:45 AM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

The very fact that you're analogizing the Russian connection as the one thing that will bring down the presidency, with a fictional example of one vulnerability that will bring down the presidency (of Tarkin), shows that you're framing it as a magic silver bullet.

It's fine to be mad about Russia, and certainly finding the truth is important, and investigations must continue. But it's not going to change who's in power this year. That will be decided at the polls in 2018 and 2020.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:45 AM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

no no, I'm making fun of Curtis, who comes off as a pompous dipshit in the quoted selections from his interview. that's all
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:47 AM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

By missing its point, though?
posted by Apocryphon at 11:49 AM on April 18, 2017

I have missed better points than his for the sake of a Star Wars joke before and I'll do so again, possibly before the day is through
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:52 AM on April 18, 2017 [52 favorites]

What they're not facing up to is the real question, which is why did Donald Trump win the election?

Enough white people in the right places like racism.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:52 AM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

Mod note: Y'all maybe let it drop all around at this point. Linking stuff you think is interesting is fine, linking it and then yeahbut-ing folks critical of it gets tedious real fast and doesn't make these threads better.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:54 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

For those interested in where Ivanka's shoes are made, Huajian is moving a lot of production to Ethopia, because it is cheaper. The propaganda to go with that is blood chilling.
posted by stonepharisee at 11:55 AM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

In conclusion, how different groups of people feel about the seriousness of the undisputed Russian interference is a land of contrasts.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:59 AM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

That carrier group story though.

No one corrected the White House for two fucking days? As Oscar Wilde once said, the only thing worse than playing squash together is playing squash by youself. [fake, esoteric Monty Python reference]

I wish I hadn't said that.
posted by spitbull at 12:14 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

Wow, it sure would've been embarrassing if North Korea had launched a preemptive strike because we said we were moving a carrier group into the Sea of Japan and it was actually going in the opposite direction! Boy, is my face red!
From the flames of nuclear hellfire.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:15 PM on April 18, 2017 [32 favorites]

So President Mattis then? Or is that just for foreign policy.

And how did Rex "Sleepy" Tillerson know but not his boss?
posted by spitbull at 12:22 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Flicking through some of the betting markets about Trump. A few odds being offered that you can bet on:

* What will Trump ban during his first term?
- To outlaw the theory of evolution: 50/1
- Stairs: 500/1
* The Queen to ban Trump from the UK: 20/1
* Trump to have a Russian airport named after him: 66/1
* Trump to holiday in Russia every year of his presidency: 33/1
* Melania:
- To be revealed to be living with another man in Trumps first term: 10/1
- To leave Trump in 2017: 16/1
- To run for president against Trump in 2020: 80/1
- To be deported in 2017: 100/1
* Trump physical appearance specials
- To grow a Hitler moustache: 66/1
- To surgically enhance his hands: 500/1
* Trump to commission his own face to be added to Mount Rushmore in 2017: 100/1
* Trump to have his likeness minted on US currency during his term: 100/1
* Trump to convert to Scientology: 25/1
* Will France ask for the Statue of Liberty back? Yes: 50/1
* To be deported:
- Madonna: 80/1
- Michael Moore: 80/1
* Trump to paint the exterior of the White House gold: 500/1
* Joe Biden meets Trump at an event and punches him right in the face: 100/1
posted by Wordshore at 12:24 PM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

The carrier thing puts me even more in mind of Reagan than anything else Trump has done. The man is clearly utterly detached from what's going on and just making shit up as he goes along. No one in the White House wants to try to correct him, they either don't think its worth the trouble or they're fine with his flights of fantasy. It produces the occasional embarrassment but the media, as with Reagan, is very reluctant to actually call the President's senile dementia what it is.

I have hope that with the internet that wont' work out quite so well for the Republicans, and also while Reagan did put on a mask that fooled some people into thinking he was a kind old man, Trump doesn't even try. He is openly, proudly, mean and cruel. And I think other than for the real sociopathic 20% rump that's not going to sell so well in the long run.

What the left has got to do is go and find a common line for those people and genuinely offer them something. If they did that, they could make politics noble and important again. But instead they're hunkering down, sneering, and trying to blame Vladimir Putin. I mean, I'm sure Russians did hack practically every server in America, but that's not the real reason why Donald Trump won.

On a different note, I'd also like to know what sort of pushback we've got on this kind of utter tripe?

Because it's not as if the Democrats were just stumbling around utterly ignoring poor white people and obsessively focusing on urban black people. The Democrats have been working diligently to reach poor and working class white people since forever, have all manner of plans and programs in place specifically to assist poor and working class white people, and in fact the biggest social welfare programs in the country (Social Security, the ACA, Medicare) all go mainly to poor and working class white people.

The idea that somehow the Democrats are failing to offer poor and working class white people something would be laughable except that so many apparently serious people keep bringing it up.

The problem isn't that Democrats fail to offer poor and working class white people something, it's that when they do they get told in no uncertain terms to fuck off and die.

Many, many, threads ago our resident Republican whisperer pointed out that basically the average white Republican voter doesn't give a flying fuck about programs that actually help them, they want programs that buy into their mythos. She'd take exception to my putting it that way, but that's what I see as the core takeaway.

The average poor or working class white person doesn't reward the party that actually helps them with votes. Instead it spends its votes on the party that actively works to hurt them, but shores up their prejudices and fact free faith in the "American Dream".

You say "Hi working class and/or poor white person, I'm here to offer you a higher minimum wage, better healthcare, and free/cheap education so you and your children can have more life opportunities!" And they say "Fuck off and die Commie scum!"

The Republicans say "Hi working class and/or poor white person, I'm here to slash minimum wage, steal your healthcare, and gut your educational opportunities, so the job creators will shower you with super awesome high paying jobs! Also I'll really stick it to those illegal immigrants, LGBT people, black people and women!" And they say "Thank you oh great savior, let us shower you with votes and power!"

The problem is that the Democrats literally can't offer what the average working class white Republican voter wants, because what they want isn't a real program that helps them, but a fantasy that makes them feel better (and a chance to put the boot in on groups they hate). The average white Republican voter has been so conditioned to believe that any sort of effective social program is "Communism" that they oppose anything that works.

I have no idea what the fix for this is, but I think it's going to come down to the slow, hard, work of education. I'll also note that apparently a lot of people really prefer voting for Republicans, for whatever reason, but will (reluctantly) turn out for a Democrat when the Republicans fuck shit up too much. To a large extent I think Obama won because this group had reached its limit with GWB and was, finally, reluctantly, and grudgingly, willing to vote for the party that can actually fix things. But the very instant it seemed that the worst of Junior's fuck ups had been kind of, sort of, patched up, they immediately switched right back to the Republicans.
posted by sotonohito at 12:25 PM on April 18, 2017 [97 favorites]

Instead of another umpteen million "I never thought leopards would eat MY face" article, I'd be much more interested in articles about people who voted for Obama and switched to Trump and what it would take to switch them back.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:29 PM on April 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

sotonohito: Your last sentence accurately describes my dad. He begrudgingly voted for Obama in 2008 and then bought right into the Fox News narrative of OBAMA IS RUINING EVERYTHING!!!
posted by Fleebnork at 12:30 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

in other words:

GOP: you're a hero and a winner and potential millionaire. you've been screwed over by people who aren't like you and want to keep you down. we'll kick their asses for you and you can become awesome all by yourself

VOTER: Yeah!

DEMOCRATS: hey, looks like you could use some help there

VOTER: Fuck you!
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:33 PM on April 18, 2017 [129 favorites]

If we're going to make a masking tape wall at the border, we might as well mask off squares for cats to sit in while we're at it.

I'm starting to see a strategy for solving the homeless cat population AND ensuring border security at the same time.
posted by Preserver at 12:37 PM on April 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

One of these days, the White House is actually going to need people to believe them about something important, information in a disaster or something, and people will say "you didn't even know which way your own ship was moving."

p.s. please enjoy this ridiculous picture of Rand Paul wearing a blazer over scrubs
posted by zachlipton at 12:38 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

PBO: Sounds about right, and when you phrase it that way maybe there's the seeds for reaching some of them. They want to believe that they'll be super awesome once the bad people stop fucking them over, we can offer the actual bad people (CEO's, banksters, Wall Street scumbags, etc) as scapegoats.

Democrats: You're a hero and a winner and a potential millionaire if only those fuckers in management and up on Wall Street would stop keeping you down, we'll kick their asses for you and you can become awesome all by yourself. oh and also there's some social programs we totally know you don't need you bold bootstrapper you, but if you should happen to know someone who needs help they can get it here
posted by sotonohito at 12:38 PM on April 18, 2017 [29 favorites]

I think we just solved for Bernie, sotonohito
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:41 PM on April 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

Trump is giving a speech at a Snap-On Tools factory in Wisconsin right now and momentarily said something about dumping steel and for a second it seemed like he was going to do the trade war with China. Which would have been quite a surprise after all of the scraping and groveling before Xi and begging for his help.

But, turns out it's just another promise to "Buy American" in some narrow, specific cases with federal contractors and projects. And some stuff about Canada and skilled worker visas. Yet another cat-pooping-in-a-toilet appearance for Trump, where he'll undoubtedly get effusive praise for not-completely-incompetently doing the barest fundamental thing a statesman should be able to do, giving a speech containing complete sentences from a teleprompter.

Also, Steve Mnuchin is a world-champion tree climber? WTF? Did the cat miss the toilet?
posted by XMLicious at 12:42 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think it's time to turn off MSNBC and close the Talking Points Memo tab, my dude. I'm all for abolishing the intelligence community and cutting the military budget to something approaching the global average, but the idea that centrists are centrists because of CIA/FSB blackmail is ludicrous.

Talking Points Memo hasn't written anything about the CIA/FSB blackmailing centrists.
posted by diogenes at 12:46 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

More amazing is that these guys managed to get down from the trees.
posted by spitbull at 12:46 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

people who voted for Obama and switched to Trump and what it would take to switch them back.

Those articles are boring. They are just "But her e-mails!" over and over again.

The Obama->Trump voters thought Hillary Clinton was corrupt. And that she represented The Establishment (which to them is basically the same thing as "corrupt".). They are people who were just eager to vote for unspecified change.

Since Clinton's e-mails were actually not very scandalous, and she was not particularly corrupt, I don't know that there's a lesson to take away from those people. They got fooled by 30 years of right wing lies, plus a blizzard of new lies cooked up just for this campaign.

Probably someone who looks and sounds a little more like Jimmy Stewart (have you ever heard a woman described as having "an honest face"?) would be less vulnerable to that kind of smear campaign. So next time Dems should run a Jimmy Stewart type, I guess.

(Who's our modern Jimmy Stewart? Matt Damon? Should we run Matt Damon? No wait - Tom Hanks!)
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:50 PM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

America is calling you, Kenneth the Page.
posted by delfin at 12:53 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

people who voted for Obama and switched to Trump and what it would take to switch them back.

A penis?
posted by JackFlash at 12:54 PM on April 18, 2017 [29 favorites]

Vox did a nice six minute video on how CNN is terrible.

The video is interesting at a meta level too. Farhad Manjoo called it "the future of takes." I'm not sure about that—I still generally hate watching videos—but there's a bit of CGP Grey's style in this one's clarity and narration that works well. So much online "news" video is just churned out garbage slideshows to satisfy some manager who declared that video is the future of ad revenue, but I think there's a lot of potential in these sorts of clear, well-done bits that owe more of their style to educational YouTube channels than cable news.
posted by zachlipton at 12:55 PM on April 18, 2017 [18 favorites]

Should we run Matt Damon? No wait - Tom Hanks!

"The US government has lost credibility, so it's borrowing some of mine."
posted by nubs at 12:56 PM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

Also, Steve Mnuchin is a world-champion tree climber? WTF? Did the cat miss the toilet?

Watching the video, he's talking about someone named "Sean" as the world-champion climber who is "also very good on television." Could he be talking about Spicey?
posted by zachlipton at 12:56 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

And I'm serious about that. If you look at the cross tabs, in the demographics where Clinton lost a few points compared to Obama, for example African-Americans and Hispanics, it was entirely a decrease in men. Women African-Americans and Hispanics voted for Clinton in numbers equal to Obama. And the big decrease in white men was obvious.
posted by JackFlash at 12:57 PM on April 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

'During a speech at George Washington University, former General John Kelly, the new head of DHS for Trump told politicians to either change the laws they don't like or "shut up and support the men and women on the front lines."'

Yea...you don't get to tell the opposition when to stop talking in a democracy. Sorry General, American citizens aren't E-4s under your direct command, how about you shut the fuck up instead? This guy definitely has the authoritarian streak, so we know why Trump picked him now. Scratch another off the 'adults in the room' list.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:01 PM on April 18, 2017 [49 favorites]

Here's James Kilpatrick, in the finals of the tree climbing world championship.
posted by notyou at 1:01 PM on April 18, 2017

And "on the front lines"? CPB is fighting a war against...who?, exactly?
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:02 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

JackFlash: White women also went for Trump if the polling analysis is to be believed, so as far as white people were concerned, it seems like fear of black people trumped fear of women, unless it was internalized misogyny and not racism, or low information voting, that made white women swing for Trump.

Seems more likely racism was the factor there to me, unless the election results are just completely meaningless noise at this point due to all the confounding factors.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:04 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Watching the video, he's talking about someone named "Sean" as the world-champion climber who is "also very good on television." Could he be talking about Spicey?

Is he talking about Sean Duffy the congressman from WI who was on The Real World: Boston (and also competed in lumberjack competitions)?
posted by sporkwort at 1:09 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Sanders supporter to run against red-state Democrat

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) is getting a primary challenger this week.

Dustin Peyer, a firefighter, is expected to formally announce his campaign against Heitkamp on Thursday at a marijuana reform rally at the state capitol in Bismarck.

Pressed about why he is challenging Heitkamp, Peyer pointed to a "Medicaid for all" system and campaign finance reforms.

"Her specifically in my opinion like I say campaign finance reform," he said. "She's in there with everyone else and that's a big part of it. And we need to make sure that she's being accountable and having debates and having town halls."
posted by futz at 1:12 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

sometimes I wish I had like donated a finger or something to the HRC campaign, just so that every time Trump does something horrifying I feel with complete certainty that I did my part and oh well.
posted by angrycat at 1:13 PM on April 18, 2017 [8 favorites]

I did donate a finger, and boy did I pick the wrong one to give away in times such as these.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:14 PM on April 18, 2017 [37 favorites]

Sources: The Murdochs Are Turning Against Bill O’Reilly

Three sources with knowledge of the discussions said that, while no final decision has been made, the Murdochs are leaning toward announcing that O’Reilly will not return to the air. Sons James and Lachlan have been arguing that O’Reilly needs to go, say these sources, though their father, Rupert, has resisted that outcome.
posted by futz at 1:15 PM on April 18, 2017 [18 favorites]

Firefighter discovers weird trick to get DNCC to spend money in a red state
posted by The Gaffer at 1:17 PM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

"Her specifically in my opinion like I say campaign finance reform,"

crap I think I just got pontypooled
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:33 PM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

Another thing in the Wisconsin speech earlier is that Trump again made the ridiculous claim that no other administration in history has accomplished as much during its first 100 days in office.

Not that it can be taken seriously in comparison to any other administration but I checked to be sure, and Harry Truman won World War II during his first hundred days in office: V-E day was 26 days after he was sworn in, the Battle of Okinawa ended 70 days afterward, the Trinity test was at 95 days, and Japan surrendered 118 days after he entered office.
posted by XMLicious at 1:33 PM on April 18, 2017 [39 favorites]

Yea but he did it with FDR's players. You've got to give a coach 3 years to get his recruits in there.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:38 PM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

I'm the youngest person by fifteen years at the poll-watching training, and the only white person. Which I expected, but is still disheartening.

That's totally what it's like getting involved with the Democratic party in red, rural areas, in my experience. I've wondered if I'm the only white Democrat in my precinct.

Which is important to remember when you're talking about abandoning the red states. The people who are doing the work of trying to create a Democratic chance there are very often POC. So when the national party or liberals on the internet or whatever tell them to fuck off, it's leaving the POC with no support or respect from the very people who claim to care about them.
posted by threeturtles at 1:40 PM on April 18, 2017 [44 favorites]

> GOP: you're a hero and a winner and potential millionaire. you've been screwed over by people who aren't like you and want to keep you down. we'll kick their asses for you and you can become awesome all by yourself

VOTER: Yeah!

DEMOCRATS: hey, looks like you could use some help there

VOTER: Fuck you!

I mean on the one hand I want to agree with your framing, but on the other hand there's a "getting high on own supply" angle to it. I remember during the few parts of the debates that I could stand to watch (rather than receiving secondhand through metafilter) more than a few moments where Clinton could have put Trump away by (say) taking a strong pro-union line, but where she instead ended up pivoting to anodyne stuff about America being already great (because the Democrats haven't been the party of labor since before I was born, if they ever were). I remember feeling a sickening lurch in my stomach each time she pivoted, even though I never suspected that she'd ultimately end up losing the electoral college.

so on the one hand yes, but on the other hand the help the dems offer has often been inadequate and sort of technocratic and conservative rather than bold or empowering, but on the third hand at least it's something, but on the fourth hand (so on, ad infinitum).
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:40 PM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

Hey, Truman's record is not safe yet. Trump still has a couple weeks to use his own WMDs.
posted by thefoxgod at 1:41 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Sources: The Murdochs Are Turning Against Bill O’Reilly

Oh hey!

Law Newz:
Lisa Bloom @LisaBloom
I represent a new woman who just phoned in a complaint of sexual and racial harassment against Bill O'Reilly to the Fox News hotline.

(Law Newz by Dan Abramz)
posted by Room 641-A at 1:46 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

people who voted for Obama and switched to Trump and what it would take to switch them back.

IMO most of them them overcame their innate racism because they thought they'd be absolved forever for their racism. It was the "I have a black friend" of votes. It didn't hurt that a white guy had fucked things up so bad and the new white option was so mediocre while the black guy was exceptional. But then they weren't heralded as a hero for voting black - people still called out their bigotry and those damn uppity blacks still wanted equality even after these whites had so magnanimously given them a black president. So they not only reverted to voting their racial animus, they did so with a vengeance, even more white supremacist than before.
posted by chris24 at 1:47 PM on April 18, 2017 [20 favorites]

more than a few moments where Clinton could have put Trump away by (say) taking a strong pro-union line, but where she instead ended up pivoting to anodyne stuff about America being already great (because the Democrats haven't been the party of labor since before I was born, if they ever were)

Democrats and Labor: Frenemies Forever?
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:48 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Arrgh that most successful 100 days ever thing. He's done precisely jack in his first 100 days but shit all over every norm and expectation that comes with the office.

Arrgh. Need to return to one of the active craft beer threads.
posted by notyou at 1:49 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

The average white Republican voter has been so conditioned to believe that any sort of effective social program is "Communism" that they oppose anything that works.

That's not quite true. It's totally possible to create effective social programs that white Republicans will go for. They just can't be accessible to literally everyone without any cost.

So you could, say, create a program where new parents paid 100$ a month for the first year of their kids life and then their kid got free college tuition to a four year college if they could get into one and people would eat it up with a spoon, describe it as something they "earned" and "paid for", and they would never consider that 1200$ in compound interest doesn't actually go that far towards rising college prices.

A lot of it is about design and messaging and just creating some minimal buy in cost. Honestly, I'm constantly surprised Democrats haven't done it already.
posted by corb at 1:49 PM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

What the left has got to do is go and find a common line for those people and genuinely offer them something. If they did that, they could make politics noble and important again. But instead they're hunkering down, sneering, and trying to blame Vladimir Putin. I mean, I'm sure Russians did hack practically every server in America, but that's not the real reason why Donald Trump won.

If any of these fellows had ever won elections before—or even ever run one, then I'd be a lot more inclined to give their pontifications a little more regard than I give the average punter. High marks here, tho, for cramming the phrases "make politics noble and important again" and "sneering, and trying to blame Vladimir Putin" into the same paragraph.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:49 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

The average white Republican voter has been so conditioned to believe that any sort of effective social program is "Communism" that they oppose anything that works.

They oppose anything that helps "those people." They're quite okay with government helping them.
posted by chris24 at 1:52 PM on April 18, 2017 [20 favorites]

> more than a few moments where Clinton could have put Trump away by (say) taking a strong pro-union line

Union membership has declined so much, especially in the contested states, that I don't think this is true. Democrats should take more pro-union stances because it's the right thing to do, and it could maybe help build the party's depth in the coming years, but I don't think a change in rhetoric toward labror in the 2016 Presidential election would have changed the outcome.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:54 PM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

> That's not quite true. It's totally possible to create effective social programs that white Republicans will go for. They just can't be accessible to literally everyone without any cost.

In short, the Republican base is not comfortable with plans that don't in some way manufacture losers. If there's not someone to look down on, and if the people looked down on don't suffer, and if it doesn't seem like it's their fault for suffering, then it's not appealing.

If we want to inspire great swathes of white America, we need to name a loser, and we need to present a plan to make that loser hurt, and we need to make it seem like the loser's fault that they're hurting. Hopefully we can treat those parts of the white-national psyche as damage and route around them instead, but...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:59 PM on April 18, 2017 [27 favorites]

> Union membership has declined so much, especially in the contested states, that I don't think this is true. Democrats should take more pro-union stances because it's the right thing to do, and it could maybe help build the party's depth in the coming years, but I don't think a change in rhetoric toward labror in the 2016 Presidential election would have changed the outcome.

True as such. I guess I'm using being pro-labor as a synecdoche for popular empowerment in general; the "america was always great" party line has "sit down and shut up and eat your vegetables" implications, where instead what was needed was something more like "things are crap but YOU are powerful and YOU aren't gonna take it anymore and YOU can do something about it!"
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:03 PM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

this is normal. U.S. Fighter Jets Intercept Russian Bombers Flying Near Alaska
posted by localhuman at 2:08 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

First protected DREAMer is deported under Trump

Federal agents ignored President Trump's pledge to protect from deportation undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children by sending a young man back to his native Mexico, the first such documented case, a USA TODAY examination of the new administration's immigration policies shows.

After spending an evening with his girlfriend in Calexico, Calif., on Feb. 17, Juan Manuel Montes, 23, who has lived in the U.S. since age 9, grabbed a bite and was waiting for a ride when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer approached and started asking questions.

Montes was twice granted deportation protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created by President Barack Obama and left intact by President Trump.

Montes had left his wallet in a friend's car, so he couldn't produce his ID or proof of his DACA status and was told by agents he couldn't retrieve them. Within three hours, he was back in Mexico, becoming the first undocumented immigrant with active DACA status deported by the Trump administration's stepped-up deportation policy.

Three hours? What the fuck?
posted by zachlipton at 2:08 PM on April 18, 2017 [59 favorites]

That's not quite true. It's totally possible to create effective social programs that white Republicans will go for. They just can't be accessible to literally everyone without any cost.

Okay, first of all, this is complete and utter bullshit. We've had work-for-welfare programs and drug-testing and all kinds of similar and often shitty hoops for the disadvantaged to jump through, and yet white Republicans have become even more bigoted. Second, "accessible to literally everyone without any cost" is kind of the point. These are people for who every extra cost makes their lives magnitudes worse than the people who could take even an extra couple of percents of marginal tax rate hikes. Which leads us to the final issue, that this is extremely regressive taxation, which white Republicans love because it hurts marginalized populations, not despite it.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:09 PM on April 18, 2017 [21 favorites]

The function of this proposed optional tax is not to give the impression that the program is self-funding. It's to serve as a gatekeeping device; people who are flat broke will have to make the "choice" not to take the very good deal on offer, and their kids will be boned because kids with parents who could spare a few hundred dollars here and there during the very expensive first year of their lives will have even more of a leg up on them.

It's not about duping the masses. It's about gatekeeping, and about manufacturing losers by keeping them outside the gates.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:11 PM on April 18, 2017 [27 favorites]

this is normal. U.S. Fighter Jets Intercept Russian Bombers Flying Near Alaska

This is a new-ish normal, but not a new-because-Trump normal. Russians have been aggressive with their aircraft for several years now.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:17 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

The Russians buzz UK airspace on a regular basis. They head towards us with intent, we send up Biggles, they wave at each other and everyone goes home for tea and medals.

It's a sort of mutual support club: everyone gets to play warbird and the defence allocation gets a little more secure each time.
posted by Devonian at 2:18 PM on April 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

Metafilter is good at a lot of things. Psychoanalyzing people who don't come here is not one of those things, and we're not getting anywhere useful by trying to model the vicious little minds that we've invented for a heterogeneous group.
posted by The Gaffer at 2:24 PM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

well in this instance i'm glad to be wrong that bombers buzzing others' airspaces is normal! also i should rtfa before ltfa
posted by localhuman at 2:25 PM on April 18, 2017

Good news, everybody! North Korea Offers Unconditional Surrender After Mike Pence Angrily Squints at It (by Andy Borowitz for the New Yorker - SATIRE)

In a major foreign-policy coup for the Trump Administration, North Korea offered to unconditionally abandon its nuclear program on Monday, after Mike Pence spent several minutes angrily squinting at the nation from just across the border.

Warning North Korea that the United States had jettisoned its policy of “strategic patience” and that “all options were on the table,” Pence fixed his steely glare on the isolated Communist nation and began furiously staring it down.

After Pence spent between five and six minutes demonstrating U.S. resolve by squinting indignantly, the government in Pyongyang released a statement indicating that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were a thing of the past.

Here's that steely gaze.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:28 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Three hours? What the fuck?

Gotta start somewhere / examples need to be made, etc.
posted by cjdavis at 2:29 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

> we're not getting anywhere useful by trying to model the vicious little minds that we've invented for a heterogeneous group

It's hard to tell since you weren't explicit about it, but if you're talking about the pushback against the idea of "buying in" to welfare, it seems to me that when someone claims to speak on behalf of sensible, moderate conservatives about the perfect pony welfare program that sensible, moderate conservatives will totally support, it's right to note the mountains of evidence that they would not support such a program. That evidence includes the writings of conservative intellectuals, the budgets of Republican legislators, and the rhetoric of so-called moderates that focuses on certain kinds of redistribution that they imagine goes to the undeserving with nary a peep about the other kinds of redistribution that helps them and their own communities. It's not about getting into their psyches, it's about taking them at their own word about their own beliefs that they're perfectly happy to share with anyone who bothers to ask.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:34 PM on April 18, 2017 [19 favorites]

It's good to be aware of these things, anyhow, so that when we see the headlines later on tonight we can sigh and roll our eyes because we already knew that and we knew that the headlines were just a little bit sensational.

Love Sensational media headlines will tear us apart

again
posted by Existential Dread at 2:38 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

I suppose I'm a little bit overconfident about my ability to model the worldview of the contemporary American right wing by first examining all my worst impulses and then pretending those impulses are good, but uhh it's served me well so far.

No that's not fair, that's not what I'm doing. What I'm doing is taking the necessary and unpleasant side-effects of the "personal responsibility" story that the Republican party uses, and then treating those effects as the purpose of their schemes rather than as side-effects. The argument becomes that leftists and liberals who want to capture "personal responsibility" voters would be better served by producing a scheme that generates something like those unpleasant side-effects, rather than a scheme that has anything to do with "personal responsibility" as such.

I think this approach adequately explains the actions taken by the Republican leadership, the actions taken by the Republican base, and the lack of traction received by right-wing Democratic plans that incorporate the idea of "personal responsibility," but that try to minimize, or at least not foreground, the nasty side effects.

Ever see one of those gas station tabloids — I don't think they're legal in all states — that run nothing but peoples' mugshots and blurbs making fun of them? We cannot deny the raw libidinal pleasure of this type of nasty entertainment; we like it. And we must acknowledge it and in some way deal with it, either by somehow routing around the people who have fully given themselves over to that type of pleasure, or else by somehow, insofar as it is possible, harnessing that part of the American id for good.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:40 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

CNN treats politics like a sport — that’s bad for all of us
posted by Artw at 2:40 PM on April 18, 2017 [8 favorites]

Nuclear pissing contest between weird-haired f**knuts how Earth always wanted to go
posted by lalochezia at 2:45 PM on April 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

Yeah, saber rattling with North Korea while simultaneously picking an unnecessary fight with South Korea is an interesting strategy...

Maybe we're trying to forge peace in the Korean Peninsula by uniting them in their irritation at us. I guess that's as good a plan as any.
posted by jackbishop at 2:46 PM on April 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

Conservative intellectuals, republican legislators, and whoever these sensible, moderate conservatives I don't care about so much, though - it's (in increasing order of importance), R voters, occasional R voters, and culturally Republican* nonvoters. So decoding some Heritage Foundation dog whistle or Alex Jones regular whistle doesn't necessarily help because these people aren't of a piece. What's more, someone can be badly informed, racist but not the most racist, less misogynist than you might expect, etc.

So taking Steve King's latest amendment as the secret desire of every trump voter or person who just didn't turn out for hillary isn't necessarily accurate, and that's even before we get into the pattern** of taking some appalachian hillfolk and blaming them for everything affluent exoburbers do.

For instance, making some kind of hedge or structural element that appeals to supply side economics or a just world theory or whatever seems less useful than making something useful and defending it with forceful, plain language. The Republican party wins by pissing on your leg and telling you it's raining. The Democratic party pisses on your leg slight less, then explains why it's best that you be covered in urine.

*Not social conservatives, but people who live in or identify with Republican-leaning communities or subcultures.

**Pattern that lives all over the place, not just here.
posted by The Gaffer at 2:50 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

we're not getting anywhere useful by trying to model the vicious little minds that we've invented for a heterogeneous group

Conservatives don't actually care about the things they say they care about.

When I was Marine Corps basic, one of my DIs would pontificate at length about how Slick Willy was womanizing draft-dodger he would never salute, and that his election represented the rot at the center of liberalism. Nobody gave a shit about the deficit until Bush the Lesser left office and then it was all Obamaphones all the time. It is perfectly acceptable for a "family values" conservative to be philandering about with rent boys while snorting mountains of coke.

The converse of IOKIYAR is that if a Dem does it or likes it, it must be bad.

Paul Ryan doesn't give a shit about grandmothers - live or die, Lyin' Ryan cares not - but Dems would (in general) prefer that they don't starve and so Paul Ryan is absolutely in favor of making grandmothers eat cat food.

It is not possible to reach conservatives, and it is a waste to try. There's nothing to understand except relentless and stupid opposition.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:54 PM on April 18, 2017 [28 favorites]

Obit: Man died peacefully after falsely told Trump was impeached

Michael Garland Elliott died "peacefully" April 6 after his "ex-wife and best friend" Teresa Elliott informed him that "Donald Trump has been impeached," his obituary in The Oregonian said.

"Mike ran out of family long ago and is survived by his ex-wife and best friend, Teresa Elliott," the obituary read. "Though their marriage ran aground, their friendship only grew stronger and hers was the last voice Mike heard. And the last thing she said to him was 'Donald Trump has been impeached.' Upon hearing that he took his final, gentle breath, his earthly work concluded."
posted by futz at 2:56 PM on April 18, 2017 [72 favorites]

> So taking Steve King's latest amendment as the secret desire of every trump voter or person who just didn't turn out for hillary isn't necessarily accurate, and that's even before we get into the pattern** of taking some appalachian hillfolk and blaming them for everything affluent exoburbers do.

I guess one reason I'm pushing back is that I don't think it's so much a matter of explaining the behavior of affluent exoburbers in terms of the behavior of appalachian hillfolk, and more a matter of analyzing the behavior of humans; what I'm talking about is something like the abominable fancy, which predates exoburbs, white Appalachian hillfolk, and the United States itself.

Much of the convoluted language found across the political spectrum can be explained as attempts to avoid openly admitting that we enjoy the idea of the abominable fancy.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:57 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

YCTaB, yeah, but then we're going from the inherent wickedness of man to pulling the wrong lever in 2016, and that's an awfully long journey.
posted by The Gaffer at 3:10 PM on April 18, 2017

> So taking Steve King's latest amendment as the secret desire of every trump voter or person who just didn't turn out for hillary isn't necessarily accurate

I'm not talking about Steve King. I'm talking about mainstream leaders of the party and the legislative caucuses. I'm talking about politicians at the state and local levels who use the same rhetoric, which I see firsthand in the purple state of Pennsylvania, and that my wife encounters as a freelance reporter who's covering the political primaries right now. I'm talking about the fact that I can probably count the number of currently sitting elected Republicans who've ever deviated from orthodoxy on support for lower income people on the fingers of one hand. You can try to dismiss this as nutpicking, but this isn't about the Kings/Gohmerts.

> For instance, making some kind of hedge or structural element that appeals to supply side economics or a just world theory or whatever seems less useful than making something useful and defending it with forceful, plain language. The Republican party wins by pissing on your leg and telling you it's raining. The Democratic party pisses on your leg slight less, then explains why it's best that you be covered in urine.

It seems less useful until you encounter actual voters who vote against every tax increase precisely because of conservative epithets about the perils of "tax-and-spend liberalism" and "exploding deficits." We seem to agree that "tricking" conservatives into supporting a robust redistribution program is unlikely to work, but as we've seen with the ACA, it's also very difficult to get any sort of help to poor people without Rube Goldberg-ing the hell out of it. I would love to live in this world where explicit appeals to tax-and-spend would gain enough traction to get policy passed and signed into law, but that's not the world we've lived in for a very long time.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:11 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

>YCTaB, yeah, but then we're going from the inherent wickedness of man to pulling the wrong lever in 2016, and that's an awfully long journey.

I dunno, shit's been pretty eschatological up in here lately, and we've picked literally the worst human in the world to immanentize that eschaton, and it all leads one to think in broad terms about what sort of creature we are.

More seriously, we're looking for an explanation for a particular human behavior ("you picked the literal worst person why?") that might lead to a method of changing that behavior ("what do we have to do to persuade you to get rid of the literal worst person?")

"Appeal to personal responsibility" is one proposed method. I'm arguing that that method won't work, because personal responsibility is primarily a stalking horse for "give us a loser to laugh at and blame." I am willing to stand by the claim that my interpretation is both accurate and also sorta useful in thinking through what schemes will or won't be appealing.

If you'd rather operate in terms of contemporary rather than medieval / late classical metaphors, you can think of "personal responsibility" as being like those variables that data scientists can use to select populations in ways that correlate incredibly well with race, but which aren't explicitly about race. The people drawing insurance rate maps or congressional district borders using those variables don't actually care about whatever it is they're sorting on; what they care about (whether or not they care to admit it to themselves) is that those variables correlate with race.

The "personal responsibility" narrative isn't the thing that matters; the blame-a-loser-for-losing impulse is what matters.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:24 PM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

FBI used dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Trump campaign in part to secure approval to secretly monitor Carter Page, US officials say
posted by futz at 3:29 PM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

-- Officials familiar with the process say even if the application to monitor Page included information from the dossier, it would only be after the FBI had corroborated the information through its own investigation. The officials would not say what or how much was corroborated.

-- Comey hasn't mentioned the dossier in all his briefings to lawmakers, according to people familiar with the briefings. To some of them, he has emphasized that the FBI gathered evidence as part of its investigation to support seeking FISA court approval and to take other steps as part of the probe that began last July, according to the officials briefed of the probe.

Oh Carter, I am thrilled that you are so dumb. Thank you.
posted by futz at 3:33 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Computer Issues Are Causing Voting Problems In Georgia House Special Election

After experiencing some issues on Tuesday, Fulton County officials are hoping to keep two polling precincts open later.

Richard Barron, the director of elections and registration for Fulton County, said they are trying to extend voting hours for Centennial High School in Roswell and the Johns Creek Environmental Campus.

The problem is, the judge that has to OK voting extension, Shawn Ellen LaGrua, is hearing a criminal case today.

Also voting equipment was stolen yesterday (?) and there are reports that 3 polling locations were changed at the last minute without any notification (twitter).

Looks like voting hours were extended.

Potential voting issues began even before Tuesday: Secretary of State Brian Kemp said Monday that his office is investigating the theft of some voting equipment from a Cobb County precinct manager’s vehicle. Kemp said although the incident happened Saturday, his office was not alerted until two days later.

Right now it looks like the last polling site will close at approx 8pm. To be continued...
posted by futz at 3:37 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

> ... investigating the theft of some voting equipment from a Cobb County precinct manager’s vehicle. Kemp said although the incident happened Saturday, his office was not alerted until two days later.

Seriously? Now we're just tolerating outright theft of voting equipment, so that they can be probed at leisure for hack-able weaknesses?
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:42 PM on April 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

And the comment I was originally making:
Kevin Drum has had it with the "lies as performance art": Under Trump, Trade Deficits Are Up, Interest Rates Have Doubled, and Car Sales are Plummeting

I guess we'd better get on the bandwagon. We need to start saying stuff about Trump without bothering to check if it's remotely true...

• American war casualties have gone up 100 percent under Trump. (This is actually true if you pick the right dates. Not that it matters.)
• The February trade deficit with Mexico under Trump doubled compared to Obama's first February. The trade deficit with China was two-thirds higher. (True!)
• Automobile sales have plummeted at an annual rate of 40 percent under Trump. (Also true!)
• Interest rates have more than doubled since Trump was elected. (This is true too!)
• Trump has the lowest recorded IQ of any American president ever. (That's what people have told me, anyway.)

posted by RedOrGreen at 3:42 PM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

Ryan Lizza on The Continuing Fallout from Trump and Nunes's Fake Scandal:

It is now clear that the scandal was not Rice’s normal review of the intelligence reports but the coördinated effort between the Trump Administration and Nunes to sift through classified information and computer logs that recorded Rice’s unmasking requests, and then leak a highly misleading characterization of those documents, all in an apparent effort to turn Rice, a longtime target of Republicans, into the face of alleged spying against Trump. It was a series of lies to manufacture a fake scandal. Last week, CNN was the first to report that both Democrats and Republicans who reviewed the Nunes material at the N.S.A. said that the documents provided “no evidence that Obama Administration officials did anything unusual or illegal.”

I spoke to two intelligence sources, one who read the entire binder of intercepts and one who was briefed on their contents. “There’s absolutely nothing there,” one source said. The Trump names remain masked in the documents, and Rice would not have been able to know in all cases that she was asking the N.S.A. to unmask the names of Trump officials.
...
The intelligence source told me that he knows, “from talking to people in the intelligence community,” that “the White House said, ‘We are going to mobilize to find something to justify the President’s tweet that he was being surveilled.’ They put out an all-points bulletin”—a call to sift through intelligence reports—“and said, ‘We need to find something that justifies the President’s crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower.’ And I’m telling you there is no way you get that from those transcripts, which are about as plain vanilla as can be.” (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

So how's the investigation going?

Even though there is now some bipartisan agreement that Nunes’s description of the intercepts was wildly inaccurate, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are still preparing to focus on Obama’s national-security team, rather than on Vladimir Putin’s. Last week, Democrats and Republicans finalized their witness lists, and the names tell a tale of two separate investigations. The intelligence source said, “The Democratic list involves all of the characters that you would think it would: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Carter Page,” speaking of the three Trump campaign officials who have been most closely tied to the Russia investigation. “The Republican list is almost entirely people from the Obama Administration.”

The fake scandal created by Trump and Nunes is not over yet. The first name on the Republican list is Susan Rice.

Word is that the Senate Intelligence Committee is going to hold another public hearing soonish. We'll see if they're still at least pretending that they're running a single investigation.
posted by zachlipton at 3:42 PM on April 18, 2017 [30 favorites]

The White House just sent out an email with quotes praising Trump's executive order. The quotes … are from White House officials.

They've put out press emails before where they quote news stories praising their stuff, but one consisting entirely of officials praising themselves is a new low.
posted by zachlipton at 3:46 PM on April 18, 2017 [39 favorites]

"things are crap but YOU are powerful and YOU aren't gonna take it anymore and YOU can do something about it!"

Saying "things are crap" would have been a slap in the face to Obama and everyone who supported him so of course, Clinton was not going to do that.
posted by asteria at 3:46 PM on April 18, 2017

Saying 'things are crap' would have been a slap in the face to Obama and everyone who supported him so of course, Clinton was not going to do that.

But she could've said "things were crap before Obama was elected" with examples, said things are better now, but we have a long way to go. I'll finish what he started, but better. Don't change horses in midstream argument.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:49 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Mexico's Revenge

From 2000 to 2013, China’s bilateral trade with Latin America increased by 2,300 percent, according to one calculation. A raft of recently inked deals forms the architecture for China to double its annual trade with the region, to $500 billion, by the middle of the next decade. Mexico, however, has remained a grand exception to this grand strategy. China has had many reasons for its restrained approach in Mexico, including the fact that Mexico lacks most of the export commodities that have attracted China to other Latin American countries. But Mexico also happens to be the one spot in Latin America where the United States would respond with alarm to a heavy Chinese presence.

That sort of alarm is just the thing some Mexicans would now like to provoke.

Trump's Old Tweets Are Becoming A Minefield Of Hypocrisy

what sort of creature we are.


Featherless biped*

*with broad flat nails.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:51 PM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

They've put out press emails before where they quote news stories praising their stuff, but one consisting entirely of officials praising themselves is a new low.

Many White House staff people are saying this is the most accomplished 100 days of any administration.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:53 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

there's a basic problem with the liberal/democratic/progressive program as being sold to the american people

people basically are being told they can help the poor and the underclass without having to sacrifice anything, that the rich, or the business community or the affluent will pay for it

the problem is, the math won't add up that way

if you want a living wage, universal health care, some kind of way of easing student debt, generous social benefits to the poor and unemployed, the simple truth is that the middle class are going to have to make sacrifices for it - and by that, i mean the top 50% or more

our politicians on the left aren't stupid - they know this - and they don't mention it

the politicians on the right aren't stupid - they know this and never pass an opportunity to protest this as socialism

and the middle class? - they're not stupid either - they know it's going to cost them and that's why so many of them aren't going to vote for it

add to this that our current way of life and way of government are not sustainable - that all of use are going to experience a severe readjustment in our lifestyles - and most of us don't want to admit it (although i think a good many people here are willing to), and what we have is a big mess

the american people will not forgive anyone who tells them the truth - and yet, they've never been more in need of the truth than now

although some people are stupid - i'm really not sure that people over all - red state voters over all - are as stupid, or vengeful, or as racist, or whatever as what's being claimed by some here

they've chosen to vote for things that feel good, even if they won't work, as opposed to voting for something that might work but will personally cost them

somehow, we've got to get back to the idea that it's not all about "me" and what's best for "me", but it's about what's best for the country

good luck with that
posted by pyramid termite at 3:54 PM on April 18, 2017 [18 favorites]

Trump's Old Tweets Are Becoming A Minefield Of Hypocrisy

This tweet sums up my feelings.

I swear if Trump randomly, like, tripped on a squirrel or something we'd find an old tweet of his saying only fat losers trip on squirrels

posted by Justinian at 4:04 PM on April 18, 2017 [56 favorites]

NYT has live results here and running commentary/analysis here.
posted by cybertaur1 at 4:14 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

There's also the GA Secretary of State results site.
posted by The Shoodoonoof at 4:18 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

she could've said "things were crap before Obama was elected" with examples, said things are better now, but we have a long way to go. I'll finish what he started, but better. Don't change horses in midstream argument.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that exactly what Clinton did run on?
posted by octobersurprise at 4:18 PM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

If we're going to make a masking tape wall at the border, we might as well mask off squares for cats to sit in while we're at it.

I'm starting to see a strategy for solving the homeless cat population AND ensuring border security at the same time.

Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons, yeah?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:18 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that exactly what Clinton did run on?

In my experience any time someone says "Why didn't Clinton talk about/run on X" she spent tons of time talking about/running on X, it's just the media didn't cover that boring policy stuff.
posted by Justinian at 4:21 PM on April 18, 2017 [63 favorites]

and the middle class? - they're not stupid either - they know it's going to cost them and that's why so many of them aren't going to vote for it

The middle class is bearing the cost already. and the poor aren't going to get any poorer, so let's just start with more appropriate taxation of the wealthy first and see how far it gets us. let's reframe this as building a prosperous society instead of a society with a few prosperous individuals.
posted by OHenryPacey at 4:23 PM on April 18, 2017 [33 favorites]

the american people will not forgive anyone who tells them the truth - and yet, they've never been more in need of the truth than now ... although some people are stupid - i'm really not sure that people over all - red state voters over all - are as stupid, or vengeful, or as racist, or whatever as what's being claimed by some here ... they've chosen to vote for things that feel good, even if they won't work, as opposed to voting for something that might work but will personally cost them ... somehow, we've got to get back to the idea that it's not all about "me" and what's best for "me", but it's about what's best for the country ... good luck with that

Jimmy Carter is still eligible to run for another term in 2020. Just sayin'...
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:25 PM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

if you want a living wage, universal health care, some kind of way of easing student debt, generous social benefits to the poor and unemployed, the simple truth is that the middle class are going to have to make sacrifices for it - and by that, i mean the top 50% or more

I choose to sacrifice spending as much as the next seven largest military budgets combined and tax breaks for rich people.

Today's income tax rates are strikingly low relative to the rates of the past century, especially for rich people. For most of the century, including some boom times, top-bracket income tax rates were much higher than they are today.

Contrary to what Republicans would have you believe, super-high tax rates on rich people do not appear to hurt the economy or make people lazy: During the 1950s and early 1960s, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90%--and the economy, middle-class, and stock market boomed.

posted by kirkaracha at 4:27 PM on April 18, 2017 [43 favorites]

FBI used dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Trump campaign in part to secure approval to secretly monitor Carter Page, US officials say

Brian Beutler raises the good point that this detail complicates the story about intelligence officials briefing Trump on the dossier. The thing is literally being used as evidence to monitor someone Trump himself described as one of his advisors. If they corroborated parts of it enough to use it as evidence in an investigation, how the heck do you then go brief the central figure in that investigation on its contents?
posted by zachlipton at 4:33 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

21st Century Fox to hold a board meeting Thursday, O'Reilly a primary topic
posted by zachlipton at 4:34 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

let's reframe this as building a prosperous society instead of a society with a few prosperous individuals

Yes! There seems to be this fundamental disconnect between the thinking that prosperity can only come at the cost of others vs something that is best achieved by helping everyone.

I mean I'm soft and squishy and bleeding heart as the best of them, but I also believe that there is usually a strong selfish and practical personal benefit to "altruism" or the social good. Helping others, materially helps ourselves.

Or as my gruff, old school, republican looking, but commie leaning father in law says "poor people are just too fucking expensive."
posted by The Shoodoonoof at 4:39 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

I would love it so, so, so much if O'Reilly wasn't allowed to come back from "vacation" and wasn't able to address his audience. Please, please, let his show be a true No Spin Zone for once.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:39 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I would love it so, so, so much if O'Reilly wasn't allowed to come back from "vacation" and wasn't able to address his audience.

Unless, now truly off leash he goes the way of Alex Jones or similar. His ratings are higher than ever. Maybe he has a really solid no compete clause in his contract? Who knows. I shudder to think the damage he could do if he is no longer constrained (LOL) by Fox news "standards".
posted by futz at 4:46 PM on April 18, 2017

Fuck it, Bill says he'll do it live.
posted by spitbull at 4:50 PM on April 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

Like Glenn Beck? I don't think his leash is that much longer than we've seen. Worth the humiliation to have him lose the Fox platform.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:53 PM on April 18, 2017

Salon: Roger Ailes’ fake news empire: Former Fox News head presided over a panoply of phony “sock puppet” blogs: "Former Fox News CEO paid for many deceptive sites, including leering blogs promoting female Fox personalities." Around 10 years ago, he was paying for blogs that would do things like post a photo of Megyn Kelly with the caption: "Whew — hot, single, and just waiting around her New York City apartment for someone to take her out (see above). Gentlemen, start your engines." That blog post "was filed by its author under the categories “Single,” “party in my pants” and “Girls Gone Wild,” among several others."

In related news, O'Reilly's lawyer put out a statement, and, um. Apparently they're going to put out "irrefutable" evidence soon that this is all a smear campaign by "far-left organizations."
posted by zachlipton at 4:54 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

Since results are starting to trickle in... I'm guessing Ossoff ends today with 48%.
posted by Justinian at 4:57 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Worth the humiliation to have him lose the Fox platform.

Of course.
posted by futz at 4:57 PM on April 18, 2017

Since results are starting to trickle in... I'm guessing Ossoff ends today with 48%.

Initial results are good, but they are from the area that went most heavily democratic in the last election, so you'll probably be right.
posted by The Shoodoonoof at 5:02 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm guessing Ossoff ends today with 48%

Fine then, I'll go on record predicting that these early numbers will stay consistent, he will win with huge turnout in a 70% blowout and the Republicans will be so terrified they take it upon themselves to pass single payer healthcare before the mid-terms.
posted by contraption at 5:05 PM on April 18, 2017 [17 favorites]

If that happens, we'd all better have one hell of a birthday party for martin q blank to give thanks next year.
posted by zachlipton at 5:08 PM on April 18, 2017 [17 favorites]

Canadian Ambassador responds to dairy comments
posted by nubs at 5:29 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Can I revise my guess? I suppose that would be cheating.
posted by Justinian at 5:42 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Blackwater founder to open bases in Xinjiang (3/21/2017)
posted by indubitable at 5:42 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fine then, I'll go on record predicting that these early numbers will stay consistent, he will win with huge turnout in a 70% blowout and the Republicans will be so terrified they take it upon themselves to pass single payer healthcare before the mid-terms.

Any chance you could get that on a cake before all the results are in? Normally that'd be a bit of a rush, but damn these results are coming in slow.
posted by The Shoodoonoof at 5:44 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ossoff at 57% in the Cobb County early vote. That's more impressive than the DeKalb tally. Ossoff on track for 2/3 of the EV
posted by futz at 5:47 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

My guess is Ossoff squeaks it out - like 50.5%

My recommendation is to take a walk or read a book - this looks like it will be a long night.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:48 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

My recommendation is to take a walk or read a book - this looks like it will be a long night.

What, and miss all the nail biting, obsessive reloading, flashback to Nov. 8th fun? Nope, I'm here till the end. Or until I leave work in an hour. Whichever comes first.
posted by The Shoodoonoof at 6:01 PM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

The Shoodoonoof: "What, and miss all the nail biting, obsessive reloading, flashback to Nov. 8th fun?"

Yikes. Just reading about people's guesses about the outcome is giving me a queasy feeling in my tummy. I think it's going to be a long while before I'm going to voluntarily subject myself to live election results. Have fun, folks. See y'all in the morning.
posted by mhum at 6:04 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Can Sherrod Brown Make Democrats Working Class Again?
For more than 20 years, Sherrod Brown has been winning elections in Ohio. But with Republicans gunning for the 2018 midterms, the Democratic senator has a target on his back.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:07 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Miami state senator curses at black lawmaker — and refers to fellow Republicans as ‘niggas’

Miami Republican Sen. Frank Artiles dropped the n-word to a pair of African-American colleagues in private conversation Monday night — after calling one of them a “fucking asshole,” a “bitch” and a “girl,” the two senators said.

Over drinks after 10 p.m. at the members-only Governors Club just steps from the state Capitol, Artiles told Sens. Audrey Gibson of Jacksonville and Perry Thurston of Fort Lauderdale that Senate President Joe Negron of Stuart had risen to his powerful GOP leadership role because “six niggers” in the Republican caucus had elected him.

Artiles later told Gibson and Thurston that he’d used the word “niggas,” suggesting the slang term was not meant to be insulting, Gibson and Thurston said. It’s unclear whom Artiles was referring to, since the only black senators in the state Senate are all Democrats — and none of them backed Negron’s bid to lead the chamber.

-- “You’re just talking — loud — to a table of people about leadership. It made me sad,” she said. “I can’t remember a time in my life when anybody called me either one of those things,” she added, referring to the two insults directed at her. “It’s just the most disrespect I’ve ever encountered.”

AND My god, this is inexcusable:

Tuesday afternoon, Artiles, Gibson and Thurston coincided at a Senate transportation budget meeting. When Artiles sat next to the place where Gibson had set down her things, Gibson picked them up and moved over, leaving an empty chair between them.

WTF Artiles. Trying to sit next to her is beyond fucked up. Dude is a boundary crossing predator. I am so fucking angry.
posted by futz at 6:14 PM on April 18, 2017 [25 favorites]

If it DOES go to a 2nd round, it will be Ossoff vs Handel.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:24 PM on April 18, 2017

Nate Cohn thinks they're on track for 190k which is truly massive turnout. He also says he'd guess Ossoff at 48%. *cough*. Who needs data and analytics when you've got wild-ass speculation based on the belief that the most likely result is coming up just short in the most painful way possible.
posted by Justinian at 6:26 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Who needs data and analytics when you've got wild-ass speculation based on the belief that the most likely result is coming up just short in the most painful way possible.

Past performance, &c., &c.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:35 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

I wish Fulton county would start returning some freaking vote. We need to see how much Ossoff beats Clinton's vote by there. We keep getting stuff from Dekalb and Cobb.
posted by Justinian at 6:39 PM on April 18, 2017

Put me down for 1 vote for Ossoff from Fulton, Justinian!
posted by robstercraw at 6:42 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Nice, robertscraw!

Dekalb and Cobb are both sitting at like 70% in and there's Fulton at 16%. In the old machine days this sort of thing usually meant that they were waiting to see what sort of numbers they had to report. One would never suggest such a thing now, of course.
posted by Justinian at 6:43 PM on April 18, 2017

it's right to note the mountains of evidence that they would not support such a program.

I actually was being lazy and thought of the first thing on my mind, the Montgomery GI Bill, which was the college program when I enlisted in the military, and enjoyed pretty fair bipartisan support until the Post 9/11 GI bill came along. Now I know that was for soldiers, who are a fairly protected class, but it was still an example of a real program with real support, and one of the most effective social programs of its century.
posted by corb at 6:48 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I went by my parent's house tonight to help dad fix the garage door, their neighbor came over to lend a hand and drink a beer when we were done. The neighbor is retired Navy, so I asked what he thought about the missing armada steaming towards Korea or Australia or wherever.

He gave a "I don't know if I should laugh or cry..." type answer, but after lot of salty language mostly settled on laughing at what he called a colossal fuckup. For him the bottom line is that escalation is more likely and less predictable if the navy and its civilian leadership aren't seen as a credible threat.

It was a pretty interesting conversation. Later, I googled the neighbor's name and discovered he's a retired vice admiral his service record is pretty amazeballs. He's a republican, and endorsed Romney (his name is on this list) but not Trump apparently. His assignments included the command of an aircraft carrier and of a carrier strike group.

So this is where we're at now, an actual aircraft carrier commander is laughing at the Trump administration and its armada steaming towards wherever.
posted by peeedro at 6:59 PM on April 18, 2017 [51 favorites]

WSJ: Fox Is Preparing to Cut Ties With Bill O’Reilly [paywall, sorry, I dunno how to bypass it anymore]

Orielly out and Ossoff within striking of 50%? Who's birthday is it, you glorious bastard?
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:03 PM on April 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

MSNBC showing the same slightly-above-50% results for Ossoff now, with 50% reporting. The commentator says "trending towards a run-off", but refuses to commit even to say when it will be possible to call it.
posted by XMLicious at 7:06 PM on April 18, 2017

If this comes down to the handful of no-name Dems who split 1% or so of the votes between them, tables will be flipped.
posted by zachlipton at 7:06 PM on April 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

For more than 20 years, Sherrod Brown has been winning elections in Ohio.

I live in SW Ohio (home of Rob Portman, whereas Sherrod's base is squarely northern Ohio*), but I love, love, love Senator Brown and have sworn to all that is holy and beautiful and sacred in my beloved state I will work my tail off to see him re-elected. If Ohio loses its slightly purple tint, we're fucked.

(*That said, it's been fun to see how Hamilton County is one of the few places in the Midwest consistently getting bluer every election cycle)
posted by mostly vowels at 7:07 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

Dekalb and Cobb are reporting 100% or virtually 100% and Fulton still at 16%. Just sayin'.
posted by Justinian at 7:07 PM on April 18, 2017

NYT analysis points out that Judson Hill had to quit his day job in the Georgia Senate to run for this and is clearly not even going to make a runoff.
posted by corb at 7:09 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

The reason they're saying there will likely be a runoff is that Ossoff beat Clinton's vote % in Dekalb and Cobb by 1.5-1.6%. Clinton got 46.4% in Fulton. If he beats Clinton by a similar margin there, it would be 48% in Fulton. Which would put him a couple tenths under 49 I believe.

In order to go above 50% he needs to overperform Clinton in Fulton by a point more than he overperformed her in Dekalb and Cobb. Which isn't impossible but isn't the way to bet.
posted by Justinian at 7:13 PM on April 18, 2017

Also - a D is leading in the special for Hill's old state Senate seat. Ds probably won't win this one in the runoff - looks like the combined Dem total is about 40%, and I believe this is a very red district - but still funny.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:14 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Befitting the Russian influence at the top, this is truly the Matryoshka doll of special elections.
posted by corb at 7:18 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

This country has SO many elections. Dems just won the Clerk of Court in Prince William County, Virginia!
posted by Chrysostom at 7:21 PM on April 18, 2017 [16 favorites]

Real-time image of me following election returns.
posted by dhens at 7:25 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Just finished the eons-ago posted How Russia Hacked Obama's Legacy, Hayes Brown, BuzzFeed. Its about the slow, plodding, tepid response. Only read if you want to be infuriated. Or annoyed at sports metaphors.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:29 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

FYI: There are a couple add-ons for Firefox/compatibles that will automatically reload the page every x minutes. It's also part of the Tab Mix Plus functionality.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:31 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is there an add-on to skip ahead to the final result?
posted by uosuaq at 7:35 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

WTF Artiles. Trying to sit next to her is beyond fucked up. Dude is a boundary crossing predator. I am so fucking angry.

Year before last it was reported that he punched a college kid outside that same bar.

Artiles is an incredible asshole and horrible bully, and well-known as a shitty human being. Fuck him.
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:40 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Dekalb and Cobb are both fully counted: 100% in. Fulton is still 16% as it has been all night. Perhaps having your vote counted by a couple of drunk teenagers wasn't the best plan, Fulton?
posted by Justinian at 7:42 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

AP: For Trump, no qualms in embracing autocratic leaders:

But rarely are U.S. presidents as warm and unabashed about their relationships with autocrats.

Trump's comfort level seems to stem in part from his background in business, where the details of a deal mattered more than the negotiating partner and flattery can get results.

When they were forced to deal with imperfect allies, Trump's predecessors, including Obama and President George W. Bush, made a point of using the moment to promote American ideals. They often followed meetings with statements about human rights or gathered separately with advocates or opposition leaders.

Trump was congratulating Erdogan as his own State Department was putting out a statement about the referendum that was not exactly celebratory.
posted by zachlipton at 7:45 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

NYT chat pointing out that Trump-aligned candidates did worst, and that the GOP candidates had been doing some really nasty mud slinging. With as close as a (now likely) runoff would be, just a few folks staying home could be critical.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:50 PM on April 18, 2017

Since apparently I can be a debbie downer sometimes, it isn't clear to me that coming in at 48% means Ossoff loses the runoff. It'd be better to win outright tonight, sure, but the turnout is so freaking high tonight that this result may be more indicative of the result on election day than it usually is. They may surpass midterm turnout for the first round of a special election!
posted by Justinian at 7:53 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

"Get me the Cardigan guy on the phone...and something presidential to say."
posted by uosuaq at 7:57 PM on April 18, 2017

Trump was congratulating Erdogan as his own State Department was putting out a statement about the referendum that was not exactly celebratory.

Gee, I wonder why? From 2012:

@IvankaTrump
Thank you Prime Minister Erdogan for joining us yesterday to celebrate the launch of #TrumpTowers Istanbul!
posted by chris24 at 7:58 PM on April 18, 2017 [26 favorites]

Fun fact: Fulton County apparently is using dial-up modems to send in their vote tallies.

This is not a joke.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:01 PM on April 18, 2017 [12 favorites]

I cannot watch the Ossoff returns it's too stressful! So here's something local that happened today that's pretty cool:

A bunch of Texas women dressed up as Atwood's Handmaids again (a few weeks back they sat in the Texas Legislature during session) and quietly walked through the lobby of a hotel in downtown Houston today where Governor Abbott was talking. Women dressed in red robes with white caps silently BEING is becoming a common, much needed, and powerful protest in this state! It was on NARAL Pro Choice Texas's Facebook Live today if anyone wants to see it. They don't get very far, but wow is it powerful and unnerving to the Abbott people.

Now I need to refresh those GA 06 results again.
posted by dog food sugar at 8:03 PM on April 18, 2017 [25 favorites]

people basically are being told they can help the poor and the underclass without having to sacrifice anything, that the rich, or the business community or the affluent will pay for it

the problem is, the math won't add up that way

Maybe back in 1970. The top 20% own half the wealth. They can sure as fuck afford it.
posted by Talez at 8:05 PM on April 18, 2017 [17 favorites]

Federal utility CEO: Coal plants not reopening under Trump

The CEO of the nation's biggest public utility [Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Bill Johnson] said Tuesday that the agency isn't going to reopen coal-fired power plants under President Donald Trump, who has promised a comeback for the downtrodden coal industry.

-- TVA has said it's on track to cut its carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. By the end of 2018, the utility will have retired five of its original 11 coal-fired power plants.

-- As a federal employee, Johnson said that he cannot comment on Trump's efforts to peel back U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other coal-related regulations.

BUT

Johnson said he recalls "cinders falling from the sky" and not being able to see across the street when he lived in Pittsburgh in his younger years.

"If we look at the history of the environment in this country, and whether it's improved or not since the creation of the EPA, I believe that we can say that it has improved dramatically," Johnson said.
posted by futz at 8:07 PM on April 18, 2017 [43 favorites]

I swear to god they could have used a telegraph to get the results faster than this.
posted by corb at 8:09 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Apparently, there's some kind of referendum in Roswell that's slowing things down.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:10 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Probably a good time to mention that the "American-Turkish Annual Business Meeting will be held at Trump Hotel first time. It has been at Ritz for years"

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
posted by zachlipton at 8:13 PM on April 18, 2017 [31 favorites]

fulton county has to confer with moscow before sending the results in.
posted by localhuman at 8:13 PM on April 18, 2017 [8 favorites]

Apparently, there's some kind of referendum in Roswell that's slowing things down.

Jesus, it's always aliens.
posted by Etrigan at 8:14 PM on April 18, 2017 [15 favorites]

Fun fact: Fulton County apparently is using dial-up modems to send in their vote tallies.

Elsewhere in the district they're physically driving unencrypted memory cards with no paper trail.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:15 PM on April 18, 2017 [17 favorites]

T.D. Strange: Orielly out and Ossoff within striking of 50%? Who's birthday is it, you glorious bastard?

mine!

For another 42 minutes, anyway. We may need an April 19 bithday to bring this thing home.
posted by martin q blank at 8:18 PM on April 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

Update:

From our onsite reporter: Fulton County is having technical difficulties. They are on the phone with tech support.

I'm not joking.

--@_Drew_McCoy_

(Yes, someone on Twitter already asked if the tech support is in Moscow, that job is done, thanks for your interest in the position.)
posted by zachlipton at 8:19 PM on April 18, 2017 [21 favorites]

This country has SO many elections. Dems just won the Clerk of Court in Prince William County, Virginia!

I grew up in Prince William County! My friends from other Northern VA counties used to laugh when I told them how backwoods conservative PWC could be - they assumed it was as liberal as every other Northern Virginia county. Granted, the demographics are much different now than they were 10-15 years ago. But what great news!
posted by nightrecordings at 8:22 PM on April 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I really need to go to bed, but keep refreshing the GA 6th poll results. I need this to be like grade school prayers for snow. If I wear my pajamas inside out and sleep at the foot of my bed, will it snow Jon Ossoff? Just another 1%?
posted by nightrecordings at 8:28 PM on April 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

Local news here in Atlanta just said they've stopped counting for now in Fulton, and that they're still working to find out exactly what's wrong.
posted by reductiondesign at 8:34 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

I want y'all to know that my GA-06 dwelling friend who said they weren't ever going to vote again after feeling spammed by pro-Ossoff phone calls and fliers posted a photo of themselves wearing an "I voted" sticker with the caption, "MFer better win so I never have to hear about this again."
posted by ob1quixote at 8:36 PM on April 18, 2017 [51 favorites]

they've stopped counting for now in Fulton, and that they're still working to find out exactly what's wrong.

The D-triple-C and the DNC and the Ga. Democratic Party and everyone else had better be scrambling lawyers to every precinct and the county HQ. A mass turnout like the impromptu travel ban airport rallies wouldn't hurt, either.
posted by martin q blank at 8:37 PM on April 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

I'm sitting here and thinking WHOA HOT FRESH ELECTION RETURNS YEAAAHH and then having flashbacks to the primaries and the general and I'm conflicted. Maybe I'll stay up and see if they call it. Maybe not.
posted by vrakatar at 8:39 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Ha ha ha haaaaaaaa. I love the uneducated and the incompetent!

A month after dismissing federal prosecutors, Justice Department does not have any U.S. attorneys in place

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is making aggressive law enforcement a top priority, directing his federal prosecutors across the country to crack down on illegal immigrants and “use every tool” they have to go after violent criminals and drug traffickers.

But the attorney general does not have a single U.S. attorney in place to lead his tough-on-crime efforts across the country. Last month, Sessions abruptly told the dozens of remaining Obama administration U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations immediately — and none of them, or the 47 who had already left, have been replaced.
posted by futz at 8:41 PM on April 18, 2017 [52 favorites]

JUST IN: Rare data error from one of the cards means Fulton Co. will have to manually go through hundreds of cards to find the culprit.

Fulton is experiencing a "rare data error" and has to go through 100's of cards to find it. They have no timeline to finish the count.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:48 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

@wsbtv: JUST IN: Rare data error from one of the cards means Fulton Co. will have to manually go through hundreds of cards to find the culprit.

Good thing the Republicans want to get rid of the Election Assistance Commission. We wouldn't want some sort of group that advises states and local governments on voting technology or anything.
posted by zachlipton at 8:49 PM on April 18, 2017 [19 favorites]

Canadians be like wtf are voting machines.
posted by Yowser at 8:52 PM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

I got called for a political opinion poll yesterday--which seemed an awful lot like a push poll sponsored by the oil and gas industry--and I'm pretty sure the lady asking the questions was a secret Democrat just trying to stay employed. I'd point it out whenever a question was biased or misleading, and the lady would giggle a tiny bit and then thank me sincerely for giving my opinion. I imagine she had to grit her teeth to get through some of the questions. But by the time we were done we were both chortling with glee anytime I said how awful this or that really was. Best of luck in your crappy day job, secret Democrat lady!
posted by Soliloquy at 8:57 PM on April 18, 2017 [25 favorites]

Fulton is experiencing a "rare data error" and has to go through 100's of cards to find it. They have no timeline to finish the count.
posted by Chrysostom

yougottabefuckingkiddingmedotcom#hashtagsameasiteverwas.
posted by futz at 8:57 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Canadians be like wtf are voting machines.

A means to steal elections without a paper trail.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:58 PM on April 18, 2017 [22 favorites]

I am having flashbacks to 2000 right now.
posted by corb at 9:00 PM on April 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Irritating as the situation is, it looks like the final number will be about 47.7% based on what's left. That's still a huge Democratic swing from what the district normally does, but it's going to be an incredibly ugly (and expensive) race now.
posted by zachlipton at 9:04 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's looking like almost exactly 48%. My patented and foolproof method has been proven sound. How long until the NYT offers me an editorial spot?
posted by Justinian at 9:04 PM on April 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

aaaaand suddenly a big bloc of votes roll in and Ossoff drops from 55% to 49% in Fulton and below 50% overall.
Nothing fishy going on here, no siree.

Also - my birthday ended 4 minutes ago. Coincidence?
posted by martin q blank at 9:04 PM on April 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

Elections in the usa are so fucked. GOP can only win by cheating at this point, and so expect rampant cheating until the end of time.
posted by supercrayon at 9:04 PM on April 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

Consumerist: As Congress Preps To Scrap Prepaid Card Protections, Lawsuit Seeks Release Of Emails Between Lawmakers & Lobbyists

At some point in the coming weeks, Congress is set to consider a fast-tracked proposal that would nullify a slew of new protections for the millions of Americans who use prepaid debit cards. With the clock ticking down to that vote, a lawsuit is trying to compel the release of any communications about these rules between industry lobbyists, lawmakers, and federal regulators.
[…]
The new prepaid guidelines have received support from some big names in the prepaid industry, including GreenDot and the Center for Financial Services Innovation, which noted earlier this month that the positives of the rules “outweigh the negatives.”

But not all prepaid companies have backed the rule. For instance TSYS’s NetSpend has been vocal in its displeasure over the rules, admitting that it stands to lose $80 [million] in overdraft fees if they are implemented.

It should also be noted that NetSpend recently agreed to pay $53 million to resolve Federal Trade Commission allegations that it misled prepaid card customers.

If your business model depends on collecting predatory late fees from the most vulnerable in society, you should rethink your life. Fucking scum.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:06 PM on April 18, 2017 [35 favorites]

Yeah, there are some uncounted mail in ballots, which will narrow it a bit, but looks like we're at 47/48 in the end. On to round 2.

Before that, we've got lots of statehouse stuff, and the MT-AL on May 25th.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:09 PM on April 18, 2017

The results from Fulton are exactly what we'd expect based on the results from Cobb and Dekalb. If there was cheating it was district-wide and not isolated to Fulton, and it also involved rigging the pre-election polling.
posted by Justinian at 9:09 PM on April 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

Can I revise my guess? I suppose that would be cheating.
posted by Justinian

Sure you can. Almost everyone else does. No shame!
posted by futz at 9:11 PM on April 18, 2017

Yeah, right now his margin over Clinton is like 2.3% in Fulton, 1.4% in Cobb, and 1.6% in DeKalb. So he's actually doing well in Fulton, just not quite good enough.
posted by thefoxgod at 9:13 PM on April 18, 2017

If you throw in the other Dems the D vote is at like 49.5%. So runoff should still be competitive.
posted by thefoxgod at 9:14 PM on April 18, 2017

From NYT at the moment:

Live Analysis by Nate Cohn
Adding all the candidates together: R 50.49, D 49.4

!!!! I hope that energizes some people to get off their butts come the second round.
posted by dhens at 9:15 PM on April 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Fun fact: Fulton County apparently is using dial-up modems to send in their vote tallies.

MOOOOOOOM don't pick up the phone!! I'm trying to count votes!
posted by azpenguin at 9:17 PM on April 18, 2017 [34 favorites]

Fun fact: Fulton County apparently is using dial-up modems to send in their vote tallies.

A station to station switched protocol where incoming callers can be identified by Caller ID, passwords, and encryption certificates? You could even drop a cellphone card into the thing.

There's a lot of benefits, actually.
posted by mikelieman at 9:33 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, right now his margin over Clinton is like 2.3% in Fulton, 1.4% in Cobb, and 1.6% in DeKalb. So he's actually doing well in Fulton, just not quite good enough.

The results from Fulton are exactly what we'd expect based on the results from Cobb and Dekalb. If there was cheating it was district-wide and not isolated to Fulton, and it also involved rigging the pre-election polling.

Yea, not winning 50% is a bit of a letdown, but it was always the most likely outcome in a PVI R+8 district. This is still not remotely friendly territory. We're actually not going to see a 20pt swing, KS-4 also had all of the local anti-Brownback factor, which I think was really underplayed. Still, this is another good indicator, and that's all we're looking for in special elections that really have nothing tangible at stake. An 8 point swing to EVEN, or even a 4.5 point swing off Trump's margin is moving in the right direction, and have we seen any signs yet that Trump's approval is going to get better? Or that the Republicans are going to accomplish anything? We're probably not close to the approval floor yet.

There are 55 districts R+5 or better. Republicans control 44 of those. Dems need 26 to take the House. Even judging by the most pessimistic outlook, Ossoff's performance here is encouraging, and there's a lot of time between tonight and a June runoff for Republicans to keep being horrible.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:44 PM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

Looking at the results it's possible Ossoff finishes closer to 49% than 48%. This was damn close to avoiding the runoff!
posted by Justinian at 9:46 PM on April 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

A thread from L. Joy Williams, President of the Brooklyn NAACP. It starts:

I don't understand what the F**K is going on. Bernie Sanders was just directly asked if he's a democrat and he said NO.
We already knew this, but why the HELL is he on freaking tour to reform a party he doesn't even claim in public??????
Lmhzmsmxmz@alcjshzrbdnsdnxbapfifoueyifz
So we supposed to just let anybody remodel or "reform" our house and they ain't even part of the damn family? Ain't even got $5 on it
Black women bustin' our individual and collective asses for the party and I ain't seen no grand gestures for that loyalty, yet...
the party built a whole damn tour around someone that don't even claim us in public.
[...]
They got money for this tour but are they putting money in recruiting candidates of color?
Are they putting up money to expand "base operations" in communities of color earlier than 2 months before an Election Day?
The message the DNC is sending is that they are chasing and begging a certain type of voter to take them back at the expense of our loyalty

This has been my pet peeve too. I like many of Sanders' policies. I want the party to be moving in that direction. Which is why it's enormously frustrating that he's not a member of the damn party. We were discussing upthread how so many of those active in the party in red, rural areas are people of color. This thread is a pretty clear sign of how all that work can be taken for granted.
posted by zachlipton at 10:00 PM on April 18, 2017 [100 favorites]

your business model depends on collecting predatory late fees from the most vulnerable in society

To be fair that describes much of government in the US as well.
posted by spitbull at 10:24 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

The results from Fulton are exactly what we'd expect based on the results from Cobb and Dekalb. If there was cheating it was district-wide and not isolated to Fulton, and it also involved rigging the pre-election polling.

Which is a perfectly reasonable position to hold because pre-election polling has never been wrong by a couple of points? Is an Ossoff victory even outside the margin of error on those polls?

Sure, maybe the fact that the votes were counted by an easily falsifiable method and then the count was moved via an easily falsifiable method and then there was a "rare data error" and then the people onsite running the count had to get on the phone with some people offsite to find out what to do (and maybe those people were tech support, could be, would be tough to prove they weren't!) is just a big string of coincidences leading to the outcome that the Republicans were looking for. It's certainly possible. But surely I'm not the only one who's tired of going on two decades of "and then a bunch of weird shit happened, I dunno it was really strange, and then if you squint technically the result went Republican, wow isn't that crazy! And no, you definitely can't verify the results. Just trust us." This isn't how elections look when Democrats win them.
posted by IAmUnaware at 11:02 PM on April 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

This has been my pet peeve too. I like many of Sanders' policies. I want the party to be moving in that direction. Which is why it's enormously frustrating that he's not a member of the damn party.

Now that we're not arguing over electing him president, it seems reasonable to say that Sanders is a good advocate for left-wing economic policies and may be useful for gaining ground among working-class white voters in particular, but he's not a party loyalist, is unlikely to speak as passionately to matters of race and gender (e.g.) as many other Democrats, and has numerous other drawbacks discussed here ad nauseam. But we're not trying to pick him as the single embodiment of the left anymore. Every politician has their strengths and weaknesses, including Clinton, Obama, Warren, or anyone else. One of the damaging aspects of a presidential system is that it encourages us to evaluate candidates as if they were meant to capture the full array of liberal ideals in a single individual. Much better -- particularly in the periods undominated by presidential elections -- is to think of each candidate as a collection of specific strengths, and focus our energies on how best to combine the array of folks we have to create the strongest, most effective social and electoral movement we can, considered at the collective level. Sanders has his strengths and weakness, but it seems most useful to treat him as a specialist in specifically economic populism (even, if you like, specifically white male economic populism), and do the best we can to combine those strengths with the myriad strengths of others throughout the left in order to make the best collective progress we can.
posted by chortly at 11:23 PM on April 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

False Narrative on U.S. Aircraft Carrier Elicits Jeers in Asia

In South Korea, Hong Joon-pyo, the presidential candidate from former​ leader Park Geun-hye’s ruling party, said in an interview that it was inappropriate to comment before receiving final confirmation of the Vinson’s whereabouts. But, he added: “What Mr. Trump said was very important for the national security of ​South Korea. If that was a lie, then during Trump’s term, South Korea will not trust whatever Trump says.”​

It's hard to overstate how monumentally stupid this situation is.
posted by zachlipton at 11:36 PM on April 18, 2017 [64 favorites]

Trump aides abruptly postpone meeting on whether to stay in Paris climate deal
It seems they are getting wobbly on the Paris Agreement, which is good for the planet. (Well better than terrible).

The wide industry support for Paris is a reminder that a lot of these international agreements are meant to make life easier for industry, to help them to be competitive while adapting to change. One of the things Trump has in common with his voters is that they don't get this, not least because all the media (not only right-wing pundits) fail to inform them. But in Trump's case, it is one more indication that he is a failed businessman, with no real understanding of how the economy works.
posted by mumimor at 12:12 AM on April 19, 2017 [18 favorites]

fully automated luxury communism future

Important: it's fully automated luxury GAY SPACE communism. I'd ask Contact to send another GCU to explain it but they're all OH NO THAT'S THE CONTROL PLANET and MAYBE IN A HUNDRED YEARS and HEY LOOK I MADE MY GENITALS INTO A BONG WOOOOOO.

Yeah, remind me not to toke next time we hang together.
posted by Samizdata at 12:37 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

With 100% of the vote counted Ossof is at 48.1%.

Call me, NYT!
posted by Justinian at 1:28 AM on April 19, 2017 [16 favorites]

Maybe back in 1970. The top 20% own half the wealth. They can sure as fuck afford it.

they still have to convert the wealth to money - (i'm assuming you're not talking about income) - the problem being is that if everyone is trying to convert their real estate, stocks, bonds, etc to money to pay taxes, what does that do to the market? who's going to be buying this stuff?

and if the value of the top 20% wealth falls due to a massive selloff, then the bottom 80%'s half of that wealth is going to fall, too - and so the middle class takes a hit as well as the rich

this is not a problem with an easy solution
posted by pyramid termite at 2:28 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's hard to overstate how monumentally stupid this situation is.

Relax -- the carrier group just got lost! See, that's the fault of some dumb sailors some place, not Donald J. Trump.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:37 AM on April 19, 2017

So yo is there a reason why Trump couldn't have been all *the fleet will be there in a week.* Can this be explained by anything but staggering incompetence?
posted by angrycat at 2:44 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I despise Sanders in many ways-- I think the harm he did in 2016 is perhaps largely irreparable, and that the behavior of his followers underscores both the underlying (probably unconscious on his part) bigotry of the policies he ran on and his failure as a leader.

That said, a lot of people look up to him, and if what he's doing is a tour, I'm fine with it.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 2:49 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

I like many of Sanders' policies. I want the party to be moving in that direction. Which is why it's enormously frustrating that he's not a member of the damn party.


It wouldn't make a difference if he were a member, and that's a problem.

Republican party discipline is infinitely more powerful than the Democratic Party's. Party loyalists haven't just won internal policy battles; they've been massively successful at all levels of US politics, including their successful gaming of the meta-political system through gerrymandering and the like. Republicans sacrifice every principle and every commitment they have for strategic unity on present political needs.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the path to liberal electoral success lies in aping the Tea Party, but right now the Democratic Party is working for people that are free to sacrifice the party's strategic interests in favor of their personal or ideological advantage. The Party needs to elect people it can rely on at every level. To do that it needs to elect loyalists and it needs to make defection costly. It's not as if Democratic Party politicians are are free of obligations to outside interests; they're just free to ignore the one benefactor they really depend on. Where's the quid pro quo?

I understand that there are good reasons for not challenging any particular politicians, but that's the logic that got us here. Unreliable candidates are inherently risky, as we have seen this year. Make examples. Start grooming a reliable-but-electable replacement for Manchin, someone who won't advance the opposition's agenda.

Also, stop giving platforms to Sanders and his supporters. He has literally no commitment to advancing party interests at all, not even a nominal one. I like some things Sander says, I don't like other ones, but that's not the point: the Party needs to win elections. It can't do that if it's constantly spinning in circles in an attempt to accommodate finger-wagging busybodies. It would be one thing if this accommodationism broadened the Big Tent and brought more voters in from the fold, but Bernie's not even in the tent. As long as he refuses to accept Party discipline he's actually opposed to a Democratic Party victory except on his own terms. That makes him an enemy, just as Jill Stein, and McMullin and all the other mavericks and independents and third-partiers are political enemies: they do not deserve respectful attention and for damn sure they don't get to set the agenda.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:00 AM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

Who currently sets the agenda of the Democratic party?
How successful has that been in the last 10 years?
Is disloyalty why the Democrats lost over a thousand state legislature seats?
posted by Richard Saunders at 3:11 AM on April 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

this is not a problem with an easy solution

And yet somehow a bunch of other economies have managed it without collapsing in a heap. It's not as easy as waving a magic wand, but it's not dangerous or unachievable.
posted by harriet vane at 3:25 AM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

Who currently sets the agenda of the Democratic party?

I understand that the present agenda consists of waiting for the Republicans to fail (as they inevitably will any day now).

If you have a Big tent policy then your agenda is the intersection of all the agendas of the people in the tent. But the present policy allows people outside the tent to set the agenda. That's crazy. It doesn't matter how special a snowflake Bernie Sanders is, he doesn't want to be in the tent.

How successful has that been in the last 10 years?

Very little! It's time to change!

Is disloyalty why the Democrats lost over a thousand state legislature seats?

Yes, to a large extent.

Party loyalty isn't just about mouthing some official platform. It's about striving to ensure that your Party succeeds. Look at the extent to which Republican politicians have gone - they have redrawn boundaries, restricted voting hours, re-formed committee structures - done everything, in short, that will advantage their party and disadvantage their opponents. I don't suggest that the Democratic Party go so far, but there a middle ground between naked opportunism and dignified surrender. In fact, Republicans have so tilted the ground away from fairness that practically anything the Democratic Party could do would actually be a blow in favor of civil rights and Constitutionalism: get Republicans off electoral committees and you have a chance to extend voting hours, restrict voter ID laws, and generally make it easier for people to extend the franchise. That's a good thing; ipso facto, allowing Republicans to set the agenda is a bad thing. So all the little bits of courtesy that Democratic politicians seem to extend to their opponents (and which is clearly not reciprocated) that ultimately allows their politicians a presence on and experience in these committees has been a betrayal of both Party and Country.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:39 AM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

Black women bustin' our individual and collective asses for the party and I ain't seen no grand gestures for that loyalty, yet...
the party built a whole damn tour around someone that don't even claim us in public.

Huh. I took the point of the Williams thread as a criticism of the DNC's decision to support Sanders, not really of Sanders himself*.

*Which is not to say it implicitly supports Sanders.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:44 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

With 100% of the vote counted Ossof is at 48.1%.

Wouldn't want to be in charge of laundering Republican underpants this morning.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:14 AM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

You don't really want that job any morning, to be honest. At least I don't.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 4:57 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Luckily even the grownup republicans like wearing diapers.
posted by spitbull at 4:58 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Running for office disrupts people's lives. Would you want to go through that for a race you had almost no chance of winning? And suffer smear campaigns and end uo hated by strangers by, the majority of your neighbors?

It's amazing to me that the Democrats find decent people willing to run in as many deep red districts as they do... Would you do it? (Why not do it, then?) I don't think I would.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:07 AM on April 19, 2017 [22 favorites]

Relax -- the carrier group just got lost! See, that's the fault of some dumb sailors some place, not Donald J. Trump.

You laugh now but when the carrier group finds that missing plane with everyone still alive Trump is going to become the emperor of the world.
posted by srboisvert at 5:18 AM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

It's amazing to me that the Democrats find decent people willing to run in as many deep red districts as they do... Would you do it?

The way it works here in Australia is that running in an unwinnable seat is considered good experience for running in a winnable one. People that do a good job have an advantage when seeking their party's endorsement ("preselection").
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:29 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Not just Democrats, there are a lot of uncontested races in Massachusetts.
posted by sammyo at 5:33 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's amazing to me that the Democrats find decent people willing to run in as many deep red districts as they do

Point taken, emphasis mine: It is not as though the Republicans are actually running "decent people" in those districts overall. In many places no D anticipates any support (based on precedent), and the party could actually make a difference there even if the support were something intangible like national endorsement.

I understand why people don't want to stick their necks out, but I don't see things changing unless they do.

The Dems I know in WY are getting increasingly galvanized and organized. At least one plans to run for local office. I hope that's going on in more rural red districts; we'll see.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:34 AM on April 19, 2017 [12 favorites]

The way it works here in Australia is that running in an unwinnable seat is considered good experience for running in a winnable one.

Most places in the U.S., you have to (or essentially have to) live within the jurisdiction of the office you're running for, so running in an unwinnable seat is generally just experience for running in a higher unwinnable seat.
posted by Etrigan at 6:07 AM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

Also, stop giving platforms to Sanders and his supporters.

He's doing irreparable harm to the Democratic Party
posted by indubitable at 6:11 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Maybe back in 1970. The top 20% own half the wealth. They can sure as fuck afford it.

they still have to convert the wealth to money - (i'm assuming you're not talking about income) ...

Why not talk about income? If we do, we don't even have to go as far down as the top 20 percent! The top ten percent earned about half of the income in 2012. I haven't dug into the IRS data yet to see whether and how things have changed since then. But I doubt that things have changed all that much.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 6:15 AM on April 19, 2017 [16 favorites]

Most places in the U.S., you have to (or essentially have to) live within the jurisdiction of the office you're running for, so running in an unwinnable seat is generally just experience for running in a higher unwinnable seat.

That's not generally the case in Australia, but I think most serious candidates do move to the electorate they're running in (if they weren't there before). A serious campaign takes time, so it's a good idea to live nearby, and being a resident makes the candidate look better.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:18 AM on April 19, 2017

Also, stop giving platforms to Sanders and his supporters.

He's doing irreparable harm to the Democratic Party

"His" medicare for all bill? John Conyers has been banging that drum since 2003, but let's all gather round Bernie and his radical new ideas no one else has ever had ever.
posted by winna at 6:21 AM on April 19, 2017 [53 favorites]

It's amazing to me that the Democrats find decent people willing to run in as many deep red districts as they do

So there have been some recent (weird) damaging revelations about Steve King's challenger Kim Weaver, whom I think is actually a pretty good and impressive candidate. (The short version is that she appears to have had extensive, fairly recent experience as a fake internet, phone and radio psychic. It couldn't be something normal, like drug use or having an affair. It had to be giving fake psychic readings over the phone for $4 a minute.) I have no idea how damaging it will be: some of the chatter that I'm hearing is that she's a middle-class single mother who was putting three kids through college, and people do random side jobs to make ends meet. But it may not be the kind of thing that she wanted public, and there are no secrets when you're running for office, even as a total long-shot.

So yeah, if there's anything in your past that might be embarrassing, you might think twice about running for office that you can't possibly win. But my sense is that there's a real push to get people to do it, especially for local races where knocking every single door and talking to every single voter might be able to overcome some of voters' antipathy to Democrats.

That's not generally the case in Australia, but I think most serious candidates do move to the electorate they're running in (if they weren't there before).

I think this reflects different ideas about how representation works, to be honest. In the US, you're supposed to have deep connections to the place you represent, and it would be seen as pretty much disqualifying to move to a place just to represent it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:22 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Being perceived as a carpet-bagger who's just moved to a district to run for office is usually a handicap.
posted by octothorpe at 6:24 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that's also what keeps us from having proportional representation? Sometimes I fantasize about turning the House into a parliamentary type body. But I can't imagine that working when we have this tradition of one specific person representing one specific area.

... I have weird fantasies.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 6:28 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've seen my city's mayor criticized because he didn't move to the city until he was an adult and grew up five miles away in a suburb.
posted by octothorpe at 6:29 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Indiana Rep, Tennessee Trey Hollingsworth

Moving to a district, still a viable option.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 6:32 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've seen my city's mayor criticized because he didn't move to the city until he was an adult and grew up five miles away in a suburb.

He was born in Eagleton!! Burn the heretic!

Also while I'm still mad about Bernie claiming medicare for all, the image of an white man taking ownership of an idea that a Black man has been promoting for years prior is EXACTLY what is wrong with the Democratic Party right now.
posted by winna at 6:33 AM on April 19, 2017 [36 favorites]

some of the chatter that I'm hearing is that she's a middle-class single mother who was putting three kids through college, and people do random side jobs to make ends meet. But it may not be the kind of thing that she wanted public, and there are no secrets when you're running for office, even as a total long-shot.


I actually think the mindset we bring to what's acceptable in a candidate's personal life is a huge part of the problem with politics today. Normal people have all done weird shit in the past that they would feel strange and uncomfortable having exposed. Normal people can look at their personal history honestly and say, you know what? I've done some things that, if revealed in the harshest possible light, would probably disqualify me from elected office; I guess I won't run.

You know who doesn't do that? Two kinds of people. People who've wanted to be politicians since the day they were born, and who have crafted their whole lives to making themselves eligible for those positions...and people who look at the shady shit they've done, and think, oh well, it's not a big deal, I can hide it and lie about it! There's probably a lot of overlap between those two kinds of people; both kinds of people are weird.

I think the world would be a much better place if the culturally acceptable amount of inquiry into a candidate's past was approximately the same as what was needed to apply for a job. Have you been arrested? Do you have a reasonable, relevant work history and positive references from the people you've worked with in the past? Great, you're qualified to run. Anything else is none of our business.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 6:36 AM on April 19, 2017 [31 favorites]

Also while I'm still mad about Bernie claiming medicare for all, the image of an white man claiming ownership of an idea that a Black man has been promoting for years prior

You realize that Conyers is in the House and Sanders is in the Senate, right? There would have to be two separate bills. That's how our government works.
posted by indubitable at 6:38 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Apparently, Tom Brady has backed out of the Patriots' trip to the White House today, citing a "family matter."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:41 AM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

Infighting of the Democratic party is going to be our downfall.
posted by INFJ at 6:46 AM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

It doesn't matter how special a snowflake Bernie Sanders is, he doesn't want to be in the tent.

"It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." -- LBJ
posted by kirkaracha at 6:49 AM on April 19, 2017 [14 favorites]

> Apparently, Tom Brady has backed out of the Patriots' trip to the White House today, citing a "family matter."

I wonder if this might have something to do with it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:52 AM on April 19, 2017

Apparently, Tom Brady has backed out of the Patriots' trip to the White House today, citing a "family matter."

Yeah, Gisele would be totally pissed with him if he went. Man's not an idiot.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:55 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

I can't find it now, but two of the players put out a video about why they are not going to the White House. Maybe that had an impact, too. But Brady is a huge loss, she said with delight.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:59 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Politico: Goodbye, Mar-a-Lago. Hello, Bedminster.: Once his exclusive seaside retreat at Mar-a-Lago closes for the season, Trump is expected to shift his weekend plans north, to his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey – and bring with him all the chaos that comes with being a preferred presidential destination.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:02 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Having to suffer through Bernie Sanders is my penance for being a Deaniac as a teenager.
posted by asteria at 7:03 AM on April 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

> "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." -- LBJ

I don't think this analogy really works in the current political climate. I've been very harsh on how Sanders handled his Presidential campaign, but remaining outside the party is a good strategic decision to maximize his power to set the agenda, but also good for Democrats long-term, because it doesn't alienate that segment of his supporters that would flip to Jill Stein or whoever if he was perceived as being corrupted by the establishment. He caucuses with the Democrats, he's part of their leadership team, he's with them on almost every vote, and just like how he stumped for Hillary, I believe he'll be there fighting for progressives when his presence can make a difference. That matters more to me than the letter next to his name.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:16 AM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

zachlipton: If that was a lie, then during Trump’s term, South Korea will not trust whatever Trump says.

Is a liar the worst person in the world? Generally, no. But then you can never trust them to tell the truth again.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:19 AM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

I think, if we on the left are expected to tolerate Manchin and his ilk, it isn't too much to demand that the centrists and rightsts in the Party tolerate Sanders, no? Big tent, yes? Gotta go with the local conditions, yes? Better a vote that's with you most of the time than a vote that's never with you, yes?

Or does that only apply to right wing people, and (as always) we on the left must be perfect Party automatons or we're destroying everything and must be shut out and put in our place?
posted by sotonohito at 7:19 AM on April 19, 2017 [23 favorites]

> I think, if we on the left are expected to tolerate Manchin and his ilk

Who here has said this? Manchin gets tons of criticism in these threads, and I've seen nobody express opposition to primarying him, even if it means potentially losing the WV seat. It's not like he's doing anything useful with it for us right now.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:22 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Is disloyalty why the Democrats lost over a thousand state legislature seats?

Incumbancy is a huge reason. The Congressional losses under Obama were in line with historical precedent for two term presidents.

And the losses in state houses are as well. Ike lost 843 state seats. Nixon/Ford lost 800. Reagan is the only post-WWII president to not lose seats, and even he lost 7 state houses. The average post-WWII loss excluding Reagan is 585 seats (487 with him). Yes, Obama is above average, but we also live in the most partisan era in modern history.

Not to say the party is without fault or hasn't made mistakes, but acting like this trend is all on Obama or the party isn't realistic either. People tend to blame the party in power (and in many people's minds that's the president's party regardless of who controls congress or state legislatures or governor mansions) and react against that.

Why Parties Should Hope They Lose the White House
posted by chris24 at 7:24 AM on April 19, 2017 [18 favorites]

Manchin and his ilk are only "tolerated" because we don't know if we can do better in those states. Feinstein, as discussed earlier, is not tolerated because it's California and we know we can do better.

Sanders will hold his Senate seat until he dies so it's a moot point.
posted by asteria at 7:30 AM on April 19, 2017

I think, if we on the left are expected to tolerate Manchin and his ilk, it isn't too much to demand that the centrists and rightsts in the Party tolerate Sanders, no?

Sanders won 43% of the vote for the party's nominee for President. He's currently on a nationwide tour with the party chairman. I think a little grumbling about his official party affiliation is a long, long way from intolerance.
posted by parallellines at 7:31 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

The Senate Democrats' Outreach Chair enjoys 80% favorability among Democrats. White people like him least, with only 52% favorability. Glad to see so many twenty-percenters in this thread!
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:34 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

I think, if we on the left are expected to tolerate Manchin and his ilk

Who here has said this? Manchin gets tons of criticism in these threads, and I've seen nobody express opposition to primarying him, even if it means potentially losing the WV seat.

[1, 2, 3]

*not an exhaustive list
posted by indubitable at 7:34 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

it isn't too much to demand that the centrists and rightsts in the Party tolerate Sanders, no?

Nope. I'm not personally going to tolerate anyone who thinks and says "identity politics" are a problem or a distraction, because I know very well what that means, at this point. It means women and non-white people get sacrificed once again on the alter of white man's pain. I don't really give a shit if that alter is part of Bernie's cult or some Republican's. I'm still getting fucking sacrificed.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:34 AM on April 19, 2017 [35 favorites]

Mod note: Good morning, let's pretend we've had this same argument about Sanders a thousand times and just drop it at this point. Also, PSA, please don't flag a ton of comments; if you're flagging more than about three in a bunch, just hit the contact form instead.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:39 AM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

In recent good news, Black Lives Matter organizer and Democratic Socialists of America member Khalid Kamau has won a race for city councilor in South Fulton, Georgia. Sarah Jaffe interviewed him for Truthout last month.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:43 AM on April 19, 2017 [39 favorites]

> [1, 2, 3]

*not an exhaustive list

Fair enough, thank you. It's narrowly true that Manchin in WV is better than any Republican, and control of the Senate is important. That doesn't mean there isn't a limit to how much shit voters should be expected to eat before considering whether a primary, however a long-shot it is to elect a Democrat in the general, isn't the right move. The primary doesn't have to necessarily be a Berniecrat challenger, it could just be a less shitty conservadem who could still win state-wide.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:50 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

The thing that bugs me about the current tour is why isn't Ellison there? Wasn't the whole point of making him co-chair so we get a younger progressive with some investment and knowledge about "identity politics" on the team?

I think Perez and Ellison also make a better duo for interviews and Ellison is more charismatic than Sanders and Perez combined so yeah, I don't get it.
posted by asteria at 7:53 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Get ready for Eggmentum!
posted by asteria at 7:58 AM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

Wasn't Egg considering running against Chaffetz in the primary?
posted by cmfletcher at 7:58 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Is a liar the worst person in the world? Generally, no. But then you can never trust them to tell the truth again.

This is interesting because everybody lies. Big lies, little lies, self-serving lies, self-decieving lies. We all do it. The thing is the lies are generally understandable and predictable. People lie to save face. People lie to avoid pain. People lie for gain.

The same is true of international relations.

Until now. Now it is not even random. It's an senile man with a supporting legion of idiot's idea of randomness.

It's going to get very interesting, in a bad way, once the sheer uncertainty gets factored into international relations and the markets.

We'll go from 'special relationships' to 'crossing the street to avoid the crazy'.
posted by srboisvert at 7:59 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Huh: Buzzfeed - Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz Will Not Seek Re-Election, Per Sources

Viral fundraising catapults Dem over Chaffetz

Democrat and first-time candidate Kathryn Allen has leapfrogged Rep. Jason Chaffetz in nearly every metric of campaign fundraising: She raised more money, received contributions from more people and, after expenses, has more cash available to spend.

So far this year, she raised nearly $400,000 more than the five-term Republican congressman, according to first quarter filings due Saturday, leaving her with $534,300 in her account. For the quarter, Chaffetz collected about $176,500. He has $402,700 in cash on hand.

posted by melissasaurus at 8:06 AM on April 19, 2017 [24 favorites]

Federalist 58 said that the number of representatives would grow with the population "under the sole limitation that the whole number shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants." The first proposed amendment to the Constitution would have required no "more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons" after the House reached 200 representatives.
The amendment is still technically pending and would become law if it's ratified by 27 more states.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:17 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

I think we're in a record breaking lull for Trump/Russia news. It's been several days since anything interesting happened.

(There's usually big news shortly after I complain about this. C'mon universe!)
posted by diogenes at 8:21 AM on April 19, 2017 [13 favorites]

It's amazing to me that the Democrats find decent people willing to run in as many deep red districts as they do... Would you do it? (Why not do it, then?) I don't think I would.

I don't think I'd make a good candidate. But, it sure would be nice to help out with one. Or even donate to one.

Which brings to mind... if you're a political consultant for the Dems and you fail, what happens ? You still land a cushy gig until the next election, and then you get a gig working the next election. Maybe do a book tour with the guys from the other side. It's the political circle of life. But if you do this grassroots thing, maybe somebody competent will come along, gaining experience winning elections, and then where will you be ? You lose your cushy gig to someone who is actually good at the one thing you're hired to do.

So, why would a 50 state strategy make sense to people who are established in their roles? It doesn't. It makes no sense. They make enough money that they are insulated from the bad effects of electoral losses, so they don't have to care, personally. And professionally, losing elections does not matter.

This is why there will be no 50 state strategy. Dem leadership doesn't care, because they don't have to.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:27 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

I think we're in a record breaking lull for Trump/Russia news. It's been several days since anything interesting happened.


Trump was a good boy and bombed Syria, so the Anonymous US Officials ease up on this xenophobic narrative for a bit...
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:34 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

First, the fact that merely running for office can literally destroy the life of a completely normal, uncontroversial person, is indicative of a diseased system. Second, since the party *knows* this to be the case, that should be even *more* reason to provide assistance to new candidates:

When I think about this, I actually have something to draw on: how protesters and activists dealt with war resisters.

We told them, in our naïveté, that it was okay to go AWOL from an unjust war, that we would support them and help them and lift them up. And for the most part, for the first year or so of everyone's sentence or new residence in Canada, everyone actually did. But life stretches longer than the first year, or even the second. Some of the war resisters I know have been in Canada now for eight years. They still can't meaningfully settle, or return to the US. The support has entirely dried up.

Similarly, the party is not equipped to provide the kind of assistance to candidates that would meaningfully encourage candidacy. They're not saying, "If you win the primary, no matter what comes out about you, you'll always have a job in the Democratic Party, somewhere." They're saying, at best, "we'll throw you some staff and money for your campaign. If oppo research discovers that at one time in high school you wrote a satirical essay about squirrel-fucking, and now you're known as a squirrel-fucker and nobody wants to hire you and your marriage is over, that's too fucking bad."
posted by corb at 8:38 AM on April 19, 2017 [15 favorites]

The primary doesn't have to necessarily be a Berniecrat challenger, it could just be a less shitty conservadem who could still win state-wide.

It doesn't have to be, but it would seem unwise given the empirical evidence that Sanders won the WV primary in a landslide last year. If someone were to run on a similarly progressive platform, that's a pretty strong signal that they could advance to the general election for the Senate seat.
posted by indubitable at 8:38 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I actually think the mindset we bring to what's acceptable in a candidate's personal life is a huge part of the problem with politics today. Normal people have all done weird shit in the past that they would feel strange and uncomfortable having exposed. Normal people can look at their personal history honestly and say, you know what? I've done some things that, if revealed in the harshest possible light, would probably disqualify me from elected office; I guess I won't run.

...

I think the world would be a much better place if the culturally acceptable amount of inquiry into a candidate's past was approximately the same as what was needed to apply for a job. Have you been arrested? Do you have a reasonable, relevant work history and positive references from the people you've worked with in the past? Great, you're qualified to run. Anything else is none of our business.

I think this is a really, really, terrific point. We can't expect candidates' backgrounds to be pristine, but, especially in the cases of women and POC, pristine is what they have to be, at least for Democrats. Unless the candidate announces something like "When I am elected, I am going to replace all government scientists with astrologers" it shouldn't matter whether a candidate worked on a phone psychic line or not.

Dennis Hastert was a freakin' CHILD MOLESTER, ffs! And he got elected! He was speaker of the House! We've got a rapist for President! Meanwhile Democrats had better be squeaky clean or else? I don't think so. Honestly, I draw the line at child molestation, rape, and other violent crimes.

But otherwise, yes, I think political office should be treated like any other job - and I think it would help get competent candidates into office if work history and references were consulted rather than "is this person divorced? Did she work at a psychic hotline? Etc." Of course, if we're talking "work history" and "references" then Someone Orange would never have had a chance at the Presidency, so that makes me doubly for it.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 8:40 AM on April 19, 2017 [33 favorites]

The shocking thing should really be that he's been kept on this long, given that Fox News (but not the public) knew about his history of alleged sexual harassment

I think it signals that the Murdochs Younger are in charge now and there might be be a new way of doing things. Of course this should have been dealt with years ago but it's a good sign that it happened fairly swiftly once Dad handed over the reins and Ailes was gone.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:40 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

> If someone were to run on a similarly progressive platform, that's a pretty strong signal that they could advance to the general election for the Senate seat.

Sure, if their goal is to advance to the general and not to win it. Do I want someone with more or less Sanders' views to represent West Virginia? Yes. Is there evidence that such a candidate would get enough support to win there? That's a much harder case to make.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:42 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

so the Anonymous US Officials ease up on this xenophobic narrative for a bit...

You heard it here first, folks. Concerns about Russian involvement in US elections is "xenophobia." Why you make Vlad sad?
posted by octobersurprise at 8:44 AM on April 19, 2017 [16 favorites]

The shocking thing should really be that he's been kept on this long, given that Fox News (but not the public) knew about his history of alleged sexual harassment

I'm whatever the opposite of shocked is, but, like, a Kessel Run farther beyond that.

Falafel O'Reilly has had a reputation as sexual predator since the 90s. Despite what they said about Bill Clinton's peccadilloes, Conservatives love that shit.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:48 AM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

Speaking of peccadilloes, Charlie Warzel of BuzzFeed and Jonathan Tilove of The Austin American-Statesman are live-tweeting Alex Jones' custody trial this morning.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:54 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Lotta white dudes excited about the Sanders event in town today, me less so. I hope he makes a positive difference, and I am glad to have white dudes on board because we need all the votes, but there's that feeling I always get, when white guys get REALLY EXCITED about another white guy and I have to smile and say "yeah, he's great."
posted by emjaybee at 8:57 AM on April 19, 2017 [30 favorites]

Regarding the conflicting reports about the "armada," I'm surprised no one has yet reached the most obvious conclusion: We solved the problems that plagued the experiments with the USS Eldridge back in 1943, and the US Navy now has teleportation capabilities.

Wake up, sheeple!
posted by lord_wolf at 8:58 AM on April 19, 2017 [21 favorites]

This guy (James Mackler) isn't my particular cup of tea, but I think he could do well in Tennessee challenging Sen. Corker:

Iraq War Vet Is First Democrat To Jump Into Tennessee Senate Race
posted by melissasaurus at 9:00 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

Emirates reduces service to the US due to decreased demand caused by Trump attempts to ban Muslims, laptops.
posted by adamg at 9:05 AM on April 19, 2017

The number of Those Tricky Evil Russians jokes I've heard since like beginning-of-summer 2017 has gone up by something like a hundredfold.

I think you mean '16. How many of those involve Stupid Moose and Squirrel?
posted by octobersurprise at 9:08 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Spicey Time starts early today y'all
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:12 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Lotta white dudes excited about the Sanders event in town today, me less so.

Sanders approval rating across demographics

African-Americans - 73%
Hispanics - 68%
Asian-Americans - 62%
Whites - 52%
posted by beerperson at 9:20 AM on April 19, 2017 [23 favorites]

beerperson: "Sanders approval rating across demographics

African-Americans - 73%
Hispanics - 68%
Asian-Americans - 62%
Whites - 52%"

Just to be clear, those figures appear to be across the whole population, i.e.: the "Whites" figure includes white republicans. No crosstabs are available, but I can't help but wonder how much those figures are simply driven by the D vs. R splits among the racial categories rather than anything intrinsic to Sanders. Also, towards the bottom of that article, they state that "Harvard-Harris Poll uses a methodology that doesn’t produce a traditional margin of error." Not exactly sure what that implies.
posted by mhum at 9:29 AM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

I think the world would be a much better place if the culturally acceptable amount of inquiry into a candidate's past was approximately the same as what was needed to apply for a job. Have you been arrested? Do you have a reasonable, relevant work history and positive references from the people you've worked with in the past? Great, you're qualified to run. Anything else is none of our business.

Having been through the grind of training, prepping and planning a campaign, I don't begrudge any candidate their past peccadilloes UNLESS it showcases significantly illegal or highly unethical behavior, an extreme lack of good judgment with little evidence of learning from it, or a personal life that is in hypocritical opposition to the political platform they embrace. Those things might be personal, but they are relevant, I think.

This last area of hypocrisy is where we run into some key issues for political candidates:

If you're in a gay relationship? Irrelevant and personal. If you also want to make gay relationships illegal? Your gay relationship now becomes relevant.

If you had an abortion? Irrelevant and personal. If you also want to make abortions illegal? Your having had one becomes relevant.

If you smoke weed in your off time? Irrelevant and personal. If you are also fighting to keep weed illegal? Your weed habit is now relevant.

If you were a conscientious objector? Irrelevant and personal. If you are also trying to send other people off to war, then your avoidance of combat on moral terms is now relevant.

If you like to wear a diaper when you visit prostitutes? Irrelevant and personal. If you are also trying to polish an image of a straight-laced "family values" evangelical Christian with heteronormative monogamy as the prescriptive model for the rest of society? Then your kinky prostitute sessions are now relevant to the public discussion.

So it's all a matter of what platform you espouse as to what becomes relevant for political discussion. And that probably can be boiled down to: if you are proposing to curtail others' rights or opportunities, it's important to ask if you acting in good faith on that issue or are you a hypocrite?

And if you're NOT trying to curtail others' rights or opportunities on a particular issue, well, then, your personal, private behavior should remain that way. Basically, you are afforded the same courtesy as you afford others in letting personal, private issues remain that way.

...

Personally, I will never run for public office.

I guess that's a rather bland statement. But at one time, I actually wanted to, hoped to, trained to and, with the support of some key constituencies here in Arizona, had a reasonable expectation of doing so. I just finally came to the conclusion that the process of getting elected and holding office is just so ridiculously intrusive and stressful on a personal level, would make enemies of close to half of the people in my community, and would result in minimal ability to actually achieve positive results in the foreseeable future (again, here in Arizona), that I decided not to go that route.

I ended up as a science professor, instead...and just earned tenure - yay! Now I make my small contribution to the commonweal by occasionally reminding students that though science is not a perfect method of knowing the truth, it has proven remarkably effective in a LOT of practical ways that they benefit from on a daily basis, that the vast majority of the world's scientists agree with anthropogenic climate change, that the theory of evolution has been tested again and again and shown repeated predictability, that astrology is not based on falsifiable evidence, that homeopathy is not based on falsifiable evidence, etc., etc., etc.

Thirty-five students at a time, y'all.
posted by darkstar at 9:36 AM on April 19, 2017 [76 favorites]

Go ahead, Cheeto, now say that Trump Tower's cafeteria has the best bulgogi. Go all in.
posted by delfin at 9:38 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

*my feelings about Sanders are merely mine, I make no claims to having the pulse of the electorate. Anyhoo.

Last night was my first precinct meeting. It was good, though attendance was less than I wanted. But again, lots of the people invited ("hard Dems" who voted in 2 or more of last 3 primaries) are in their 80s and don't get out much.

We did get one person to commit to phonebanking, another to block walking. We handed out sample ballots for our upcoming locals in May and discussed the merits of candidates.

Next round, we are going after the "soft Dems" which is anyone in my precinct who voted in the last primary. We're hoping to capture some of the younger active voters. We've got our Facebook page set up and setting our sights on 2018.
posted by emjaybee at 9:39 AM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

Hm. According to the attorneys in the Alex Jones case, Jones has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder diagnosis. I mean, it's not like you couldn't have guessed that by watching him, but I wasn't aware that he had an actual diagnosis.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:41 AM on April 19, 2017 [27 favorites]

Next thing you know Jones will apply for disability due to NPD, go on daytime TV and talk about his road to recovery and turning to Jesus, and appear on Dancing With the Stars paired up with Monica Crowley.
posted by spitbull at 9:51 AM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

So I was just looking back through the election 2016 posts to torture myself and I notice that we stopped using Hamilton quotes for titles in mid-October which is coincidentally when Hillary's standing in the polls got a bit shakier.

I'm not trying to point fingers but I do think this is something we should keep in mind for 2018 and 2020.
posted by asteria at 9:57 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

Comment from way upthread:

Texas should absolutely be a battleground, even Ted Cruz's own supporters hate Ted Cruz, and Texas demographics will get to competitive levels one of these years. But most of the Democratic action this cycle will necessarily have to be on the House side, outside of Nevada and Arizona which are both tough too, the Senate is mainly going to be defending incumbent seats.


Recent results in Kansas and Georgia that suggest Trump is an anchor for incumbent Republicans is supported now in Texas:

Joaquin Castro leads Ted Cruz by 4 points in Senate Poll
posted by darkstar at 9:59 AM on April 19, 2017 [38 favorites]

The great thing is that Jones' lawyer is working the "my client is a performance artist; it's just an act" defense while Jones is going on the air and says "They’ve got articles out today that I say I’m a fake, all of this other crap. Total bull!"

Alex Jones And The Dark New Media Are On Trial In Texas

Dr. Sherry is now being questioned about Alex Jones taking his shirt off during a family therapy session "it's a rare thing 2 have happened"
— @cwarzel

posted by octobersurprise at 10:01 AM on April 19, 2017 [19 favorites]

I was in Austin in the late 80s and early 90s when Jones got his start with the anti-government CT wackos of that era. We ran into him at a protest once at the DMV where he was against Texas putting coded magnetic stripes on driver's licenses because it was a sign of creeping totalitarianism and the mark of the beast or something. Guy gave off the stink of crazy even at a distance then. Can't believe it's any different now.
posted by spitbull at 10:06 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Sanders is probably more popular among white Democrats than many other politicians. I seem to recall that if only the votes of white people had been counted, he would have in fact narrowly won the Democratic primary. But Democratic politicians in general are less popular among white people than among people of color...

I was thinking about this stuff and about whether Sanders actually qualifies as a populist, by this definition of populism...

In populism, “the People” isn’t everybody.

While democracy is “government of the People, by the People, and for the People”, populism can get so focused on the for that it stops caring about the of and by.

Because democracy is of and by the People, democratic government is defined by process. But populist movements want results.

I think for Sanders "the People" is "the 99%"... so if not everybody, it's almost everybody. And while there was a little bit of a "cult of personality" air about him, he wasn't trying to get elected dictator. His campaign was very much "bottom up" rather than "top down." But I do think he fits the last criterion. "A populist movement wants results." The process is less important.

Bernie seemed, to me, impatient with compromise, whether that means compromise with Republicans or within the big-tent Democratic party. (Eg, his rhetoric about Obamacare, which is the ultimate "compromise" achievement.) He extracted specific campaign promises from Clinton with the threat of withholding his endorsement, because the protocol of party unity was less important to him (and his supporters) than getting those promises.

But I think maybe what a lot of people of color are seeking is not a specific policy agenda so much as having a voice. A seat at the table. Fixing the justice system is a process issue too. There's not a specific outcome people want from it exactly -- not like "free Aaron Schwartz" or whatever. They just want to make it work better, more fairly.

So maybe white people, who already have a voice, are more results-focused at this moment in history, while people of color are more process focused.

When people said Clinton didn't have a "vision" they mean she herself was more process-focused that results focused. She was running on a platform of elevating voices that haven't been heard ("Stronger together") and of making the government function better for everyone. Sanders was running on a platform of "give people education, give people healthcare" -- specific results.

Just an observation that I think is helpful in understanding the political dynamics here...
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:08 AM on April 19, 2017 [34 favorites]

Chaffetz announced today that he won't run for re-election to the House in 2018.

His Dem challenger has been vastly out-fundraising him.

Probably too much of a stretch, but: maybe he foresaw a damaging primary challenge by Egg, followed by a general fight against a very well funded Dem, all in the context of the Trump Anchor effect, and the heat he's been getting for his willful incompetence in conducting oversight, and it's all gotten to him?

Or maybe he just figures it's the right time to shoot for the Governorship.
posted by darkstar at 10:18 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

The great thing is that Jones' lawyer is working the "my client is a performance artist; it's just an act" defense while Jones is going on the air and says "They’ve got articles out today that I say I’m a fake, all of this other crap. Total bull!"

Well, publicly arguing against your own defense is something a performance artist would do...
posted by diogenes at 10:26 AM on April 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

corb: "Similarly, the party is not equipped to provide the kind of assistance to candidates that would meaningfully encourage candidacy. They're not saying, "If you win the primary, no matter what comes out about you, you'll always have a job in the Democratic Party, somewhere." They're saying, at best, "we'll throw you some staff and money for your campaign. If oppo research discovers that at one time in high school you wrote a satirical essay about squirrel-fucking, and now you're known as a squirrel-fucker and nobody wants to hire you and your marriage is over, that's too fucking bad.""

You know, if we had a social safety net instead of welfare that has to be gated behind means-testing, maybe people wouldn't have to be constantly anxious about job prospects in this way. But God knows that moronic means-testing just gives Republicans huge boners, so we're out of luck.
posted by TypographicalError at 10:32 AM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Donald Trump forgets Paul Ryan's name and calls him Ron twice

More evidence?
posted by futz at 10:51 AM on April 19, 2017 [20 favorites]

You know, if we had a social safety net instead of welfare that has to be gated behind means-testing, maybe people wouldn't have to be constantly anxious about job prospects in this way. But God knows that moronic means-testing just gives Republicans huge boners, so we're out of luck.

It also plays into the conservative tropes about "unresponsive bureaucrats" and "regulatory red tape," as filling out all the forms to prove one is eligible for a means-tested program makes it more complicated.
posted by Gelatin at 10:52 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump forgets Paul Ryan's name and calls him Ron twice

I know a Speaker of the House that's about to get a meatloaf dinner.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 10:55 AM on April 19, 2017 [12 favorites]

You know, if we had a social safety net instead of welfare that has to be gated behind means-testing

men would ride side-saddle, we would park on a parkway and drive on a driveway, and President Neil DeGrasse Tyson would be announcing the Mars solar power conduit project.
posted by spitbull at 10:57 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

Google Ron Ryan!
posted by Artw at 10:58 AM on April 19, 2017 [32 favorites]

I mean there is a sort of liberal version of what-aboutism that goes "if we had a real progressive tax system and free college for all we wouldn't be in this mess." Yeah, true.
posted by spitbull at 10:58 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Donald Trump forgets Paul Ryan's name and calls him Ron twice

itshappeningohwaitmaybeitisntwhothehellevenknowsanymore.gif
posted by Etrigan at 10:59 AM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Donald Trump forgets Paul Ryan's name and calls him Ron twice

More evidence?

I am baffled at this point by what *would* be evidence that he were mentally incapacitated. Does he have to fling his own poo on national television? Publicly masturbate? What's the ceiling here?
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:03 AM on April 19, 2017 [23 favorites]

In other words, "surely this".
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:04 AM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

From the perspective of someone who actually studied the history of the region, I can say in no uncertain terms that Kyung Moon Hwang is not biased when he says Korea was never part of China, he's speaking absolute and literal truth. No respectable historian, not even in China, would claim that Korea used to be part of China.

In fact, a fairly big part of the moral/philosophic/popular/whatever backing old Korean dynasties claimed involved getting official recognition from the Chinese Emperor as being the rulers of Korea which only happened with nations that weren't part of China.

Further, China defined itself culturally as much as anything else, and Koreans were absolutely not culturally Chinese. they spoke a different language, developed a different written language, had different customs and worldview.

Arguing that Korea used to be part of China is as absurd as arguing that France used to be part of Germany, or that Mexico used to be part of the USA.
posted by sotonohito at 11:05 AM on April 19, 2017 [22 favorites]

Donald Trump forgets Paul Ryan's name and calls him Ron twice

More evidence?

It wouldn't surprise me, but it also wouldn't surprise me if this is another one of his dumb power moves.
posted by dirigibleman at 11:05 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

Publicly masturbate

Technically the rallies are part of the re-election campaign.
posted by Artw at 11:05 AM on April 19, 2017 [52 favorites]

He realizes the 2nd time he says "Ron" that he's got the wrong name; points to another Ron (Ron Johnson?) to play off his whole speech like he just got the wrong name.

File this under "of all the stupid shit this man has done, probably a nothingburger." He got someone's name mixed up for 15 seconds and tried to correct himself once he figured it out. Could it be senility? Sure. But seeing as how he (relatively quickly) figures it out himself and tries to fix it, seems like it could be a busy and confused old man trying to manage too much in his mind.

On preview: dirigibleman has an interesting theory. Could be a power move, could also be something he's hoping the media will pick up and then he'll run with as "fake news! I was obviously talking about this Ron in the room/don't you see how biased the media is?" And his propagandists on CNN will be all like "OMG he made an innocent mistake look how unfair you attack him are you guys going to nitpick EVERYTHING?"

Fuck this White House for its continuing psychological warfare/gaslighting of the American People.
posted by andruwjones26 at 11:10 AM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

Does he have to fling his own poo on national television? Publicly masturbate?

Sounds like somebody has those apprentice tapes...
posted by mrgoat at 11:13 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Pence sworn in by August.

It wouldn't surprise me. If Trump is suffering from some kind of senile dementia, then it's only going to get worse. I've watched a relative go from mild confusion to bed-ridden in little more than a year.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:13 AM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

think we're in a record breaking lull for Trump/Russia news. It's been several days since anything interesting happened

Exxon: Hold my beer.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:14 AM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

I really wanted Ossoff to win this round if only because of figurative TON of mailers we've been getting. We had 8 on monday: 3 for Karen Handel, 2 for Jon Ossoff, 2 against Ossoff, and 1 postcard that seemed very nice with a female scientist on the front that wanted me to get out and vote.

And the ads. SO MANY ADS. STOP. JUST STOP ALREADY. UGH.
posted by LizBoBiz at 11:20 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Here comes the Russian pay-off, I guess.
posted by Artw at 11:23 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

/wonders if the rest of the dossier becoming solid will mean pee-tape's existence becomes a certainty.
posted by Artw at 11:24 AM on April 19, 2017

Donald Trump forgets Paul Ryan's name

I would like to forget Paul Ryan's name.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:26 AM on April 19, 2017 [45 favorites]

I think the Wall Street Journal did a terrible job of explaining the significance of this Exxon/sanctions story...

#1 -- It seems to me there is very little point in having the sanctions at all if you're going to let a deal like this go through. Most of Russia's wealth is oil wealth. If you're going to try to punish them for invading their neighbor (which is what these sanctions are for!) by hurting their economy, the way you are going to hurt their economy is by blocking *exactly* this kind of international oil investment. Exxon is one of the biggest multinational oil companies in the world, and Rosneft is a giant in the Russian oil industry. You let this happen, and wealth is flowing back into Russia. They would've succeeded in invading Ukraine with no negative consequences at all. That needs to be explained in the article.

#2 -- While the WSJ does explain that Rex Tillerson was Exxon's CEO until he became Secretary of State, it does not mention that the other party to this deal, Rosneft, appears in the "dossier" compiled by the fomer MI6 agent. "Sechin's associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered Page and his associates the brokerage [eg 6% fee on the sale] of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft," the dossier said. "In return, Page had expressed interest and confirmed that were Trump elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted." [...]"The company signed a deal on December 7 to sell 19.5% of shares, or roughly $11 billion, to the multinational commodity trader Glencore Plc and Qatar's state-owned wealth fund. Qatar's sovereign wealth fund is Glencore's largest shareholder. [...] The purchase amounted to the biggest foreign investment in Russia since US sanctions took effect in 2014. It showed that "there are some forces in the world that are ready to help Russia to circumvent the [West's] sanction regime.""

That context needs to be in the article too!
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:30 AM on April 19, 2017 [35 favorites]

Man, I'm not looking forward to White House staffers and GOP congresspeople abusing their power to gin up public support for increasingly senile utterances
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:30 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

You know, if we had a social safety net instead of welfare that has to be gated behind means-testing, maybe people wouldn't have to be constantly anxious about job prospects in this way. But God knows that moronic means-testing just gives Republicans huge boners, so we're out of luck.

It also plays into the conservative tropes about "unresponsive bureaucrats" and "regulatory red tape," as filling out all the forms to prove one is eligible for a means-tested program makes it more complicated.

National level Democrats have proposed means-tested programs just in the last year, it's not only a problem with Republicans or conservatives.
posted by indubitable at 11:30 AM on April 19, 2017

I can't look at any of this anymore and I also can't look away, and no matter how many times we unweave and reweave the tapestry I'm here like I've never seen it before or like it's news, as if a two-second Google search doesn't turn up a hundred references from serious news organizations who have delved into the clear cognitive problems of the president. Like, this is actual reality. Part of me feels like I will spend the rest of my life stranded on election night, two AM, the last person in the country to accept that Hillary Clinton had lost, that a woman would not be president, but that the country preferred a monster instead.

But he is allowed to bomb things, people are being deported, people have been beaten, there's a guy down the street from me who has stuck an enormous American flag on the back of his pick up and it waves behind him as he drives. In another life, my main worry would be that flag creates public safety hazard and what if it flies off on the interstate?

So I guess I'm saying, I too am having a hard time with reality.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:34 AM on April 19, 2017 [71 favorites]

Weird seeing conflicts of interest sometimes count, thought the standard had been lowered to the point where they basically never do.
posted by Artw at 11:39 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Bill O'Reilly is officially out, says the Times
posted by Brainy at 11:40 AM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

NYT: Bill O’Reilly Is Forced Out at Fox News

“After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel,” 21st Century Fox, Fox News’s parent company, said in a statement.

That just goes to show you that there is, in fact, a limit to how long a powerful white man can sexually harass women at work. Unfortunately, that limit in this case turns out to be two decades.
posted by zachlipton at 11:41 AM on April 19, 2017 [59 favorites]

So not yet on Ossoff, but yes on O'Reilly. Who had that for their cake? Please post photos immediately.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:44 AM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

Pence sworn in by August.

I'd like to think so, but out of all the possible mechanisms to make this happen (Impeachment->Trial->Conviction, Resignation, 25th Amendment), I can't see any of them being very likely. Yet.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:47 AM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

NYT: Bill O’Reilly Is Forced Out at Fox News

Play us out, Bill, play us out.
posted by dis_integration at 11:47 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

Bill O'Reilly is officially out, says the Times

If anyone is currently drafting a front page post about this, please feel free to use the title BO'Rexit!
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:48 AM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

Bill O'Reilly is officially out, says the Times

NelsonHaHa.gif
posted by dnash at 11:49 AM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

Papa bear set to replace Spicer? [fake, for now]
posted by emelenjr at 11:49 AM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Papa bear set to replace Spicer? [fake, for now]

My mom just texted me this
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:51 AM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Bill O'Reilly fired and a great new posthumous song from Prince. It's a good day.
posted by chris24 at 11:51 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

At the Tax March last Saturday in NYC we were marching past the News Corp headquarters when these high school kids started a "we need more sanity, not more Hannity" chant that went over pretty well. And then I spent the next couple blocks trying to think of what rhymes with O'Reilly.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:54 AM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

O'Reilly started out as a writer for the alternative Boston Phoenix, where he interviewed the director of the early porn classic The Devil in Miss Jones.
posted by adamg at 11:55 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's not as if an elderly entertainment figure with cognitive problems and an obnoxious authoritarian streak serving as a Republican President figurehead while assorted dingbats and criminals beneath him steadily dismantle American prosperity and freedoms is a NEW and unprecedented phenomenon. Some would argue that we are simply reverting to one of our nation's baseline states, which would be pursuing dominance by an elite and vomiting angry rats on all others.
posted by delfin at 11:56 AM on April 19, 2017 [13 favorites]

The Washington Post has a nice article and dataviz on the current ideological spread of Congress and the resulting difficulties facing the Dems in the 2018 elections. I know the topic's been discussed at length (if not ad nauseam) here, but I figured there's plenty of others that can't resist good mouseover.
posted by sapere aude at 12:00 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Bill O'Reilly is officially out, says the Times

"Here's what breaks my heart about this. Because in my mind I think of you as a goon. But then when you look at this picture [the young O'Reilly on the cover of A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity], look at how sweet and adorable that kid is it breaks my heart because I have a sweet and adorable kid like that and I think, 'Oh great! What if he too becomes a goon!'"

posted by octobersurprise at 12:07 PM on April 19, 2017 [18 favorites]

It's not as if an elderly entertainment figure with cognitive problems and an obnoxious authoritarian streak serving as a Republican President figurehead while assorted dingbats and criminals beneath him steadily dismantle American prosperity and freedoms is a NEW and unprecedented phenomenon.

Which is why Democrats need to lampshade the deliberate Republican inaction as unpatriotic (it's counter to the Founders' idea that Congress would check the President if Republicans flatly refuse to do so, especially after grandstanding so much about obstructing Obama) and more, as proof that Republicans simply can not be trusted with power.

That message, over and over, until it makes the conservative creation of the "liberal media" myth seem like a fleeting thought: Republicans can not be trusted.

That means you too, Mr. President.
posted by Gelatin at 12:11 PM on April 19, 2017 [15 favorites]

New book by FOX News: Killing Bill O'Reilly.

And Tucker Carlson will take Papa Bear's spot.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:13 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Ron Paul Ryan.

[shudders violently].
posted by srboisvert at 12:15 PM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

And Tucker Carlson will take Papa Bear's spot.

Good to know that privileged white guys will continue to fail ever upward.
posted by Etrigan at 12:16 PM on April 19, 2017 [25 favorites]

I know, I can't believe Tucker bounced back after that whole Jon Stewart thingy. Amazing.
posted by valkane at 12:18 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

They're all good congressmen, Ron.
posted by klarck at 12:18 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

And Tucker Carlson will take Papa Bear's spot.

Maybe he'll take the padlocks off the swivel chairs in the studio so guests can spin again. That's what O'Reilly meant by "No Spin Zone", right? Because people sure weren't telling the truth on his show.
posted by Servo5678 at 12:19 PM on April 19, 2017

Maybe back in 1970. The top 20% own half the wealth. They can sure as fuck afford it.

I don't know if it's been discredited or failed to make a necessary caveat or something, but this video from a few years ago showed the top 1% with 40% of the wealth in the U.S. and appeared to have the top 20% owning around 85% of all wealth.
posted by XMLicious at 12:19 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Tucker Carlson will take Papa Bear's spot.

Hahaha. Sickest burn. The PAPA BEAR being replaced that smarmy wandought.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:21 PM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

Full headline (emphasis mine):

Donald Trump forgets Paul Ryan's name and calls him Ron twice
President's gaffe comes after pair worked together extensively on healthcare legislation

As if this is why the president of the united States should know who Paul Ryan is.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:22 PM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

I was thinking with O'Reilly out, that cat lady from The Simpsons could fill in for him. Will bring cats.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:22 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Tucker Carlson will take Papa Bear's spot.

Hahaha. Sickest burn. The PAPA BEAR being replaced that smarmy wandought.


Made me google "wandought". Very happy to have learned this new (old) word.

Take my favorite and go in peace.
posted by darkstar at 12:24 PM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

And Tucker Carlson will take Papa Bear's spot.

Ah, Mr. "You're hurting America" himself.
posted by Gelatin at 12:25 PM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

"Sechin's associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered Page and his associates the brokerage [eg 6% fee on the sale] of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft," the dossier said. "In return, Page had expressed interest and confirmed that were Trump elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted."

The thing that has been bugging me about this claim is that Carter Page is clearly an idiot. Russian spies said so themselves in 2013. I mean, who the heck would entrust this guy with a share of one of the largest oil deals ever? If anything, it seems more likely that they planned to stiff Page, just as the last round of Russian spies did.

Also: Sean Spicer wants to argue about what the definition of ‘is’ is, in which Spicer contorts the English language to attempt to explain why they weren't lying about the Carl Vinson even though it was 3,000 miles away going the wrong direction. It's like if you tell your spouse: "I'm on the way home honey" when you're actually headed the other direction to the strip club. By Spicer's standards, that's not misleading, because you're still planning to head home eventually (in this analogy, as with real life, this assumes there will still be a home to get to after your delay, which is not at all assured in either case).

Of course, the article is written by Aaron Blake, who sucks only slightly less than Chris Cillizza, so he ends with:

Whether they deliberately misled us or somehow didn't realize the narrative of confrontation that was quickly forming in the western Pacific, it's yet another strike against their credibility. And it's why it's getting very hard to give them the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this.

"Getting very hard?" Dude where have you been? They should have lost the benefit of the doubt, at the very latest, after the fake Trump steaks incident over a year ago. Is everyone who writes for The Fix the most gullible person in the world?
posted by zachlipton at 12:26 PM on April 19, 2017 [15 favorites]

Donald Trump forgets Paul Ryan's name and calls him Ron twice

@HartHanson: Paul Ryan will fulminate and fuss about this for an hour and then accept that his new name is "Ron".
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:28 PM on April 19, 2017 [60 favorites]

Looking forward to hearing Lauren Duca on Tucker again.
posted by progosk at 12:30 PM on April 19, 2017

Paul Ryan will fulminate and fuss about this for an hour and then accept that his new name is "Ron".

While insisting all the time he isn't endorsing the name "Ron."
posted by Gelatin at 12:31 PM on April 19, 2017 [14 favorites]

Made me google "wandought". Very happy to have learned this new (old) word.

And here I was giggling and WTFing what a wangdonut was. lol. Oh well now I have 2 new words!
posted by futz at 12:31 PM on April 19, 2017 [13 favorites]

I'm just reflecting on how painfully similar the USS Carl Vinson error is frighteningly evocative of the misinterpretation/miscommunication of events of the USS Maddox incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, and how that ended up dragging us deep into the Vietnam war.
posted by darkstar at 12:31 PM on April 19, 2017 [15 favorites]

Hannity stays. O'Reilly goes. I see how you could make that error though.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:40 PM on April 19, 2017

USAT: Senate Dem fundraising way up.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:46 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Now this clip of Ron the Bear fighting a troll got stuck in my tiny brain (Courtesy Wizard People Dear Reader). Thanks all
posted by Namlit at 12:49 PM on April 19, 2017

I'm thrilled that Hannity is (finally) out

gdi don't tease
posted by murphy slaw at 12:50 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Hahaha. Sickest burn. The PAPA BEAR being replaced that smarmy wandought.

"And when thou bids the paughty Czar stand yon,
The Wandought seems beneath thee on his Throne ..."

— Allan Ramsay, "Epistle From Mr. William Starrat,
Teacher of Mathematicks at Straban in Ireland." Poems, 1728.

You wouldn't think an 18th century Scots poet would have any insight on Bill O'Reilly, but there you go.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:52 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Hannity stays. O'Reilly goes.

Though one must wonder why Hannity didn't get the nod...
posted by Etrigan at 12:52 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

The night of the election, the big stars on Fox News were Megyn Kelly, Greta Van Susteren, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly.

Only Hannity remains. He must be absolutely fuming that that little shit Tucker Carlson got elevated before him.
posted by zakur at 12:54 PM on April 19, 2017 [19 favorites]

Carlson has long been more of a political insurgent than many people recognized

Nah, "twerpy" is about right. He's a silver-spoon lightweight, a frat-boy scion of the D.C. elite, who used his social connections to wangle an undeserved role first on Crossfire where his only source of gravitas was from stealing George Will's bowtie schtick, and then when his star was fading due to Jon Stewart's handing him his ass on public t.v., he leveraged his wealth and what little clout he had left into starting his own paper, the Daily Caller, a right wing rag more in the spirit of Breitbart than in the National Review.

He'll make a fine replacement for O'Reilly. Wandought, indeed.
posted by darkstar at 12:54 PM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

Is today someone's birthday? Is it Ron Ryan's birthday? Seriously, good stuff coming out of the world.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:55 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yeah, when Hannity finally goes I predict it will be for some transgression related to his colossal stupidity, rather than his (presumed) lecherousness. Like maybe he'll brag on twitter about how trump gave him a special private tour of the war room and—just for laffs—even let him touch the big red nuclear launch button!
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:57 PM on April 19, 2017

The Colorado Independent: Why is a state investigator sniffing around Colorado’s Electoral College vote?

Prior to the vote, [Republican Secretary of State] Williams had told a national publication that if an elector violated his or her oath to carry out their duties, “I think there’s a basis for a more severe criminal penalty,” and indicated that it could be perjury.

Following Baca’s vote for Kasich instead of Clinton, Williams asked Republican Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s office to investigate.

That was in late December.

So why is an investigator looking into it now?

posted by audi alteram partem at 1:04 PM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

Hannity didn't get the nod because he's a known quantity; he's a howling attack dog with zero subtlety and less variation. You keep him around to hurl red meat but you need someone with at least marginally human features for high-profile roles.
posted by delfin at 1:05 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

A lot of heavy hitters at Fox have been ousted recently because of misconduct with women, which I think only makes them more appealing to the openly misogynistic alt-right (more openly than the semi-mainstreamed Fox brand of right wingerism anyway). Is there a point where O'Reilly and Ailes might try to join up with, or compete against Breitbart in that formerly fringe space?
posted by codacorolla at 1:08 PM on April 19, 2017

Shaun King, NY Daily News: Conservatives hated an uppity negro golfing President

The problem wasn't that they hated seeing a President spend the money on golfing. The problem wasn't that they hated seeing a President spend precious time on the golf course. A golfing President never disgusted them. The problem was that few things irritate bigoted white men more than an uppity negro.

And if Obama was anything to the average white bigot, he was just that — the quintessential uppity negro, with his Harvard Law degree, and his beach trips to his home state of Hawaii. Over and over again, white conservatives obsessed over things like the exact costs of Obama's family vacations. Now though — with tons of money being spent to protect the entire Trump family as they gallivant all over the world, for business or pleasure, those same critics are now silent.

Imagine Michelle Obama demanded to live in a gold-plated penthouse in the middle of Manhattan, costs be damned, while President Obama lived in the White House alone. The outrage would be riot-level fierce. Now, conservatives no longer care.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:10 PM on April 19, 2017 [125 favorites]

WaPo: Handel has a lot of fences to mend in GA-06.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:16 PM on April 19, 2017

And here I was giggling and WTFing what a wangdonut was.

Pretty sure wangdonuts are the kind of office snacks that eventually got Bill O'Reilly fired.
posted by nickmark at 1:19 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Carlson is also really popular right now with Trump supporters. They think he's super smart and constantly embarrassing their opponents with his intellectual rigor. They pass around videos of him interviewing college students like we pass around Twitter threads.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:21 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Jon Stewart's handing him his ass

And he made it look effortless. Carlson never knew what hit him.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:22 PM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

US Army base on lockdown, sixty four soldiers busted in cocaine drug ring

Holy shit.
posted by futz at 1:22 PM on April 19, 2017 [14 favorites]

Online, Carlson has been given a very unofficial slogan: “You can’t cuck the Tuck.”

i would very much like to be excluded from this narrative
posted by murphy slaw at 1:23 PM on April 19, 2017 [26 favorites]

They think he's super smart and constantly embarrassing their opponents with his intellectual rigor.

Well, that trope is sure to be challenged on Fox News. [/sarcasm]
posted by Gelatin at 1:25 PM on April 19, 2017

Online, Carlson has been given a very unofficial slogan: “You can’t cuck the Tuck.”

Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh harder.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 1:26 PM on April 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

(Speaking of, just as Democrats need to be consistent in their message -- I know, I know -- hat Republicans can't be trusted, they should also regularly imply that Republicans are cowards because they hide behind their phony news channels.

After all, it was a Democrat, Harry Truman, who said "if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen." The mere existence of Fox News proves Republicans can't stand the heat.)
posted by Gelatin at 1:28 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

I think we're in a record breaking lull for Trump/Russia news. It's been several days since anything interesting happened

Exxon: Hold my beer.

This is definitely interesting, but it's not exactly what I had in mind. I was hoping for some fresh evidence that's bad for Trump. This is more like evidence that he's getting away with it.

So let me be more specific Universe. It's been several days since there was fresh evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. I await your reply.
posted by diogenes at 1:28 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Support the troops man. Legalize cocaine.

And I have always figured Hannity will eventually go down for a really grandiose perversion. Because you know, look at the guy.
posted by spitbull at 1:29 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

sean hannity will be on fox forever because even if he dies they will reanimate him as a frankenstien and nobody will be able to tell
posted by murphy slaw at 1:31 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

The New Yorker had a piece, recently, on Carlson's post-Stewart-debate move to Fox News

The best part of that article is the slow build to the final damning paragraph:

In conversation, Carlson often returns to an unusual disclaimer: “I’m not a deeply moral guy.” Maybe this is his way of playing the rogue. Maybe this is a debater’s ploy—a way of insisting that some principles are so clear that even he can see them. But with Carlson it is wise to consider another possibility: Maybe he means it. And maybe he is right.
posted by diogenes at 1:31 PM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said.

Eeeeenteresting.
posted by jammer at 1:34 PM on April 19, 2017 [13 favorites]

For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said.

If memory serves, Trump started talking a lot about voter fraud at that time. Probably just another coincidence.
posted by diogenes at 1:37 PM on April 19, 2017 [15 favorites]

If memory serves, Trump started talking a lot about voter fraud at that time. Probably just another coincidence.

October 17, 2016:
@realDonaldTrump
Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!
posted by melissasaurus at 1:40 PM on April 19, 2017 [30 favorites]

And to think just today O'Reilly shook hands with the Pope. [true]
posted by spitbull at 1:42 PM on April 19, 2017

Yeah like I said really grandiose perversion, nothing as banal in its evil as mere sexual harasssment. The kind you hide really well. Mark my words. Hannity ain't right.
posted by spitbull at 1:43 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Jon Stewart's handing him [wandought Tucker Carlson] his ass

What's really troubling about that is that Stewart should have been arrested.

There aren't that many states where it's legal to smack a little boy around in public like that.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:45 PM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

People were poking fun at Pence for going outside to angerly stare at North Korea with his "outlaw the X-Men face." He apparently meant it literally:

“I thought it was important that we went outside,” he said. “I thought it was important that people on the other side of the DMZ see our resolve in my face.”

Since a good long stare doesn't seem to have caused North Korea to give up its nuclear program, will we be trying finger-wagging next?
posted by zachlipton at 1:46 PM on April 19, 2017 [61 favorites]

Should have worn a bulkier jacket man.
posted by spitbull at 1:47 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

That's more of a "I swear I just saw one of the DPRK guys giving me the finger" face
posted by theodolite at 1:51 PM on April 19, 2017

Y'know, if he'd just squinched his eyes up a little more, one of the DPRK guys might have relented and given him some laxatives.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:53 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Either the New England Patriots have far fewer players than they did in 2015 or we've go another inauguration crowd size situation going on here.

Looks like at least two dozen players didn't show up. Tom Brady also had "family issues" in 2015.
posted by zachlipton at 1:53 PM on April 19, 2017 [27 favorites]

It says fucking "Vice President" on his fucking jacket. Like he's gonna forget, or somebody won't know. I know he probably didn't ask for it, but still. These guys love the military cosplay.
posted by valkane at 1:54 PM on April 19, 2017 [12 favorites]

Well, he had to make up for Rex Tillerson turning his back and allowing a N Korean soldier to shoot him somehow!
posted by Westringia F. at 1:57 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Pence was a fourth-rate Rush Limbaugh for fucks sake. He used the media (just like his boss) to get where he is, then denounces the same media now that he's arrived.
posted by valkane at 1:57 PM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

It says fucking "Vice President" on his fucking jacket. Like he's gonna forget, or somebody won't know. I know he probably didn't ask for it, but still. These guys love the military cosplay.

Last night I watched the first episode of an amazon original dark comedy called Patriot, it was made in '15, but it's pretty timely. One of the characters, a congressman, gets offered a chance as an overseas "attache" and he's so stoked that he gets a badge made with "attache" on it and he shows it to his brother and he's like "yeah, we all have these...." i chuckled.
It's worth a watch because the players all seem to be Dampnut level incompetent.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:02 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

You can’t cuck the Tuck.

My daughter has recently drawn me into the gravitational pull of her obsession with Rupaul's Drag Race. The word tuck has taken on a whole new, now beautifully subversive, meaning to me, one that I can't unsee.
posted by chaoticgood at 2:07 PM on April 19, 2017 [21 favorites]

It just reminds me of this thing I read about Burt Reynolds one time; he puts on a toupee, puts lifts in his shoes, and then goes to an office he rents and sits behind a desk with a big engraved brass plate on it that says "Burt Reynolds." I mean, to me, that's a monster ego. What the fuck does Burt have to prove? He was the fucking Bandit. It made me lose respect for ol burt, and I actually like Burt.

Pence chose to put on that jacket, he thinks he's like a formula one racer or something, and in reality, he's an ego-monster.
posted by valkane at 2:09 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

One reason of about twenty thousand that I'd want Trump impeached is I'd love to have Pence forced to open his stupid yap about something
posted by angrycat at 2:10 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

First protected DREAMer is deported under Trump

Update: a lawsuit has been filed, and because the universe has one strange sense of humor, the judge hearing the case is none other than U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge who oversaw the Trump University case and Trump said was biased because of his "Mexican heritage."
posted by zachlipton at 2:11 PM on April 19, 2017 [72 favorites]

“After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel,”

"No man has ever come back from leave – even Napoleon."
posted by mikelieman at 2:12 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

to be fair, Burt mighta just been making a joke with the nameplate. I hear he has a wonderful sense of humor. Still love you, Bandit.
posted by valkane at 2:13 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

ZOMG NPR's coverage of Trump and the Patriots jeezum crow must everything be about his election? Is he that miserable and starved for affirmation inside? It's like one of the most pitiful things I've ever witnessed.
posted by angrycat at 2:21 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is he that miserable and starved for affirmation inside?

I draw some satisfaction in knowing that his internal suffering and absolute inadequacy in all things is known to the entire world, as he descends into senile dementia prior to his inevitable death. It's a fitting punishment for an execrable human, although not entirely sufficient.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:24 PM on April 19, 2017 [13 favorites]

Made me google "wandought". Very happy to have learned this new (old) word.

Same here, which led me to this lovely piece where I discovered that the first word listed is the most excellent term for our president that I've seen: "abydocomist—a liar who brags about their lies".
posted by worldswalker at 2:24 PM on April 19, 2017 [35 favorites]

Another great word applicable to our times: agnotology, the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.

There are many causes of culturally induced ignorance. These include the influence of the media, either through neglect or as a result of deliberate misrepresentation and manipulation. Corporations and governmental agencies can contribute to agnotology through secrecy and suppression of information, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, and forgetfulness.[8]

Proctor cites as a prime example of the deliberate production of ignorance the tobacco industry's advertising campaign to manufacture doubt about the cancerous and other health effects of tobacco use. Under the banner of science, the industry produced research about everything except tobacco hazards to exploit public uncertainty.[6][9]

I've been contemplating an FPP on the topic, but haven't had a chance to put it together. But it absolutely describes the Fox News viewer mindset.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:27 PM on April 19, 2017 [25 favorites]

ExDread, have you read Thank You for Smoking? It's a hilarious exploration of the tobacco industry denialism, back the in days when that could still be funny and we didn't know it would bring us where we are now.
posted by emjaybee at 2:31 PM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

Is he that miserable and starved for affirmation inside?

He got the job! You hear me dad? I got it! It doesn't matter if I cheated, or if I'm really bad at it, or if I have to walk away from it, I GOT IT! I made the deal! So what if the taps in the room don't work? they're gold-plated! Who cares if none of my marriages actually worked, look at how hot my wives were! So what if I haven't actually made the world a better place I WON!
posted by valkane at 2:31 PM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

“I thought it was important that we went outside,” he said. “I thought it was important that people on the other side of the DMZ see our resolve in my face.”

next up, pence goes to el paso, right up to the border, turns around and drops his pants so the mexicans can see how big the stick up his ass is
posted by pyramid termite at 2:34 PM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

his internal suffering

Unfortunately, ascribing any measure of self-reflection or capacity for regret to this pathological narcissist is kind of like projecting our human emotions onto a pet goldfish.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:35 PM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

Shit.

Russian journalist and Putin critic dies after being beaten up by strangers

Nikolai Andrushchenko, 73, who co-founded the Novy Peterburg newspaper, was attacked six weeks ago and had been in a coma since then.

He died on Wednesday in St Petersburg.

He was also beaten up in 2007 and imprisoned.

At the time Mr Andrushchenko's colleagues said they thought his detention was due to Novy Peterburg's critical coverage of local authorities ahead of parliamentary elections.

Move along, nothing to see here...
posted by futz at 2:36 PM on April 19, 2017 [25 favorites]

Sessions: MS-13 gang could be designated as terrorist organization

This frankly seems like a recipe to bring all the worst excesses and abuses of the war-on-terror to Latinos.
posted by zachlipton at 2:38 PM on April 19, 2017 [16 favorites]

A Cartoon Guide to How Donald Trump Can Get Us to Talk about Anything (Perhaps it's an oversimplification, but not by much. And we keep falling for it...)
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:48 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Chaffetz's campaign arm registers 2028 websites

Friends of Jason Chaffetz registered two web domains more than a week ago, Fusion first reported, citing a search on the WhoIs domain name directory: Jason2028.com and JasonChaffetz2028.com.

The domains were secured by Chaffetz’s campaign arm on April 6. The URLs currently redirect to a generic landing page.

Another domain, JasonForGovernor.com, currently redirects to his congressional campaign page.
posted by futz at 2:50 PM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

Deutsche Welle: AfD's Frauke Petry will not stand as lead candidate in 2017 German elections

On the DW English evening news, being broadcast by my U.S. public television station at the moment, the political correspondent characterized this both by saying Petry "left the party" and also stated "she hasn't said she doesn't want to lead the party", so I'm not quite sure what it means. But hopefully it represents right-wing populism faltering a bit.
posted by XMLicious at 2:50 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Jason2028

These sleazebags see trump and all they can think is "why not me too?"
posted by valkane at 2:58 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Also, chaffetz must have cut some kinda deal.... whether it comes to fruition is anybody's guess.
posted by valkane at 3:02 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

US Army base on lockdown, sixty four soldiers busted in cocaine drug ring

The main story doesn't surprise me much. But the sidebar had a link to a story I couldn't resist.

"Marine dad surprised with magical tea party with 4-year-old daughter"
posted by msalt at 3:10 PM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

Am I the only one that immediately thought of the nearest Army base before I clicked the link, or did that only happen to people who live near Ft Stewart?
posted by mllm at 3:14 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

US officials: Syria moves planes to Russian base for protection

The move places the Syrian aircraft in close proximity to Russia's Khmeimim Air Base -- where the majority of Russian air forces helping ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime are based -- in Latakia Governorate, Syria.

One US defense official said that the warplanes moved appeared to be most if not all of the Syrian government's operational aircraft.

The Khmeimim base, along with a naval facility in Tartus, is one of the two of the primary Russian military installations in Syria. The Russians have reportedly stationed advanced anti-aircraft missile systems at the base.
posted by futz at 4:03 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Former NFL player Colin Allred launches campaign to unseat Pete Sessions

Civil rights attorney Colin Allred has launched a campaign to unseat Rep. Pete Sessions of Dallas.

But first the former NFL player will have to run in a potentially crowded Democratic primary for the 32nd Congressional District...

-- Hillary Clinton beat Trump in the 32nd Congressional District, which Sessions has represented since its development nearly two decades ago.
Looking to take advantage of the demographic changes in that district, several Democrats are considering campaigns for the March primary. They include Ed Meier, a former policy adviser to Clinton and a nonprofit executive.

I am so happy that Dems are stepping up to the plate.
posted by futz at 4:13 PM on April 19, 2017 [29 favorites]

@cmclymer: So many clips of O'Reilly getting owned over years but this little-known gem between him and @alfranken is glorious

[direct link to youtube clip]
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:20 PM on April 19, 2017 [14 favorites]

Jason Chaffetz's Abrupt Exit:

According to one senior GOP source, it is not yet clear whether Chaffetz will finish his term, or ultimately decide to resign early.

Now people are talking about him resigning before the end of his term? What the heck is going on? Are they thinking getting an appointed Republican in there early would give them a better shot against Kathryn Allen or Egg or someone?

But here's the really screwed up thing. I can't believe I'm even saying this, so someone please talk me back from listening to the crazy people. Six days ago, Louise Mensch claimed (*hangs head in shame for going there; I suck *) that there is kompromat on Chaffetz. Today, there's question about whether he'll even finish his term. Somebody please tell me just to stay away from Mensch and stop thinking about this, ok?
posted by zachlipton at 4:22 PM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

He probably just wants to spend more time with his family.
posted by valkane at 4:27 PM on April 19, 2017 [16 favorites]

Sanders, Perez unity tour is off to a bumpy ride

From the "Come Together and Fight Back" tour's kickoff rally in Maine on Monday, Democrats witnessed that old habits die hard.

When the leader of the Maine Young Democrats asked the crowd what brought them to the rally, the audience erupted in "Bernie" cheers.

The leader followed up by asking, "Maybe you came through because you are curious about the new DNC chairman and the future of Democratic politics?" — and the crowd cut her off with boos.

[Article backtracks to an earlier Sanders/Perez interview here]

Perez and Sanders' differences were somewhat apparent in the Tuesday interview. On health care, Sanders called for a "Medicare-for-all" approach, and Perez stopped short of endorsing that policy while saying he believed health care should be a right.

Sanders railed against "the ruling class" and said voters needed to hear that.

"Your [republican] greed is destroying this country, and you know what? We're going to take you on," Sanders said.

Asked about that kind of message, Perez demurred and said Democrats needed to campaign on "hope" and later called it a "false choice."

"When we put hope on the ballot, Chris, we win," Perez said.

So Perez is selling Hope? I don't want to Hope for healthcare. I am of course being a wee bit glib but Perez is confusing to me.
posted by futz at 4:28 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Six days ago, Louise Mensch claimed (*hangs head in shame for going there; I suck *) that there is kompromat on Chaffetz.

Louise Mensch is a bullshit artist. Here's an example of how she works. Unsourced twitter speculation becomes rock! solid! evidence! Chaffetz is probably setting the stage for a gubernatorial run, or he sees some potential grift in the private sector that he can get in on in this completely corrupt environment.
posted by Existential Dread at 4:28 PM on April 19, 2017 [17 favorites]

Somebody please tell me just to stay away from Mensch and stop thinking about this, ok?

I would tell you to stay away from Mensch, but I'm afraid she might denounce me as a Russian spy on twitter.

(Context)
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:38 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

I don't follow Mensch and don't find her credible at all. However, I do find the US intelligence community credible, and they announced in the declassified report that the Russians had hacked both Republicans and Democrats, but had only released the material the stole from Democrats.

So it's not only plausible but in fact likely that they have some kind of compromising material on some Republicans. The conspiracy theory stuff starts when you begin filling in details about what kind of material on which specific Republicans. There's no evidence to support any of the speculation on that...

But you don't have to be a Mensch-follower to say "I don't have any evidence of this, but we should consider the possibility that one explanation for Chaffetz's strange behavior is that some of that material that Russia stole from Republican servers pertains to him." It's a realistic possibility, though of course completely unproven.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:38 PM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

O'Reilly is leaving to spend more time violently attacking his family.
posted by spitbull at 4:42 PM on April 19, 2017 [9 favorites]

I don't think O'Reilly has a family anymore.
posted by valkane at 4:44 PM on April 19, 2017

CBS: CIA, FBI launch manhunt for leaker who gave top-secret documents to WikiLeaks

The CIA and FBI are conducting a joint investigation into one of the worst security breaches in CIA history, which exposed thousands of top-secret documents that described CIA tools used to penetrate smartphones, smart televisions and computer systems.

posted by Mister Fabulous at 4:56 PM on April 19, 2017

Oh, wait, Bill's got a statement up on his website:

Over the past 20 years at Fox News, I have been extremely proud to launch and lead one of the most successful news programs in history, which has consistently informed and entertained millions of Americans and significantly contributed to building Fox into the dominant news network in television. It is tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims. But that is the unfortunate reality many of us in the public eye must live with today. I will always look back on my time at Fox with great pride in the unprecedented success we achieved and with my deepest gratitude to all my dedicated viewers. I wish only the best for Fox News Channel.

Completely unfounded claims. That only cost 13 million plus.
posted by valkane at 4:57 PM on April 19, 2017 [14 favorites]

zachlipton: "Now people are talking about him resigning before the end of his term? What the heck is going on? Are they thinking getting an appointed Republican in there early would give them a better shot against Kathryn Allen or Egg or someone? "

You can't appoint someone to fill a vacant House seat, you'd have to have a...

["But...that's *Chrysostom's* music!"]

...SPECIAL ELECTION.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:57 PM on April 19, 2017 [20 favorites]

US Army base on lockdown, sixty four soldiers busted in cocaine drug ring
I recommend that everyone read the comments on that article (at least the first half).
posted by Hal Mumkin at 5:05 PM on April 19, 2017 [33 favorites]

Completely unfounded claims. That only cost 13 million plus.

So, unfounded, but very well funded?
posted by uosuaq at 5:05 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Chaffetz is probably setting the stage for a gubernatorial run

With rumors that he's going to quit mid-term, and even the most charitable scenarios having him sitting idle for two years? And isn't Chaffetz currently losing popularity rapidly, to the extent that he's ducking town halls and the like? I'm not sure how "rapidly becoming hated by your constituents" and "jumping ship on the government job you have" can possibly be a good lead-in to running for governor.
posted by jackbishop at 5:06 PM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

I was confusing Senate vacancies, which get an appointment and then an election, with House vacancies. But, it turns out that said special election is complicated in Utah because there aren't really any rules:

For U.S. House members who resign, Utah law says simply that "the governor shall issue a proclamation calling an election to fill the vacancy."

It is silent on whether that should allow conventions or primary elections first to narrow the field, how quickly the election should be held, and how candidates qualify for the ballot — including whether they could do so by gathering signatures.

So we could get a situation like what just happened in Georgia, with tons of Republicans running, except with no primary. This all seems very odd.

[By the way, thanks Chrysostom for your special election updates! They are much appreciated.]
posted by zachlipton at 5:06 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

I recommend that everyone read the comments on that article (at least the first half).

I definitely needed a flamewar about whether PFC is an "acronym" or an "initialism" in my life.
posted by Justinian at 5:07 PM on April 19, 2017 [34 favorites]

I recommend that everyone read the comments on that article (at least the first half).

They can really initialize a plate of beans over there.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:12 PM on April 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

If it can't be pronounced it's just an initialism. I don't know why we'd even bother arguing about this.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:15 PM on April 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

I can pronounce PFC easily, but usually I have to unexpectedly swallow a bug first.
posted by downtohisturtles at 5:19 PM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

*invokes bill o'reilly voice*

"Friends of the metafilter, here's a man who made upwards of 29 million dollars a year (not counting book sales) to go on tv and lie to the the American public about aspects of their lives that really mattered, and yet, he didn't have enough self control to not call up women on the telephone and masturbate in a manner where they could not tell what he was doing."

"And he has the nerve to claim it's the fault of left-wing hit squads. Now Mr. and Mrs. America, I think we all know, the democrats are just not that good at thier jobs. If anyone had a hand in this particular hit parade, it was Mr. O'Reilly himself. And that's..... the rub."

"Tune in next week when bow-tie boy will be in this space rolling his eyes and sighing loudly to indicate his impatience with the truth."
posted by valkane at 5:21 PM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

It's pronounced "Goddammit". As in "Goddammit Snuffy ran over another fucking rake. What Dumbfuck [spelled C-P-L] put him on lawnmower duty again?!?"
posted by Etrigan at 5:21 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

there's no such thing as a bug - the proper name is insect - to be formal, it's insect first class or ifc
posted by pyramid termite at 5:22 PM on April 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

In order to pronounce ifc as an acronym, I have to swallow an ifc.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:23 PM on April 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

Completely unfounded claims. That only cost 13 million plus.

Sure, it's a loss, but they make it up on volume...

The thing I don't understand is*... Surely, it would have been cheaper to hire women for whatever his fetish is? I mean... I've never been rich, so I have no idea how much it costs to be a creepy weirdo or whatever. But it seems like he could afford to do it consensually and avoid all the legal Falafel.

Its sort of like when a millionaire gets busted for a DUI. I get why a factory worker might have a few after work and not call a cab because reasons, but a rich dude can easily afford the alternatives, so it's curious to me when they don't do it.

* mostly rhetorical. I'm not sure I want to understand what his problem is
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:26 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

I don't think Bill O'Reilly has a family

He won joint legal custody of his kids but they were so adamant about not wanting to live with him (and in the daughter's case about how abusive he was to Maureen McPhilmy, whom he once dragged down a flight of stairs in front of his daughter) that the judge listened to the kids and gave mom full physical custody. And this was after he used cop friends to try to go after his ex-wife's new cop boyfriend. And bribed his wife's therapist to rat her out to him. Or so the late Gawker reported. From the courtroom.

Scumbag all the way.
posted by spitbull at 5:27 PM on April 19, 2017 [55 favorites]

The thing I don't understand is*... Surely, it would have been cheaper to hire women for whatever his fetish is? I mean... I've never been rich, so I have no idea how much it costs to be a creepy weirdo or whatever. But it seems like he could afford to do it consensually and avoid all the legal Falafel.

Because you can't pay for it. If you did pay for it then it'd be fake. A trick. You know, something a whore does for money. Real power is where you can wield it with impunity. If you can't sexually harass female colleagues then it's not real power.
posted by Talez at 5:39 PM on April 19, 2017 [14 favorites]

The thing I don't understand is*... Surely, it would have been cheaper to hire women for whatever his fetish is? I mean... I've never been rich, so I have no idea how much it costs to be a creepy weirdo or whatever. But it seems like he could afford to do it consensually and avoid all the legal Falafel.

For quite a lot of sexual predators, having an unwilling victim IS the main point. If someone consented to the treatment, whether due to desire or being paid, it would take the thrill of subjugation out of it. Unfortunately this is a really common attitude in the modern male, whether it be forcing women to listen to you masturbate or sending random women dick pics or a more direct assault. It's about power and domination.
posted by threeturtles at 5:41 PM on April 19, 2017 [22 favorites]

Ivanka's notes for the babysitter

If Donald’s friend Steve calls, tell him to call back tomorrow. If Steve says that it’s urgent and concerns dismantling the administrative state, preëmpting the deep state, or hollowing out the State Department, tell him to call their friend Reince.

posted by Dashy at 5:47 PM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

Gisele tweets anti-Trump march as Brady skips White House visit

Supermodel and philanthropist Gisele Bündchen tweeted a link to an April protest against President Trump and his climate policies at the same time Wednesday that her husband, NFL quarterback Tom Brady, was missing the New England Patriots' visit to the White House.

On April 29th in Washington- D.C. - March for climate, jobs, and justice. To change everything, we need everyone. https://t.co/dZaRiXQV46

— Gisele Bündchen (@giseleofficial) April 19, 2017

The tweet has since been deleted. I admire her for taking a stand.
posted by futz at 5:58 PM on April 19, 2017 [21 favorites]

i'm glad to see that tom brady has learned to deflate something besides footballs

*ducks*
posted by pyramid termite at 6:01 PM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

Chaffetz is going to devote himself to investigating Hillary's emails full-time.
posted by EarBucket at 6:11 PM on April 19, 2017 [15 favorites]

In which I shout obscenities in the direction of Bernie Sanders:

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in an interview Tuesday in Louisville, Ky., said he didn’t know much about Mr. Ossoff, a 30-year-old former House staffer. Mr. Sanders said he isn’t prepared to back Democrats just because of a party label.

“If you run as a Democrat, you’re a Democrat,” he said. “Some Democrats are progressive and some Democrats are not.”

Asked if Mr. Ossoff is a progressive, Mr. Sanders, an independent who challenged Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, demurred. “I don’t know,” he said.

But you're not a Democrat either, Bernie. It's fine to have high standards. And if you refuse to get within 5,000 feet of anyone who doesn't meet your personal high standards, all the power to you and your integrity (though see, for example, his next campaign appearance, which points out those standards don't extend to no mandatory ultrasounds). But operating that way has got to be incompatible with being a member of party leadership. Sanders is the outreach chair for the Democratic Party. If he can't support Ossoff, who's he reaching out to?

I will say that I'm curious about the context of this quote and I'm open to the possibility that the WSJ did a hatchet job on it, but it's pretty damning. Interesting to see Daily Kos coming back in a strong way to push back against this stuff too.
posted by zachlipton at 6:15 PM on April 19, 2017 [36 favorites]

Why is everybody going to Louisville? Nobody ever went to Louisville when I lived there!
posted by valkane at 6:17 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

I don't see what the problem is with that Bernie exchange. Where does the "5,000 feet" bit come from? He doesn't strike me as much of a person to go along to get along.
posted by rhizome at 6:19 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Brady is a legit Good Guy (as opposed to a Nice Guy, which often seeks to imposter Good Guys.)

He sees himself as a skinny doofus who tries too hard. He nerds out over pseudo-science nutrition like he was a '90s raver into UFOs. He is contractually obligated to answer questions on Sports Talk Radio, the Monday (or Tuesday, sometimes Friday, depending on schedule), where one of the "Journalists" is a raving racist and the other is a self-important troll more keenly interested in picking fights with newspaper journos than actually talking to Tom Brady after he wins a game.

Serious. This is how these interviews go,

Racist: "Does it ever bother you that Bill has to draft so many people of the criminal element for you to have a respectable defense?"
Troll: This journalist I hate says that you throw the ball this way, which is wrong, as you win as you throw the ball that way!
Tom: I trust Bill to put the best team together, with the best players. Our Defense, from the nose to the corner, are all smart guys, really talented and self-disciplined, and I could not do what I do without them. And, hyuck, I do throw the ball that way sometimes, and Coach yells at me for that. I don't think that highlight will make Sportscenter! Guys, my kids are awake and want pancakes, and so the interview is OVER.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:19 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Why can't Bernie learn if Ossoff is a progressive or not? The DNC and the grassroots have thrown themselves entirely behind the Georgia election and Bernie can't be bothered to learn anything about Ossoff's views. Some great outreach from the outreach chair.
posted by vathek at 6:23 PM on April 19, 2017 [23 favorites]

He's the party's outreach chair. How do his comments reach out to voters in the GA-6? As David Nir puts it: "Bernie Sanders isn't helping—he's hurting. He should either endorse Ossoff and raise money for him, or keep his silence."

Now, it's Georgia, so Bernie's endorsement might well be the kiss of death for Ossoff politically. But this game where there are Democratic candidates and then there are Bernie-approved candidates is incompatible with being a member of leadership.

[I'm done on this topic for now before I punch something.]
posted by zachlipton at 6:23 PM on April 19, 2017 [34 favorites]

Some great outreach from the outreach chair.

I haven't read the linked article yet so if it ends up being accurate all I have to say IS WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU SANDERS. I don't get this all. I don't, can't, won't ever understand a stance like this. In between typing these words my hands are suspended in a Y position in the air.
posted by futz at 6:32 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is great, from C-SPAN Book TV:

‘SHUT UP!’: Watch Bill O’Reilly lose it when Al Franken exposes him as a liar during vintage segment
posted by Room 641-A at 6:34 PM on April 19, 2017 [7 favorites]

Is he? He did have the MAGA hat, which, I dunno about you, but makes me kinda think he's more a Nice Guy...

He definitely considers Trump a friend and has only said nice things about him.
posted by diogenes at 6:37 PM on April 19, 2017

Mr. Sanders said he isn’t prepared to back Democrats just because of a party label.

Getting more of that party label into the House is the only thing that will create a functioning check on Trump's abuse of power.
posted by diogenes at 6:50 PM on April 19, 2017 [10 favorites]

Ok, trying to switch my brain to another mode besides furious. Here is some good news!

Roy Moore's Suspension As Alabama's Chief Justice Is Upheld By Alabama Supreme Court

The Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously upheld a suspension of Roy Moore — the court's elected chief justice — that will last for the remainder of his time in office.

The decision means the judge who lambasted the US Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex couples' marriage rights will not serve on the state's high court again. He is suspended until his term expires in January 2019 and is ineligible to run again due to his age.

The high court — with seven specially appointed justices sitting in judgment because all of the elected justices recused themselves — upheld a state judicial ethics board's ruling that Moore violated judicial ethics canons on six counts, concluding, "[W]e affirm the judgment of the Court of the Judiciary in all respects."

The court found that the Judicial Inquiry Commission, which investigated and prosecuted the complaints, and Court of the Judiciary, which heard the complaints and meted out the punishment, acted within their jurisdiction.

To the broader point about whether the commission proved its case against Moore, the state's high court was blunt: "The record before this Court supports the findings of the Court of the Judiciary; therefore, we cannot conclude that its judgment is plainly and palpably wrong, manifestly unjust, or without supporting evidence."

Bye Bye fucker.
posted by futz at 6:56 PM on April 19, 2017 [54 favorites]

Christ.
I'm 42, the election was five months ago, and I'm still stuck shouting at Bernie Sanders to get off my goddamn lawn.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 6:58 PM on April 19, 2017 [26 favorites]

I don't see what the problem is with that Bernie exchange.

The problem is that when you've agreed to act as an outreach chair for the Democratic Party one thing you NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SAY is that some Democrats are progressive and other aren't. This is in the same way that you don't say that some Democrats are loyal Americans and others aren't, or that most Democrats aren't child-molesting cannibals but some might be.

If you fuck up spectacularly badly and actually do say that, someone might ask "Well, do you think Ossoff is a progressive?" What you do then is you say "Of course! He continues the proud tradition of progressive values that's such a critical part of what will turn this nation around!" What you don't say, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, is "I don't know."'

This is real fucking simple: if you're equivocating about supporting Ossoff, wondering if he's good enough, telling people he might not be good enough, what you are doing is absolutely unequivocally supporting Trump. You might not mean to. But you are absolutely unmistakably, without any serious possibility of error, performing actions that have the direct effect of supporting Trump.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:58 PM on April 19, 2017 [102 favorites]

Mod note: Folks, please a) flag and move on, b) refresh the thread, and c) keep your comments current to actual current events, not the primaries. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:11 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

I don't know if this is that important, hardly a paradigm shift, but the Times is reporting that it was Carter Page's Visit to Moscow That Sent the F.B.I. Digging
posted by Brainy at 7:26 PM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

White House sidewalk to be closed to public permanently

Maryland teens charged with hate crime for burning Trump sign

THIS is a hate crime? Unfuckingbelievable.
posted by futz at 7:31 PM on April 19, 2017 [29 favorites]

I despise Tom Brady, but I'm kind of loving that since third-string QB Jacoby Brissett probably didn't feel like he could cite "family reasons" or more openly protest going to the White House (after all, look what's happened to Kaep), I feel like posting a heartfelt thank you letter to Obama on Instagram during your Dolt45 visit is the way to go.

(Also: "Yes we can!! DREAM BIG!! Thank you,Jacoby Brissett
P.S Holla at me to help you with your broke jump shot" had me lolling)
posted by TwoStride at 7:33 PM on April 19, 2017 [21 favorites]

futz: "Maryland teens charged with hate crime for burning Trump sign"

Meanwhile, in Washington state, "Edmonds police doubtful painted swastikas were hate crime". Though in fairness, a day later, they did reverse themselves after public backlash: "Edmonds Police Backtrack Earlier Decision, Will Investigate Swastikas as "Possible Hate Crimes"". In conclusion, hate crimes investigations and prosecutions are a land of contrasts.
posted by mhum at 7:45 PM on April 19, 2017 [26 favorites]

Hope those teens get a good lawyer. If burning a flag is protected political speech (as it should be and as SCOTUS affirmed) burning a damn Trump sign sure as hell is too.

Hey ACLU!
posted by spitbull at 7:45 PM on April 19, 2017 [23 favorites]

@zachlipton:

You know, I've always wondered whether neocons hate drug cartels not because they kill people, as I imagine most of their victims are probably latinos, but instead because they do not get a cut of their profits.
posted by constantinescharity at 7:46 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I want more out of this Carter Page investigation, especially as it relates to Jeff Sessions. What's the tea on that connection?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:48 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

So the Trump sign that was burnt was apparently mounted on a business's window or wall. So they didn't just get a Trump sign and burn it. They burned actual property owned by someone who was displaying it. I don't count that as a "hate crime" since it seems like if "hate crime" has any meaning, the crime needs to be intended to intimidate or harass a group that has less power or is historically marginalized. But it's certainly not as simple as "burnt trump sign, charged with hate crime, omg free speech".
posted by R343L at 7:57 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Maryland hate crime statues refer to a "person or group of a particular race, color, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender, disability, or national origin", not, as the officer said, "these political signs, along with the beliefs, religious views and race of this political affiliation, directly coincides with the victim".

Political beliefs are not protected by statute in Maryland. Some prosecutor is going to have a very bad day trying to defend this, then ultimately decline to pursue a hate crime offense. Not that they can't still be charged with something else. But I doubt the hate crime charge sticks past a prosecutor reading that police report and rolling their eyes.

The basis for the hate crime charge, then, is that political affiliation with Trump is so closely tied to being a white christian that an attack on the one is automatically an attack on the other.

Yea...this. The prosecution would have to argue that Trump = religion. Surely we're not there yet.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:04 PM on April 19, 2017 [22 favorites]

Maryland teens charged with hate crime for burning Trump sign

I didn't realize assholes were a protected class.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:06 PM on April 19, 2017 [20 favorites]

Ok sorry sorry (this isn't my best day in the thread, between starting a relitigate-the-primaries fight and buying into some Louise Mensch narrative). I do think there's a question about actual current events behind all the fighting, and it's an important one for the future: What is the right model to run and win in districts like GA-6 (a historically strongly Republican district that has become competitive thanks to demographic change, fractured GOP opposition, and general dislike for the President)?

It's frustrating to me because I see the Ossoff campaign as a pretty extraordinary grassroots effort. It's one where a lot of people were shocked into action by the election, looked at the calendar for the first big place to fight back, and poured everything into this race. The message was essentially "mad about Trump? Channel that anger into something useful by throwing a few bucks this way, even phonebank or come volunteer if you can." And it worked incredibly well. Groups (and Daily Kos gets a lot of credit here) raised $8.3+ million from close to 200,000 donors, most of them out of state. And that's without the support of the official party apparatus. That's extraordinary, and a perfect example of the kind of thing that has to keep happening over and over again if we have a prayer in hell of picking up seats. So when the party's outreach chair says he doesn't know much about him, it's hard not to see that as a real slap in the face to all that grassroots effort.

Because the situation right now is that Tom Price left the seat open, and somebody is going to fill it one way or another. So is there a right way to get somebody elected there who is going to make Sanders and someone like Slap*Happy, well, happy? Is Jon Ossoff an "unelectable centrist candidate" the Dems shouldn't be running? What is the Bernie Sanders-approved strategy for districts like the GA-6, and since he's a member of party leadership with a huge mailing list stocked with loyal supporters, what is he doing to carry it out?
posted by zachlipton at 8:08 PM on April 19, 2017 [29 favorites]

I'm curious as to what dems will do if Ann Wagner runs against Claire McCaskill and vacates that MO-2 seat. I haven't heard squat about any democrat eyeing that spot. It's a tough district, for sure, but someone could at least go after the milennials still living at Casa Mom and Dad in The County demographic.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:19 PM on April 19, 2017

Broadly, I think the dems should run everyone in every seat. There's no reason not to make Rs fight where there's a fight to be had.

It's preferable if the dems that run aren't just R-lite Lieberman clones. But, even then, it's a seat. In the ideal case, enough good Dems win that the waffledems don't matter.

But, it's academic, because Dem leadership has been allergic to standing for anything except cashing donor checks and doing book tours about their losing campaigns. There are some signs that maybe they are hearing the rest of us who have to live here with the policies they helped implement through failure. I was there in WI in 2011, with the recall, and everything else - I know full well that Dems would very much rather clutch at pearls over Sanders being uncouth than actually stand for something, so I'm not optimistic.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:21 PM on April 19, 2017 [8 favorites]

since we're still playing slag bernie for reasons I'm going to throw out a proposed skeleton key for explaining what sanders will or will not do:

dude hates fundraising. He's old and he's crotchety and he's a moderate lefty and he just cannot bear to suck up to the bourgeoisie in order to get money out of them. which, like, I can't blame him — if suffering fools gladly is not in your skillset, you're going to despise trying to talk money out of the rich — but on the other hand it limits his ability to work with/exploit the apparatus of the democratic party.

So why doesn't he formally join the democrats instead of just caucusing with them? because he doesn't want to spend like six hours a day calling up rich nitwits telling them to give money to the DSCC. Why isn't he raising money for Ossoff? Cause raising money suuuucks. Dude is old and dude does not want to spend the waning years of his life in a cubicle with fluorescent lights sucking up to the sort of people who end up with large amounts of disposable cash in this godforsaken country.

The thing is, he's not wrong. but a genuine left leader has to develop the capacity to shake money out of the rich by telling their faces all sorts of placating lies, while meanwhile sticking a shiv in their backs.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:22 PM on April 19, 2017 [39 favorites]

so my proposed method for predicting whether or not Bernie Sanders will or will not do a thing for/with the Democratic Party involves asking whether or not that thing might require him to personally call up rich people and ask for money. If yes, he won't do it. If no, he'll do it.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:23 PM on April 19, 2017 [13 favorites]

So when the party's outreach chair says he doesn't know much about him, it's hard not to see that as a real slap in the face to all that grassroots effort.

From Wikipedia: According to the official website, "the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee is dedicated to fostering dialogue between Senate Democrats and community leaders from across the nation. Each year, the Steering Committee hosts several meetings with advocates, policy experts, and elected officials to discuss key priorities and enlist their help in the development of the Democratic agenda in the Senate. We are committed to serving as a liaison between Senate Democratic offices and advocacy groups and intergovernmental organizations."

Bernie, as outreach chair for the Senate, is a long way away from the management of or decision making for any election, other than his own campaign. The "job description" for his position says nothing about campaigning for candidates or fundraising.
posted by W Grant at 8:25 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

If yes, he won't do it [raise money from rich people]. If no, he'll do it.

Nobody asked Sanders to raise money for Ossoff. All they did was ask him to endorse. "He'll do it", you say? Well, apparently he won't.
posted by JackFlash at 8:30 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Zombie Trumpcare! It's back? Maybe? Sort of? Not really? Some Republicans Think They May Have A Health Care Deal

GOP moderates and conservatives are nearing a deal on health care that in theory could get the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act out of the House and over to the Senate. The changes also might move Republicans even further away from passage ― no one really knows.

The deal, brokered between House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Tuesday Group co-chairman Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), would allow states to get waivers eliminating the so-called community rating provision ― the rule that prohibits insurers from charging higher premiums to people with pre-existing conditions. In order to obtain the waiver, states would have to participate in a federal high-risk pool or establish their own, and satisfy some other conditions.

In exchange for that conservative concession, the amendment would reinstate the Essential Health Benefits that were already taken out of the bill ― though, again, states could waive those provisions as well if they were able to show that doing so would lower premiums, increase the number of people insured, or “advance another benefit to the public interest in the state."

So basically, screw over people with pre-existing conditions and let insurance companies sell crappy plans, but on a state-by-state basis. Of course, plenty of Republicans promised they wouldn't mess with coverage for pre-existing conditions, so who knows if this is going anywhere at all (they'll claim that everyone is still covered, but if insurance companies can charge you as much as they want, you're not covered). There are also still all the unanswered questions about this plan, like whether it also screws over people on Medicaid or seniors.

The narrative I'm seeing from some reporters is that the White House is seemingly determined to get something, anything moving again on healthcare so they can claim the "repeal Obamacare" promise isn't completely broken when everyone goes to do their "what has Trump done in his first 100 days?" reports. The crazypants thing is that the government is currently set to shut down on Trump's 100th day in office (April 29th), just a few days after Congress gets back, and it's really hard for me to see how saying "let's try the AHCA again" is going to improve the negotiating climate to avoid that.
posted by zachlipton at 8:35 PM on April 19, 2017 [16 favorites]

Yea...this. The prosecution would have to argue that Trump = religion. Surely we're not there yet.

Eh I pretty much consider the primary axis of sectarian conflict in the territories of this moribund empire to be between "traditional" Protestants and the syncretic Protestant offshoot Progressivism. If the courts deciding Red tribe and Blue tribe are protected classes keeps the bloodbath in check I could live with it. (Seriously, aren't a number of denominations schismed or close to it over gay marriage, etc.?)

Regarding Bernie Sanders (I), it's like while the word gets thrown around a lot you guys don't understand the concept of ally. Like the United States Government is allies with Her Majesty's Government, and big enough to push HMG around, but there's no expectation the latter go republican and become the 51st state.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:37 PM on April 19, 2017 [6 favorites]

"Trump = Religion" is -easy- to argue if you're arguing the Prosperity Gospel, and assuming he's still (or ever was) a billionaire.
posted by Archelaus at 8:52 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Shane Bauer was interviewed on this morning's Democracy Now! (at 52:00, alt link, .torrent) about the Berkeley incident. There's supposed to be an extended interview coming but it hasn't shown up on the site yet.
posted by XMLicious at 8:53 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Slap*Happy, sent you an email a bit ago, let's have this conversation there. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:35 PM on April 19, 2017

If the courts deciding Red tribe and Blue tribe are protected classes keeps the bloodbath in check I could live with it.

Except Red/Blue flavors of Christianity easily unite to take on all others, and declaring political views as equating to one religion would give them both a legal sword and shield. Ostensibly laws still matter, and legal definitions are very specific for good reasons. Like not labeling political speech as a hate crime. At least not yet, not until Republicans get all Trump's district court judges seated and Anthony Kennedy retires in July.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:55 PM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Pogo_Fuzzybutt: Dem leadership doesn't care, because they don't have to.

I think this grossly mischaracterizes the way party leadership thinks and operates.
posted by Superplin at 10:05 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Your [republican] greed is destroying this country, and you know what? We're going to take you on," Sanders said.

Asked about that kind of message, Perez demurred and said Democrats needed to campaign on "hope" and later called it a "false choice."

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce the two political parties that are going to lose to Trump in 2020.
posted by mmoncur at 10:12 PM on April 19, 2017 [11 favorites]

The crazypants thing is that the government is currently set to shut down on Trump's 100th day in office (April 29th),

I have Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds show on the 28th.

Interesting times indeed.
posted by mikelieman at 10:22 PM on April 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Except Red/Blue flavors of Christianity easily unite to take on all others, and declaring political views as equating to one religion would give them both a legal sword and shield.

I don't want this to become a derail, but I think it's worth noting that this "legal sword and shield" for Christians is *exactly* what their "Ensoulment happens at conception" legislation does with respect to the traditional Jewish belief of Ensoulment at the moment the mother feels the child move.
posted by mikelieman at 10:26 PM on April 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

Nobody asked Sanders to raise money for Ossoff. All they did was ask him to endorse. "He'll do it", you say? Well, apparently he won't.

Best thing for Sanders to do, in my opinion, is NOT endorse anyone. I mean, just read back in this very thread and you'll see tons of anti-Sanders comments. So he's not a Democrat so he needs to butt out, but he ALSO needs to publicly endorse Dem candidates? That's... not a realistic expectation.

I cannot believe (well, no, I can) that it's almost May of 2017 and we're still kvetching about Bernie Fucking Sanders.
posted by Ruki at 10:55 PM on April 19, 2017 [14 favorites]

White House sidewalk to be closed to public permanently

So anyone in Palm Beach with $200,000 can hang out with the President on the weekends, but ordinary people can't even get up to the fence on the South Lawn?
posted by zachlipton at 11:06 PM on April 19, 2017 [20 favorites]

Sanders Twit Tweet: The silver lining of the Trump administration is that millions of people are getting involved in politics for the first time to fight back.

And you just shot one down Bernie! Someone who could oust Tom Motherfucking Price. I am not sure if I am in the Flabber or the Gasted stage of being flabbergasted but boy howdy am I pissed off.

Upside:

Think #GA06 is over? Think again. @ossoff raised $500K today, biggest online fundraising total for them to date

Sanders comments about Ossoff (trying to keep to this specific story) are just incomprehensible. Totally incomprehensible. I hope he gets read the riot act hardcore. I mean, is there any indication that Ossoff is a Mnuchin or Heitkamp or...? And even then..
posted by futz at 11:10 PM on April 19, 2017 [16 favorites]

And you just shot one down Bernie! Someone who could oust Tom Motherfucking Price.
posted by futz at 11:10 PM on April 19 [1 favorite +] [!]

I love Bernie....but I am under no illusion that Bernie is that powerful, especially in THAT particular Georgia election and where there is no indication that Ossoff ever WANTED or ASKED Bernie for help. And Tom Price is out - he's already got his new job. There is no ousting of Tom Price.
posted by W Grant at 11:36 PM on April 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

Good points. W Grant and I agree but he shouldn't be maligning the Dem who could actually win.

But yes, you are correct and I lost sight of those circumstances in my frustrations. Thank you.
posted by futz at 11:54 PM on April 19, 2017

So, interesting developments in Alabama. You will recall that white supremacist Senator Jeff Sessions was named Attorney General, opening up the Senate seat. Governor Robert Bentley, who was under investigation for a campaign finance/sex scandal, named state AG Luther Strange to the vacancy in what seemed pretty clearly to be a quid pro quo for trying to sandbag the investigation.

As it happens, the legislature pushed on, and Bentley ended up resigning. Now new governor Kay Ivey has moved up the SPECIAL ELECTION to fill the seat permanently from next year to this one. So, Strange is on shakier ground, having very little Senate tenure and being under fire for the Bentley affair.

Dem shot at this seat is extremely low, but anything that distracts the GOP seems worthy.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:01 AM on April 20, 2017 [15 favorites]

I cannot believe (well, no, I can) that it's almost May of 2017 and we're still kvetching about Bernie Fucking Sanders.

Well, he's landed himself the position of Chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee, and he's presently touring the country in that capacity, and he's busy crapping over someone who is presently running for election. These are all newsworthy, current events. The fact that a non-Democratic Party politician was offered the position at all is risible. I mean, what does the outreach consist of? Telling people not to join?

Bernie's acting as if his personal integrity were the important thing here; it isn't.Ossoff deserves support from the Chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee simply because he's running as a member. More than that, though, he deserves it because he has a good chance to win and his victory would help the Party gain momentum. Even Bernie-the-progressive should have told people to go out and vote for Ossoff, but Bernie the Party Functionary had no other moral choice. The Democratic Party needs to stop genuflecting at the Altar of Uncompromisable Perfection and focus on winning seats. That's obviously not Bernie's priority, and he needs to be dumped. Hard.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:09 AM on April 20, 2017 [53 favorites]

A Timeline of Bill O'Reilly's Vileness
posted by futz at 12:42 AM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

The Democratic Party needs to stop genuflecting at the Altar of Uncompromisable Perfection and focus on winning seats.

I think we're coming from different positions here, but I absolutely agree with this. I voted for Sanders in the primary (and HRC in the general) and while I understand that his position is a thrown bone, I don't think it was the right move. It's not what he's good at, and he's polarizing to the point of distraction. There are other elected Berniecrats out there that could pick up the flag. Sanders is pretty much ruined as a spokesperson thanks to both the Bernie Bros and the anti-Sanders camp, and nothing he does will ever will be acceptable (justified or not) so, fuck it. Me not feeling represented pales in regard to the bigger picture right now. so that bigger picture is my focus.
posted by Ruki at 12:52 AM on April 20, 2017 [19 favorites]

The idea behind bringing someone into the tent is not that they piss all over the people inside the tent.
posted by jaduncan at 2:53 AM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

Regarding Bernie Sanders (I), it's like while the word gets thrown around a lot you guys don't understand the concept of ally. Like the United States Government is allies with Her Majesty's Government, and big enough to push HMG around, but there's no expectation the latter go republican and become the 51st state.

If HMG said they didn't know if we were a democracy and weren't sure if they would support us in a fight we wouldn't call them an ally anymore.
posted by chris24 at 3:33 AM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

I think I'd consider them more of an ally for acting that way at the moment. Bring on the election observers and war protesters.

OSCE/ODIHR—United States, General Elections, 8 November 2016: Final Report

Mukhamed Lou, whoever you are, thank you for coming all the way from the Kyrgyz Republic to observe our elections. Even if your organization's logo is a creepy tree made of eyeballs.

The Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions issued on 9 November 2016 concluded that “The 8 November general elections were highly competitive and demonstrated commitment to fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly and association. The presidential campaign was characterized by harsh personal attacks, as well as intolerant rhetoric by one candidate. Diverse media coverage allowed voters to make an informed choice. Recent legal changes and decisions on technical aspects of the electoral process were often motivated by partisan interests, adding undue obstacles for voters. Suffrage rights are not guaranteed for all citizens, leaving sections of the population without the right to vote. These elections were administered by competent and professional staff, including on election day, which was assessed positively by IEOM observers, despite some instances of long queues and malfunctioning voting equipment”.

posted by XMLicious at 4:09 AM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

If you consider slagging Jon Ossoff as morally equivalent to protesting the invasion of Iraq, I question your definition of "equivalent" and probably "moral".
posted by Etrigan at 4:13 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

These threads are increasingly like Paddy's Pub from IASIP.
posted by um at 4:28 AM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

The Gang Watches Helplessly As Institutions Collapse
posted by murphy slaw at 5:10 AM on April 20, 2017 [47 favorites]

Reproductive Rights are a Core Democratic Value

Any attempt to classify people as “progressive” that does not include reproductive freedom as a criterion is bullshit. That doesn’t mean that the issue is a “dealbreaker” in a general election where someone with bad views on the subject is the best you can do, but of course the same goes for candidates whose economic rhetoric Sanders finds insufficiently populist in tone.

posted by tonycpsu at 5:47 AM on April 20, 2017 [32 favorites]

On any given day on the floor of the House, Louie Gohmert is likely to scream I CUT THE BRAKES! WILD CARD, BITCHES! and kick over a podium. Parallel holds.
posted by delfin at 6:04 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

On any given day on the floor of the House, Louie Gohmert is likely to scream I CUT THE BRAKES! WILD CARD, BITCHES! and kick over a podium. Parallel holds.

You forgot the Yeeha
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:08 AM on April 20, 2017

This is Gohmert we're speaking of. I think it's implied at all times.
posted by delfin at 6:15 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Guardian: Donald Trump raised a record-smashing $107m for his inaugural festivities

Billionaires, corporations and NFL owners opened their wallets in a big way to help Donald Trump raise a record-shattering $107m for his inaugural festivities, records released by the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday show. The amount about doubled the record set by Barack Obama eight years ago.
[…]
All the seven-figure contributions fed into a fundraising total that dwarfed the amounts raised for past inaugurations – yet produced an event that was largely viewed as lower-key than previous swearing-in festivities. Trump’s inaugural committee does not have to disclose what it spent the money on or how much was left over. But it did promise to “identify and evaluate charities that will receive contributions left from the excess monies raised”.

This is a job for… Fahrenthold Man!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:41 AM on April 20, 2017 [34 favorites]

All the seven-figure contributions fed into a fundraising total that dwarfed the amounts raised for past inaugurations – yet produced an event that was largely viewed as lower-key than previous swearing-in festivities. Trump’s inaugural committee does not have to disclose what it spent the money on or how much was left over.

There's a project for the next Democratic president and Congress, and they can start by disclosing every dime of the president's own inauguration before signing the law.

If Roberts opened the door to unlimited money in politics on the grounds that money == speech, then not a dime of it should be anonymous.
posted by Gelatin at 6:45 AM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

Donald Trump raised a record-smashing $107m for his inaugural festivities

That's only like $14 per person who was there, though.
posted by Etrigan at 6:45 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Trump’s inaugural committee does not have to disclose what it spent the money on or how much was left over. But it did promise to “identify and evaluate charities that will receive contributions left from the excess monies raised”.

I'm sure the remainder will be distributed in a fair and transparent fashion, as is the style of this administration.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:49 AM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Politico: Trump’s missing 90-day cyber plan

Barron's late with his homework assignment!
posted by leotrotsky at 6:55 AM on April 20, 2017 [21 favorites]

It's satisfying to see the Trump Administration appear to be keenly aware of the 100-day "grading period" (and, by implication, how badly they're failing). I hope the grandiose promises Trump made (such as defeating ISIS in 30 days) loom large in the evaluations, too.
posted by Gelatin at 7:02 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

That 100 Day Press Conference In Full.

SPICER: Who knew it was so complicated? [EXITS]
posted by Devonian at 7:06 AM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

We really, really need a new Voting Rights Act

I'm going to once again bitch and moan about how -- as someone who has *never* spent more than 15 minutes casting a ballot in *any* election -- that any wait more than 30 minutes is a de-facto denial-of-service attack on our elections.
posted by mikelieman at 7:25 AM on April 20, 2017 [37 favorites]

Washington Post's Daily 202 leads off with this idea: "Republicans' best argument in special elections is Nancy Pelosi"

In lieu of having anything to run on, Republicans are running against the idea of her, seen recently in campaign ads for special elections.

According to every poll, Republican voters remain broadly supportive of the president. Issue-to-issue, they’re less supportive – and they have been flummoxed so far by the actions of the Republican Congress. No Republican has yet run and won as the candidate who’ll come to D.C. and help the president and speaker get things done. They’ve run harder on the promise never to let Pelosi back to power.

posted by ZeusHumms at 7:29 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

So we aren't getting a new voting rights act and the old one has been savaged. Rather than wish it so we'd better make sure all the NH students get properly registered and to the polls.
posted by spitbull at 7:30 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Seems to me the GOP could just set up a generic "that scary woman" to run against and save a lot of money on not cutting new commercials.
posted by spitbull at 7:32 AM on April 20, 2017 [31 favorites]

any wait more than 30 minutes is a de-facto denial-of-service attack on our elections.

I've already noted several messages I wish the Democrats would adopt in the interests of pushing the Overton window back from the right, and another is that Republicans' own actions reveal that they don't think a majority of Americans supports their agenda. A political party that was really confident in its majority status wouldn't be as obsessed with restricting voting as they are.

Every action the Republicans take to restrict the franchise should be met with "So you admit you're a cheater and a loser."
posted by Gelatin at 7:32 AM on April 20, 2017 [20 favorites]

WaPo: Bernie Sanders’s strange behavior
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:32 AM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

Dem leadership doesn't care, because they don't have to.

I think this grossly mischaracterizes the way party leadership thinks and operates.

On the one hand, nice people like you say these things on the internet.

On the other hand, I present the entire political reality of 2017 and the 30 years leading up to it.

What wins we've got, we've largely managed in spite of Dem leadership. Recall, after all, that Hillary was a big supporter of DOMA. Traction on gay marriage happened entirely because of political nobodies like Gavin Newsom. And yeah, sure, Obamacare happened. But it took Hillary's other opponent to get that done - another Dem outsider. And you could make a cogent argument that Obama's failures in his first term stem entirely from his hiring what remained of the Clinton Machine and getting that triangulating softpedaling band back together.

Anyway, it's academic - there is no functioning local Dem party where I live. The last election saw three Dems on the ticket - rep, senator and pres. Every other spot was R or a couple of independents. I, and the others here like me, have been written off by Dem leadership. I'm accustomed to that, however - I was there on the streets in Madison in 2011. The Dems failed us then, too.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:33 AM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

I actually wonder if the NH thing is trying to target Free Staters, not specifically college kids.
posted by corb at 7:33 AM on April 20, 2017

It's hard for the GOP to come out against Scary Women en toto when one of their prominent ones is widely associated with demon sheep.
posted by delfin at 7:36 AM on April 20, 2017

I actually wonder if the NH thing is trying to target Free Staters, not specifically college kids.

I don't know, but the new Iowa voter ID law, which excludes out-of-state drivers' licenses and student IDs from the list of valid IDs, is definitely intended to target college students, among other people.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:36 AM on April 20, 2017 [16 favorites]

Trump deports Scott Brown to New Zealand in obvious attempt to gain votes in Massachusetts.
posted by Etrigan at 7:37 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Sarah Palin, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent had dinner at the White House last night

... okay, got the setup, waiting for the punchline.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:40 AM on April 20, 2017 [28 favorites]

I actually wonder if the NH thing is trying to target Free Staters, not specifically college kids.

Then the question is, would the Republican politicians perceive Free Staters as less likely to vote for them than college students?

In any case, it doesn't matter. Restricting voting is obscene and undemocratic.
posted by Gelatin at 7:42 AM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

Sarah Palin, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent had dinner at the White House last night

... okay, got the setup, waiting for the punchline.

I mean, if a joke ever screamed for "The Aristocrats!"...
posted by Etrigan at 7:42 AM on April 20, 2017 [22 favorites]

Link to the beginning of a Rachel Maddow tweet-thread.

Here's something interesting. Remember a few days ago, when we dropped the MOAB on Afganistan? Remember that DoD statement that went out saying, in essence, that Trump said we were going to start bombing the shit out of people and now we're doing just that?

The DoD sent out another press statement, basically denying that that first statement actually came from them (in an official capacity, anyway). They wouldn't say who it did come from.

Fine, great.

But that second statement used a press release number that had already been used. And also, this press release (the one saying "that wasn't official") wasn't publicly posted in the place the DoD usually posts press releases.

So like: either somebody who was not a DoD spokesperson was pretending to be one to the media and making public statements, which the DoD disavowed (but they wouldn't point the finger at the person in question). Or a DoD spokesperson who was doing the disavowing slipped their leash and issued a press release that was wrongly coded and wasn't made public, which means the original (really quite fucked up) statement was official and the disavowal wasn't.

All of which points to the fact that, yes it's true, the car is on fire and there's no driver at the wheel.
posted by penduluum at 7:52 AM on April 20, 2017 [20 favorites]

New PPP poll is out! Full results PDF here.

Democrats lead the generic Congressional ballot 47-41. But what's more notable is the enthusiasm imbalance. 63% of Democrats say they're 'very excited' about voting in the 2018 election, compared to only 52% of Republicans who express that sentiment. When you look at the 2018 House picture just among the voters most excited about turning out next year, the lead for Democrats grows to 19 points at 57-38. Republican leaning voters are comparatively disengaged, with the GOP holding advantages only among voters who are 'somewhat excited' (48-40) and 'not that excited' (46-31).

Plus questions on tax returns, paid protesters, Steve Bannon, United Airlines, and more!
posted by melissasaurus at 7:54 AM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

Oh Jesus. Here's a diversion. This was totally predictable and still I'm shocked, and I really f*ing hate those off-the-shoulder tops.

People, when you walk into any establishment or other person's home where you are a guest, you take your hat off.

When you walk into the Oval Office, even if the president is an illegitimate leaking blueberry-shit diaper of a human being, especially if you're the sort of insufferable asshole who likes to drone on and on about the kids today and how when I was young we all had RESPECT, you take your fucking hat off.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:59 AM on April 20, 2017 [23 favorites]

actually wonder if the NH thing is trying to target Free Staters, not specifically college kids.

Even were this true, which is illogical because they don't comprise a big bloc of votes, that wouldn't be ok. Targeting groups of voters of any sort for suppression is inimical to democracy. But as others have noted, of course their goal is to suppress the votes of democratic-leaning college students. Because republicans are hateful and anti-democratic, and because they are hostile to educated people and education in general.
posted by spitbull at 8:01 AM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

Sarah Palin, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent had dinner at the White House last night

Did they have Meatloaf?
posted by srboisvert at 8:02 AM on April 20, 2017 [21 favorites]

Trump’s claim that ‘no administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days’

During the presidential campaign, he even issued a list of 60 promises that he said he would fulfill in his first 100 days.

We’ve been tracking Trump’s promises, and so far he has not even taken action on 60 percent of the promises — and he’s broken five of them, such as his promise to label China as a currency manipulator.

posted by kirkaracha at 8:04 AM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

Sarah Palin, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent had dinner at the White House last night

Dumb Dynasty season 1. The total collective IQ in the room reached a simmering 114. Also I've heard that Nugent hadn't changed his underwear in a month just in case he was asked to entertain the troops.

Also this is where I always exercise my guitar-playing prerogative to point out the Ted Nugent is to guitar playing what Kid Rock is to rap music and Sarah Palin is to motherhood. Nugent is a terrible musician whose only trick is turning it up until the feedback hides his lack of chops.
posted by spitbull at 8:09 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Yeah, screw that noise. I like my hat. I am more comfortable with it than without. If I meet the Pope while someone plays the Star-Spangled Banner and four petticoated Southern belles enter the room, and I fail to remove my hat, no one present will die of dysentery on the spot. Judge me on my behavior, not whether my entire hairdo is visible or if I am compliant with the Official Rules For Hats Like What Movie Cowboys Did.
posted by delfin at 8:12 AM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Why is taking a hat off necessary? I mean, if it's a big sombrero or something and you're likely to knock over lamps then ok. Otherwise, that tradition is exclusionary.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:04 on April 20 [+] [!]

Uh, because it's tacky af. What are you protecting your head from indoors?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:12 AM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

Unrelated to anything --

I spent the morning doing PTO stuff in the front office of my kids' school, and listening to the main office worker train in a temporary worker on their policies in the event of immigration showing up at the school. No entry into the school building, period. No buzzing in parents until you're sure that ICE has left the premises and won't shove their way in with them. If they say first that they have a specific warrant, then let the principal know, but still don't let them in.

I knew that our school district had an official sanctuary policy -- they've sent letters home to parents -- but it was so great to see that in action, and every single person aware of it.

(Also, I was making copies for the school social worker, whom I'd signed up to help the day after the election in an obsessive need to Fix Something Somewhere, and I was tired and grumpy and didn't want to be there trying to placate my two year olds so I could do office work. And after listening to them I left the school like DAMN STRAIGHT, PUNCH THE FASCISTS IN THE FACE and also print flyers for the mitten drive)
posted by gerstle at 8:12 AM on April 20, 2017 [55 favorites]

Otherwise, that tradition is exclusionary.

Wait, how? I suppose people who are paraplegic can't remove their own hat, and people who wear religious headgear might not be able to remove it, but those seem like legitimate exceptions to a longstanding sign of respect for your interlocutor or the context.
posted by spitbull at 8:14 AM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

What are you protecting your head from indoors?

Do you take any of your other clothes off once you're inside any building with climate control?
posted by Etrigan at 8:14 AM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

I can't help it, but when I look at that picture all I see are three men who are willing to do anything to hide the fact that they are balding.
posted by valkane at 8:15 AM on April 20, 2017 [36 favorites]

folks really please don't make this about the norms of polite society and the importance of adhering thereto. It's a bad look, especially when there's real stuff we could be talking about instead.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:16 AM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

Nugent is a terrible musician whose only trick is turning it up until the feedback hides his lack of chops.

Hey hey hey, feedback is a beautiful and interesting musical approach. Nugent's horrible lack of musicality can overshadow even the awesomeness of super high gain and feedback.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:17 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

Do you take any of your other clothes off once you're inside any building with climate control?

Jumper? Sunglasses?
posted by Talez at 8:17 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

What are you protecting your head from indoors?

Do you take any of your other clothes off once you're inside any building with climate control?
posted by Etrigan at 10:14 on April 20 [+] [!]

You mean like my coat?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:17 AM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

What are you protecting your head from indoors?

Do you take any of your other clothes off once you're inside any building with climate control?
posted by Etrigan at 10:14 on April 20 [+] [!]

You mean like my coat?

Depends. Do you also look askance at other people who don't take their coats off? Would you look askance at other people who took their shirts off? I mean, if "protecting your [body part] indoors" is the criterion, then far more than hats need to come off.
posted by Etrigan at 8:19 AM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nugent is a terrible musician

A draft dodger and a pedophile, too. He can't hunt in some states because of poaching convictions.

He and Trump are like peas in a pod.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:21 AM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

Mod note: Jeezum crow, folks, let's pick another time and place to hash out once and for all the rules of clothes doffing.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:22 AM on April 20, 2017 [42 favorites]

Some useful language for talking about the politics of race (as we do in these threads, and as most of us probably do elsewhere as well):

Racism, Hot and Cold

To the conservative mind [...] If there is no conscious hatred involved, then it’s totally unfair to suggest comparisons to the KKK, as they feel "racism" does.

“So fine, then,” a liberal might say, “give me the word that applies to this situation and we’ll use it.”

But then you hit the root problem: There is no conservative term for the habitual and perhaps unconscious tendency to see people of another race differently, judge them more negatively, and react to them more harshly.
...
In liberal circles, there is already a distinction between conscious and unconscious bigotry. We often talk about implicit bias, and there is even a test you can take for it on the internet. But every term I’ve heard smacks of some liberal bastion like psychology or academia. None of them would sound right rolling out of a conservative mouth. A conservative talking about implicit bias would impress his fellow conservatives about as much as a macho man talking to his locker-room buddies about relationships and commitment.
...
Here’s a common metaphor that might work: Emotions have temperature. Hate and anger are hot. If you feel a vague aversion towards someone, you are cool to them, and if the aversion got stronger you might want to freeze them out.

If we apply that metaphor to racism, then the kind conservatives already acknowledge, the conscious hatred that Emmett Till‘s killers must have felt, is "hot racism." [...] "Cold racism", on the other hand, doesn’t actively wish harm on people of color, but simply fails to factor in their interests or to weigh them as heavily as the interests of whites.

posted by OnceUponATime at 8:24 AM on April 20, 2017 [38 favorites]

Meanwhile, over at Jeff Sessions's Justice Department:

Key Official in Trump-Russia Investigation Will Step Down (The Intercept): "Mary B. McCord, who has been helping oversee the Justice Department’s probe into Russian interference in the presidential election, is stepping down from her post as the acting head of the department’s national security division and leaving the federal government in the coming weeks, a source familiar with McCord’s role told The Intercept. The source, who asked not to be identified as McCord’s departure has not been formally announced, said that McCord plans to work in academia after leaving government."
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:27 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

But then you hit the root problem: There is no conservative term for the habitual and perhaps unconscious tendency to see people of another race differently, judge them more negatively, and react to them more harshly.

How about just English?

prej·u·diceˈprejədəs
noun
1. preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
posted by Talez at 8:28 AM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

It's definitely intended to target college students.

I live in a college dominated town, is that the tax revenue from the college kids exceeds the locals by an order of magnitude AT LEAST. According to Free Market Republicans, their votes should count MORE, right?
posted by mikelieman at 8:28 AM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

Sarah Palin, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent

Worst. Tour. Ever.
posted by mikelieman at 8:30 AM on April 20, 2017 [25 favorites]

Racism, Hot and Cold

Wasn't "soft racism" devised for this purpose a while back? Which is to say, the problem isn't that there isn't a term. The problem is that any such term will immediately become The Worst Thing You Can Say About A Person and anyone you try to explain it to will shut down just as quickly because you said "That's 'cold racism'" or "That's 'implicit bias'" or "That's 'dynamic privilege'" or whatever else is devised.
posted by Etrigan at 8:33 AM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

Yeah, there are other terms, but I think the point that "this is something you could imagine a conservative actually saying" is a good one.

Anyway, I'm going to use it for "arguing on the internet" purposes going forward, because I think it's clearer and more powerful than the alternatives, and I think the resonances with "cold war" as opposed to "hot war" are effective at making the distinction I'm often trying to get at.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:37 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I actually found that article perfect and incredibly useful, and am going to try to use the differentiations (hot, cold, room temperature) in future and see how it resonates in conservative land.

I think the "room temperature" descriptor is especially perfect because it describes a state of what feels normal to people in it, but not everyone has the same "room temperature" temperature. So this way you can describe someone who is acting appropriately for their experience- not suggesting they are specifically and personally immoral - but just sugggesting their room temperature is not appropriate for the actual room. You get away from the "what is the soul of a man" kind of discussion.
posted by corb at 8:43 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

Using appeals to reason is why I have my "Look, if you want to effectively reduce abortion/save a shitload of money, fund contraception for everyone. Abortion rates will plummet, healthcare costs go down (because contraception is much cheaper than babies), fewer children end up in foster care, and more women are likely to vote for you/your party."

When people respond to this argument with some variation of "But then I'll be helping people have sex without suffering for it!" then I know we are not talking about reason anymore.
posted by emjaybee at 8:47 AM on April 20, 2017 [67 favorites]

"But Jesus" also counts for that.
posted by delfin at 8:52 AM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

There's definitely something weird going on with Chaffetz if he isn't going to finish his term.
posted by diogenes at 8:53 AM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

But then you hit the root problem: There is no conservative term for the habitual and perhaps unconscious tendency to see people of another race differently, judge them more negatively, and react to them more harshly.

...find a word that conservatives would say...

I mean if this were a relationship askme we'd all be like "Jesus Christ DTMFA"
posted by schadenfrau at 8:54 AM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

There's definitely something weird going on with Chaffetz if he isn't going to finish his term.

Agreed. You don't work your way up to a position of considerable power as the chair of a major House committee and then just quit in the middle of your term unless there's a very significant issue brewing.

Sarah Palin quit halfway through her governorship, but it was to take on a million-dollar marketing deal that she couldn't grab if she still held office. There's something big going on here for Chaffetz - either good or bad for him - that hasn't hit the news...yet.
posted by darkstar at 8:57 AM on April 20, 2017 [15 favorites]

There's definitely something weird going on with Chaffetz if he isn't going to finish his term.

Yeah, my Representative resigned only a few months before the 2012 election because he was indicted for voter fraud. I can't imagine Chaffetz is doing anything but trying to avoid something similar, overtly or co-.
posted by Etrigan at 8:58 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

I mean if this were a relationship askme we'd all be like "Jesus Christ DTMFA"

Well, we can't dump them, and moreover, people do change their political opinions over time (I have), so even if we could "dump them" we'd have a new set of conservatives in less than a generation, and the conservative sea-steading islands we sent them to would have a new set of liberals.

Since we can't dump them, we have to figure out ways to talk to them...
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:58 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

You get away from the "what is the soul of a man" kind of discussion.

Corb, I think this is specifically what makes me crazy, because, I mean, the soul of the man is the problem. It's the problem for everybody. Maybe what they don't get is that liberals generally believe everyone has this kind of work to do? And liberals have blind spots, too (witness all the misogyny and racism on the left).

But pretending that it's not actually a problem with how they view other human beings and pretending it's a question of appropriate etiquette or something seems like giving Tylenol to someone with a contagious flu and then sending them back out there to cough all over everyone.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:58 AM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

The Trump Administration is an entire store's worth of shoes waiting to drop.

And it isn't even 100 days old.
posted by Gelatin at 9:00 AM on April 20, 2017 [15 favorites]

I'm also reminded that there was a stick for Palin as well as the carrot: she was facing ethics charges, too. Similar ethics situation leading to Aaron Schock's resignation.
posted by darkstar at 9:01 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

You get more flies with honey than vinegar. You get further with "light racism" trying to nudge them by degrees than by confronting and condemning them outright.

The problem is that the potato salad is damn tired of excuses for swarms of flies landing on it year after year and feels quite justified in demanding stronger fumigation.
posted by delfin at 9:09 AM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

The Trump Administration is an entire store's worth of shoes waiting to drop.

A veritable DSW of scandal
posted by dis_integration at 9:10 AM on April 20, 2017 [13 favorites]

Since we can't dump them, we have to figure out ways to talk to them...

Like a sibling, parent, or co-parent-of-your-child, you can never truly "dump" them, no. But we can take other advice from AskMe like go low/no contact, "No." is a complete sentence, set and enforce boundaries, "That won't be possible.", etc. Yeah, we're all forced to live with them, but we don't have to allow them to dictate what our boundaries are or what our responses to their boundary crossing will be.

E.g.: Them: "But I waaaaaaaaant to debate trans rightsssssss."
Us: "That won't be possible."
Them: "BUT BUT BUT BUT -"
Us: "No."
Them: "SO MUCH FOR THE TOLERANT LEFT"
Us: ~*blissfully working toward fully automated luxury space intersectional feminism after blocking their number~*
posted by melissasaurus at 9:15 AM on April 20, 2017 [29 favorites]

Like a sibling, parent, or co-parent-of-your-child, you can never truly "dump" them, no. But we can take other advice from AskMe like go low/no contact, "No." is a complete sentence, set and enforce boundaries, "That won't be possible.", etc. Yeah, we're all forced to live with them, but we don't have to allow them to dictate what our boundaries are or what our responses to their boundary crossing will be.

Except it'll be more like:

E.g.: Them: "But I waaaaaaaaant to debate trans rightsssssss."
Us: "That won't be possible."
Them: "BUT THEY MAKE ME FEEL ICKY AND INSECURE ABOUT MY MASCULINITY!"
Us: "No."
Them: "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
Them: ~*blissfully committing domestic terrorism and hate crimes against trans people~*

posted by Talez at 9:22 AM on April 20, 2017 [17 favorites]

I think "ignore them and hope they go away" is more or less the approach everyone took during the Obama administration, but it only works if you are in a position of power. When they start winning elections, we aren't in position to ignore them any more.

I dunno, I go back and forth on this stuff. I've recently been very disillusioned about how well "talking to people" and "appealing to their better instincts" actually works. Not very well! People are kind of terrible, worse than I previously thought. But I don't see that we have any other choice.

Anyway, whatever. If you don't want to argue with racists, I understand, and I can't make you anyway. But if you do find yourself arguing with them, as I do, for some reason, I think this some useful language.
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:23 AM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

Chrysostom: WaPo: Handel has a lot of fences to mend in GA-06.

In a district Trump had carried by just 1.5 percentage points last year, Gray had banked on just enough pro-Trump Republicans to carry him into a runoff with Democrat Jon Ossoff. With the GOP vote split between 11 Republican candidates, it wasn’t an entirely wild idea, but as midnight approached on Tuesday, it became clear that it was just a fantasy.

Instead, the evening would go to Karen Handel, who appeared headed to a runoff with Ossoff early Wednesday.

For most Republican voters in the 6th District, Trump loyalty has become a matter of begrudging party loyalty. It’s a delicate dance, and Handel found a way to do it best.

This makes me very happy, and I think this is what bodes best for the US. Yes, it would have been wonderful if Ossoff swept this one, but that would have been amazing. But for every Little Trump who loses, I think we crawl a bit closer to normal. Yes, the GOP is still the party of extreme gerrymandering, voter intimidation and blocking by any means possible, war hawks and hate-mongers, but not as extreme as Trump (or his "coaches") would like.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:24 AM on April 20, 2017 [14 favorites]

The thing that genuinely baffles me about Republicans are going around tearing up minority protections (from voting rights to trans rights to the filibuster and everything in between) is that some day -- and I believe the day is coming soon -- they, as the political minority, will want to benefit from those norms and protections.

We know that Republicans aren't good about thinking long term, but this practice is particularly egregious.
posted by Gelatin at 9:26 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's not ignoring them and letting them get away with violence - it's just recognizing that their voice is not important; their perspective is not important; responding to them as if they have standing to discuss any of these issues gives them legitimacy. We can just say "sorry, you don't have standing to bring that claim; dismissed" - then take the time we would have spent litigating their "case" and devote it to tasks that actually reduce the impact of oppressive structures.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:28 AM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

> Since we can't dump them, we have to figure out ways to talk to them...

This is bad framing and leads to bad ideas. The goal isn't persuadimg fascists and their supporters. The goal is marginalizing them; making them by whatever means politically irrelevant. Persuasion — getting fascist sympathizers to switch sides — is one tool in the box of methods for marginalizing fascism, but it is only one tool among many, and not a particularly effective one.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:29 AM on April 20, 2017 [23 favorites]

There's definitely something weird going on with Chaffetz if he isn't going to finish his term.

Agreed. You don't work your way up to a position of considerable power as the chair of a major House committee and then just quit in the middle of your term unless there's a very significant issue brewing.

The major issue is called "money." Every one of these grifters will cut and run on their supposedly called-from-on-high doing the politics for the people schtick the moment it is more profitable to do so.

As examples: Palin, linked above, who bailed on her governorship to go get that wingnut media welfare. Rep Cantor, who bailed on the remainder of his term after being primaried out by Brat, to go get the lobbyist dollars. Hell, even Manafort and some others from the administration only in its third month.

As an additional factor, it's an accepted idea around town that Chaffetz hates being here. The idea that he'd like to bail out on having to spend time in DC - where his personal mythology requires he sleep on a cot in his office - isn't that shocking to me. If the K street money is good enough he'll jump ship early, particularly if it looks like (though I am having a hard time holding back the laughter here) the Congress and/or Trump administration start to make moves to impede the revolving congresscritter/lobbyist revolving door.
posted by phearlez at 9:30 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

We can just say "sorry, you don't have standing to bring that claim; dismissed" - then take the time we would have spent litigating their "case" and devote it to tasks that actually reduce the impact of oppressive structures.

Exactly. Standing is partially based on demonstrating that one is actually harmed. One might believe that gays and trans people are icky, but their having the same rights as you does not actually harm you, certainly not in a way that justifies the greater hard of denying them their own rights. The ability of gays and lesbians to marry does no actual harm to the institution of marriage at all.
posted by Gelatin at 9:33 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

It's not ignoring them and letting them get away with violence - it's just recognizing that their voice is not important; their perspective is not important; responding to them as if they have standing to discuss any of these issues gives them legitimacy. We can just say "sorry, you don't have standing to bring that claim; dismissed" - then take the time we would have spent litigating their "case" and devote it to tasks that actually reduce the impact of oppressive structures.

These are people who don't give a crap about the most egregious of cognitive dissonance and have no shame about being hypocrites. You really think they're going to spend energy in some sort of intellectual battle of the discourse? If the extreme people out there think a trans-woman is going into the women's bathroom and their wife/mother/sister/kid is in there they'll just beat the crap out of them, policy be damned.
posted by Talez at 9:36 AM on April 20, 2017

Maybe he thought back on that IPhone/health coverage thing he said and decided he should just quit before he said something even more stupid.
posted by Golem XIV at 9:37 AM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

As a former DC resident I only wish Chaffetz had left years ago. It was bad enough that he was always picking on the District; but he was always so gleeful about it. Like he had found his own playground where he could be king bully.
posted by orrnyereg at 9:44 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

... okay, got the setup, waiting for the punchline.

The line would be our faces. They use a sledgehammer instead of a fist.
posted by juiceCake at 9:44 AM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

These are people who don't give a crap about the most egregious of cognitive dissonance and have no shame about being hypocrites. You really think they're going to spend energy in some sort of intellectual battle of the discourse? If the extreme people out there think a trans-woman is going into the women's bathroom and their wife/mother/sister/kid is in there they'll just beat the crap out of them, policy be damned.

Sure, but what about every cable news show and major newspaper that has segment after segment about trans people, often exclusively discussed among cis folks. Or discussion of abortion that includes no people with uteruses. Etc etc. For every white male terrorist shooting up a planned parenthood, there are a hundred white male pundits telling him he's doing the right thing.

One of the best ways to show people they are out of step with the mainstream is to have them not reflected in the mainstream. Erasure is a very powerful tool; they've been using it against us for millennia.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:45 AM on April 20, 2017 [15 favorites]

Several of those are entirely rational within the framework of Republican legislators (as opposed to Republican voters) wanting to retain the levers of power longer.

In the short term, yes, but a Democratic president in 2020 is going to be able to fill any SCOTUS vacancy with a much more liberal candidate than she otherwise might have if the filibuster was intact, and that's just one example.

It shouldn't be surprising from a party that believes in transferring infrastructure spending to tax cuts for the rich instead of the other way around, but Republicans are eating their seed corn. (They're also ensuring that Democrats elected in 2018 and 2020 will not be in a forgiving mood at all.)
posted by Gelatin at 9:45 AM on April 20, 2017

Corb, I think this is specifically what makes me crazy, because, I mean, the soul of the man is the problem. It's the problem for everybody. Maybe what they don't get is that liberals generally believe everyone has this kind of work to do?

It's not that. It's more like - oh man, as I start to explain it I realize it's more complex than I thought! But here goes.

If you are a Christian who believes in a heaven and hell, and a God who is able to sort out souls for each place, then you must, by definition, believe people can be sorted into "good enough to get into Heaven" and "bad enough to get into Hell". (We are leaving out for the moment Purgatory, in part because most of the people we are discussing tend to be Protestants.)

This belief system has to account for changing views and mores, because it has to account for the past. When you're deciding the question of "was this person a good person or not", it's not just an academic question- you're deciding whether you think these historical figures would be in heaven or hell - whether or not, essentially, their soul is damned. Even if you're not doing it on a conscious level, even if you've put a lot of those beliefs aside, emotionally, these are the resonating factors.

So when you allow "what is the soul of a man" questions to come into "is this racist" questions, it's a much higher bar, because you're no longer saying "Did granny/uncle/whoever grow up in a much different time, and should stop saying those things, but is essentially a good person", but are now saying, "Is granny damned", to hell, forever, because she grew up in a time when those things were normal.

And the crazy thing is I think most of the people trying to make these moral arguments don't actually care about the soul question, exactly, so much as they want people to agree "it is morally right not to be bigoted". And that's where these gradients come in.

If everyone sins, and racial bias you haven't gotten out - room-temperature racism that exists in you - is a sin, but a minor sin that won't immediately send you to hell, then that's something you can do something about and work at and struggle with, the same way people struggle with cheating on their wives or stealing or other things that are bad but will not immediately and completely damn you. But if it's a damning sin that precludes you from the sight of heaven, then your choices are to repent completely and live differently or to just be damned. And it's really hard for someone to immediately undo years of ingrained racial bias.

So within this morality framework, that's why it kind of matters to be able to say that you believe someone's a fundamentally good person, but they are exhibiting a sin you believe they can correct. You're saying not that their actions in showing bias are good, but that they are essentially heaven bound but just need to clean up their act.
posted by corb at 9:51 AM on April 20, 2017 [23 favorites]

Trump’s first war is here at home: A military-style assault on undocumented immigrants
It sounds as if he believes he’s a real general, running a real war. And the enemy is not just the “terrorist” gangbangers; it’s millions of undocumented immigrants who’ve been designated as criminals for infractions as minor as driving without a license. And now the administration has even got media “embeds” with the troops, reporting from the front.

I knew Trump was very likely to start a war. It’s just not in his character to resist the temptation to flex his muscle and prove his manhood. But I assumed he would fight the hated foreign hordes overseas on their own turf. Unfortunately, whatever happens with our various foreign policy crises, it’s looking more and more every day like we’re also going fight a war right here, on the streets of American cities.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:55 AM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Okay, so Republicans have a new healthcare plan and guess what? It has an insurance mandate, the thing they've been screeching about for the last seven years.

But it's not what you think. For some background, I made this comment last month. If you remove the requirements for essential benefits, coupled with the Republican plan to provide identical subsidies to everyone regardless of income, then insurance companies will create as one option garbage plans that have few benefits and very high deductibles but have premiums that cost exactly the amount of the subsidy.

My comment at the time was that healthy people will just choose the cheap plan because it matches the universal subsidy. They probably will never use the plan because it has few benefits and very high deductibles, but they may as well take because it is free with the subsidy. Essentially, it is just a means of transferring taxpayer funds cost free to insurance companies for benefits they will never pay.

What I didn't realize at the time is that for Republicans, this is actually a feature that they would brazenly embrace. They aren't going to just wait around for healthy people to sign up for these worthless plans to transfer taxpayer money to insurance companies. In their new plan they are going to mandate them by "auto-enrolling" everyone in these worthless plans if they don't choose any other.

In other words, Republicans are going to mandate that taxpayer funds be transferred to insurance companies for worthless policies. Meanwhile they will brag no more 24 million uninsured. Everyone will be insured but most of them will have useless insurance and the insurance companies get a windfall. Oh, and don't forget tax cuts for the rich.
posted by JackFlash at 9:56 AM on April 20, 2017 [73 favorites]

(They're also ensuring that Democrats elected in 2018 and 2020 will not be in a forgiving mood at all.)

have you MET a democrat
posted by beerperson at 9:58 AM on April 20, 2017 [26 favorites]

The more confusing thing, to me, is the more insider-baseball stuff -- the reports that the White House is trying to only disclose information to House committee chairs, rather than to all committee members, for example; that's something that absolutely cuts both ways, if it becomes enshrined as common practice.

Restricting the dissemination of facts doesn't actually hurt you if you just lie all the time.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:58 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Sarah Palin, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent had dinner at the White House last night

... okay, got the setup, waiting for the punchline.

He's sitting behind the desk.
posted by EarBucket at 10:00 AM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

In other words, Republicans are going to mandate that taxpayer funds be transferred to insurance companies for worthless policies. Meanwhile they will brag no more 24 million uninsured. Everyone will be insured but most of them will have useless insurance and the insurance companies get a windfall. Oh, and don't forget tax cuts for the rich.

The dastardly libruls at the CBO saw this trick coming and decided to categorize garbage plans as being "uninsured" for the purposes of their budget scoring. So at least on that front they won't be getting away with it, assuming they let the CBO score the bill before they vote on it.
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:02 AM on April 20, 2017 [17 favorites]

There might be an actual bill that can pass the House next week, but the spin the White House is putting on this is absurd.

Well, jeez, is another face-destroying loss based on a failure to set expectations ppropriately about the popularity and passability of extremely vile legislation in the offing? I can hardly contain my excitement!
posted by Existential Dread at 10:04 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Allison Janney on Broadway, 'The West Wing' legacy and Trump:

Has she watched any briefings from the real press secretary, Sean Spicer? "I have been able to watch few of them because I get so embarrassed and it is too upsetting for me to watch them," she says. "I can't even talk about it."

Meanwhile, marijuana advocates are handing out joints to members of Congress and their staffs (and reporters), so it could be a weird day.

And, Emily Nussbaum brings us a slightly-late, but perfect, pun: "During Passover, it is traditional to remove all the Chaffetz from the House."

Finally, in more serious news, I wanted to recommend this talk (or the text thereof) by Maciej Ceglowski, with assistance from Zeynep Tufekci: Build a Better Monster: Morality, Machine Learning, and Mass Surveillance:

A question few are asking is whether the tools of mass surveillance and social control we spent the last decade building could have had anything to do with the debacle of the 2017 election, or whether destroying local journalism and making national journalism so dependent on our platforms was, in retrospect, a good idea.

We built the commercial internet by mastering techniques of persuasion and surveillance that we’ve extended to billions of people, including essentially the entire population of the Western democracies. But admitting that this tool of social control might be conducive to authoritarianism is not something we’re ready to face. After all, we're good people. We like freedom. How could we have built tools that subvert it?

posted by zachlipton at 10:05 AM on April 20, 2017 [29 favorites]

I'm a little late to post this re: that Franken segment as I've been percolating on it overnight. Is there a name for what the Lying Liar Bill O'Reilly does when he lies just enough to either plausibly deny deceitful intent, or will "clarify" to make it look like the questioner didn't understand the scope of their (the Liar's) statement?

Example (paraphrased):
Bill O'Reilly said they (Inside Edition) won a Peabody. They didn't. Turned out they won a Polk. And "they" didn't even include Bill. IE won a Polk after Bill was gone. So it went from "We won a peabody" (first statement) to "oh it was a Polk but still 'we'". But the truth was ACTUALLY "IE won a Polk after O'Reilly left."

It feels like it's somewhere between gaslighting and "Truthful Hyperbole, but I'm not sure those capture it. It's like a 20% lie that they feel is within the margin of error of the truth, so they can always walk it back in the off chance they're ever confronted with the truth. It's also something my parents did a lot of growing up, so I have blinders to it's existence in some ways. It always seems to give the liar one more chance to act like you're an idiot for either being "nitpicky" or "not getting it". Anyway, it's crazy making for me and I'd like a label for it.
posted by avalonian at 10:08 AM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

The wife of someone executed by cops, the person harassed or attacked for "looking Muslim," the dark-skinned person who waits in line for hours only to be told surprise, you can't vote!, and the family whose benefits and healthcare are threatened give less than a shit about Granny Redneck's afterlife destination. Just saying.
posted by delfin at 10:08 AM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

you're deciding whether you think these historical figures would be in heaven or hell

Judge not, that ye be not judged.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Unless you're Samuel L. Jackson.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:10 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

There might be an actual bill that can pass the House next week, but the spin the White House is putting on this is absurd.

I'm basically okay with the White House puffing up a lot of nonsense spin about "working on" and "being close to" another ACA repeal in time for the 100-day report card, only for it to collapse into a heap of much-hyped failure on Day 101.

Earlier still, better yet.
posted by Gelatin at 10:10 AM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ivanka Trump Heading to Germany for Official Visit

Why staff the State Department with experts when we can just give all the glory to the President's family?
posted by zachlipton at 10:11 AM on April 20, 2017 [21 favorites]

you're deciding whether you think these historical figures would be in heaven or hell

Of course, these same people don't hesitate to sit in judgment on all people, past and present, who are LGBTQ.
posted by Gelatin at 10:13 AM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Ivanka Trump Heading to Germany for Official Visit

Official because you have to apply for political asylum in person?
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 10:14 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

It feels like it's somewhere between gaslighting and "Truthful Hyperbole, but I'm not sure those capture it.

A liar has some respect for the truth. A bullshitter just doesn't care.
posted by Gelatin at 10:17 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Is there a name for what the Lying Liar Bill O'Reilly does when he lies just enough to either plausibly deny deceitful intent, or will "clarify" to make it look like the questioner didn't understand the scope of their (the Liar's) statement?

I think Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" holds up pretty well. With the added benefit that it was about O'Reilly in the first place.
posted by msalt at 10:18 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

The big lie of the Franken - O'Reilly segment wasn't that O'Reilly falsely claimed he won a Peabody, which could have plausibly been a mistake. It was that after being called on it he claimed that he never said that he had won a Peabody and that the media was lying about what he had said.
posted by vathek at 10:26 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

Ivanka Trump Heading to Germany for Official Visit

Official because you have to apply for political asylum in person?

If there's one place in the world that's not keen on Russophilic Nazi-apologists, it'd be modern day Germany.

Is she planning on crossing on a red light whilst visiting as well?
posted by leotrotsky at 10:29 AM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Trump legal tab: $4 million and rising. This bit seems rather sketchy, like they were trying to cover up a settlement:

In one case, a British photographer sued Trump and his campaign — as well as his son Donald Trump Jr. and Vice President Mike Pence — for allegedly misappropriating a photo of a bowl of Skittles featured in a tweet by Don Jr. arguing it was dangerous for the U.S. to accept refugees from Syria.

The photographer dropped the case in December, about a week after a $10,000 payment was made to the firm of the photographer’s lawyer, Heather Blaise. Told that the payment was listed in the Trump campaign’s FEC report as “legal consulting,” Blaise laughed and said “that’s interesting. I have never been retained as counsel or a consultant to the campaign.” She wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the case.

posted by zachlipton at 10:33 AM on April 20, 2017 [32 favorites]

Is there a name for what the Lying Liar Bill O'Reilly does when he lies just enough to either plausibly deny deceitful intent, or will "clarify" to make it look like the questioner didn't understand the scope of their (the Liar's) statement?

Narcissistic personality disorder; sociopathy.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:36 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

>> It feels like it's somewhere between gaslighting and "Truthful Hyperbole, but I'm not sure those capture it.

> A liar has some respect for the truth. A bullshitter just doesn't care.

So this is one of those things that I get really hung up on, but, well, I can't deny that I'm hung up on it, so here goes:

There are two ways to react to the knowledge that people have interests other than truth, and that we have a tendency to use speech to advance our ends as we see them, rather than just using speech as a means to disinterestedly determine what is or is not true.

One way is to be scandalized: those bullshitters over there are bullshitting, they don't even care about truth, they're worse than liars, they're the devil, how can we reëstablish the norm that truth must be respected, whatever can we do? This pattern of reaction is paralyzing, because no matter how much you wish that truth will by its own shining nature win out, languages, minds, and societies don't work that way, and we're just left feeling sad and hopeless.

The other way is to, well, accept it. Acknowledge that people have perspectives, acknowledge that we all have material interests, and accept that we all use language to advance those interests rather than to uphold truth or whatever — accept that the norm of truthtelling never really existed, and that debate is less about truth and more about advancing material interests. This means, though, abandoning the pose that bullshit is a scandal — or at least, abandoning the idea that bullshit is really truly scandalous.

Any denunciation of bullshit has to be itself bullshit to be valid. Calling bullshit as a tactic in a campaign to marginalize a political actor can be useful, but only insofar as it advances our material interests. Denouncing bullshit just because you don't like bullshit, though, is naïve and ineffectual.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:38 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

you're deciding whether you think these historical figures would be in heaven or hell

I do not understand Protestant concerns at all. Are you saying that they don't want social progress because changing standards of moral behavior would make dead people look bad retroactively? And that's like, more upsetting than the present injustice?
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:40 AM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

WSJ: Publicity Over Dispute by Former Trump Partners Could Tarnish President, One Warns

Felix Sater is battling his former boss, Tevfik Arif, over $3.5 million in legal fees related to Mr. Sater’s employment at Bayrock Group LLC, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Bayrock developed the Trump SoHo in New York City, which opened in 2010.
...
Mr. Sater, in a personal memo sent to Mr. Armao, was blunter: “The headlines will be, ‘The Kazakh Gangster and President Trump.’”

Felix Sater, you magnificent bastard, you should just write a frickin' book. You'll make a lot more than $3.5 million, I bet.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:41 AM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

Tehhund is still back there, working diligently. Just favorited a comment of mine from March 24th. Hi Tehhund!

reëstablish

thank you for this, it's beautiful
posted by Existential Dread at 10:42 AM on April 20, 2017 [43 favorites]

So at least on that front they won't be getting away with it, assuming they let the CBO score the bill before they vote on it.

That remains to be seen. I can see the Republicans marketing this as mandating free (worthless) insurance for everyone. Whee!

But this has another side effect. It removes the healthy from the real insurance pool, which will increase premiums for those who need real insurance.

Which gets to another gadget in their Rube Goldberg plan, high risk pools. They will segregate out people who have expensive healthcare needs. We have experience with high risk pools because that was what some states tried before Obamacare. The high risk pools become political footballs which are inadequately funded. Whenever a state faces a financial shortfall, and when do they not with the penchant for Republican tax cuts, the first thing cut is support for the sick (losers).

Do not underestimate the Republican skill at marketing bad policies with feel-good slogans and the inability of the lazy and ignorant press corps to sort out the truth.
posted by JackFlash at 10:44 AM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

Felix Sater, you magnificent bastard, you should just write a frickin' book. You'll make a lot more than $3.5 million, I bet.

Maybe it will be good for us that all these venal, back-biting snakes are snakes? They'll be unable to resist poisoning each other because it really is just about money and revenge and there's no real ideology restraining them.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:45 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

yeah my twin missions in life are promoting:

1. marxist analyses of bourgeois law and
2. the general use of the New Yorker style guide.

posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:45 AM on April 20, 2017 [14 favorites]

His declining to run in 2018 makes sense, to me, sort of, within that context; his fortunes changed dramatically on Election Day, and in 2018 he'd either (1) lose his chair to an insurgent Democratic wave, or (2) keep it and have to spend another two years furiously avoiding investigating Trump. But announcing it this earlier, and possibly resigning early -- that's far more perplexing.

With regards to announcing you're not going to run again, it's really not early given the nature of House seats. Elections cost so much now that house members, who have an election for every seat every two years, are essentially constantly running for office. That means constantly glad-handing and, more pertinent here, constantly fundraising.

If Chaffetz doesn't intend to keep the seat he's in that would become very obvious very quickly, particularly with the national Dem interest in challenging him. Additionally, someone interested in the fate of the R party is going to want to put whoever does pursue that seat in a good place to win that seat and that means getting as early a start as possible. So if he wants to be the one making the announcement rather than news media he has to do it pretty close to when he talks to party folks about it because otherwise it will leak.

The alternative of keeping it under his hat and doing business as usual would burn a lot of bridges. You're soliciting money you don't intend to use and thereby keeping it from the new candidate or other R causes. You're harming your party's chances at the seat which isn't going to win you any friends in the partisan lobby arm or with the local party machinery if you actually do want to go for that governor gig in 2020.

As icing - or perhaps the primary driver and the above is icing - you signal to the money out there that you're planning on being on the market and let's start talking.
posted by phearlez at 10:48 AM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

This means, though, abandoning the pose that bullshit is a scandal — or at least, abandoning the idea that bullshit is really truly scandalous.

Look, some of us are trying to figure out how stuff works so that we can solve problems. Bullshit is noise that makes that project harder.

I'm a scientist and I hate noise in my data. It's frustrating and it pisses me off every time, even though it's usually just radio interference or ground loops or sunspots or some other natural phenomenon. I don't get righteously indignant about static on my signal, but I do swear at it sometimes, and I try to get rid of it.

You're engaged in a different project, maybe. But those of us who are on team "figure out what's happening and try to fix it" are allowed to be frustrated with those interfering with the "figure out what's happening" part of that by spreading false information, and to attempt shut them up when possible.

Here's another lesson from the science lab: noise mostly averages away. All the false measurements tend to be wrong in random ways that cancel each other out over a long period of time. Reality persists.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:55 AM on April 20, 2017 [23 favorites]

I don't even know why I'm that interested in this sub-conversation, but:
Bill O'Reilly said they (Inside Edition) won a Peabody.
I looked into this yesterday when I saw the video and if I'm generous I can believe O'Reilly's defense isn't wholly without merit, but it's pretty weak. The original context of saying "we won Peabody awards" was him claiming that because Inside Edition won an award that meant Inside Edition wasn't a tabloid. That is a pretty weak argument especially in the context of many people consider it a tabloid show. If they won a journalism award that hardly anyone is familiar with that doesn't make people less inclinded to believe the show is a tabloid. Tabloid doesn't mean you can't do journalism that can't be recognized on its merits.

Anyway, IF O'Reilly had heard IE won awards and IF he somehow heard/remembered that awards were Peabodies and not Polks IF he thought that by they were awarded to the entire IE series then you can kind of conclude it wasn't a "lie" to say "we won Peabody Awards'. But that would be undercut because he did say "awards" so it would be weird to get multiple awards for an entire series' work...

And the biggest issue being O'Reilly later claimed that when someone says he said he won a Peabody that person was a liar and there's no evidence he ever said that. Of course, he DID say "we won Peabody Awards" and there was evidence of this. Maybe he could argue he didn't mean "we" literally but like "we won!" because your football team won, but he did use those words so it really takes the cake that he calls that person a liar for pointing out what he said that.
posted by Green With You at 10:56 AM on April 20, 2017

yeah my twin missions in life are promoting:
1. marxist analyses of bourgeois law and
2. the general use of the New Yorker style guide.

Zoë reëxamined her poëm while Eloïse naïvely aërated koälas.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:58 AM on April 20, 2017 [27 favorites]

Meanwhile on Twitter

@EricHaywood
2002: Bill O’Reilly pressures Pepsi into dropping Ludacris

2017: Ludacris is in the #1 movie in America the day Bill gets fired
posted by emjaybee at 10:59 AM on April 20, 2017 [56 favorites]

Here's another lesson from the science lab: noise mostly averages away. All the false measurements tend to be wrong in random ways that cancel each other out over a long period of time. Reality persists.

Unfortunately, motivated actors are generating correlated noise, which averages into systematic error.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:00 AM on April 20, 2017 [21 favorites]

aërated koälas

Well, that certainly creätes a disturbing mental picture
posted by Existential Dread at 11:00 AM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

You have to aërate them or else they'll reïgnite. All that eucalyptus oil.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:03 AM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

Any denunciation of bullshit has to be itself bullshit to be valid. Calling bullshit as a tactic in a campaign to marginalize a political actor can be useful, but only insofar as it advances our material interests. Denouncing bullshit just because you don't like bullshit, though, is naïve and ineffectual.

YCTaB - I think the bullshit/lies distinction is important on the left specifically because it informs the response. It is ineffectual to say things like "How could he lie and say that he got the most electoral votes since Reagan when he KNOWS it's not true?!" When you recognize that the truth or falsity of the statement is irrelevant to Trump, and all that matters is the effect (either on the audience or on Trump himself) of the statement, you can craft a different strategy. Neither shock nor acceptance, but rather a statement that "you can't accept anything that comes out of Trump's mouth at face value, because he speaks for effect without any thought to the accuracy of his statements" and then an examination of how to combat the effect itself.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 11:03 AM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

Are you saying that they don't want social progress because changing standards of moral behavior would make dead people look bad retroactively?

No, not at all. Sorry, this stuff is hard to explain and I am not at my best. The tl;dr on that one is basically that the more you can separate "Is this person Good or Bad" from notions of social progress, the more you can get good hearted but wrong people to embrace the latter, because it doesn't require Judging This Person As Bad to say they should really stop shitting on the rug.
posted by corb at 11:06 AM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Well, I mean, I think some libs have shifted from "you're racist"--to which cons may append an unspoken "and therefore bad"-- to "that thing you said/did was racist," but it still doesn't have any traction. I think the bigger issue is as the Hot/Cold Racism article describes, cons really struggling to separate individual actions from biases/systems/blind spots. For example, a FB article I encountered yesterday about the truly heinous threats against Aramis Ayala was plagued with comments from white people complaining that black people are sometimes mean to them therefore reverse racism. I don't know at which point these people are willfully missing the point, or so up to their necks in unexamined privilege that they seriously think a black teen busting on them at the bus stop is equivalent to having death threats and nooses mailed to your home. Seems pretty demoralizing that we're still hoping to appeal to the better angels of the natures of the ones who benefit from racism. There's not even a Soviet Union around any more to shame them into practicing the liberty rhetoric they espouse. If anything, I'd say Dr. King gave the religiously minded but ignorant a path tailored to their values and views, and by and large, most of them still chose not to follow it.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 11:21 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

...plagued with comments from white people complaining that black people are sometimes mean to them therefore reverse racism. I don't know at which point these people are willfully missing the point...

I think their point is more like a frame. And the framing says "In my version of my life story, I can't be the bad guy." (And they are scrambling pretty hard to find anything, like an unpleasant interchange at a bus stop that give them a tiny sliver of moral high ground."
posted by puddledork at 11:24 AM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

The tl;dr on that one is basically that the more you can separate "Is this person Good or Bad" from notions of social progress, the more you can get good hearted but wrong people to embrace the latter, because it doesn't require Judging This Person As Bad to say they should really stop shitting on the rug.

I feel like the splitting/black-and-white thinking is itself the problem. No one is truly all good or all bad (including ourselves); we have to learn to hold conflicting things at the same time. Thomas Jefferson did some great things that advanced our society; he also enslaved people. Susan B Anthony was instrumental in getting white women the right to vote; she was also a white supremacist. We have to acknowledge the entirety of the facts we have about these people. We can't sort them into "Overall Good Person/Overall Bad Person" - and, if you believe in God, that task is for God alone and presuming you even have the knowledge or ability to do that is, like, not really respectful of God. Our job is not to sort people into good and bad, but to magnify the impact of good actions and lessen the impact of bad actions.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:26 AM on April 20, 2017 [22 favorites]

The ex post facto revisionist conspiracy bullshit is getting out of hand. New idiot theory that Jason Chaffetz is resigning because he in essence caused the Benghazi massacre to 'trap' SOS Clinton.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:32 AM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

What are you protecting your loins from indoors?!?!

Aside from envious stares and ravenous glances? Maybe a chilly draft or two.
posted by Floydd at 11:33 AM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

Maybe it will be good for us that all these venal, back-biting snakes are snakes? They'll be unable to resist poisoning each other because it really is just about money and revenge and there's no real ideology restraining them.

Snakes are venomous not poisonous. So these snakes are envenoming each other. The importance of this distinction is that the snakes are not eating each other. Just biting.

Who would have guessed that team randian individualist asshole would have such poor solidarity?
posted by srboisvert at 11:35 AM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

The frustrating thing is that, if you're a Christian, you already have this framework:

I try to be a good person, but, sometimes, because I am not perfect/sinful, I fail. This is why I need God's forgiveness.

There is zero difficulty with putting "I am racist even though I don't mean to be" in the "fail" category, then going to Jesus and asking forgiveness. Which, if you're a Christian, you are able to get. Jesus knows you are sinful. That's why he came and died. etc.

So no, I really don't get the "If I am a racist that means you think I will go to hell, so don't call me a racist!" argument, corb. And in fact there are not, to my knowledge, any sins that are Automatic Hell for You except denying salvation. A murderer can be forgiven. A pedophile. They have to repent and stop sinning but they can be forgiven, in the Christian faith. And most Christians should know this.

So why would any of them think calling them on racism would mean they were going to Hell? Racism is not any more special than any other sin.
posted by emjaybee at 11:36 AM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

> aërated koälas

ugh I never should have let on that I've been in the pocket of Big Diaeresis all this time

> Look, some of us are trying to figure out how stuff works so that we can solve problems. Bullshit is noise that makes that project harder.

I'm a scientist and I hate noise in my data. It's frustrating and it pisses me off every time, even though it's usually just radio interference or ground loops or sunspots or some other natural phenomenon. I don't get righteously indignant about static on my signal, but I do swear at it sometimes, and I try to get rid of it.

You're engaged in a different project, maybe. But those of us who are on team "figure out what's happening and try to fix it" are allowed to be frustrated with those interfering with the "figure out what's happening" part of that by spreading false information, and to attempt shut them up when possible.

I'm really, really glad that you've chimed in, cause I think you've sort of explained what I'm on about better than I can.

Politics isn't science. We can't construe ourselves as objective observers studying a system from the outside; really, we're closer in position to the experimental subjects in a scientific lab than we are to being scientific researchers. Our goal isn't to uncover the truth of the system; our goal is to work that system to get the results that we want, insofar as that's possible. Adherence to truth — or at least not actually believing falsified claims — is useful as a guide for action, but it's not the goal itself.

If resolving political disputes ("figuring out what's happening and trying to fix it") through disinterested scientific research were possible, we'd all be living in a Keynesian Utopia right now — the euthanasia of the rentier would have happened back in '68 or so and we'd all be making art all day while living off the UBI. Unfortunately, "trying to fix it" entails power politics, which entails mustering material force, which means tactical bullshit — using language to accomplish ends other than truth — is back on the table.

Approaching politics like a lab scientist tends to result in technocratic "solutions" that don't really work, because scientific practice only works in spaces carefully constructed to allow for the potential for disinterested study. One of the reasons why liberals often get read as condescending is because of the liberal tendency to act as if we're all engaged in a common project to determine truth, when really what we're doing is scrapping over resources and attempting to make our various ideologies more successful.

Bullshit is indeed noise that makes the project of figuring out how cultures/societies/economies work harder, but there's no reason to therefore assume that people should (or can) behave in ways that make themselves legible to researchers, especially when tactical illegibility is useful for achieving material power.

tl;dr: we're participants in the political realm, not scientists studying it, and denouncing the presence of bullshit in political discourse is like militating against cows for not being spherical and frictionless.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:37 AM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

I think the bigger issue is as the Hot/Cold Racism article describes, cons really struggling to separate individual actions from biases/systems/blind spots.

I call shenanigans -- Christians have a broad and deep vocabulary for talking about original sin, the fallen Creation, etc. Some might say too broad and deep. TMany Christians are happy to go on at length about, say, a "culture of sexual permissiveness". It's just that white evangelical American Christians (in particular) don't want to apply that vocabulary to the systemic racism and misogyny of our society.

There aren't any magic words or phrasings that will get people to see something they're steadfastly refusing to look at.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:37 AM on April 20, 2017 [30 favorites]

Politics isn't science.

I knew university was a scam. "Political Science" indeed.
posted by some loser at 11:40 AM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Clegg: "If you don't live in my community, please don't vote in my community,” Clegg said. “You don't have to pay for the results of your actions. I do."

Dude, zip your lips. Very few (for values of "very few" approaching zero) of the out-of-state students are attending school in your state for free. As the employee of a small university, I am well aware how much cash comes into your community along with each student. BE THANKFUL.

My daughter is headed for college in NH in the fall, and I am going to make damn sure she gets registered to vote there.

Her small college, St. Anselm, has a small unit called the New Hampshire Institute of Politics which hosts the presidential primary debate every cycle, and the campus seems pretty politically active.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:40 AM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

If you don't live in my community, please don't vote in my community,” Clegg said. “You don't have to pay for the results of your actions. I do."

Taking his statement at face value would mean basically ending voting rights for all college students who don't attend college in their home district. They don't live at "home", sot hey can't vote there, they don't "live" where they're living so they can't vote there.

Basically its an effort to present college as a time when you just plain shouldn't vote, ever.

Which, I'm pretty sure, is what he actually wants.
posted by sotonohito at 11:50 AM on April 20, 2017 [42 favorites]

There is exactly nothing amazing about this, except for Session's amazingly bizarre framing.

Nothing bizarre about it at all. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is a known racist, of the hot and/or hard varieties, and he doesn't think a state full of non-white people should really count as much as other states that know how to treat their non-white people.
posted by Etrigan at 11:55 AM on April 20, 2017 [22 favorites]

Californians aren't Real Americans so their votes shouldn't count. Hawaii isn't a state, just some "island in the Pacific." The only real job is coal mining. Is it only Thursday?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:55 AM on April 20, 2017 [37 favorites]

You Can't Tip a Buick: "The other way is to, well, accept it. Acknowledge that people have perspectives, acknowledge that we all have material interests, and accept that we all use language to advance those interests rather than to uphold truth or whatever — accept that the norm of truthtelling never really existed, and that debate is less about truth and more about advancing material interests. This means, though, abandoning the pose that bullshit is a scandal — or at least, abandoning the idea that bullshit is really truly scandalous. "

Well, bullshit. :p

I agree insofar as you've posed the question as "Should we honor the norm of truthtelling (in politics)?", which you've correctly noted is thoroughly problematic because as a (nation/culture/species) we've never had that norm.

But you've kinda tipped over here into some problematic territory, I feel--bullshit artists, gaslighters, they use the idea that we all "have perspectives" to weaponize communication. It's not inappropriate to call them out for doing material harm to their listeners. And yes, I mean that quite literally--listening costs you; listening is a gift. Listening to someone to only receive a thing which will cost you energy to debunk, or which will hurt you later on if you believe it is like paying to be slapped. It's appropriate to be angry about this without reference to a moral authority or norm.
posted by TypographicalError at 11:59 AM on April 20, 2017 [19 favorites]

> Politics isn't science.

I knew university was a scam. "Political Science" indeed.

I mean this is a throwaway joke, but yeah, there is a distinction between treating politics as a subject for scientific study (which quickly leads you away from the methods of lab science) and treating politics as itself a science.

Predictably, I'm more given to credit the methodologies of political economy than I am to credit the methods of political science as practiced as a discipline in American universities. But bracketing off the political science/political economy split, one thing that dogs both liberal-bourgeois and materialist-marxist analyses of political systems is the tendency to treat the production of truth about politics as being in and of itself a political goal. This is one reason why you are absolutely right to back away from and then laugh at anyone who talks about Marxism as a science.

Developing anything like a "scientific" politics (rather than a political science) requires acknowledging that we're participants in the system we're studying, and that tactics that make studying that system harder can still be valid tactics.

In my useless opinion, we should be approaching politics in terms of technê (craft, art, technique) rather than epistêmê (knowledge, science, understanding).
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:01 PM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

We joke, but this is how they think. "Blue" states (and the people in them) don't matter. People who voted for the democratic candidate in "red" states don't matter. They're not even pretending to work for Americans as a whole anymore. They see us as the enemy to a white-only conservative evangelical-only heterosexual (but strictly missionary) paradise. And you know what? I am an enemy of that.
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:02 PM on April 20, 2017 [42 favorites]

I thought college students generally voted in their state of residence, which is where their folks live not where they go to school. At least that's what I'm supposed to do now as a student. I'm not seeing the controversy.
posted by BeginAgain at 12:03 PM on April 20, 2017

Good morning everybody, what the heck is this thread about anymore?
posted by rhizome at 12:04 PM on April 20, 2017 [15 favorites]

Trump’s Elements of Style

Strunk Rule: Omit needless words
Trump Rule: No word is needless. They’re all great! Terrific! They’re fantastic words! I know about fantastic words!

posted by kirkaracha at 12:06 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

I thought college students generally voted in their state of residence, which is where their folks live not where they go to school.

Depends on the state. But here's the thing: there are plenty of college students who are far less attached to "where their folks live" than to "where they go to school". For instance, my parents moved to a different state as soon as I went to college. Should I have voted to affect a place where I had never lived and never wanted to live, or should I have voted to affect a place that I was actually living and could very well have intended to stay?
posted by Etrigan at 12:07 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

I FIGURED IT OUT!

Consider:

1) Barack Obama is Kenyan by birth.
2) Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

If we are to order to reconcile those two rock-solid facts, the scales quickly fall from our eyes. Hawaii is actually WEST KENYA, deviously disguised as a State of the Union lo these many years!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:07 PM on April 20, 2017 [22 favorites]

> It's not inappropriate to call them out for doing material harm to their listeners. And yes, I mean that quite literally--listening costs you; listening is a gift. Listening to someone to only receive a thing which will cost you energy to debunk, or which will hurt you later on if you believe it is like paying to be slapped. It's appropriate to be angry about this without reference to a moral authority or norm.

On the one hand, yes definitely. But on the other hand, I think the focus should be on the harm and on who is harmed, rather than on the method of harm. Politics is a fistfight, and if we pretend otherwise we'll get suckerpunched.

Bullshit is an act of violence — but the problem isn't bullshit. The problem is punching down instead of up.

(once again I find myself making an awkwardly honest defense of the practice of lying. I will never, ever, ever be politically valuable. I'm stuck as a useless academic 4 life.)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:07 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

> Good morning everybody, what the heck is this thread about anymore?
posted by rhizome at 12:04 PM on April 20 [+] Adding... [!]

The thing that makes this comment perfect is that you posted it while it's not even morning.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:12 PM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

Predictably, I'm more given to credit the methodologies of political economy than I am to credit the methods of political science as practiced as a discipline in American universities.

I don't know what the difference you see is? Considering that lots of (most?) polisci departments have people doing international political economy and/or comparative political economy?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:12 PM on April 20, 2017

tl;dr: we're participants in the political realm, not scientists studying it, and denouncing the presence of bullshit in political discourse is like militating against cows for not being spherical and frictionless.

First of all, I militate against non-spherical cows all the time. Damn mis-shapen cows! This is all your fault!

Secondly -- politics is more than Hobbes' "war of all against all." If that's all it was, we'd be doomed by the tragedy of the commons, because often what's in the general interest of all of us, is not in the specific interest of any of us. (I would think a socialist would understand this -- I normally hear "it's every man for himself" coming from conservatives.)

As human beings (and herd animals) we are able to coördinate solutions to the tragedy of the commons.

We are able to share and take turns, and all of that stuff you learn in kindergarten. But doing this successfully as humans often requires coming up with some kind of rules, some sort of system... "You can play with it for five minutes, but when the timer beeps, it's my turn." "We can each have three M&Ms." "Whoever harvests the grain can keep half of it for themselves, but the rest of they have to put in the village granary" etc.

Coming up with rules like this only works if you convince most people that the rule is fair, and since it's almost impossible to convince everyone you'll probably need to come up with some way to enforce the rule...

Now we're into the project of building institutions. Bodies that make rules, enforcers who ensure they're followed, processes for handling dissent, etc.

Building institutions, making rules and ensuring they don't contradict each other, developing processes for handling disputes... This is an engineering project. It can be done well or badly. The badly designed social institutions tend to collapse after a short time, and you get that "war of all against all" stuff for a little while until something more solid can be built. (Sometimes there's a social hurricane that knocks down even well built social institutions. Nothing is perfect)

If resolving political disputes ("figuring out what's happening and trying to fix it") through disinterested scientific research were possible, we'd all be living in a Keynesian Utopia right now


The society we live in (for now) is a lot closer to a Keynesian Utopia than it is to Hobbes' "State of Nature." So apparently political science, while not perfect, does work reasonably well...

Approaching politics like a lab scientist tends to result in technocratic "solutions" that don't really work, because scientific practice only works in spaces carefully constructed to allow for the potential for disinterested study.

That's like saying "Sure, you can build an airplane that works in the lab, but the real world has lightning and high winds. Your so-called science can never build anything robust enough to survive in that environment."

Sure, it's easier to design a model plane that just flies around the lab. But in fact we do have real planes that can successfully fly through storms. They sometimes crash, but that doesn't make us give up. We just try to engineer in even more safety features.

Similarly humans have built real world governments and institutions which have weathered a lot of political storms. Sometimes they crash, but that should just send us back to the drawing board to figure out a way to prevent that problem from taking us down the next time.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:13 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

My argument for the nonexistence of God is that a cloud does not follow Sessions everywhere he goes, perpetually pelting him softly with floppy rubber dildoes.

Not hard enough to cause injury. I just feel like he would hate that more than nearly anything else on Earth.
posted by delfin at 12:14 PM on April 20, 2017 [16 favorites]

Good morning everybody, what the heck is this thread about anymore?
posted by rhizome at 14:04 on April 20 [+] [!]

We're hanging out until Trump says something appalling at a press conference in half an hour and waiting for someone to spill tea on Jason Chaffetz.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:14 PM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

> Good morning everybody, what the heck is this thread about anymore?
posted by rhizome at 12:04 PM on April 20 [+] Adding... [!]

The thing that makes this comment perfect is that you posted it while it's not even morning.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:12 AM on April 20 [+] [!]

Good morning everybody, what the heck is this thread about anymore?
posted by rhizome at 10:04 AM on April 20 [+] [!]

The thing that makes both of these things perfect is time zones.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:15 PM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

The thing that makes this comment perfect is that you posted it while it's not even morning.

It is still morning in Hawaii, which is both an island (er, several islands) and, fun fact apparently unknown to the Attorney General, a US State.
posted by zachlipton at 12:16 PM on April 20, 2017 [34 favorites]

You know where it's morning? HAWAII.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:17 PM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

Are we sure Time Zones will even be a thing before Dampnut is done?
posted by OHenryPacey at 12:18 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

militating against cows for not being spherical and frictionless

YOU HAVE MY AXE
posted by murphy slaw at 12:18 PM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

come on stop spreading bullshit about the place that everyone knows is west kenya.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:19 PM on April 20, 2017

Now, let's be fair: Hawaii is totally part of America on December 7.

Just not any other day.
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:19 PM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

I just want to point out that a bunch of Dixiecrats, including LBJ, were opposed to granting Hawaii statehood explicitly because it was majority non-white and they were afraid Hawaii would vote for Senators that opposed segregation.

See also, current opposition to statehood for other US territories.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:21 PM on April 20, 2017 [37 favorites]

"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here." -- J. Danforth Quayle, April 25, 1989.
posted by dhens at 12:24 PM on April 20, 2017 [28 favorites]

> My argument for the nonexistence of God is that a cloud does not follow Sessions everywhere he goes, perpetually pelting him softly with floppy rubber dildoes.

Not hard enough to cause injury. I just feel like he would hate that more than nearly anything else on Earth.

The late antique neoplatonists believed that philosophy was only the second-best way of gaining knowledge, with the real best way being "theurgy," or godmaking. I mention this because it suggests that the nonexistence of a cloud that follows Jeff Sessions softly pelting him with dildos isn't a sign of the nonexistence of God, it's a sign that we haven't yet built the right deity.

be the cloud pelting jeff sessions with dildos that you would like to see in the world.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:24 PM on April 20, 2017 [14 favorites]

Great.

Grassley is expecting another SCOTUS vacancy this summer.

Kennedy would be most likely. If so, expect the SCOTUS to get much more conservative really darn fast.
posted by darkstar at 12:25 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I just want to point out that a bunch of Dixiecrats, including LBJ, were opposed to granting Hawaii statehood explicitly because it was majority non-white and they were afraid Hawaii would vote for Senators that opposed segregation.

That's what's so bizarre about Sessions, not that he's racist (because god knows there's ample amounts of that in politics) but that he's such an anachronistic one, like he's Senator Billboard Rawkins from Finian's Rainbow or a simpering corrupt smalltown judge in The Heat of the Night or something.

(Although I mostly think of him as the bastard offspring of Foghorn Leghorn and a Keebler Elf.)
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:31 PM on April 20, 2017 [15 favorites]

> I don't know what the difference you see is? Considering that lots of (most?) polisci departments have people doing international political economy and/or comparative political economy?

yeah, you're right, that was in fact legitimate marxist gibberish. I think I was trying to express annoyance at departments within the social sciences that privilege quantitative approaches over qualitative ones, but yeah there's no way to get to that from what I said. apologies.

(I stand by the episteme/techne stuff tho)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:31 PM on April 20, 2017

Grassley: “I don’t know about racial and ethnic divisions, but there’s some very good females on there that would make good Supreme Court Justices as well,”

I think I just vomited in my brain. "Females" like they're prize horses.
posted by TypographicalError at 12:31 PM on April 20, 2017 [23 favorites]

Grassley is expecting another SCOTUS vacancy this summer.

Well that headline has no menacing Pelican Brief vibe at all. None whatsoever.
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:34 PM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

chuck grassley's ferengi heritage: CONFIRMED
posted by murphy slaw at 12:34 PM on April 20, 2017 [17 favorites]

That's what's so bizarre about Sessions, not that he's racist (because god knows there's ample amounts of that in politics) but that he's such an anachronistic one

See:
Many have asked abt the AG's reaction to my [=Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Fund] presentation. He listened respectfully and said that I was "articulate."
posted by dhens at 12:36 PM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

That's what's so bizarre about Sessions, not that he's racist (because god knows there's ample amounts of that in politics) but that he's such an anachronistic one...

His boss was a caricature even in the 1980s who ran a campaign from the 1930s. You're surprised that his AG wants to relitigate the 1950s?
posted by Etrigan at 12:36 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Grassley: “I don’t know about racial and ethnic divisions, but there’s some very good females on there that would make good Supreme Court Justices as well,”

Would he address them as "m'lady" as he tips his fedora to them?
posted by dhens at 12:36 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

Grassley: “I don’t know about racial and ethnic divisions, but there’s some very good females on there that would make good Supreme Court Justices as well,”

Why, I bet there are binders full of them!
posted by nubs at 12:38 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

Democracy-Loving Floridians: take action!
Fla. Supreme Court rules that proposed constitutional amendment on restoring voting rights of felons passes muster and can appear on ballot

Here's the petition you can sign to support adding it to the 2018 ballot (has to printed and mailed, unfortunately).
posted by melissasaurus at 12:41 PM on April 20, 2017 [17 favorites]

"Females", but unlikely any females that are from the "Democrat" party, because then the negging would become obvious.
posted by Dashy at 12:41 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

His boss was a caricature even in the 1980s who ran a campaign from the 1930s. You're surprised that his AG wants to relitigate the 1950s?

Not at all. There just aren't so many of that particular style of bigot left.
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:43 PM on April 20, 2017

Here's the CSPAN feed for the press conference. Starting in a few minutes.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:43 PM on April 20, 2017

i saw this tweet go by in the ol' timeline

We are 8 1/2 days from a potential government shutdown.
5 days from Congress returning from vacay.
No bill text yet.

is the capricious hand of fate going to be so kind as to grant us an avoidable government shutdown on the 100th day of trump's presidency?
posted by murphy slaw at 12:48 PM on April 20, 2017 [14 favorites]

hawaii doesn't count because they refuse to elect republicans, see
posted by murphy slaw at 12:49 PM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

> Is the capricious hand of fate going to be so kind as to grant us an avoidable government shutdown on the 100th day of trump's presidency?

Follow Trump's razor to it's logical conclusion. What better accomplishment to discuss on the 100th day than the complete shutdown of the Federal government because it can't pay the bills?
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:03 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

So O.A.R. is accepting comments till May 15 on what EPA regulations should be "repealed, replaced or modified to be less of a burden." I feel like we should use this platform to express our opinions. There is also a teleconference on Monday 4/24. Details here.
posted by emjaybee at 1:05 PM on April 20, 2017

Twitter Locks Trump Associate Roger Stone’s Account, Again

Stone, a confidant to President Donald Trump and former adviser to his campaign, had his Twitter account temporarily locked again this week after tweeting "I'm watching you and know what you're up to. Better watch your ass" to Media Matters communications director Laura Allison Keiter on Wednesday afternoon.
posted by futz at 1:10 PM on April 20, 2017 [16 favorites]

> "Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here." -- J. Danforth Quayle, April 25, 1989.

A bit grammatically dodgy, but, you know, he wasn't wrong. I mean, he was in Hawaii when he said it. It was RIGHT THERE.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:14 PM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

Well the press conference was...a thing that happened.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:23 PM on April 20, 2017

Well the press conference was...a thing that happened.

give it to me straight, doc. are we at war with italy?
posted by murphy slaw at 1:25 PM on April 20, 2017 [17 favorites]

Grassley also believes that he is actually communicating to the person he tweets to. Is there any reason at all to think he knows anything?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:28 PM on April 20, 2017

Racism is just a series of tubes.
posted by darkstar at 1:31 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Glenn Thrush: Pressed for specifics on health care proposal being resubmitted, Tump uses word "good" 4X -- then says people "will like it a lot."
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:31 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

We're not at war with Italy, but he did invite himself to the Vatican. Also North Korea is mostly China's problem because it will eff up our trade if they don't take care of it, healthcare and government funding will totes happen, Italy owes NATO money and The Donald wants to collect, we're staying out of Libya because we're oh so tired of being everyone's police force against ISIS or something. IDK. Word salad. Even the hot takes on twitter are like 'we can't make sense of anything he said'
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:33 PM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

Out of context that press conference would have been bizarre and worrying, but in practice it was a pretty unremarkable showing from Trump, with only comparatively moderate amounts of idiotic and inappropriate bragging about our foreign military and domestic healthcare initiatives, and at worst a shrugging ambiguity about whether Trump immediately and directly contradicted the Italian stance on US participation in shared military ventures. Kind of a snoozer.

God I hate our current context.
posted by cortex at 1:33 PM on April 20, 2017 [35 favorites]

Good morning everybody, what the heck is this thread about anymore?

These threads get a little woolly when we don't have some fresh treason to coalesce around.
posted by diogenes at 1:33 PM on April 20, 2017 [20 favorites]

Glenn Thrush: Pressed for specifics on health care proposal being resubmitted, Tump uses word "good" 4X -- then says people "will like it a lot."

Oh, sure you did, you had a real good time, and it's good that you had a good time, it's real good
posted by murphy slaw at 1:34 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Trump on healthcare: The plan gets better and better and better and it's gotten really really good and a lot of people are liking it a lot.
posted by diogenes at 1:35 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

you know I hope when the inevitable shit hits the fan on Russia or whatever these guys fuck up, Sessions goes out in the most ignoble way possible, where even Alabama shuns him.

Sessions, man. it's sort of like how Sauron's minions were grosser than the big guy himself
posted by angrycat at 1:44 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

These threads get a little woolly when we don't have some fresh treason to coalesce around.

Be patient, it's only Thursday.
posted by Cookiebastard at 1:47 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

is the capricious hand of fate going to be so kind as to grant us an avoidable government shutdown on the 100th day of trump's presidency?

Maybe?

Trump’s Ego Could Cause a Government Shutdown

White House Is ‘Gearing Up’ For a Government Shutdown Fight

Normally one party controlling both the White House and Congress ought to preclude something so drastic - it's always happened when there's a split - but nothing's normal about either Trump or the Rump Republicans.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:47 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's terrifying how seriously people are talking about linking healthcare with a government funding bill. They already tried shutting down the government to repeal Obamacare, and it failed miserably.

I can't tell whether to laugh or cry about the increasingly likelihood of a government shutdown on Trump's 100th day in office. It's just plain awful for federal employees, who will probably end up getting shafted out of their pay again. The symbolism of the whole thing blowing up on his face on "report card day" is too much to resist though.
posted by zachlipton at 1:49 PM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

oh totally. i really, really don't want it to happen, but if it happens, that is the best possible day.
posted by murphy slaw at 1:51 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

> Trump on healthcare: The plan gets better and better and better and it's gotten really really good and a lot of people are liking it a lot.

....real?
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:55 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Trump on healthcare: The plan gets better and better and better and it's gotten really really good and a lot of people are liking it a lot.

I see on Twitter these are his actual words.

I mean... I fully agree with the oft-mentioned sentiment that Donald Trump is how weak people see a strong person and foolish people see a smart man, but even this...

I feel like the universe is collapsing on itself.
posted by orbit-3 at 1:55 PM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

When Obama was in office I didn't really worry too much about the shutdown fights since, if the worst happened, I felt Obama would try to handle it as best he could manage (but still put his efforts into avoiding the shutdown in the first place).

With Trump, he has a long history of being a deadbeat who doesn't pay his bills, so failing to take care of basic functions is part of who he is. I have no confidence he'll mind/notice if government employees don't get paid/departments shut down/etc.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:57 PM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

I should have known better than to ask.

I think Trump missed his calling in advertising. He'd be great at jingles:

"Come to Uncle Moe's for family fun, it's good good good good, good good good!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:58 PM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

That's pitched at a level lower than how I talk to my toddler.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:58 PM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

so i always hated other peoples' boats and i boasted about how bad they were and always said that if given chance i would build the best boat EVAR on the first day I could and then they gave me a chance and it took a little while like 66 days but i failed miserably building a boat. it wasn't my fault, it was someone else's fault, but the boat didn't get built.

then, i still really wanted to build a boat, but I also needed to rewire my house but believe me i'm no electrician either and also i only had 8 days before my house and the boathouse burnt down altogether so i decided the best course of action would be to BUILD A BOAT WHILE REWIRING MY ENTIRE HOUSE, that would totally work.
posted by localhuman at 2:01 PM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

WaPo has some details on the new GOP healthcare proposal and it seems uh less than better and better and better than the last one.

Like it doesn't actually address any of the objections that scuttled the last one and leaves even more people without usable insurance.
posted by murphy slaw at 2:05 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

WaPo has some details on the new GOP healthcare proposal and it seems uh less than better and better and better than the last one.

Like it doesn't actually address any of the objections that scuttled the last one and leaves even more people without usable insurance.

Maybe they'll just keep throwing themselves against the fence, banking on cumulative nihilism wearing us all down as we breathe our last, 'Oh fuck it, go ahead. Kill us all.'
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:08 PM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

These threads get a little woolly when we don't have some fresh treason to coalesce around.

Oh she may get woolly, women do get woolly, because of all the stress...
posted by kirkaracha at 2:16 PM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

Remember the last one failed because it wasn't terrible enough.
posted by Artw at 2:25 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: woolly because of all the stress
posted by diogenes at 2:27 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

Calling the offices of my senators today, I had a surprisingly easy time getting through on the phone to staffers. Like, a sinking-bad-feeling easy time getting through. Call your elected reps and remind them that even nonspecific talk of a revised Republican healthcare plan will lead to vocal opposition.
posted by compartment at 2:29 PM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

In the last shutdown in 2013, there was a widespread expectation that federal employees would be paid eventually at the end of it, and were. I don't have nearly the same confidence that would happen under a Trumpdown.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:29 PM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

The thing that I don't understand about Republicans is their instance on treating healthcare as if it were wholly symbolic. They think that the high-risk pools will help them because they'll provide ideological cover for moderates, who will be able to say they're doing something for people with pre-existing conditions. And apparently, they think that if moderates can say that they're protecting people with pre-existing conditions, then that's good enough. But this isn't symbolic. It's real. Nobody is going to care that moderates have ideological cover when they're trying to help their sister pay twice her annual income for high-risk-pool insurance that requires her to pay 20% of all her healthcare expenses.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:30 PM on April 20, 2017 [13 favorites]

kirkaracha: Trump’s claim that ‘no administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days’

Some Tax-Cut Backers Urge Trump To Drop Full Overhaul, Go For Quick Win (NPR, April 20, 2017)

"You know, you've got a period when you're first elected where you've got to rush and get things done before that window slams shut," Moore says.

But Moore says that as of mid-April, President Trump has no legislative victories, and his Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, says a tax cut will have to wait until the fall.

Moore says Trump needs a win and should push a tax right now.

"Do something that's achievable," he says, pointing out that Trump ran on a corporate and business tax cut. "Get that done. This is taking too long and it's getting harder to do as each week goes by."

Moore does have some skin in this game: He's co-author of the tax overhaul plan Trump ran on during the election. But nearly 100 days into his administration, Trump hasn't sent Congress that or any other tax plan.

[Nelson]Haw-haw![/Nelson]

Seriously, for all the trumpeting of success and accomplishments (executive orders that might end just as easily as they "began," and plenty of crazy accusations that have other implications, White House.gov only lists 28 pieces of legislation signed, and a number of them are appointing people to positions, or changing rules so people can be appointed to positions.

Such bluster.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:34 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Chrysostom: Apparently, there's some kind of referendum in Roswell that's slowing things down.

Etrigan: Jesus, it's always aliens.

Damnit, don't bring us, er New Mexico, into this! That's Roswell, GA, not to be confused with Roswell, NM (and there more Roswells around, FWIW).
posted by filthy light thief at 2:36 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

From a Center for American Progress report: Based on our analysis, we estimate that individuals with even relatively mild pre-existing conditions would pay thousands of dollars above standard rates to obtain coverage. For example, because an individual with asthma costs an issuer 106 percent more than a healthy 40-year-old, she would face a premium surcharge of $4,340. The surcharge for diabetes would be $5,600 per year. Coverage could become prohibitively expensive for those in dire need of care: Insurers would charge about $17,320 more in premiums for pregnancy, $26,580 more for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders, and $142,650 more for patients with metastatic cancer.

After accounting for a 1.5 percent reduction in overall premiums from the risk sharing program, the surcharges would still remain astronomically high: $4,270 for asthma, $17,060 for pregnancy, $26,180 for rheumatoid arthritis, and $140,510 for metastatic cancer.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:40 PM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

If Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is so amazed by how the federal court system actually works may I suggest that he is not even remotely qualified for the job of Attorney General. Shouldn't our top legal eagle at least have a functioning knowledge on how cases make their way through federal court system?
posted by Talez at 2:41 PM on April 20, 2017 [37 favorites]

@JNicholsonInDC: "Mulvaney tells Democrats to "call us" if interested in a ACA insurer payments-for-DoD money deal in omnibus. Maybe not best of signs."

Now we're linking health insurance subsides (that we've already legally promised to pay) to increased defense spending. We're so screwed.
posted by zachlipton at 2:42 PM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

I do not understand Protestant concerns at all. Are you saying that they don't want social progress because changing standards of moral behavior would make dead people look bad retroactively?

i think what they're saying is it can't be heaven if they have to share it with a bunch of ...
posted by pyramid termite at 2:47 PM on April 20, 2017

This belief system has to account for changing views and mores, because it has to account for the past.

You know this is something conservatives say a lot. That standards are constantly changing and they can't keep up and they shouldn't be blamed for holding opinions that were acceptable in their youth or whatever.

But does morality actually change? It was morally repugnant to own slaves in 1840. It would be morally repugnant today. It was morally wrong to deny a person a job or housing in the 1930s based on the color of their skin. It still happens and it's still morally wrong. Using a racial slur was wrong in the heyday of the KKK and it's still wrong.

To distill it down to basics, treating fellow human beings with kindness and fairness should be a basic requirement of morality, regardless of era or the individuals involved.

The real difference is that there used to be classes of people who the majority of society thought it was ok to mistreat, ridicule, and abuse. And a lot of people were able to mistreat people and still call themselves moral because that kind of person didn't count. So when people complain about changing mores, all I hear is whining that there's no acceptable target to vent their anger and sadism at.

So do I want to give those people the moral benefit of the doubt? Yeah not so much.
posted by threeturtles at 2:47 PM on April 20, 2017 [44 favorites]

For anyone not monitoring news feeds One police officer shot to death, one wounded in Paris with what Deutsche Welle World News (evening English broadcast) is calling "a machine gun". DW saying they see possible reports in French media of more shootings.
posted by XMLicious at 2:50 PM on April 20, 2017

i think what they're saying is it can't be heaven if they have to share it with a bunch of ...

They're gonna be soooooo pissed off when they get up there and find out that God is a non-threatening black man.
posted by Talez at 2:51 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

But does morality actually change? It was morally repugnant to own slaves in 1840.

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

- Galatians 3:28

it's admittedly more complex than that, as other epistles suggest that slaves should obey their masters, but certainly slavery was looked down upon even then
posted by pyramid termite at 2:54 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

I don't think that's true, is it? I thought there wasn't a major denunciation of slavery in Christianity until Saint Patrick.
posted by XMLicious at 2:56 PM on April 20, 2017

from the "well that escalated quickly" department

Politico: Chaffetz says ‘absolutely’ no scandal is forcing him out

Asked if he is resigning because of a yet-to-be revealed scandal, Chaffetz said, “Absolutely, positively not.

“Not in any way shape or form,” he said. “I’ve been given more enemas by more people over the last eight years than you can possibly imagine. From the Secret Service to the Democratic Party. I am who I am. If they had something really scandalous, it would’ve come out a long, long time ago.”

posted by murphy slaw at 2:59 PM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

Trump Administration Blocks Shipment Of Illegal Execution Drugs: After a nearly two-year standoff between death penalty states and the federal government, the Food and Drug Administration formally blocked a shipment of thousands of illegal execution drugs on their way to Texas. The move sets up a potential legal battle between death penalty states and the Trump administration.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:00 PM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

I’ve been given more enemas by more people over the last eight years than you can possibly imagine.

*brb, vomiting*
posted by zachlipton at 3:02 PM on April 20, 2017 [23 favorites]

I am who I am.

Popeye cosplayer?
posted by kirkaracha at 3:03 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Either the New England Patriots have far fewer players than they did in 2015 or we've go another inauguration crowd size situation going on here.

Since I shared the original photo here, I am duty-bound to also share the correction, because it was somewhat misleading. There were several dozen players who didn't show up, but the 2015 photo included members of the team's staff, while the 2017 photo did not. Said the Times Sports Editor:

By midmorning Thursday, Jason Stallman, the Times’ sports editor, had taken responsibility for the tweet in an email to The Post. “Bad tweet by me. Terrible tweet. I wish I could say it’s complicated, but no, this one is pretty straightforward: I’m an idiot. It was my idea, it was my execution, it was my blunder. I made a decision in about four minutes that clearly warranted much more time.

“Once we learned more, we tried to fix everything as much as possible as swiftly as possible and as transparently as possible. Of course, at that point the damage was done. I just needed to own it.”

posted by zachlipton at 3:06 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

CNN: Sources: US prepares charges to seek arrest of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:08 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

What the correction doesn't mention is that POTUS himself was behind the move to not include team staff.

Quote: "I only like winners, not the ugly little people who help winners get to the top, those people can stay in the shadows and get whatever respect is left after the winners are done winning" [fake].
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 3:08 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Trump: 'I love WikiLeaks’
posted by zachlipton at 3:15 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

CNN: Sources: US prepares charges to seek arrest of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Leopards, faces, etc. Fuck Assange, but send him back to Sweden to face his rape charges.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:15 PM on April 20, 2017 [13 favorites]

CNN: Sources: US prepares charges to seek arrest of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Trump is again fucking his contractors. He just can't help it.
posted by Talez at 3:16 PM on April 20, 2017 [24 favorites]

I guess we find out soon if Wikileaks has what Russia hacked from the Republicans.
posted by chris24 at 3:18 PM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

I don't think that's true, is it? I thought there wasn't a major denunciation of slavery in Christianity until Saint Patrick.

Moses v. Pharaoh, Torah Book II
posted by mikelieman at 3:18 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

> a beautiful one where the Attorney General’s granddaughter was born

"Some of my best grandchild is Hawaiian."
posted by tonycpsu at 3:21 PM on April 20, 2017 [55 favorites]

“The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed opinion by a single judge can block the President’s lawful exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe.”

There is a problem when the AG doesn't understand Marbury.
posted by mikelieman at 3:23 PM on April 20, 2017 [37 favorites]

“The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed opinion by a single judge can block the President’s lawful exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe.

So... the problem is the system of checks and balances in the country then?
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:23 PM on April 20, 2017 [50 favorites]

Well yeah, I feel like they've been pretty clear on that point.
posted by contraption at 3:25 PM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

Hawaii is indeed an island in the Pacific. So are Guam and Vanua Levu. None of those seem particularly relevant given that the judge is on Oahu.
posted by Justinian at 3:29 PM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

Politico: Chaffetz says ‘absolutely’ no scandal is forcing him out

And yet... the rumour on the twitters is that he might even resign tomorrow. So what do we think: dead girl, or live boy?
posted by dis_integration at 3:30 PM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

There is a problem when the AG doesn't understand Marbury.

...or that the President swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to "keep the entire country safe"
posted by thelonius at 3:30 PM on April 20, 2017 [25 favorites]

How's it go? If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.

This is the Attorney General pounding the table.
posted by notyou at 3:32 PM on April 20, 2017 [37 favorites]

If you have Hawaii, pound sand.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:34 PM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

He can pound it all he wants, I just hope he doesn't try to flip it.
posted by contraption at 3:35 PM on April 20, 2017

So, here's my hypothesis.

Ivan Does number 1 - 50 ( Russian hackers ) are charged for violating 18 USC 1030 -- the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, the legal foundation here is "The hacked computers are in the US.", with respect to Podesta's emails and other DNC servers.

Then Assange either having the stolen data ( earning an 18 USC 1030 for himself ) the conspired with Stone to release the stolen data. in violation of 18 USC 371. and or 18 USC 1001, depending on how many lies they tell Feds once interviews start.

Of course, other participants of that Conspiracy are the Trump campaign staff and advisors, Sessions, 80% of the White House admin, Trump, probably Pence. Again, might be President Paul Ryan , especially if Trump's exit card "retired from public life due to dementia" gets played before the fall and Pence has to take a fall, too.

In other words, do I go buy more popcorn?
posted by mikelieman at 3:53 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

2017: The plan gets better and better and better and it's gotten really really good and a lot of people are liking it a lot.

2029: "It's been ten years since Trump famously forgot he was President on live TV. Let's look back. In the early years, no one noticed that Trump was suffering from dementia. No one! We were all just completely blindsided. No signs at all."
posted by 0xFCAF at 3:58 PM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

The mere fact of possessing and releasing the data isn't, in itself, illegal though is it? That's why the NYT didn't get busted for publishing the Pentagon Papers. There are tons of more recent examples. Now if Assange aided in the collection of that data or instructed people on what data they wanted or any number of other possible complicating factors that's a different story. But if someone merely hands you a flash drive with information on it and you publish that information you're protected.

As you note there are plenty of other possible avenues to pursue. But Assange has to have done something beyond receiving and publishing. Or the government could intend to pursue a novel legal theory as to why he was breaking the law. I expect you'd see media heavyweights like NYT and WaPo and others lining up behind Assange if that happened.
posted by Justinian at 4:01 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's actually a pretty compelling case against the national injunction at least at the district court level. Think about all the Obama policies that were halted by Republican forum shopping for Republican judges in Texas issuing partisan injunctions, DACA, Clean Power, overtime pay.

But that's not what Sessions was saying, he's just doing the Republican thing where they cry foul every time their own abuses of constitutional process are reversed and used against them. Tactics are only valid when used in Republican hands, but the same things are literally unAmerican and treason when Democrats 'stoop to our level'. The national injunction was weaponized by Republicans, and Democrats would be morons to not learn the lesson that partisan judges can gum up the works and delay implementation basically at will. And they'd be fools to unilateral disarm and refuse to use a legal tool that Republicans never hesitated to.

Basically, payback's a bitch, Republicans.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:02 PM on April 20, 2017 [26 favorites]

Oh, and why not toss an 18 U.S. Code § 798 - Disclosure of classified information WikiLeak's way.

Reading it, (Disclosure of classified information) seems appropriate especially with the release of the NSA hacking programs
posted by mikelieman at 4:02 PM on April 20, 2017

I was going to ask a question, but then I figured I should RTFA first. I found my answer:

Assange is untouchable as long as he remains in the Ecuadorian embassy.
posted by diogenes at 4:03 PM on April 20, 2017

the rumour on the twitters is that he might even resign tomorrow. So what do we think: dead girl, or live boy?

Pure, baseless speculation time: neither a boy nor a girl. Neither live nor dead nor in Schroedinger's Box.

He's resigning because he's in an unwinnable state. He knows how bad the scandal is involving Trump. To the point of treason. However, he can't turn on a GOP president, even when warranted, without serious blowback and the end of his future ambitions. So he'll get hell from his own party, or he'll get hell for not pursuing justice for an unprecedented crime by the President. On top of that, the people in his district are making his life difficult and are threatening a serious race next year in a district which is usually a pushover.

Who needs all that grief? Especially when he can bow out now and cash in on some wingnut welfare (buy some more iPhones!) while doing a wait / see about running for Governor.
posted by honestcoyote at 4:03 PM on April 20, 2017 [28 favorites]

Assange is untouchable as long as he remains in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Well, he's touchable by the Ecuadorians. Who knows, maybe there's some leverage someone could find somewhere.
posted by Existential Dread at 4:05 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

“I’ve been given more enemas by more people over the last eight years than you can possibly imagine. From the Secret Service to the Democratic Party. I am who I am. If they had something really scandalous, it would’ve come out a long, long time ago.”

Ok is Chaffetz saying there are scandals in his bum?
posted by jason_steakums at 4:05 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, as much as I'd love to see Chaffetz taken down by scandal I think honestcoyote's scenario is most likely. He is in a crappy position where he is going to continue being made to look like a corrupt idiot (because he's a corrupt idiot) and so rather than endure that for years he's looking to GET PAID. With that sweet, sweet lobbying dosh.
posted by Justinian at 4:05 PM on April 20, 2017

But Assange has to have done something beyond receiving and publishing.

The conspiracy under 18 USC 371 seems beyond that.

"If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."

Elizabeth de la Vegas' commentary:

As used in Section 371, the term "to defraud the United States" means "to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful government functions by deceit, craft, trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest." The term also means to "impair, obstruct, or defeat the lawful function of any department of government" by the use of "false or fraudulent pretenses or representations."

I would submit that Elections are a lawful function of the Federal Election Commission and the Election Assistance Commission
posted by mikelieman at 4:07 PM on April 20, 2017

You know what's weird? No one in Trump's orbit has (barely) mentioned Wikileaks or Assange on their Twitter feed since 2010.

I'm using this archive, and this command line:

egrep -io ".{50}(assange|wikileaks).{60}" data/*/*.json

Even @sarahpalinusa was critical of Wikileaks in 2010, then nada, until 2016. Same for Hannity. Don Jr. in 2013 retweeted an article about Assange being critical of the Manning verdict.

Maybe my grep-fu is weak, or maybe it's not weird at all? But I think it's weird.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:09 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

mikelieman: I absolutely agree one could make a statutory argument for charging him under a bunch of the laws you've cited. His defense would be Constitutional, not statutory. And as I said I think he'd have a lot of important players filing briefs on his behalf.
posted by Justinian at 4:09 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I PHOTOSHOPPED STEVE-O INTO EVERY PALIN/NUGENT/KID ROCK PHOTO AND HE FITS IN PERFECTLY
posted by Existential Dread at 4:27 PM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

Steve-O probably has better taste than to attend, really
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:31 PM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

The first-century Letter of Clement (written by one of the first Roman bishops) mentions some Christians selling themselves into slavery to buy freedom for other slaves.
posted by EarBucket at 4:34 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Secret meeting at Mar-a-Lago raises questions about Colombia peace and Trump

President Donald Trump quietly met a pair of former Colombian presidents last weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, thrusting his administration into an ugly power struggle in Latin America that threatens to undermine the country’s controversial peace agreement with rebel leaders.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is expected to push Trump to support the peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia at their first meeting at the White House next month. He wants the Trump administration and Congress to maintain the $450 million in foreign aid promised by former President Barack Obama to implement the plan to end Latin America’s longest armed conflict.

The meeting between Trump and the former presidents, Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana – Colombia news media have reported it was arranged by an influential U.S. critic of the plan, Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida – was not on the president’s schedule and was not disclosed to reporters who traveled with him to Palm Beach.

Worse, the White House is trying to claim it was a total coincidence that two former Colombian Presidents were at Mar-a-Lago:

The White House later confirmed the meeting to McClatchy but downplayed its significance, saying it was a mere coincidence that both former leaders opposed to the peace pact were at the president’s club. Aides to Rubio declined to comment.

“They were there with a member from the club and briefly said hello when the president walked past them,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “There wasn’t anything beyond a quick hello.”

But the leaders’ own comments contradict the White House’s characterization.

In a tweet following the meeting, Pastrana thanked Trump for the “cordial and very frank conversation” about problems in Colombia and the region.

This is nuts.
posted by zachlipton at 4:38 PM on April 20, 2017 [52 favorites]

The real question is how much did they pay Trump-Org for that conversation.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:45 PM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

The first-century Letter of Clement (written by one of the first Roman bishops) mentions some Christians selling themselves into slavery to buy freedom for other slaves.

In Deuteronomy the genocide of certain peoples was not only morally acceptable, but morally obligatory, down to their livestock. Thusly I selected my Metafilter username as a commentary on the nature of morality.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:48 PM on April 20, 2017 [17 favorites]

> I don't think that's true, is it? I thought there wasn't a major denunciation of slavery in Christianity until Saint Patrick.

mikelieman: Moses v. Pharaoh, Torah Book II

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but the Israelites did not stop holding slaves just because they'd been slaves themselves in Egypt—they didn't even stop holding other Hebrews as slaves, according to what Wikipedia is telling me^{_^}.

And IIRC Saint Patrick, who had been a slave, was actually primarily promoting the idea of not holding other Christians as slaves any more. So, a bit of a moral hazard there, if it created a perk to go along with his missionary work that converting to Christianity made you part of the class of people who didn't get enslaved.

I really think we should shed this idea that there's a moral arc of the universe inexorably moving society toward justice. Like, "Do not install into power a leader who promises to round up millions of people and put them in camps" seems obvious and not something there would be any backsliding on. And yet...

Not that I'm disagreeing with threeturtles up above; the fact that fundamental moral precepts can't be taken for granted makes it even more important to make moral arguments, and perhaps even makes them more effective if you make the don't-take-it-for-granted argument at the same time.

The hot racism / room-temperature racism thing makes sense to me for somewhat different reasons to why it makes sense to corb, because I've had an experience where when I've forced an atheist friend, who would not regard themselves as politically conservative, to acknowledge that it would be absurd to say no racism is involved in situations like all black people being denied mortgages even though there may be no conscious hatred or even conscious bias: they actually responded to having their arm twisted into admitting the word "racism" applies to that by saying "Well it should be called something different!"

A training-wheels concept like "room-temperature racism" that doesn't noticeably feel different seems to me like it could have great utility, because if you can get them to accept that concept and acknowledge that it's real, perhaps you can then triangulate by saying "Gee, if you look at the kind of things that the average non-Nazi citizen of Nazi Germany tolerated or didn't question, it actually seems like there was quite alot of room-temperature racism involved in the Holocaust, and it kind of seems like a gateway drug to full-blown Nazism. Maybe it's actually mortally essential to address racism even while it's just in a mild, lukewarm form." (And maybe it's not so mild to the people who are the targets of even room-temperature racism.)
posted by XMLicious at 4:58 PM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

Dianne Feinstein is cool everyone. She went to In-n-Out and posed with a drink, so it's all good.
posted by zachlipton at 5:11 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

> Dianne Feinstein is cool everyone. She went to In-n-Out and posed with a drink, so it's all good.

I think she and Poochie have the same PR team.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:14 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

I don't think that's true, is it? I thought there wasn't a major denunciation of slavery in Christianity until Saint Patrick.

It took until Bartolomé de las Casas for the Catholics to start to get their shit together. And it took Bart until pretty late in his life to extend his anti-slavery views to include Black people.

So even historical heroes can be kind of shitty people, right up until they are not, about the very thing they are lionized for.
posted by srboisvert at 5:16 PM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

The problem with a conspiracy charge against Assange is Trump, Sessions and Pompeo would be co-conspirators.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:16 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Worse, the White House is trying to claim it was a total coincidence that two former Colombian Presidents were at Mar-a-Lago.

Oh fer chrissakes!
posted by diogenes at 5:31 PM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

I think she and Poochie have the same PR team.

Poochie Dianne Feinstein died on the way back to her home planet.
posted by Talez at 5:32 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

thrusting his administration into an ugly power struggle in Latin America that threatens to undermine the country’s controversial peace agreement with rebel leaders.

Does he like win a prize if he incites at least one civil war or nuclear crisis on every continent? Look out, Africa and Australia: you're next.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:33 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

So this goes without saying, but everyone needs to call their representatives tomorrow and tell them that we will not put up with any healthcare compromise that returns us to the days of "high risk pools," which we know from experience are both substandard insurance and prohibitively expensive. You might add that the best possible reform for Obamacare is Medicare for All.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:34 PM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

I’ve been given more enemas by more people over the last eight years than you can possibly imagine.

English majors are vastly-undervalued and under-appreciated, not least because many of us can prevent this sort of phrasing that occurs when people mistake revolting phrases like this for benign folksy vulgarity.

Jesus, dude.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:36 PM on April 20, 2017 [26 favorites]

Woah, so Jason Chaffetz's father was married to Kitty Dukakis before she married Michael Dukakis? And Jason Chaffetz has a half-brother, the son of his father and Kitty Dukakis, who was adopted by Michael Dukakis? And Chaffetz is close to his half-brother and the entire Dukakis family? How did I miss that? That's bizarre.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:42 PM on April 20, 2017 [33 favorites]

And Chaffetz is close to his half-brother and the entire Dukakis family?

Not only that, he was Utah co-chairman of the Dukakis Presidential campaign!
posted by waitingtoderail at 5:49 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

Trump Inaugural Committee Falsely Lists Big Donation From “Hidden Figures” Hero

...claimed in its official filing with the Federal Election Commission that it received a $25,000 donation from Katherine Johnson, the distinguished NASA mathematician and physicist. The filing listed her address at 1 NASA Drive in Hampton, Va., the location of NASA’s Langley Research Center. Johnson, who is retired at age 98, does not live at the research center.

Eugene Johnson, who described himself as a friend and power of attorney for Katherine Johnson, told The Intercept that the “donation is fake, she did not make that donation.”

Huffington Post investigative reporter Christina Wilkie noted on Twitter that other major donors do not appear to exist. The filing also lists an “Isabel T. John,” from Englewood, NJ who gave $400,000 for the inauguration. But, as Wilkie noted, John does not appear in public records databases, and the address for the donor matches a corporate parking lot. Wilkie asked the public to help her dig through the disclosure for similar inconsistencies.
posted by futz at 5:53 PM on April 20, 2017 [79 favorites]

Why is he talking about enemas? Why does that ever come up? Why? Why!?

I was listening to a podcast today where they suggested that Trump may not realize how little all of these EOs he is signing amount to. He may be under the impression that he is getting a lot of important work done when in reality he is accomplishing very little. For someone who has never been in politics I imagine all these meetings and briefings and photo-ops may give a false sense of working hard and getting lots done.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:54 PM on April 20, 2017 [13 favorites]

something something Chaffetz scandal something something in the tank for Dukakis
posted by cortex at 5:58 PM on April 20, 2017 [17 favorites]

Wilkie asked the public to help her dig through the disclosure for similar inconsistencies.

I would think a financial fraud investigator would be better than crowdsourcing it. Because this here, this is straight up fraud. I mean, it's not even good money laundering. My mock dataset for qa testing is more believable.
posted by mikelieman at 6:00 PM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

So I didn't see this linked but I may have missed it. From the WaPo piece on the GOP's new plan, here's a chart showing the surcharges for pre-existing conditions. Including 425% surcharge for anyone who's had a completed pregnancy with no complications, 200% for major depressive disorder, and so on. Up to 3500% for metastatic cancer.

Yes, I'm sure women are going to support this quietly and pay a 425% increase to premiums just for giving birth.
posted by threeturtles at 6:11 PM on April 20, 2017 [47 favorites]

Dianne Feinstein does not yet realize that it is no longer sufficient to run on her past record.

I will tell her as such and encourage California MeFites to do the same.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:13 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

From Chaffetz's statement: "If they had something really scandalous, it would’ve come out a long, long time ago."

Why did he phrase it like this? It's surely not the case that only really scandalous things happen a "long, long time ago". Like, what if something just happened in the past few months? What is even going on with this dude?
posted by mhum at 6:14 PM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

Including 425% surcharge for anyone who's had a completed pregnancy with no complications,

There's no GOP war on women, right?
posted by Talez at 6:14 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

Republicans Sell Access to Congressional Staffers, Flouting Cardinal Ethics Rule

Documents obtained by The Intercept and the Center for Media and Democracy show that the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are both telling donors that in exchange for campaign contributions, they will receive invitations to special events to meet with congressional staff including chiefs of staff, leadership staffers, and committee staffers.

Congressional ethics rules flatly forbid Capitol Hill employees from engaging in fundraising activities as part of their official duties. Any explicit fundraising work must be done strictly as a volunteer, and there must be a clear firewall separating government work from campaign work.

[...]

“You can’t use resources that are paid for by the taxpayer to service campaign donors. That’s blatantly illegal,” said Caroline Fredrickson, the former chief of staff to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

[...]

“This is the first time I have heard of party fundraisers based on pay-for-access to congressional staff,” said Craig Holman, an ethics expert with the watchdog group Public Citizen. “It raises serious issues of ethics and corruption.”

“This takes money buying access to a new level,” said Jessica Levinson, a law professor and ethics expert at Loyola Law School. “This means that people with money can buy, in a very concrete sense, a meeting with important staffers.”

This blatant in your face fuck you to the so-called ethics rules. How low won't republicans stoop? No consequences so why not.
posted by futz at 6:17 PM on April 20, 2017 [51 favorites]

One rather suspicious entry on the inauguration donation list is the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation, which gives grants for alcoholism treatment and prevention efforts. It's really unclear to me how giving $100,000 to the inauguration is an appropriate use of such funds.
posted by zachlipton at 6:19 PM on April 20, 2017 [24 favorites]

Indeed, Trump's inauguration has probably led directly to just the opposite effect the Smithers Foundation is working toward.
posted by darkstar at 6:31 PM on April 20, 2017 [17 favorites]

WaPo: White House could provoke a spending showdown over funding for border wall

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that he hopes to use negotiations to keep the government open past April 28 in an effort to force Democrats to back some funding for creating a new wall along the U. S-Mexico border — a risky move that could provoke a spending showdown with congressional Democrats next week.

Mulvaney said the White House would be open to funding some of the Democrats’ priorities — such as paying insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act — if Democrats agree to fund some of the more controversial parts of President Trump’s agenda, notably the border wall.

posted by murphy slaw at 6:34 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

house minority leader nancy pelosi had no formal comment but was heard mumbling "oh no, don't throw me in the briar patch!" under her breath and chuckling softly to herself
posted by murphy slaw at 6:37 PM on April 20, 2017 [26 favorites]

But Hillary met with a Clinton Foundation donor* as SoS, so she paved the way?

*who someone said also got a medal from these dudes in Sweden, but hey, that's just a rumor.
posted by Dashy at 6:37 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

From the WaPo piece on the GOP's new plan, here's a chart showing the surcharges for pre-existing conditions. Including 425% surcharge for anyone who's had a completed pregnancy with no complications, 200% for major depressive disorder, and so on. Up to 3500% for metastatic cancer.

It's almost like they don't understand what "insurance" means. Or they just think more people should die. Or maybe both!
posted by uncleozzy at 6:41 PM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

One rather suspicious entry on the inauguration donation list is the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation, which gives grants for alcoholism treatment and prevention efforts. It's really unclear to me how giving $100,000 to the inauguration is an appropriate use of such funds.

Do they own or run treatment centers?
posted by futz at 6:44 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I don't think it's that they don't understand what insurance is, it's that the GOP is pretty openly against the concept of risk pooling. When they talk about "insurance" they're really talking about "healthcare", and when they talk about healthcare their grand scheme is that everyone pays out of pocket for their own usage and anyone who can't gets buried in the potter's field.
posted by tocts at 6:48 PM on April 20, 2017 [19 favorites]

follow Sessions everywhere he goes, perpetually pelting him softly with floppy rubber dildoes.

I just wanted to say thank you for spelling it d-i-l-d-o-e-s! You're the best, MetaFilter-type person, mm'whayygh.

Aah I said I wasn't gonna cry . . *snf*
posted by petebest at 6:52 PM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

Nope. Mostly they seem to sell pamphlets for a dollar or so each (but don't, say, put PDFs on their website like you'd do if you wanted to reach people), and give out a fairly minimal amount in grants. The $100K they gave to the inauguration was about equal to the total grants they gave out in 2015 and roughly double their grants from 2014.
posted by zachlipton at 6:53 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

Mulvaney said the White House would be open to funding some of the Democrats’ priorities — such as paying insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act — if Democrats agree to fund some of the more controversial parts of President Trump’s agenda, notably the border wall.

Say it with me, folks: "We don't negotiate with terrorists."

The ACA, like it or not, is the law, and those subsidies are allocated and granted by law. Withholding subsidies is a bullshit power play, not a legitimate usage of executive power.
posted by jackbishop at 6:54 PM on April 20, 2017 [30 favorites]

One rather suspicious entry on the inauguration donation list is the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation, which gives grants for alcoholism treatment and prevention efforts. It's really unclear to me how giving $100,000 to the inauguration is an appropriate use of such funds.

Even weirder is that the FEC contribution database show the only contribution made eponymous Mr Smithers last election cycle were to Representative Kathleen Rice's campaign -- Rice is a democrat. In 2000 he ran a PAC for Florida Senator Bill Nelson, another democrat.
posted by nathan_teske at 6:54 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Including 425% surcharge for anyone who's had a completed pregnancy with no complications,

Let's see how outraged the pro-life crowd get. I predict crickets.
posted by srboisvert at 6:56 PM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

The Mr. Smithers in question died decades ago, and so did his son, who started the foundation. Presumably the next generation?
posted by zachlipton at 6:57 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I see everyone else also ran to their website to pull the annual report.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:57 PM on April 20, 2017

Obviously many of these inauguration donor names were faked but why would they need to fake that for this event?
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:59 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Did the Trumps Invite Mostly White Children to the White House Easter Egg Roll? - Unproven.

During an 11 April 2017 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that tickets to the event had been “sent out to all the schools in the area.” That was not the case. Representatives for all three immediately-surrounding public school districts, D.C., Arlington and Alexandria, all told us they did not receive tickets to the event this year, unlike in previous years. According to the New York Times, these districts have in the past received tickets for as many as 4,000 children to attend the event.

-- A Department of Education spokesperson told us by e-mail that “hundreds of tickets” were provided to “traditional public schools, public charter schools, private schools and home school families” so long as their schools were not on spring break.

Although D.C. public schools (DCPS) were closed for spring break during the 17 April 2017 event, Alexandria schools were in session. Arlington schools were closed to students for a “grade preparation day” but like Alexandria had spring break the week before. In the preceding year, DCPS was invited to the 28 March 2016 Easter Egg Roll even though they were on spring break.

-- What remains unclear is whether the Trump White House invited more schools and districts that simply chose not to attend — Frank Bellavia, spokesperson for Arlington Public Schools told us by phone that even if the district had received tickets, they would not have attended this year, simply because the logistics of transporting and chaperoning hundreds of children at a high-security event is taxing.

Snopes is still waiting to hear back from several entities involved at this point.
posted by futz at 6:59 PM on April 20, 2017 [9 favorites]

The Mr. Smithers in question died decades ago, and so did his son, who started the foundation.

The current President of the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation is Christopher B. Smithers.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:01 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Obviously many of these inauguration donor names were faked but why would they need to fake that for this event?

Money laundering?
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:03 PM on April 20, 2017 [13 favorites]

Interesting info on Marinelli, the Calexit guy:
In October, 2007, Marinelli moved to Samara, Russia, to work as an ESL teacher in a private language school after earning a TEFL certificate.[4] Six months later, Marinelli accepted a new job teaching English for a competitor with a new school opening in the city of Kazan in the Republic of Tatarstan, a part of the Russian Federation 500 miles east of Moscow.

In 2009, Marinelli relocated to Saint Petersburg, Russia where he began working for another private language school as an English teacher and became a student himself at Saint Petersburg State University, the alma mater of Russian presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. Although he initially considered giving up his U.S. citizenship to remain in Russia permanently, citing disillusionment with the United States government and political system, Marinelli came back to live in California in the summer of 2011. (wikipedia)

How odd that he lived in Russia before coming back for a short time to lead a secessionist movement.
posted by benzenedream at 7:07 PM on April 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

You people have got to be more scrupulous about the [real] and [fake] tags. It took several comments before I realized the Smithers Foundation wasn't a smart-ass Simpsons joke of some kind. [real]
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:07 PM on April 20, 2017 [30 favorites]

According to Slate, "On Thursday, a three-judge federal court ruled that Texas intentionally discriminated against minority voters in drawing its state House district map in 2011. The decision follows a similar ruling by the same court in March holding that Texas also drew its federal congressional districts in an effort to dilute minority votes. Thursday’s ruling marks the third time in recent weeks that the federal judiciary has found Texas to have intentionally burdened its Hispanic voters."
posted by Bella Donna at 7:17 PM on April 20, 2017 [26 favorites]

I am shocked -- shocked! -- to find out that Texas is going on in this state!
posted by uosuaq at 7:28 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

APR 20 SPECIAL ELECTIONS NEWS:

MT-AL

* Quist hits $2M in individual donations. DCCC also in with a "six-figure" donation.
* At this point, in order to show off their gun bona fides, BOTH candidates have ads out showing them shooting screens.

====

UT-3

* As mentioned in the thread, Chaffetz is talking about resigning early (with some speculation it could be as early as this week). That would be a problem, since the special elections law in Utah is super vague. The legislature dicked around with doing something about it earlier in the year, but failed to do so. There's now talk of a special session to address the gap. Fun fact: Utah's last special election for Congress was in 1930!

====

GA-06

* DCCC in with new $450K ad buy.
* NAACP and other voting rights groups are suing Georgia over the requirement that you must have been registered to vote for the first round vote in order to be eligible to vote in the runoff.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:54 PM on April 20, 2017 [18 favorites]

So even historical heroes can be kind of shitty people, right up until they are not, about the very thing they are lionized for.

W.E.B. DuBois on Abraham Lincoln:

Abraham Lincoln was a Southern poor white, of illegitimate birth, poorly educated and unusually ugly, awkward, ill-dressed. He liked smutty stories and was a politician down to his toes. Aristocrats—Jeff Davis, Seward and their ilk—despised him, and indeed he had little outwardly that compelled respect. But in that curious human way he was big inside. He had reserves and depths and when habit and convention were torn away there was something left to Lincoln—nothing to most of his contemners. There was something left, so that at the crisis he was big enough to be inconsistent—cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves. He was a man—a big, inconsistent, brave man.
...
I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed. The world is full of illegitimate children. The world is full of folk whose taste was educated in the gutter. The world is full of people born hating and despising their fellows. To these I love to say: See this man. He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln.
...
The difficulty is that ignorant folk and inexperienced try continually to paint humanity as all good or all evil. Was Lincoln great and good? He was! Well, then, all evil alleged against him are malicious lies, even if they are true.
...
The scars and foibles and contradictions of the Great do not diminish but enhance the worth and meaning of their upward struggle: it was the bloody sweat that proved the human Christ divine; it was his true history and antecedents that proved Abraham Lincoln a Prince of Men.

And you could say much of the same about LBJ.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:54 PM on April 20, 2017 [88 favorites]

English majors are vastly-undervalued and under-appreciated, not least because many of us can prevent this sort of phrasing that occurs when people mistake revolting phrases like this for benign folksy vulgarity.

I don't even think you need much book learnin' to realize that steering clear of enema metaphors is a good idea.
posted by thelonius at 8:02 PM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

Venezuela donated $500,000 to the inauguration despite their starving citizens. Would it have been a national incident if the trump team had refused the money? Does anyone here have any idea? I know that half a million is a drop in the bucket for most governments...could have and would have Obama declined the money under the same circumstances? Just thinking out loud here.
posted by futz at 8:06 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

As a metaphor, enemas are even worse than Hitler!


Am I doing this right?
posted by darkstar at 8:10 PM on April 20, 2017 [12 favorites]

Fuck Assange, but send him back to Sweden to face his rape charges.

Dumbass missed his chance. If he'd been quick about it he could have been past the Swedish rape thing and in a jurisdiction that offerred long term security. Now he is a rat in a tiny cage.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:10 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Politico: White House demands disrupt shutdown negotiations

Congressional leaders' efforts to hatch a massive spending deal have been thrown off course by the Trump administration's 11th-hour intervention, leaving the bipartisan bill teetering on the brink of collapse just a week before a government shutdown deadline.

The hard line taken by White House officials, particularly Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, has strained an emerging deal between House and Senate leaders that would skirt hot-button issues that could shut down the government. In particular, administration officials’ hopes of giving President Donald Trump a win during his first 100 days, such as border wall funding or a crackdown on sanctuary cities, have complicated what had been a relatively smooth, bicameral, bipartisan negotiation, according to staffers in both parties.

But Democrats are taking an aggressive stance, too, flatly insisting that Trump or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan make a commitment to funding Obamacare’s cost-sharing subsidies as a precondition to voting for any bill to fund the government through September. Democrats have also talked tough on ruling out funding for a wall or a provision restricting billions in federal grants from cities that don’t enforce federal immigration laws.

It was looking like they could get a reasonably clean CR through, and Democrats would even spring for some more funding for non-wall border security stuff, but then White House stepped in and started demanding over a billion for the wall. I don't see how we don't end up with a shutdown.
posted by zachlipton at 8:11 PM on April 20, 2017 [23 favorites]

The Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin and Kid Rock story has been updated with lots more color since it was posted earlier today:

The encounter included a tour of the executive residence, a grip-and-grin session with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office and an impromptu snapshot — featuring a sneering Ms. Palin — in front of Mrs. Clinton’s official portrait as the three guests and their families left through the East Wing.

Mr. Nugent said one member of the group — he wouldn’t say who — asked the three to extend their middle fingers beneath the portrait. “I politely declined,” he said. “Let the juxtaposition speak for itself.”
...
“It was like a family reunion,” [Nugent] said. “None of us expected this. He showed us the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom and explained how that was where the president’s son died. He knew the designer of the chairs. He showed us the bulletproof glass.”

I, for one, am thrilled that the President has studied up on who designed the White House furniture, but still knows nothing about foreign policy and world affairs.

This would be a good place to point out that Ted Nugent regularly had racist and offensive things to say about President Obama, not to mention his anti-Semitic Facebook post last year. This behavior gets you invited to dinner at the White House.
posted by zachlipton at 8:22 PM on April 20, 2017 [34 favorites]

Assanage won't live to leave the embassy. Wikileaks is an entirely owned subsidiary of the Kremlin, and man, I used to back them so hard, and yes, I was a dupe. The over/under now is either a life in prison by competent Swedes sussing out his lies, or suicide. As if suicide is a choice he gets to make.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:28 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

So this looks real? Secretaries Kushner & Trump.
posted by scalefree at 8:39 PM on April 20, 2017 [7 favorites]

Secretaries of Nepotism
posted by localhuman at 8:42 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

W.E.B. DuBois on Abraham Lincoln:

The quote reminds me of a bit that stuck with me from _Lies My Teacher Told Me_, about how, if Lincoln was a racist, we (the white readers, presumably) could also be racist, and that if Lincoln could overcome his racism at times, then so too can we.

There were probably thousands of upright moral white men in the country during the Civil War with more progressive views than Lincoln, but Lincoln was the one to end slavery.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:44 PM on April 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

More insanity.

Trump lawyer: ‘No right’ to protest at rallies

President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued in a Thursday court filing that protesters “have no right” to “express dissenting views” at his campaign rallies because such protests infringed on his First Amendment rights.

“Of course, protesters have their own First Amendment right to express dissenting views, but they have no right to do so as part of the campaign rally of the political candidates they oppose,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

As such, Trump’s lawyers concluded “even if Mr. Trump implicitly instructed the audience to remove the protesters by using force if necessary, his speech was still entirely lawful and protected under the First Amendment unless he advocated a greater degree of force than was necessary under the circumstances. Absent that type of unlawful advocacy, Mr. Trump cannot be held liable for incitement. It makes no difference whether the crowd reacted with unlawful violence beyond what Mr. Trump advocated.”
posted by futz at 8:45 PM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

That's not a real email.
posted by EarBucket at 8:51 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

> President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued in a Thursday court filing that protesters “have no right” to “express dissenting views” at his campaign rallies because such protests infringed on his First Amendment rights.

Ah, yes, who can forget the landmark case of Freeze v. Peach.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:52 PM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

So Bernie doesn't know if Ossoff is progressive enough yet he capaigns for this guy. Okay. i wanted to bold this whole article.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is campaigning for Omaha, Neb., mayoral candidate Heath Mello Thursday night, and he's not apologizing for it.

"Absolutely, and I want him to win," Sanders, I-Vt., told NPR Thursday, after a rally in Grand Prairie, Texas.

-- The Omaha event wasn't that notable – just one of several red state visits on the DNC itinerary — until Thursday morning. That's when Ilyse Hogue, the president of abortion rights advocate NARAL Pro-Choice America, issued a statement blasting Sanders and Perez for spending time and resources campaigning alongside a Democrat who opposes abortion rights.

"The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women – one of the most critical constituencies for the party – of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid," Hogue said. "Today's action makes this so-called 'fight back tour' look more like a throw-back tour for women and our rights."

Sanders pushed back against the criticism. [...blah blah blah blah...]

But that call for pragmatism doesn't mesh with the main message Sanders has been delivering this week: a call for a more aggressive and progressive Democratic party. In the same interview, he blamed Republican gains at the state and federal level on "the failure of the Democratic Party to have a progressive agenda, to bring people into this party, to mobilize people."

-- The DNC is doing its best to distance itself from the Mello endorsement. Party staffers were quick to tell reporters that it was Sanders', and not the DNC's, idea to hold a rally for Mello.

OLD WHITE DUDES need to step aside. There is a strong case for senility here as well. He just stomped on his own message and stomped again. GAH. Go away, get checked by a doctor, and paint pictures or whatever.
posted by futz at 9:04 PM on April 20, 2017 [30 favorites]

I feel as though the "an island in the Pacific" thing is an attempt to invert Birtherism: they've had to admit that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii... so now, we know that Hawaii isn't part of the United States because Barack Obama was born there, and we know that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States!

It's like the scene from The Holy Grail where they conclude that a witch must be made of wood because she weighs the same as a duck.
posted by XMLicious at 9:10 PM on April 20, 2017 [21 favorites]

"The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women – one of the most critical constituencies for the party – of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid," Hogue said. "Today's action makes this so-called 'fight back tour' look more like a throw-back tour for women and our rights."

Called it.
posted by Talez at 9:13 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Futz, I've got to say I was with you until your final paragraph. The Mello endorsement infuriates me, especially when contrasted with his attitude toward Ossoff, but I just see it as more of his same old schtick rather than senility or anything.
posted by zachlipton at 9:14 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

The Gorsuch Court issued its first illegitimate 5-4 ruling, overturning a stay of execution in Arkansas.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:26 PM on April 20, 2017 [25 favorites]

BOTH candidates have ads out showing them shooting screens

As a non-gun-owner I assumed "shooting screens" was some popular variant on skeet shooting so I went to have a look and nope, it's two old white guys going Full Elvis on some old electronics.
posted by Well I Was In The Neighbourhood at 9:27 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Futz "OLD WHITE DUDES need to step aside." is not very inclusive....and I, for one, have no intention of stepping aside. Just sayin'. I'm not trying to pick a fight. I have had similar issues with big names in both national and local politics and I understand frustration and powerlessness and fear and anger. But given the wide range of factual evidence plus the circumstantial evidence that a foreign government and its agents have actively tried to undermine our Democracy, our Political Parties, our Faith in the process, and anything else they can undermine, every time I get angry about something that is divisive on the left I try to pause and ask "Would Putin get a hard-on watching me rant and rave about this?" and if the answer is yes, then I try to let it go and channel that energy in to something more constructive and unifying. Sometimes I fail at it. But more and more I am finding the satisfaction from taking constructive actions to be a guiding force. Just sayin' not judgin'.
posted by W Grant at 9:39 PM on April 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

When they talk about "insurance" they're really talking about "healthcare"

We have found the root cause of the issue! They're confused about providing care on one hand and paying for it on the other.

Government Healthcare == The Military and VA

Government Healthinsurance == Medicare/Medicaid

Just keep calmly enlightening them at every opportunity and everything will work out fine! *
posted by mikelieman at 9:48 PM on April 20, 2017

"OLD WHITE DUDES need to step aside." is not very inclusive

You've been telling lies so long
Some believe they're true

So they close their eyes to things
You have no right to do

Just as soon as you are gone
Hope will start to climb

Please don't stay around too long
You're wasting precious time
posted by mikelieman at 9:54 PM on April 20, 2017

As a metaphor, enemas are even worse than Hitler!

Hitler loved enemas. Camomile enemas. And was quite the Furzführer.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:54 PM on April 20, 2017

Arkansas is the same state that kept a friend of a friend on death row for 18 years, finally forcing an Alford plea once they figured out the state was in the wrong (said former prisoner can't even vote). I am not impressed by the justice system of Arkansas, but I guess it's good enough for Gorsuch.
posted by lauranesson at 9:56 PM on April 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

I could have and should have done a much better job explaining myself in my last post. #notalloldwhitemen will have to do for now. Also, being an asshole does not equate dementia.
posted by futz at 9:59 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

> It's like a 20% lie that they feel is within the margin of error of the truth, so they can always walk it back in the off chance they're ever confronted with the truth. . . . Anyway, it's crazy making for me and I'd like a label for it.

Assholery - and the person doing it is an asshole.

Does that help?

These are people who always have to be right and can never under any circumstances admit that they are wrong. So, they have found a way to make this happen. In common parlance, these people are known as flaming assholes.
posted by flug at 10:06 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Henry Kissinger just damned Jared Kushner with the faintest of praise

I'll take them where I can get them.
posted by AwkwardPause at 10:14 PM on April 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

I would just say that as a white dude who's not that young anymore...I would be 100% fine with not being represented by a white guy at any level of government for, say, the next 20 years.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:16 PM on April 20, 2017 [25 favorites]

Chrysotom, make it 200 and you've got yourself a deal.
posted by lauranesson at 10:21 PM on April 20, 2017 [14 favorites]

"OLD WHITE DUDES need to step aside." is not very inclusive...

Ah yes, the Minoritarian Reversal. A classic move.
posted by rhizome at 10:21 PM on April 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

So this appears to be the NPR article futz is quoting from there? The most damning thing it mentions about Heath Mello seems to be that he supported a bill that would mandate that doctors "inform women seeking abortions about the availability of an ultrasound".

But didn't the entirety of the Democratic Party's efforts and money, and the efforts and money of many other people besides, just get thrown behind a candidate who far from merely having supported a candidate with questionable positions, actually herself said on video in a 2015 interview on MSNBC said that she would support "Constitutional restrictions" and "Constitutional action" on abortion?

I posted a link to that video in a thread last year (goes to another huge politics thread, obvs.) But when I checked, it turns out I did so while quoting and concurring with a comment from you, futz, which you concluded by saying, "despite being the nominee endorsed by the nation's leading pro-choice groups, she is more open to abortion regulation than Sanders."

So, it seems incongruous to castigate Sanders for supporting someone (and supporting that person in the company of the head of the DNC) who sounds like they have less-problematic credentials than the party's own presidential candidate.

Maybe Clinton made some excuse for her statement that would clarify everything and make Sanders and Mello obviously the bad guys here; but Google seems to think the "Constitutional restrictions" quote doesn't appear anywhere else on MeFi, so I don't think anyone ever responded to me or brought it up again here, I'm not seeing an official campaign comment on it in the course of a quick search elsewhere, and curiously it is not mentioned at all in the related section of the Wikipedia article on her positions.
posted by XMLicious at 10:26 PM on April 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

I published my thoughts on Sen. Feinstein's town hall as a Medium piece, with some additions and edits, since a few people asked. That said, if you already read it upthread, you're not going to find much new.

Thanks to everyone in the thread for their questions and suggestions, which helped me improve a few things.
posted by zachlipton at 10:35 PM on April 20, 2017 [34 favorites]

So, it seems incongruous to castigate Sanders for supporting someone (and supporting that person in the company of the head of the DNC) who sounds like they have less-problematic credentials than the party's own presidential candidate.

Ok. Thanks for pointing that out? It is a full year later. I am not going to go through all of my comment history right now but I did say in one of these threads quite awhile ago that I was done with Sanders and I have been for some time. That comment was from a year ago in the heat of the election.

I hope that you got something off your chest.
posted by futz at 10:43 PM on April 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

I really didn't go looking for a quote from you. I just searched for discussion of it on MeFi because I assumed it would have been investigated and explained at some point.

It's totally fine if you're done with Sanders. That's not a reason for anyone else to accept specious criticism of him, though.
posted by XMLicious at 10:47 PM on April 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think that we have some crossed wires here XML. Memail me if you want to sort it out.
posted by futz at 11:02 PM on April 20, 2017

Just to make one more note which I already wrote out—I didn't take a close look at Mello, so maybe he has done things worse than endorsing constitutional restrictions on abortion. But as far as I can see neither the NPR article nor the NARAL press release present evidence of it.

You are absolutely awesome for all of the links you've been finding and posting in these threads, futz; it's not that I want to criticize you personally.
posted by XMLicious at 11:08 PM on April 20, 2017

New Yorker: The Recent History of Bombing the Shit Out of 'Em: "Last October, in Iraq, I stumbled across the aftermath of a coalition strike that killed nineteen allies. The frequency of such incidents shows that Trump’s bombing strategy is nothing new."

The scrutiny that American airpower has attracted during the Trump Administration is both welcomed and frustrating. Even during the three months immediately preceding Trump’s Inauguration, the organization Airwars documented an alarming escalation in both coalition strikes and their collateral damage: more than three hundred credibly reported civilian deaths in the vicinity of Mosul and more than two hundred in the vicinity of Raqqa. “With reported fatalities from coalition strikes at record levels, we would have expected significant media engagement,” Chris Woods, the director of Airwars, said in a statement on President Barack Obama’s last day in office. “Instead, anything beyond local reporting has been almost nonexistent.”

posted by zachlipton at 1:23 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

I think it's important to clarify what's going on with Bernie, the DNC and the Omaha mayor's race because apparently there's still some confusion over Democratic candidate Heath Mello's pro-life position. So, here's the quote from the Huffpo story:
"Mello is a sponsor of the final version of a 20-week abortion ban approved by the governor in 2010, and cast anti-choice votes in favor of requiring physicians to be physically present for an abortion in order to impede access to telemedicine abortion care, and a law banning insurance plans in the state from covering abortions. He was endorsed in 2010 by anti-choice group Nebraska Right to Life."
Of course, as mayor, he assures Huffpo, he “would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care.”
Of course, as mayor, he would have absolutely no power or authority to do so, so it's not exactly a Tim Kaine kind of situation. And he knows that.
As for Bernie's (and Ellison's!) appearance at a rally for Mello, there's this: "And we have got to appreciate where people come from, and do our best to fight for the pro-choice agenda. But I think you just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue."
I'm not going to argue yea or nay on the exclusion question because that should be a whole separate post. But Bernie already put his foot in it once this week with the Ossoff debacle. Now he's bathing in it.
I suspect the DNC may not have done its homework on Mello before committing its spotlight, because according to Huffpo, Daily Kos had to withdraw its earlier support for him.
Maybe everybody stumbled badly on this, but I'm not in a forgiving mood. Women's right to choose is not just any old issue, it's driving the resistance. You think all those pink hats are chopped liver? Maybe Bernie doesn't know that, maybe he thinks he's driving the resistance. In any case, I think he needs to be shown a way to honorably step back from the tour for health reasons before he splits the party.
posted by kemrocken at 3:04 AM on April 21, 2017 [29 favorites]

That New Yorker link is frustrating. I'm all for articles that put a human face on the victims of our military actions. We need to see that. But they say "Even during the three months immediately preceding Trump’s Inauguration, the organization Airwars documented an alarming escalation in both coalition strikes and their collateral damage" with no corresponding graph or data. If that is real, I'd very much like to understand what happened and why, but there's no effort to explain. And "the military says the rules of engagement haven't changed umder Trump" is quoted without any mention of the fact that this statement has been contradicted by some on the ground personnel.

It feels like they are, in the middle of what should be a straightforward article on the human costs of American air power, going out of their way to normalize Trump.

I have the opposite problem with the two Intercept articles linked above. I want very much to share them, because the transparent corruption of lying about your inauguration donors and selling access to Congressional staffers fits my personal understanding of the Trump administration all too well, and, if true, needs to be exposed. But after the way The Intercept supported Wikileaks and "but her emails, but the Clinton Foundation" etc during the campaign, and after their weird credulity toward Jay from "Serial" (sorry, that still bothers me), and after this story from someone who worked there, I've put the Intercept on the same Do Not Share list as the Daily Mail. (Though I am tempted to share stuff from the Intercept a lot more often than I'm tempted to share stuff from the Daily Mail.)

Anybody got any less problematic sources for any of those stories?
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:33 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

I dreamed last night that I was working in Washington, having lunch at a bar-type restaurant when Trump walked in with a guard and sat at the far end of the bar, nearest the window. Most people stood when he entered, and sat after he did, but he took no notice of any of us. He ate quickly and left. Then there was a commotion outside, and we saw smoke. We went to investigate, and off in the distance bloomed a mushroom cloud, and then a second one appeared. I saw one bomber shot down and crash near me. Everyone started yelling and screaming, but my first instinct was to start getting people to safety (and try some really interesting looking Korean food, which I didn't really consider significant until just now).

I've never had a dream about Trump before (no surprise), but I've never had a dream about nuclear war either, and I was born in the 1960s. I might have dreamed about Korean food before, that does sound like me. But I just wanted to say, thanks America for putting this crap in my head for the first time ever.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 4:04 AM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Ah, I'm now seeing that the DailyKos statement about Heath Mello I was looking at a Twitter version of has been slightly updated; when originally issued it only had the claim about the supposedly-optional ultrasound information bill, and also stated that he had "a 100 percent approval rating from Planned Parenthood Voters of Nebraska in 2015."

Now there's a separate statement from Planned Parenthood pasted into the page essentially saying that the report of Mello having a positive approval rating from Planned Parenthood is completely false and giving what appears to be the same record kemrocken describes above.

So, my apologies for having the information wrong in my last few comments; when I was looking into this six hours ago I wasn't seeing the corrected details in the NPR article, the NARAL press release, or several other sources I looked at. And now I think I agree with what everyone else has been saying about Sanders.
posted by XMLicious at 4:14 AM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

So, it seems incongruous to castigate Sanders for supporting someone (and supporting that person in the company of the head of the DNC) who sounds like they have less-problematic credentials than the party's own presidential candidate.

I keep forgetting there are two rules: one for Sanders and one for every other Democratic politician. Sanders makes weird purity rules about who is a progressive and who isn't based on the now-defunct TPP? Fine. Sanders doesn't care about allegedly-progressive politicians being weak on choice? Also fine. Sanders wants more influence in the party and is made Outreach Chair? Great! Sanders doesn't really want to do that outreach beyond groups that were already supporting him? Also great!

Everything Bernie Sanders does is fine and great and we should just not worry about it. Good to know.
posted by asteria at 4:27 AM on April 21, 2017 [14 favorites]

No, as I said (perhaps while you were writing your own comment, asteria) since all of the sources I was looking at lacked significant information about Heath Mello's record and falsely claimed he had a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood, I see that I was wrong and definitely agree with the criticism of Sanders.
posted by XMLicious at 4:31 AM on April 21, 2017

Yesterday during his press conference with the Italian PM, Trump brought up Pavarotti "friend of mine, great friend of mine." Pavarotti has been dead for ten years.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:00 AM on April 21, 2017 [21 favorites]

If you're serious about economic justice you will never compromise on reproductive justice. The two are indivisible. You can't claim to support one without supporting the other.
posted by supercrayon at 5:01 AM on April 21, 2017 [62 favorites]

"And we have got to appreciate where people come from, and do our best to fight for the pro-choice agenda. But I think you just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue."

This is rich coming from someone who's spent most of the last two years castigating and attacking as not true progressives anyone who disagrees with him on any issue that affects white people's wallets. $12 minimum wage rather than $15? Heretic! College free for those making less than $125,000 rather than everyone? Unworthy!

So Sanders will forgive someone being damn near completely opposite of the true progressive position when it comes to women's rights, but being slightly less progressive on an issue that he affects his dear WWC and reap the whirlwind.
posted by chris24 at 5:17 AM on April 21, 2017 [26 favorites]

@Talez: your "called it" says Democrats could probably sway moderate Republican voters by saying "We will fund schools instead of overzealously cutting taxes. We will not touch abortion, gun control, or gay rights" but then voters on the left would stop showing up. This reads that you think it's bad thing that women are holding to a core plank of the Democratic platform. If I'm misreading that, I apologize. My view is that we don't trade away basic human rights to appease conservative voters just to get someone elected because he has a (D) next to his name for now.

I don't think it's a bad thing to hold to basic principles of humanity. I'm just pointing out that when we go after moderate Rs we lose the left so what's the point? We need to solidify our own base.
posted by Talez at 5:22 AM on April 21, 2017

Has Sessions been fired for perjury yet?
posted by Yowser at 5:25 AM on April 21, 2017 [22 favorites]

Democracy Now posted part 2 of their conversation with Shane Bauer about the Berkeley incident.
posted by jazzbaby at 5:46 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

At NYT, Climate Denial and Racism Don’t Make You Fringe–but Single-Payer Does

Again, on the issue of single-payer healthcare—a position supported by a plurality of Americans and a majority of Democrats—the only Times columnist to nominally support the cause, Paul Krugman, spent weeks during the primary explaining why it wasn’t feasible (“it’s just not going to happen anytime soon”) and should be tabled until some unknown time in the future.

Other liberal columnists, like Blow, Nick Kristof, Gail Collins and Roger Cohen, were either silent on the issue of single-payer healthcare or similarly dismissed it as unrealistic (“almost certainly an unattainable goal,” Cohen insisted—11/4/16). Strangely, the most conservative of the liberal columnists, Thomas Friedman, endorsed the idea in an offhand thought experiment last year (1/6/16), but as with Krugman, single-payer is relegated to a normative, theoretical goal, while those pushing it—namely Sanders—are dismissed as fringe day-dreamers promising the Moon.

The point is not that any particular columnist is under any leftist obligation to like Sanders, or all of his policy goals—it’s that the lack of a single columnist supporting a candidate whose platform would be down-the-middle in most European and Latin American countries shows how far to the right the Overton window is in the most influential newspaper in the world. Ideas like single-payer healthcare and free college are dismissed as pie-in-the-sky fantasies, while climate denial, anti-Arab bigotry and anti-woman vitriol are, according to Times editors (Huffington Post, 4/14/17), bringing a “new perspective to bear” that “further widens” the “vibrant diversity of opinions” the paper presents.

posted by indubitable at 6:18 AM on April 21, 2017 [49 favorites]

Current status: tired of explaining the difference between "was referred to committee in January and hasn't been heard from since" and "definitely totally going to happen, like, tomorrow omg!" to people on Facebook. We have enough shit to deal with, I'm sick of these glurgey "copy, don't share!" posts implying that Congress is going to outlaw abortion and abolish all public schools next week.

Anyway. Carry on.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:22 AM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

From yesterday: [Chaffetz is] resigning because he's in an unwinnable state. He knows how bad the scandal is involving Trump. To the point of treason. However, he can't turn on a GOP president, even when warranted, without serious blowback and the end of his future ambitions. So he'll get hell from his own party, or he'll get hell for not pursuing justice for an unprecedented crime by the President.

I don't see the latter part. The rest of the Republican Party, and certainly all of them in Congress, seem perfectly fine with not acting as a check on Trump at all, let alone pursuing justice for an unprecedented crime. And Chaffetz doesn't care about the opinion of patriotic Americans.
posted by Gelatin at 6:39 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

"Heretic" and "Unworthy" are interesting ways of interpreting "campaigned for that other candidate in the general and encouraged people to vote for her"

Man starts fire, eventually throws glass of water on flames. Film at 11.
posted by chris24 at 6:50 AM on April 21, 2017 [14 favorites]

If you're serious about economic justice you will never compromise on reproductive justice. The two are indivisible. You can't claim to support one without supporting the other.
posted by supercrayon An hour ago [15 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

Well, you can if you just don't think women are important. If you tell yourself you're a Nice Guy, on the right side of the issues, a True Progressive, but you think "women's issues" are secondary concerns, guess what: you're a misogynist. You just don't care if women are fucked over so long as your chosen demographic (white men) are taken care of, because they take priority. I mean that is literally what this is: economic justice for some is more important than for others.


"And we have got to appreciate where people come from, and do our best to fight for the pro-choice agenda. But I think you just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue."

I know his misogyny has been VERY FUCKING OBVIOUS to me for a long, long time, but is it enough now? Can we stop coddling people who still support this shit and don't acknowledge what a big fucking deal this was in the election?
posted by schadenfrau at 6:53 AM on April 21, 2017 [37 favorites]

Why not? We are still having one right now on MeFi.
posted by spitbull at 7:01 AM on April 21, 2017 [32 favorites]

Man starts fire, eventually throws glass of water on flames.

Is your feeling that we just shouldn't have primaries?

Despite last year, it is actually possible to run in a primary without undermining your opponent to the point that there is a legitimate argument to be made that you cost that opponent the general election.
posted by Etrigan at 7:01 AM on April 21, 2017 [25 favorites]

Man starts fire, eventually throws glass of water on flames. Film at 11.

Your position is that someone disagreed with some policy positions, lost their election and then acted pragmatically by endorsing their former rival in the general election — and this is unforgivable? Your view of the world literally does not permit dissent. It's a gigantic waste of time to engage further with that kind of ideology.
posted by indubitable at 7:02 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Is your feeling that we just shouldn't have primaries?

My feeling is that a person who said he wouldn't campaign negatively doesn't really deserve much praise for eventually and often seemingly reluctantly backing the candidate after breaking that promise and campaigning negatively well after he'd lost the nomination.

And my earlier comment was not focused on Sanders/Clinton, but rather Sanders and any Democrat/Ossoff/etc.
posted by chris24 at 7:04 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Why not? We are still having one right now on MeFi.

MeFi should've campaigned in Wisconsin!
posted by dis_integration at 7:06 AM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Your view of the world literally does not permit dissent. It's a gigantic waste of time to engage further with that kind of ideology.

On the issue of abortion, you're correct, my view of the world does not permit dissent on the issue and it would be a gigantic waste of time to engage further on it. I will not vote for or donate to a candidate who isn't fully in support of abortion rights and there are no trade-off policies that could be proposed that would make me cede from that position.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:08 AM on April 21, 2017 [48 favorites]

Your position is that someone disagreed with some policy positions, lost their election and then acted pragmatically by endorsing their former rival in the general election — and this is unforgivable? Your view of the world literally does not permit dissent. It's a gigantic waste of time to engage further with that kind of ideology.

My position was that Sanders will permit dissent when it comes to women's issues - and issues about POC - but won't when it comes to economic issues affecting WWC. His decisions on where and where not to suffer dissent say much more about him I think than my comment pointing this out.
posted by chris24 at 7:13 AM on April 21, 2017 [11 favorites]

Well, it's a good thing that Sanders supports abortion rights, then. I guess we're off to talking about someone else?
posted by indubitable at 7:14 AM on April 21, 2017

Well, it's a good thing that Sanders supports abortion rights, then. I guess we're off to talking about someone else?

Not enough to require it in who he endorses.
posted by chris24 at 7:15 AM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

I guess we're off to talking about someone else?

Sure! Take Mello, for example. Fuck that guy.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:15 AM on April 21, 2017 [12 favorites]

Sanders is just one politician who some love to point out "isn't even a Democrat". Isn't the larger issue that the Democratic party permits dissent when it comes to women's issues?
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 7:17 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Sanders is just one politician who some love to point out "isn't even a Democrat".

You know that he literally is not a Democrat, right?
posted by Etrigan at 7:21 AM on April 21, 2017 [11 favorites]

Please, enough with Clinton and Sanders.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:22 AM on April 21, 2017 [52 favorites]

Isn't the larger issue that the Democratic party permits dissent when it comes to women's issues?

Yes, it is a major problem that the Democratic party allows its members to be in favor of forced childbirth and says its a-ok to actively support policies that require exclusively-low-income women to go through childbirth against their will. But, gotta keep those 65+ year old white dudes in WV happy I guess.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:23 AM on April 21, 2017 [23 favorites]

You know that he literally is not a Democrat, right?
Of course, but that's picking at the blade of grass while I'm pointing out the boulder.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 7:23 AM on April 21, 2017

Democrats to Trump: You don’t have the leverage. We do.
Tellingly, multiple reports indicate that the White House is demanding a rushed vote on the new repeal-and-replace bill because aides are desperate to showcase something, anything, as a legislative achievement in time for the 100-day mark. So you’d think the last thing the White House can tolerate is a government shutdown on Trump’s watch at precisely that moment, which would further reinforce the image that Trump and Republicans are making an enormous mess of governing. And so, in the government funding fight, Democrats should see the looming 100-day milestone as something that also gives them increased leverage. Judging by last night’s Democratic conference call, they are aware of this.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:30 AM on April 21, 2017 [22 favorites]

I am related to, know and love many old white dudes. I don't want them disenfranchised or cast into the outer darkness or anything. I just want them to step back for a while and let everyone else have their fair turn, because everyone's else's interests have been thrown under the bus for (checks watch) a few thousand years now.
posted by emjaybee at 7:30 AM on April 21, 2017 [24 favorites]

I guess that I'm a pragmatist and a supporter of the big tent, and I don't believe that the Democrats should have any single litmus test for membership, even one that I feel as strongly about as reproductive freedom. But that's not Bernie's stance. Bernie is all for litmus tests. He demands absolute purity on issues that he thinks are important, like trade policy. He's only for a big tent on issues that he thinks are secondary, like whether women are fully human.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:33 AM on April 21, 2017 [21 favorites]

Anyway, I don't really care if Sanders ran for the Democratic nomination and then said, when chosen for the outreach chair position, "I was elected as an Independent and I will finish this term as an Independent".

I project that to myself, wanting to be able to say I'm a Democrat because many of the non-race, non-gender things they stood for in the 1930s were great policy. But the DLC coopted it before I could vote and started trading away rights for the poor. It's only last year, in hope of helping to change the Democratic party toward something I could support, that I joined my local party - largely because of Sanders' campaign.

Though, after going to meetings for a year, I'm fairly bothered with what the local party leadership will accept as normal and what they'll consider fringe.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 7:36 AM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

So having kept up with these threads for maybe, at best, 60% I feel like I'm missing some context on why Sanders and White Working Class are being regularly joined at the hip despite the policies he advocates for helping everyone with a pulse.

Also, 2018 and 2020 are going to be !FUN! if Bernie is the boogieman of the 2016 election and not:

a) Two years of But Her Emails from the press
b) Two years of not spotlighting Trump's inadequacies
c) James Fucking Comey
d) Rampant GOP cheating
e) Delightful combinations of the above in op-eds

We still have a press that is trying to find something Presidential in Trump. We still have a press that relegates stories about Trump scandals that would have stuck to Obama to A11. We still have a press that is trying to find some shine on the shit of GOP policies in the interest of "balanced reporting". We still have James Comey doing whatever slimey thing he's doing (and I think a Russia/Trump investigation is Lucy's Football at this point). We have GOP cheating that is getting more blatant and they're still getting away with it in many cases. We will always have shitty op-eds but I guess that's been a feature since the before first hot-takes on Hadrian's new construction project.

I thought the post-mortem on the Clinton Candicacy was pretty clear on it being the above, plus data failures (which presumably have been addressed). I was under the impression that Sanders attacks in the primary bleeding people off Clinton at the end was dwarfed by the above. And fucking Stein voters.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:38 AM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

Oh, and Rusdian meddling, to forget about the elephant in the room.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:42 AM on April 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawai'i's second Congressional district hasn't yet put out a press release about the "island in the Pacific" jibe. I'm wondering whether she will.

Rep. Gabbard has been seen as one of the less anti-Trump Democrats (and it's hard to get away from news reports saying that Bannon loves her & she was being considered for Cabinet posts). But she is super unhappy about the Syria air strikes (given that she said that preventing a war with Syria is basically the one reason she gave for being one of the first Democrats to meet Trump after the November election), spoke against the refugee ban and brought an advocate for refugees as her guest to Trump's Joint Address to Congress. She supported the tax marchers, but hasn't yet (in my opinion) gone beyond very policy-y criticisms to say anything fighty or snarky about the current administration. I'm wondering whether the Sessions jab will cause a break in the pattern.
posted by brainwane at 7:45 AM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh, and Rusdian meddling, to forget about the elephant in the room.

If Americans weren't so stupid and/or eager to engage their own prejudices during the election the Russian meddling wouldn't have mattered. Give its history, and as a discrete unit, this country deserves everything it gets.
posted by Talez at 7:46 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

I feel like I'm missing some context on why Sanders and White Working Class are being regularly joined at the hip despite the policies he advocates for helping everyone with a pulse

I think it's just that, in 2017, the last thing we need is another old white dude touring the country telling us women of childbearing age that we must donate our uteruses to the cause.

To be clear: we currently have a single payer health insurance plan called medicaid. It does not provide abortion coverage because of the Hyde Amendment. If you are currently campaigning to enact single payer health insurance for all without simultaneously campaigning for repealing Hyde, you're campaigning for means-testing abortion coverage for every woman in the country.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:50 AM on April 21, 2017 [61 favorites]

Mod note: Folks, please try way, way harder and more consistently to not dig in on Clinton/Sanders stuff. I feel you: I get that it's really easy to decide to re-argue some Bernie Sanders and/or Hillary Clinton stuff on a "oh but I just want to address this one thing, I'm not relitigating the primaries" sort of basis, but realistically there was a lot of fuckin' psychic damage done last year to MeFi's collective ability to "just" discuss some little detail, to the point where it's fraught as hell to go there without digging up a bunch of bad feelings and putting people from various directions on edge. It's like watching siblings with baggage try to have a normal conversation that never really is normal because of semi-related old shit they haven't moved past. It's exhausting and exhausted and we really need y'all to be more self-aware on an individual and group level about this dynamic playing out and again and again and again.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:51 AM on April 21, 2017 [72 favorites]

These threads move fast, so I think some people might handle that by skimming or classifying comments based on the first few words. Here's part of a comment I found interesting:

But given the wide range of factual evidence plus the circumstantial evidence that a foreign government and its agents have actively tried to undermine our Democracy, our Political Parties, our Faith in the process, and anything else they can undermine, every time I get angry about something that is divisive on the left I try to pause and ask "Would Putin get a hard-on watching me rant and rave about this?" and if the answer is yes, then I try to let it go and channel that energy in to something more constructive and unifying.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:55 AM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

Exactly what are we supposed to do when Sanders starts talking about abortion, then? Or injecting himself into vulnerable house races?

This is a serious question. Sanders is not going away, and neither are women's rights.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:56 AM on April 21, 2017 [26 favorites]

sometimes I take a shot of whiskey and bite down hard on a piece of leather in lieu of commenting
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:00 AM on April 21, 2017 [55 favorites]

People who won't vote Democrat because of abortion are people who are not reachable. Anti-abortion is not a consistent moral stance, and has everything to do with hatred of women and nothing to do with protecting babies (as evidenced by the many, many, MANY things that anti-abortion people are in favor of that hurt actual babies, which we have rehashed endlessly).

We don't need hardcore anti-abortion voters. We really don't. Most people believe abortion should be legal.

There is neither an ethical nor a vote-getting excuse for throwing women under this bus.
posted by emjaybee at 8:05 AM on April 21, 2017 [73 favorites]

There is no one in the office today so I'm just constantly refreshing twitter for the Chaffetz bomb to drop.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:06 AM on April 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Apparently Bill O'Reilly's legal team accidentally sent some strategy emails to Politico yesterday.

Josh Marshal has some amusing Thoughts on O'Reilly's Final Faceplant:

So let’s stipulate. There was an organized campaign [to drive ad-revenue from O'Reilly's show]. It was run largely by liberal activists. And everybody f’ing knew about it! The campaign amounted to these organized liberals being as loud as they could publicizing their campaign to drive away O’Reilly’s advertisers. And publicly taking credit for their success! [...]

But why would O’Reilly think that this email amounted to anything? I would submit that in this final moment, O’Reilly was duped by the ‘war on christmas’, liberal media bias dumbshit victimology racket he had been selling on his show for two decades: comically melodramatic, victim-preening nonsense aimed at whipping up feelings of resentment and rage. In other words, he was deluded in these final moments of his cable TV existence by his own racket! His goose had long been cooked. But this was his final undoing.

posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:13 AM on April 21, 2017 [22 favorites]

Exactly what are we supposed to do when Sanders starts talking about abortion, then? Or injecting himself into vulnerable house races?

My imperfect, unsatisfying answer is something like be understandably frustrated while still actively considering whether and how revisiting it on MetaFilter is gonna actually make the thread better. I'm not saying "this topic isn't legit" or "there's nothing worth discussion about this"; it'd be simpler if that were the case. I'm saying we are in a goddam hole on how people react to Sanders and Clinton and to people reacting to those reactions, and it's bad enough and been bad enough long enough that people choosing more often to just actively decline to dig in on it even when they feel like they're super right is gonna be healthier overall for the conversational dynamic here than yet another volley of Yeah But artillery.
posted by cortex at 8:16 AM on April 21, 2017 [19 favorites]

Oldest mistake in the game. You never get high on your own supply Bill.
posted by cmfletcher at 8:17 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Brian Beutler wrote a column yesterday that acknowledges and discusses the relitigate the primaries fight and the collective "psychic damage" across the party: The Democrats’ Existential Crisis Won’t Resolve Itself.

He concludes that the only way out is "the blessing of clean hands," someone who remained neutral in the primary, and violates MeFi's informal "stop saying Elizabeth Warren should run for President" rule by reminding us that, just as Harry Reid encouraged Obama to run, he recently encouraged Warren to run.

I remain somewhat skeptical, not least because she's repeatedly and loudly said she doesn't want to run for President, but I agree with Beutler's diagnosis that the discussion we keep having in this thread, and across the party, isn't going away on its own and we need a better way out.

Bonus link - McSweeney's: Trump's Elements of Style
posted by zachlipton at 8:21 AM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

another volley of Yeah But artillery.

Dang, I just got my HowAboutwitzer in position.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:21 AM on April 21, 2017 [53 favorites]

sometimes I take a shot of whiskey and bite down hard on a piece of leather in lieu of commenting

Sometimes I do that before commenting!

(And on a lighter note, I somehow missed this at the time, but Richard Prince is trolling Ivanka hard.)
posted by octobersurprise at 8:23 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

He concludes that the only way out is "the blessing of clean hands," someone who remained neutral in the primary, and violates MeFi's informal "stop saying Elizabeth Warren should run for President" rule by reminding us that, just as Harry Reid encouraged Obama to run, he recently encouraged Warren to run.

Unfortunately there's no new blood in the Democratic party. We desperately need both Bernie and Hilary to STFU, stay out of public, quietly fundraise and endorse if you must, but stop both covering for Trump and attacking the same team, and let someone new come on to the scene to revitalize the party. The last generation's leaders who just lost everything to fucking Donald Trump can't rebuild it. They just proved that. Let someone else lead. Anyone else other than those two. But unfortunately there's next to no Democratic bench through 8+ years of losses, and no obvious break to the poisonous cycle until at least 2018, but more likely the 2020 race when hopefully someone new can emerge. There's tons on new faces out there doing stuff through new organizations like Indivisible, but all of that just started, there's been no time for anyone to emerge through those channels, and continually fighting the last war and the lost cause is taking away from those efforts and not serving anyone except the two people at the end of their political careers who get to keep dominating the conversation anyway.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:35 AM on April 21, 2017 [19 favorites]

I think we keep coming back to Sanders/Clinton not only because it's important in itself, but because it's a stand in for a bigger division in the Party itself.

The problem with American political parties, both the Democrats and the Republicans, is that they're too damn big. Really each of them is at least two parties, and possibly even more, joined together mostly by a loathing for the other side not out of any real love for each other. But the nature of how we conduct elections in the USA prevents the parties from splitting and surviving, so they stick together.

So we keep circling back to Sanders v Clinton because there's that much bigger division that we're having a hard time talking about.
posted by sotonohito at 8:38 AM on April 21, 2017 [20 favorites]

President Trump, today:
No matter how much I accomplish during the ridiculous standard of the first 100 days, & it has been a lot (including S.C.), media will kill!

Translation: "I know my performance is a miserable failure, so I'm making excuses in advance!"

(Much like the election, when even he seemed to perceive that he was losing.)

Memo to Democrats: Trump's such a failure that even he admits it. (Hammering him on his failure to uphold his own "pledge" to the voters couldn't hurt, though IOKIYAR is a pervasive standard.)
posted by Gelatin at 8:44 AM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

There is no one in the office today so I'm just constantly refreshing twitter for the Chaffetz bomb to drop.

You might enjoy this garden path, then.
posted by dis_integration at 8:50 AM on April 21, 2017 [12 favorites]

Florida State Senator Frank Artiles resigned in light of his racist remarks.
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 9:00 AM on April 21, 2017 [31 favorites]

Resigned, but still a victim: "While I take full responsibility for using language that was vulgar and inappropriate, my family has fallen victim to a political process that can distort the truth for the sole purpose of political gain."
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:09 AM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

These threads are perfect examples of why we often can't coalesce well around a single candidate. Each of us has issues that are very personal to us, which we are unwilling to budge on, or negotiate.

Get a hundred progressives (or liberals, or whatever) in a room. Discuss your negotiables and non-negotiables and then try to pick someone in the room to "represent" the whole group. There likely will be no single person who shares everyone's non-negotiables. And if you find someone that does, they are not going to align with the non-negotiables of the next 100 people, or the next.

As a result, politicians can statistically NEVER completely satisfy their constituencies. This is baked in to who we are as human beings.

The trick, then, is for enough of us to be willing to grit our teeth and let go of our non-negotiables, so that we can actually make common cause with those who are otherwise mostly in agreement, so we can make progress on some issues now, with the hope that we will soon get progress on those other, more personal, issues later.

Who wants to be that person? Who wants to hand over or sublimate their own non-negotiable issue, the one that's so deeply personal that they couldn't imagine supporting someone in disagreement? The issue that had led to the death and suffering of friends and/or family?

How do we do it? Or do we not do it at all, and simply remain rooted where we are, hoping/working toward that time sometime down the road, when the candidates will eventually tire of our recalcitrance and swing back to pick us up?

This is the quintessential nature of human politics and is part of who we are. I think seeing this for what it is, and accepting that for some people, compromise on certain issues works, and for others compromise doesn't work on that particular issue, is the only way we can maintain any cohesive "movement". Historically, that's always been true, I think.

So if some here have issues which they feel are so fundamental to their identity that they cannot compromise on them, that does not make them my enemy. It just means that's who they are. We can accept our friends and allies for who they are, and allow them the latitude to be who they are, or we can decide it's not worth it to have a friend or ally and shun them.

It's not an easy calculus, and there are no easy answers. I think I just wanted to say all of this, though, not to be condescending, to help process my own thinking. Hopefully, I can be more accepting of my friends and allies when they have non-negotiables, and then elevate my perspective above our internecine struggles and disagreements we might have, to focus on the larger existential threats I think we all face.
posted by darkstar at 9:10 AM on April 21, 2017 [71 favorites]

Resigned, but still a victim: "While I take full responsibility for using language that was vulgar and inappropriate, my family has fallen victim to a political process that can distort the truth for the sole purpose of political gain."

Like demonizing people of color and women, for example.
posted by Gelatin at 9:11 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Florida State Senator Frank Artiles resigned in light of his racist remarks.

Resigned, but still a victim...

Well, it's something at least. I was pretty sure that the N-word wouldn't be a resignation-worthy offense in Trumperica.
posted by Etrigan at 9:12 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Flagged as fantastic, Darkstar.
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:13 AM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Exactly what are we supposed to do when Sanders starts talking about abortion, then? Or injecting himself into vulnerable house races?
posted by schadenfrau at 7:56 AM on April 21

Well, I think what we did/do here is a good start - intelligent discussion that did not devolve in to something less than that (thank you moderators!) and because of that I could follow along and learn more - about what is happening this week "on the street" so to speak, with current races/elections, with the DNC, with Bernie, about individual politicians' history with women's reproductive rights. For me, I now have the information I need to write a letter to Bernie, calling him out on supporting a candidate that does not support the full freedom of reproductive rights for women. I can also reach out to Perez and the DNC and let them know that if they want any money or support from me, in the future they need to have a better handle on what they are doing. The Leadership at the DNC is still new and I have to keep reminding myself of that simple fact.
posted by W Grant at 9:25 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

I think I know the answer, ya'll.

@lyzl Forget Bernie, remake the party in the image of Maxine Waters
posted by emjaybee at 9:26 AM on April 21, 2017 [46 favorites]

Oh also from Twitter, Imani Gandy @AngryBlackLady has this thread

I'm seeing a lot of stalwart Bernie stans talking about "pro-life" establishment Dems as if that absolves Sanders.

"Sanders is anti-establishment. he's going to shake up the system. He's going to lead the Democrats to the progressive promiseland."

But at the FIRST OPPORTUNITY, what does he do? Says that Democrats can't be focused on a single issue. Says repro rights is a social issue.

... He was supposed to be different. Better than the establishment.

BUT HE'S THE SAME.
posted by emjaybee at 9:32 AM on April 21, 2017 [22 favorites]

BHO is back.
posted by carmicha at 9:34 AM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

11 Republican AGs file on behalf of Exxon, claiming climate investigation is a ‘witchhunt’
posted by Artw at 9:35 AM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

> The Gorsuch Court issued its first illegitimate 5-4 ruling, overturning a stay of execution in Arkansas.

A lot of Trump's supporters won't care that he hasn't really gotten much done - aside from being President when Gorsuch was confirmed - because getting a conservative on the SC was by far the most important issue to them. Who needs to pass laws when you've got your own properly compliant court to overturn the ones you don't like?
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:45 AM on April 21, 2017 [12 favorites]

> Mr. Nugent said one member of the group — he wouldn’t say who — asked the three to extend their middle fingers beneath the portrait. “I politely declined,” he said. “Let the juxtaposition speak for itself.”

Ah yes, Mr. Ted Nugent, a true gentleman of the highest order. I wish they had flipped the portrait the bird. Why pretend to be anything other than what you are?
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:52 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Heh. Sweaty trump already working the refs re: assessment of his first 100 days in office:

No matter how much I accomplish during the ridiculous standard of the first 100 days, & it has been a lot (including S.C.), media will kill!

(Direct link to Beau Willimon tweet.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:53 AM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

A lot of Trump's supporters won't care that he hasn't really gotten much done - aside from being President when Gorsuch was confirmed - because getting a conservative on the SC was by far the most important issue to them.

Completely agree, and it's a complete indictment on both the Democratic party and the entire left/progressive movement that there's no corresponding recognition of the importance of SCOTUS, and that the only opportunity we were ever going to get to break the Republican's stranglehold on the Court and prevent a judicial theocracy didn't even move the needle.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:54 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Gorsuch's tiebreaking vote allowed Arkansas to rush the execution of Ledell Lee, among others. Lee was convicted in a trial where the judge and prosecutor were sleeping together. One of his appellate laywers hearings drunk. There was untested DNA evidence from the scene of the crime. But who cares, right? He's a prisoner, so he must have done it!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:57 AM on April 21, 2017 [64 favorites]

I thought there were a bunch of how to do business in Asian books that pretty much suggested the opposite, as in it's all about relationship building through things that don't necessarily seem pertinent?

I took a college course on Japanese Business and Culture way back when cyberpunk was a new thing, and yes, one of the thing that the instructor specifically mentioned is that Japanese tended to be offended by Americans skipping the small talk and adopting an "all business, straight to the point" attitude.

In other words, Trump's Mirror in action again.

Speaking of Asia and 1980s business trends, one of the things that keeps me optimistic is the maxim from Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" that one must know one's enemy and oneself. Republicans have been demonizing Democrats, liberals, and/or leftists for so long that they know longer know them, believing instead in their own propaganda and/or tribalism. And through a combination of the fact that the actual Republican agenda of cutting taxes for the rich and laissez-faire economics are not really popular, and that conservatives often define themselves as the opposite of whatever liberals believe, they don't really know themselves, except as a tribe.

Republicans are excellent at Sun Tzu's favored tactic of deception, but that's because for them, it is necessary. Say what you will about Democrats and their disagreements, but they don't have to pretend to favor policies they really don't, or vice-versa. That's a huge advantage, and I hope more on the left embrace it.
posted by Gelatin at 9:58 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Yeah, as a foreign observer I was amazed by how little fuss the Democrats raised over the prospect of a stolen Supreme Court seat being used to dismantle basically everything the party ostensibly stands for and supports.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:58 AM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

BHO is back.

Former President Barack Obama will make his first public appearance Monday, hosting an event on civic engagement on his old stomping grounds at the University of Chicago.

...Obama’s largely been on vacation since leaving office with trips to the Caribbean with Richard Branson and more recently in the South Pacific with Bruce Springsteen, Oprah and Tom Hanks. He also has started working on his memoirs.

Man, if anyone deserves an extended vacation, it's that dude. Eight years of dealing with the world's bullshit..no wonder he has gray hair now.

Now that he's rested up, though, my pony request is that he'd hold a civic engagement event in Roswell, GA...
posted by darkstar at 10:00 AM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

Sweaty trump already working the refs re: assessment of his first 100 days in office

It's worth noting, dismissively, that the Republicans stealing the SCOTUS seat was almost entirely Mitch McConnell's doing, not Trump's.
posted by Gelatin at 10:00 AM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Trump's Mirror in action again.

Even down to the "communicating in broken, pidgin English" part.
posted by contraption at 10:02 AM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

David Fahrenthold, WaPo: What Trump's giving to charity -- or lack thereof -- foreshadowed about his presidency

During the 2016 campaign, I spent a lot of time trying to answer a simple question: Had Donald Trump followed through on his many public promises to donate money to charity?

The answer, for the most part, was “no.” […] And, along the way, I learned something about the president’s personality, by studying a lot of small decisions – when Trump gave money, and when he didn’t – that Trump made when he thought nobody was looking.

Now that Trump is in the White House, some of the same behavior patterns have appeared again.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:06 AM on April 21, 2017 [24 favorites]

From that Farenthold article, referencing an earlier paragraph in which Farenthold tried to track down physical testimonials to Trump's alleged philanthropy:

The result, after nearly 100 days, is a familiar one. Trump’s list of presidential achievements so far looks like the policy equivalent of two theater seats and a park bench.

Oh, snap!
posted by Gelatin at 10:15 AM on April 21, 2017 [12 favorites]

Does anyone have a precise address on that park bench with Trump's name on it? For... reasons.
posted by Etrigan at 10:19 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Does anyone have a precise address on that park bench with Trump's name on it? For... reasons.

The ice rinks in Central Park have Trump's name on them. Probably some benches near there.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:20 AM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm just going to say that I don't want people who are not pro-choice under my tent. It's a big tent, I understand that, and yet those assholes can go stand in the rain.

We can win without them. In fact, we need to win without them and this is absolutely not an issue where we should give a single fucking inch. Hold the goddamn line for reproductive rights or gtfo.
posted by lydhre at 10:22 AM on April 21, 2017 [50 favorites]

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Sends Letters Inviting Testimony of Comey, Rogers, Brennan, Clapper and Yates
posted by futz at 10:24 AM on April 21, 2017 [29 favorites]

The way I see it, we (Democrats) don't need to, nor should we, throw women's reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and those of other vulnerable people, under the bus in the interest of getting out the vote. Democrats do have a huge Meh Why Bother I'm Staying Home problem, but that won't be solved by turning ever more Blue Dog and courting the elusive conservative Democrat, who no longer exists for the most part. It's Republicans and the Right who are clutching their pearls and howling about Preshus Baybeez and OMG Scary Trans People In The Laydeez John WHUT ABOUT OUR CHIRRUN?

I think we need to solve the problem of 1) How do we pry voters out of their homes to actually vote? I'm not talking about the disenfranchised, though that's a problem, I'm talking about the "Meh Why Bother" contingent and the "I Only Vote In Presidential Elections" contingent.

And 2) how do we get a little more Teflon so that BUT HER EMAILS types of things don't stick? That candidate for local office whose potential OMGSCANDAL was working as a phone psychic? Are Democrat voters really such delicate flowers that they wilt (and stay home) when the merest whiff of something maybe a little unconventional comes up? Or is it the leadership that's timid (or just fond of suckling at the corporate donor teat?) that they're scared of any candidate putting a toe out of line?

Ever since the 2004 presidential race, the whole manufactured brouhaha around the Dean Scream and OMGSWIFTBOAT, I've been wondering why it seems so easy to turn people against a Democratic candidate when Republicans obviously don't give a shit about any shadiness surrounding one of their own? Even someone as manifestly horrid and unfit for office as His Cheetoness?

And as T.D. Strange points out, why weren't Democrats mobilized around the Supreme Court issue as Republicans were? (Yes, I know we MeFite Dems were, and many Democrats were, but not so much the party at large, at any rate not like the Republicans.) When did the Democrats become The Party of Meh?

And no, the solution is NOT NOT NOT to throw women and LGBT people under the bus; I know it's easy for me to say, being a Californian, but I don't think even in more conservative areas, people are as socially conservative as all that.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 10:27 AM on April 21, 2017 [21 favorites]

Does anyone have a precise address on that park bench with Trump's name on it? For... reasons.

I don't have a precise address, but I've seen it. It's inside Central Park, on the East side, on the pathway leading past the Zoo. If you walk in at the SE corner entrance by the Plaza, and follow the path toward the Zoo (or possibly just beyond, I may be remembering wrong), it will be on your right.
posted by Mchelly at 10:32 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Ever since the 2004 presidential race, the whole manufactured brouhaha around the Dean Scream and OMGSWIFTBOAT, I've been wondering why it seems so easy to turn people against a Democratic candidate when Republicans obviously don't give a shit about any shadiness surrounding one of their own? Even someone as manifestly horrid and unfit for office as His Cheetoness?

Because it's literally a holy war at this point. The ends now justify all means.
posted by Talez at 10:32 AM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

CNN: Trump was going to investigate voter fraud. What happened?

I'd bet on the Republicans springing that just close enough to the 2018 elections to seriously burden people with last-minute ID requirements in as many states as they can, using a federal voter fraud investigation of Benghazi-level overheated nothingburger as a fig leaf.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:33 AM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Much like the Tea Party spawned from the dead-ender remnants of those Republicans who, in 2008, still thought George W. Bush wasn't a miserable failure, there will be diehard Trumpists who will define whatever he does as good.

But it's about time that Democrats stopped pretending Trump is a legitimate president, or anything other than a national disaster. The indications that Trump was unfit for office were obvious even back in the primary, if not before, and obsessive navel-gazing from the so-called "liberal media" aside, voting for him can only be viewed at best as a tragic mistake if not irresponsible political bomb-throwing.

Many Republicans basically never accepted Obama as legitimate, and they were wrong to have done so. But even if it activates the media's "both sides do it!" pleasure centers, no Democrat should regard the choice of Trump as at all legitimate or acceptable. If Trump is the price of political tribalism, that price is too high.
posted by Gelatin at 10:33 AM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

I'd bet on the Republicans springing that just close enough to the 2018 elections to seriously burden people with last-minute ID requirements in as many states as they can, using a federal voter fraud investigation of Benghazi-level overheated nothingburger as a fig leaf.

Maybe, but good luck getting it past circuit judge Richard Posner, among others.

Every step of the way, Democrats should loudly and publicly demand the evidence. As with Benghazi, it basically doesn't exist. Now here's hoping the media isn't fooled into its typical lazy "he-said, she-said" narrative again, but one objective fact the Democrats can hammer is that the Republicans don't provide the proof.
posted by Gelatin at 10:36 AM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Vanity Fair with a nice write-up of Trump's 100 days flopsweating and the history of the 100 day benchmark...
posted by TwoStride at 10:40 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Kremlin: We won't discuss reports Russian troops moving toward North Korea border - RIA

Some media in Russia's Ear East have cited local residents as saying they have seen military hardware being moved toward North Korea as tensions with the United States over its nuclear program escalate.
posted by futz at 10:41 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Talez, to clarify, I know why conservatives and Republicans smear Democrats - of course they do, fighting dirty is their MO. What I wonder is why it works on Democratic voters or potential Democratic voters. Not those who flip Republican (fewer than you might imagine, I think) but the abstainers.

I'm not talking about people who are disenfranchised (felony records, Republican shenanigans) or who have a lot of trouble voting because of work, caregiving, etc., but those who can vote, don't have major obstacles in their paths, but choose not to vote at all. And if Republican smear campaigns work on Democratic voters, why, and what can be done?
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 10:42 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

National Treasure Alexandra Petri, WaPo: ‘Killing Bill’ (in the style of noted historian Bill O’Reilly)

The man with a day left to live is anxious.

He is the best cable news anchor in the world. He is a colossus among men, with piercing eyes, large hands and an elegant wattle like a turkey prince. If he is anxious, it is because he knows that other men — lesser, smaller men who hate to see a man like him — are gathering to plot against him.

He is rakishly handsome and universally admired. When he opens his mouth, people are impressed. When he closes it, they weep. Sometimes, just as a special favor to them, because he is broad-minded like that, he will call women on the telephone and allegedly give them a wonderful compliment: his sexual attention and a reference to a loofah.

But some of these women are ungrateful, and instead of being flattered, they complained to a lawyer. And now a vile and pointless newspaper has gotten wind of it.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:43 AM on April 21, 2017 [23 favorites]

White House dismisses CIA liaison after clash with Flynn protege.

A retired marine serving as the CIA’s liaison to the White House was summarily dismissed in mid-March, sources told the newspaper, after a clash with Cohen-Watnick, the 30-year-old intelligence director for the National Security Council.

Filed under "W" for "Well Oiled Machine".
posted by darkstar at 10:43 AM on April 21, 2017 [14 favorites]

Seriously, who the fuck is Cohen-Watnick and what weird svengaliesque power does he have?
posted by Etrigan at 10:45 AM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

And 2) how do we get a little more Teflon so that BUT HER EMAILS types of things don't stick?

The Republicans didn't create the myth of the "liberal media" overnight. More media savvy than the journalists they sought to influence, they prevailed by repeating the charge over and over and over and over, and completely ignoring any counterclaim. Believing that the media is liberal is as essential to modern Republicanism as believing in tax cuts.

So Democrats must consistently and with discipline (I know, I know) repeat the message that the media fails at its job when it gives lies the same respect as truth. The whole email thing, which I doubt any journalist could actually explain except to hint that it "raises questions," is one example; so is Benghazi, and the odious Swift Boat smear -- which was a tissue of lies, but reported as truth -- as is the fact of climate change, as is the fact of evolution, as is the false claim that Iraq posed a threat that demanded an invasion, as is the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves with growth.

Notice a pattern here? They're all Republican lies. Republicans have to lie to enact their agenda, and if journalists aren't vigilant, they aid and abet them.

Part of the reason the Republicans were able to work the refs so effectively is that many journalists basically want to feel they are doing their job, and so they took accusations of bias seriously. That same impulse could work the the Democratic advantage if their regular line is "the American people depend on the press to do its job and separate facts from lies."
posted by Gelatin at 10:46 AM on April 21, 2017 [60 favorites]

What I wonder is why it works on Democratic voters or potential Democratic voters.

In all honesty? IMHO because in a lot of poorer communities no matter who you vote for in the end nobody's lives in the community get better. You elect a Democratic mayor, they don't have the money to do anything at the city level. You vote a Democratic state rep, the state has no money either because its budgets are up shit creek from the past decade of economic carnage. You vote for a Democrat fed rep, the rest of the country fucks you anyway. When the WWC vote Trump he at least makes them feel important and they get to punch down even if their lives are still going to be shitty.
posted by Talez at 10:46 AM on April 21, 2017 [18 favorites]

That candidate for local office whose potential OMGSCANDAL was working as a phone psychic? Are Democrat voters really such delicate flowers that they wilt (and stay home) when the merest whiff of something maybe a little unconventional comes up? Or is it the leadership that's timid (or just fond of suckling at the corporate donor teat?) that they're scared of any candidate putting a toe out of line?

I was the one who brought that up. She's actually not running for local office: she's running for the congressional seat now occupied by racist fuckwit Steve King. The issue is not the leadership, I don't think, if only because the leadership has completely written off that congressional seat. It's a very, very, very conservative area, and any Democrat is going to be a near-hopeless longshot, even running against someone who is as much of a lightening rod as Steve King. (And in fact, you could argue that King is popular in part because his extremism accurately reflects the views of many of his constituents, although I think that's an oversimplification.) The issue with Weaver's psychic business is the perception that fake psychics prey on people's grief and desperation and that it's a moral issue, in a way that merely having wacky hobbies or beliefs wouldn't be. But my sense is that it's going to blow over, although there's at least one other person who has indicated an interest in running as a Democrat for that seat, and it's not a foregone conclusion that Weaver would win a primary.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:47 AM on April 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Seriously, who the fuck is Cohen-Watnick and what weird svengaliesque power does he have?

The current official conduit to the Russian goverment, it seems.
posted by Artw at 10:47 AM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

He is the best cable news anchor in the world. He is a colossus among men, with piercing eyes, large hands

I see what you did there, National Treasure Alexandra Petri.
posted by Gelatin at 10:52 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm just going to say that I don't want people who are not pro-choice under my tent. It's a big tent, I understand that, and yet those assholes can go stand in the rain.

We can win without them.

The fact remains that an attitude like this is going to alienate people. You feel it's a black-and-white issue, but my own mother was very on the fence. She could understand why people would be pro-choice, but she was personally pro-life. She said on more then one occasion "If other women want to get an abortion, that's their business - but I could never do it."

My mother always voted Democrat.

The attitude of "it's my way or the highway" is not the attitude I want of my party. I want the live-and-let-live attitude. I am loud-and-proud pro-choice, but I feel a bit alienated myself when the message I'm being given is "We shouldn't accept people's different opinions."

IMHO we're not the party that are just suppose to blindly follow along. If this means we have some among our ranks who hold a different opinion, they're all the more welcome.
posted by INFJ at 10:53 AM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

I want the live-and-let-live attitude.

Some of us will not live if we are live-and-let-live about some of these so-called alienating issues. The stakes are that high. I will not toss my fellow queer community members under the bus, or other women whose lives are on the line.
posted by yasaman at 10:57 AM on April 21, 2017 [52 favorites]

I'm just going to say that I don't want people who are not pro-choice under my tent. It's a big tent, I understand that, and yet those assholes can go stand in the rain.

We can win without them.

The fact remains that an attitude like this is going to alienate people.

Then there is literally no "attitude" that will suffice. lydhre is saying to ignore those people. The Democratic Party is not a literal tent that people are going to physically kick anti-choice people out of when it's actually raining. And yet, that's still not good enough.

By the way, your mother, who believes "If other women want to get an abortion, that's their business" is pro-choice. And I suspect that she didn't spend a lot of time asking her local party officials "Hey, am I welcome here? Is it okay if I personally never get an abortion? Does that make me a good enough Democrat? OH IT DOESN'T, YOU SAY despite not actually saying that? Well then FUCK YOU."
posted by Etrigan at 11:00 AM on April 21, 2017 [28 favorites]

"If other women want to get an abortion, that's their business - but I could never do it."

She's not pro-life, she's pro-choice. Pro-choice doesn't mean "loves abortions", it means "thinks the choice should be the woman's".

jason_steakums I'd bet on the Republicans springing that just close enough to the 2018 elections to seriously burden people with last-minute ID requirements in as many states as they can, using a federal voter fraud investigation of Benghazi-level overheated nothingburger as a fig leaf.

I'm not just betting on it, I'm 100% sure it'll happen.

Which is why we on the D side need to be getting a program of donations and drivers together to help poor people get ID. We absolutely cannot afford to lose voters by an entirely predictable Republican move.

Yes, we should fight such things in the courts and wherever else we can. But we should also accept that we'll lose (at least in some places) and just start getting people ID as quickly as possible.
posted by sotonohito at 11:01 AM on April 21, 2017 [16 favorites]

he could understand why people would be pro-choice, but she was personally pro-life. She said on more then one occasion "If other women want to get an abortion, that's their business - but I could never do it."

Your mom is pro-choice. This is what being pro-choice means. It doesn't mean "everyone has to get abortions now." It means "people who want to get abortions are able to get them in a medically-safe manner."
posted by melissasaurus at 11:02 AM on April 21, 2017 [29 favorites]

The fact remains that an attitude like this is going to alienate people. You feel it's a black-and-white issue, but my own mother was very on the fence. She could understand why people would be pro-choice, but she was personally pro-life. She said on more then one occasion "If other women want to get an abortion, that's their business - but I could never do it."

That's an attitude that I hear all the time when I'm knocking doors for Democrats. Constantly. And it's interesting, because while those people usually define themselves as pro-life, I think they're actually pro-choice. To me, this issue isn't about whether you personally approve or or would have an abortion. It's about who you think should make that decision for individual women. If you are uncomfortable with abortion but recognize that your discomfort shouldn't govern other people's options, you're pro-choice.

Incidentally, when I talk to self-identified pro-life women who nonetheless support women's choice, they tend to be very strongly in favor of Planned Parenthood.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:03 AM on April 21, 2017 [23 favorites]

She could understand why people would be pro-choice, but she was personally pro-life. She said on more then one occasion "If other women want to get an abortion, that's their business - but I could never do it."

The way I see it, that's actually a pro-choice view. Saying "abortion is fine for other women, but I, personally, would never have one" is pro-choice - because choice is just that; my uterus, my business. As long as one is an advocate of the government staying out of personal choices, and the option of abortion open to a woman (or any gender with a uterus) who wants one - that's pro-choice in my book, even if one's personal view is "I would never ever ever in a million years have an abortion!"

Somehow the needle of "pro-choice" got pushed to "abortion is the preferred option!" and not "whatever the person with the uterus wants - abortion, adoption, keep the baby - it's their choice and not the government's."
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 11:03 AM on April 21, 2017 [17 favorites]

And I guess that, for me, a real reproductive justice agenda has to include the kind of social supports that make it possible for people to parent when they want to. You're not pro-choice if you're ok with women feeling like they have to have abortions because they can't afford to raise a child.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:05 AM on April 21, 2017 [15 favorites]

Yes, we should fight such things in the courts and wherever else we can. But we should also accept that we'll lose (at least in some places) and just start getting people ID as quickly as possible.

And the press! The media accepted the myth of voter fraud -- and the more insidious myth that Republicans restrict access to voting in order to prevent voter fraud, which doesn't really exist, and not to disenfranchise people who are not likely to vote for them because their policies suck.

"Where's the evidence?" should be the rallying cry whenever the media asks a Democrat to speak on the issue of voter fraud. And, hey, Republicans are fine with implying sinister motives, so we can play that game too. "There's no evidence voter fraud exists -- but I notice $REPUBLICAN_LAW will keep a bunch of people from voting against them. That's undemocratic."

As LBJ said, let them deny it.
posted by Gelatin at 11:05 AM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

Part of what's really frustrating about reading this discussion is that abortion and the welfare of those who identify as LGBT are still being presented as a difference of opinion, like goddamn ice cream flavors. It's a matter of life and death for people, and frankly it's infuriating to read that I need to support people who don't think this matters.
posted by erratic meatsack at 11:06 AM on April 21, 2017 [43 favorites]

The way I see it, that's actually a pro-choice view. Saying "abortion is fine for other women, but I, personally, would never have one" is pro-choice - because choice is just that; my uterus, my business.

I wonder if it would work to point out that outlawing abortion takes away the choice even from people who would not choose to have an abortion.
posted by Gelatin at 11:07 AM on April 21, 2017

@realDonaldTrump (early this morning): "Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!"

I know these sorts of comments are the new normal now, but it's amazing how not at all normal this is. This is the President of the United States embracing the agenda of terrorists to interject himself into a foreign election. I mean that literally: if this is your response to a shooting, you are proclaiming quite loudly that terrorism works as a means for provoking political change.
posted by zachlipton at 11:08 AM on April 21, 2017 [110 favorites]

You can be personally pro-life and politically pro-choice and I will welcome your vote. That is not what we are talking about.
posted by lydhre at 11:09 AM on April 21, 2017 [18 favorites]

I sometimes try to push the idea that the two sides are pro-choice and pro-birth. Because they're not for "life" - they aren't interested in caring for the woman nor for the baby, before or after birth. And they aren't even anti-abortion, or they'd be in favor of contraception and education and social services for single mothers. No, they're in favor of more births, whether or not there's any support for a baby.

It's the "men get orgasms; women get babies" approach.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:14 AM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

I know she was pro-choice, but if you would have asked her? "Oh no, no abortions please." - like don't even mention them to her, she found it upsetting. By definition? Pro-choice. In her heart? People make decisions with their heart. Even important ones like who to vote for in elections.

I understand the passion. I agree with it! I'm just saying that drawing lines in the sand - even for great reasons - is going to rock the boat. If you're ok with that, then ok! I'm not ok with it and I want to point out to you that this is how being political works.

We're suppose to be the inclusive progressive party. This means including people we don't understand or agree with. Or at least, it does in my book.
posted by INFJ at 11:15 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

BREAKING: Trump tells AP he will unveil tax plan next week that includes "massive" tax cut for individuals and businesses.

He's so terrified of the 100 day mark and desperate to pull a rabbit out of his hat. The question is whether the press will fall for it, and I fear they are exactly that stupid.

Going to be a busy week next week, what with a massive tax cut, revamping the nation's healthcare system, and trying to somehow avoid a government shutdown.
posted by zachlipton at 11:15 AM on April 21, 2017 [15 favorites]

Also, we can turn the question from "abortions: for all or for none" to "do you think we should pursue policies that reduce the incidence of elective abortion?" Many people would say yes to that (I take issue with the "safe, legal, and rare" framework as used on a campaign-wide basis, but in individual conversations, it can help). Policies like comprehensive sex ed, access to a variety of free birth control methods, free maternity and newborn care, supports for new parents like paid leave and financial assistance, a "baby box" with newborn essentials, and the ability to access abortion procedures, etc, have all been proven to reduce the incidence of abortion and improve outcomes for pregnant people and for newborns.

Banning abortion, making it harder to access -- these things do not actually lower the rate of abortion, they just kill women.

And if you need some rebuttals on the adoption talking point, see this FPP.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:15 AM on April 21, 2017 [32 favorites]

What I said was "people who will not vote Democratic because of abortion are not reachable." And I think that's true.

People who think of themselves as pro-life but still vote Democrat are not only reachable, they are already reached. So I am not sure what the problem is. Is Democratic insistence on using "pro-choice" going to make that person suddenly nope out? Probably not. We've been using that term a long time. Person-to-person, you can find many Democrats willing to talk about the gray areas and the moral issues while still preserving the right to choose.

What I am against is people who think we can get that first group, the ones refusing to vote Democratic because of abortion, by refusing to stand behind our "prochoice" label. We can't. And if we try, we cut off all the women who do care about that label. So there is nothing to be gained by doing so. And a lot to be lost.
posted by emjaybee at 11:16 AM on April 21, 2017 [21 favorites]

Going to be a busy week next week, what with a massive tax cut, revamping the nation's healthcare system, and trying to somehow avoid a government shutdown.

On the one hand, Trump can probably get a majority of Republicans on board to pass a "massive" tax cut; on the other hand, the budgetary rules aren't so simple, and they'll have to be careful to be able to pass it thru reconciliation, which can't be filibustered.

On the other hand, Trump makes a mess of almost anything he does, and not only do Democrats perceive themselves as having more leverage here, I bet individual Republicans in Congress do too. It's possible the whole mess crashes and burns, along with the "very good" repeal of the ACA, just in time for the anniversary. Then Trump's a lame duck, 100 days in, and Republicans spend the newxt year running away from him.
posted by Gelatin at 11:26 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

We're suppose to be the inclusive progressive party. This means including people we don't understand or agree with. Or at least, it does in my book.

Personally I am not so inclusive that I want to include people who don't think I am entitled to decide what happens to my body.
posted by winna at 11:27 AM on April 21, 2017 [47 favorites]

This discussion is that abortion and the welfare of those who identify as LGBT are still being presented as a difference of opinion, like goddamn ice cream flavors. It's a matter of life and death for people, and frankly it's infuriating to read that I need to support people who don't think this matters.

This is true of almost every single political issue.

You know why I care about foreign policy? Because I care about whether my family and friends in the military are going to have to shoot someone, or get shot. (And because I like thinking of America as the good guys.)

Immigration. Many immigrants, legal or illegal, come here because their homes are ganglands or warzones and they are afraid their kids might die.

Health care. Well that one's frickin' obvious. People die all the time for lack of adequate health care.

Environmental issues. People with asthma die when the air gets too dirty. I guess lead poisoning is rarely fatal, but it can be deeply disabling. And if climate change is not slowed or mitigated, people will die in numbers we can't even comprehend now.

Economic issues. Every time there's cold snap or a heat wave you hear stories of poor people dying because they can't afford to properly heat or cool their homes. People die of diet-related conditions that come from eating cheap processed food. People die working dangerous jobs without adequate safety measures out of desperation.

Racial justice: people who aren't white suffer from almost all of these other problems disproportionately, and so die at higher rates in dozens of different ways, and have a shorter life expectancy. Also many of them live in fear of both criminals and the police who are supposed to protect them from criminals, and that is also a real, life and death, fear.

Education: Without education you don't have the tools to advocate for yourself effectively and you don't have much economic value, so we're back again to all the ways you can die of poverty. And also without an educated population it's hard to have a working democratic government, so the chances of a broken system killing people via war, crime etc. also go up.

I could go on, but basically... what darkstar said.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:30 AM on April 21, 2017 [21 favorites]

You know, I get as excited as any patriot over the Russia Investigations, but my excitement is tempered when I remember Fitzmass. Our hopes were so high that Dick Cheney's treason would be uncovered and prosecuted, but the buck stopped with Scooter.
posted by frecklefaerie at 11:39 AM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

These guys don't stop any bucks anywhere.
posted by Artw at 11:41 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

1/ A great many more women have had abortions than many men seem to realise. Particularly if those women had their fertile years before safe birth control was accessible. Many older women you know have had abortions. They don't talk about it.

2/ The idea that life begins at conception and abortion is baby murder is fairly modern - even Evangelicals didn't used to believe this.

3/ So, whereas loads of women who have had children see abortion as such a painful choice it's too sensitive to talk about,* they also recognise that dedicating 20 years of life to someone else's best interests is such an incredibly huge thing nobody should ever be forced into it.

4/ What I'm saying is, just because your mother finds the idea painful and the issue sensitive, doesn't mean she isn't pro-choice. I find the issue sensitive and have never chosen to have an abortion - in this I'm in the minority of women I know, young and old: and I'm like infinity % pro choice. Politically, it's a super important issue not only for women but for everyone ...affected by women in some way? Families? ie the human race?

5/ No, being pro-choice is not negotiable in any viable concept of basic human rights. There is no other issue that affects women's health, opportunities, education, future earnings, autonomy, status, hell, mortality even, so much, and that is, globally. Women's rights and their control over their own fertility are a basic condition of development.

* Some do, some don't.
posted by glasseyes at 11:45 AM on April 21, 2017 [34 favorites]

Recipients of the letters were warned that to receive certain fiscal year 2016 grants, they must certify by June 30 that they have complied with a 1996 federal law that bars local authorities from forcing officials to withhold information from federal immigration authorities about people’s immigration status.

I'm curious, has that law ever been tested in court? It seems like a huge overreach for the federal government to tell local governments how to/whether to cooperate in a case like this.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:50 AM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

So instead of cutting out at noon and daydrinking, looks like Chaffetz is having a productive last day. He and Rep. Cummings sent a letter to Trump's lawyer asking for info on foreign payments.

This is the lawyer with the stacks and stacks of paper props at that press conference where my boo Acosta got called fake news.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 11:53 AM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

NYT: Sanctuary Cities Face Aid Cuts as Justice Dept. Tightens Screws

The important thing to remember is that this is always and only DoJ aid to the cops. Not anything any liberal ever would give the slightest shit about.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:54 AM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Donald Trump has 'dangerous mental illness', say psychiatry experts at Yale conference
posted by futz at 11:54 AM on April 21, 2017 [12 favorites]

OnceUponATime: "This is true of almost every single political issue. "

At the end of the day, I feel like this amounts to telling women that their bodily autonomy should remain negotiable in order to score other wins. I do not accept such allies.
posted by erratic meatsack at 11:55 AM on April 21, 2017 [24 favorites]

‘Pivotal Moment’ for Democrats? Gerrymandering Heads to Supreme Court

If only the deciding vote was Merrick Garland, not Anthony Kennedy.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:02 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Treasury refuses to give ExxonMobil special waiver to drill in sanctioned Russia

“In consultation with President Donald J. Trump, the Treasury Department will not be issuing waivers to U.S. companies, including Exxon, authorizing drilling prohibited by current Russian sanctions..."</em
posted by futz at 12:02 PM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

We're suppose to be the inclusive progressive party. This means including people we don't understand or agree with. Or at least, it does in my book.

Pretty sure "progressive" is supposed to take precedence over "inclusive" in this description. I'm sure that everyone has a line as to what they are willing to accept. For me and many others, anti-abortionists are on the same side of the line as racists and neo-Nazis, and they can all fuck right off. And as far as the political calculus is concerned, how many core progressive supporters are you driving away with every asshole you choose to "include?"
posted by Behemoth at 12:05 PM on April 21, 2017 [14 favorites]

@bklapperAP: "Trump tells @jpaceDC he's not endorsing Le Pen, but says she’s candidate who is “strongest on borders" & "what’s been going on in France”"

This is so incredibly inappropriate.
posted by zachlipton at 12:05 PM on April 21, 2017 [31 favorites]

OnceUponATime: "This is true of almost every single political issue. "

The burden of every single issue mentioned is tripled when applied to those who have no control over when they become pregnant and whether or not they have to carry the child and care for it for the next 20 years.

Honestly I can't believe I'm having to state these points in 2017.
posted by glasseyes at 12:06 PM on April 21, 2017 [20 favorites]

Shouldn't Trump's coy endorsement of Le Penn backfire? Is he like Jerry Lewis over there or something?
posted by klarck at 12:16 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Like... I don't know how to break this down any simpler. A member of any political party who is not pro-choice does not get to call themselves an ally to women. They absolutely should be an embarrassment to Democrats, full-stop. We 100% should be gearing up to primary the living fuck out of them. All of us. And not cozying up to potential voters who would totally be in our corner were it not for this ooooooone tiny issue of women getting a say in how their lives play out.
posted by erratic meatsack at 12:20 PM on April 21, 2017 [33 favorites]

Shouldn't Trump's coy endorsement of Le Penn backfire?

Nah, racist fascists are an international confederation.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 12:22 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Mod note: A few comments deleted; please see my long mod note from not many hours ago if wrenching this back toward escalating Yes Bernie / No Bernie grar somehow seems like a productive direction to be going in.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:24 PM on April 21, 2017 [13 favorites]

Since when does a Special Assistant get a Chief of Staff? When she's the boss's daughter, apparently. WTF?
posted by zachlipton at 12:26 PM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

I'm responding to what I see as an argument that one shouldn't push too hard on the pro choice thing in case it scares off ....people who might back other progressive legislation but will be scared away by the idea women should control their own fertility. Which I think is complete baloney, needs resisting and needs the argument against repeatedly articulated. There are places in the world where this argument has been won. It's very scary to see justifications against it sneaking into discourse under the guise of 'inclusivity'. It's like being parachuted in Gilead except that the Gilead supporters are calling themselves progressives.

I've just control-F'd Langevin and the comment above seems to be the first mention in this thread, so, is it a way to say: shut up women, you're interests are not serious enough for politics? As I said above, anybody calling themselves progressive should realise that there is no possibility of gender equality unless women control their own fertility. Or women, 50+% of humanity, should just accept their inferior status I guess.
posted by glasseyes at 12:27 PM on April 21, 2017 [16 favorites]

Is there any indication that throwing women or LGBT people under the bus would win the Democrats enough voters to make a difference? If there are, in fact, more pro-choice people, LGBT people, and people who aren't LGBT but aren't bigoted against them, wouldn't appealing to them win more voters, not fewer?

How many Democrat voters are there, really, who would say, "I was going to vote Democrat, but BAYBEEZ and BATHROOMS, so I'm going to vote Republican or at least stay home?"

As I've said before, I think people not voting is a huge problem, but is catering to bigots going to help matters? I have a feeling that being more progressive, not less, would get people to the ballot box. But then, again, I do live in California where being progressive does get votes.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 12:28 PM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

Equivocation, and overeagerness to compromise read like a lack of principle to a lot of people. I'm increasingly of the opinion that democratic candidates don't have a high enough or consistent enough turnout in part because the democratic party has an image of standing fast for nothing.

This is not a new idea - it's usually framed in terms of economic issues. But why just economic issues? I'm curious to see what would happen if a candidate took a very strong, even a fighty tone. Less "I support a woman's right to choose" and more "Someone else's body is none of your business, and I'm here to keep it that way."
posted by The Gaffer at 12:35 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Alex Jones releases statement on his ongoing custody trial: “I urge the press to be respectful and responsible"

Oh the delicious irony. Respectful indeed.
posted by futz at 12:36 PM on April 21, 2017 [54 favorites]

@sarahnferris: Mulvaney says White House has offered Dems $1 in Obamacare funds for $1 in wall funds in Bloomberg Live interview

Again, WTF? The cost sharing reduction funds are ~$7 billion/year, and most importantly, they're funds that the government has already legally promised to pay. They're written into the law. This isn't some kind of game; this pays for the health care of millions of people. The deal is "we'll fund your medicine if you fund our stupid wall?"
posted by zachlipton at 12:37 PM on April 21, 2017 [30 favorites]

Shouldn't Trump's coy endorsement of Le Penn backfire?

Maybe he's confused by all the Republicans who did the cowardly "support but not endorse" thing during Trump's dumpster fire of a campaign, and he thinks it's normal. Feh.

Mulvaney says White House has offered Dems $1 in Obamacare funds for $1 in wall funds in Bloomberg Live interview

Hold on -- I thought Mexico was supposed to pay for it?

(It's just precious that the Trump Administration is pretending they have any leverage. I can almost smell the flop sweat from here.)
posted by Gelatin at 12:45 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

N.K. Jemisin talked about this, and better than me since she's a professional wordsmith, in relation to the SF community (and specifically the SFWA) and it's problem with racism and sexism.

The thing is: you can't be neutral. You can't simply be "inclusive" in a generic, general, sense because that, by its very nature, excludes some people.

If you say "my political party is a big tent, it must have room for homobigots, racists, and misogynists" then you've excluded women, people of color, and LGBT people. That might not be your intention. You might want everyone to all come together and be nice to each other. But the instant you say "this space is welcoming to misogynists" you unavoidably also say "this space is not welcoming to women".

Yes, this means your tent gets smaller.

Yes, this means your group can't proudly claim to be generically "inclusive".

Yes, this means you push some voters out.

That's what "group" means though. If a "group" includes absolutely everyone then it doesn't exist as a group.

There can be no neutrality in the question of who is included. When you say "this space is open to the KKK" then you are, like it or not, saying "this space is not open to people of color".

You must pick a side, and by pretending you aren't, by pretending that "inclusion" in a generic sort of sense is your cardinal virtue, you have. And it's not the side you think it is.
posted by sotonohito at 12:46 PM on April 21, 2017 [82 favorites]

I'm responding to what I see as an argument that one shouldn't push too hard on the pro choice thing in case it scares of ....people who might back other progressive legislation but will be scared off by the idea women should control their own fertility.

It's not that they'd be scared off by the pro-choice thing or the idea that women should control their own fertility. They're 'scared off' because, to use erratic meatsack's words.. they're being labeled as an embarrassment for their opinion/belief. It has nothing to do with women, that's only the differing opinion. It has all to do with this attitude of "YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED!"

I mean, ok fine - they don't agree with you. Instead of feeling properly shamed and admit they're wrong, they go vote GOP because GOP says "hey, we have the same opinion as you. We won't make you feel bad for it."

Because I promise you in a good number of cases the reaction to "You're pro-life? You are a horrible person. This means you don't think I should have control of MY OWN BODY!" is going to be "well then, fuck you." and not "Oh I'm sorry I didn't look at it from your perspective." People don't like being told they're wrong. Even if they are, in fact, wrong.
posted by INFJ at 12:48 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Again, WTF? The cost sharing reduction funds are ~$7 billion/year, and most importantly, they're funds that the government has already legally promised to pay. They're written into the law. This isn't some kind of game; this pays for the health care of millions of people. The deal is "we'll fund your medicine if you fund our stupid wall?"

Fundamentally, this is just Trump (and the GOP) admitting what we've known for a long time: there is no bargaining with these people. No agreement will ever be honored. Whenever they want something, every possible thing they agreed to previously is back on the table as a negotiating point.
posted by tocts at 12:49 PM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

I'm imagining Schumer and Pelosi just standing there with arms folded with a slight eyebrow raise in that 'get a load of this guy' kind of way as the 'offers' come in.

The Rs and Trump are supposed to deliver a YES vote on a healthcare bill, a tax plan and not shutting down the government next week. My guess is we get a clean CR, AHCA 3.0 being shot down in flames and no tax plan sees the light of day.
posted by TwoWordReview at 12:50 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Again, WTF? The cost sharing reduction funds are ~$7 billion/year, and most importantly, they're funds that the government has already legally promised to pay. They're written into the law. This isn't some kind of game; this pays for the health care of millions of people. The deal is "we'll fund your medicine if you fund our stupid wall?"

This has been part of the pattern in his business deals from the get-go. Just because terms have been contractually agreed to doesn't mean you can't renegotiate them to get something you want.
posted by scalefree at 12:54 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

That candidate for local office whose potential OMGSCANDAL was working as a phone psychic? Are Democrat voters really such delicate flowers that they wilt (and stay home) when the merest whiff of something maybe a little unconventional comes up?

Phone psychics are not "a little unconventional." They are straight-up scam artists. I would have serious reservations about voting for one for public office, even one running against a racist asshole like Steve King.

The party can - and must - do better than former phone psychics.
posted by zakur at 12:54 PM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

They're 'scared off' because, to use erratic meatsack's words.. they're being labeled as an embarrassment for their opinion/belief.

Then they misunderstand. They aren't an embarrassment, they're a threat.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:54 PM on April 21, 2017 [25 favorites]

Hi. Several folks have said thanks for the SPECIAL ELECTIONS updates. I don't really know how to react to that sort of thing, but I wanted to say I appreciate it, and will keep up with the updates. I'm glad people like them!
posted by Chrysostom at 12:54 PM on April 21, 2017 [36 favorites]

When she's the boss's daughter, apparently. WTF?

I'm pretty quickly coming to believe that they're trying to thread the needle between Ivanka acting in the First Lady role (with Sec. Clinton as a role model), while not actually calling her the First Lady (possibly to keep from offending Melania, possibly for PR reasons).

Setting the issue of the business entanglements aside for a moment (which is a whopper, don't get me wrong), its not unheard of for the First Lady to have a chief of staff, to make formal overseas visits, to meet guests, and even to (gasp!) sit in on policy meetings. Now, of course, the hypocrisy of the decades of complaints from the right about Democratic First Ladies doing many of those things reeks to high heaven, but its certainly part and parcel with the role, and has been for decades.

So, yeah, I don't actually know where I'm going with this, but I think that's what's happening. Ivanka is his trusted partner in the First Lady mold, and Melania is ... his wife.
posted by anastasiav at 12:55 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

zakur Yeah, put me down as "not in favor of a scam artist as our candidate".

That said, I'll vote for literally any Democrat out there in the general election. If we can stop the phone psychic in the primaries, yay! If not, well, they're what we've got so let's go with them.
posted by sotonohito at 12:58 PM on April 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Schumer's spokesman: What happened to that whole "Mexico is going to pay for the wall" thing anyway?
posted by zachlipton at 1:00 PM on April 21, 2017 [15 favorites]

> Phone psychics are not "a little unconventional." They are straight-up scam artists. I would have serious reservations about voting for one for public office, even one running against a racist asshole like Steve King.

The party can - and must - do better than former phone psychics.

Poor people have to run hustles to survive. My mom is one of the kindest, most ethical people I know — and for most of the time I was in elementary school she worked as a telemarketer selling magazines to old people who didn't need them. This is morally equivalent to phone psychic work. She did this work because we were broke in an expensive city, and if we moved so much as one block outside the borders of that city, I'd lose my place in the private-school-equivalent "advanced" program I was in.

Management keeps its hands clean and skims off the profits while labor does the dirty work in exchange for enough money to survive. If we're going to play respectability politics about past jobs, we are consciously choosing to only elevate middle-class and above people to government. As a broke person from a long line of criminals on the one side and shady preachers on the other, I cannot get behind your ideas.

This righteous prophetic statement from Zoe Leonard might be a better guide for thought than the frame you are using.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:06 PM on April 21, 2017 [62 favorites]

How many Democrat voters are there, really, who would say, "I was going to vote Democrat, but BAYBEEZ and BATHROOMS, so I'm going to vote Republican or at least stay home?"

There are definitely a large number of voters who just don't think it's important.

• There was a dustup about "identity politics" shortly after the election,
• there were people saying that democrats making a big deal about opposing the bathroom bills is the type of thing that lost them the election,
• there was Kellyanne Conway saying "It's about what affects people, not what offends them",
• and there was the Keepin it 1600 / Crooked Media guys repeating that like it was a really good point,
• there's "tumblr sjw bullshit" type rhetoric coming not just from hardcore reddit gamergate types but from casual reddit types, from independents, from Bernie supporters
• and every so often you get someone talking about "real things affecting real people's lives"

and these are all sort of a spectrum of dogwhistles ranging from "These things aren't important to me" (which is where Bernie is on abortion) to "These things are objectively not important and you're stupid for thinking they are".

There's a lot of, for example, white dude independents-leaning-democrat who support abortion rights in a "yeah sure" kind of way. Which, yes, is not actually support at all. But it's not opposition either. It's an important difference, that a candidate softening or hardening their stance on abortion will simply not make a difference to those dudes.

What will activate them, or deactivate them, is the presence or absence of whatever economic message they care about.

At least some of the "stop focusing on identity politics" opinions I've heard are saying "just give it less airtime and care more about the issues I care about." If you are asking whether we should, as a strategy, reverse position on abortion or whatever, in some sense you've misheard the question.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 1:07 PM on April 21, 2017 [11 favorites]

Schumer's spokesman: What happened to that whole "Mexico is going to pay for the wall" thing anyway?

That was a big part of his campaign, sure. But the campaign's over so he doesn't have to say it anymore.
posted by scalefree at 1:09 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

>CNN: Sources: US prepares charges to seek arrest of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Jeff Sessions, Julian Assange, and the First Amendment. This is a terrible idea.

I realize that Julian Assange isn't high on anyone's Christmas card list after he and WikiLeaks played monkey-mischief with the 2016 presidential election, largely through the dissemination of hacked emails in which was exposed the interior monologue of the Democratic National Committee. I realize that his defenders—Bernie Bros or not—can be completely insufferable and a plague upon Twitter feeds.

However, this is a truly terrible idea that should scare the socks off anyone committed to the free exercise of the First Amendment.

...

I don't care what you think of Julian Assange, or Glenn Greenwald, or The Intercept, and I don't care which side you were on during the 2016 Democratic primaries. (In fact, I wish you'd all shut the hell up about that.) Unleashing Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III on the Bill of Rights is a ghastly prospect that should be fought at every turn. The only court in which Assange rightly should appear is in Sweden.

posted by homunculus at 1:12 PM on April 21, 2017 [13 favorites]

It would be easier for me to a accept Ivanka as a First Daughter in the WH if only her husband wasn't also working as a special assistant to POTUS. Also it remains to be seen if Melania is going to refuse to act as a traditional First Lady-- she seems to be taking on that role occasionally right now and may become more involved once she moves into the White House (if that ever happens.)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 1:14 PM on April 21, 2017

I don't care what you think of Julian Assange, or Glenn Greenwald, or The Intercept, and I don't care which side you were on during the 2016 Democratic primaries. (In fact, I wish you'd all shut the hell up about that.) Unleashing Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III on the Bill of Rights is a ghastly prospect that should be fought at every turn. The only court in which Assange rightly should appear is in Sweden.

Once again, Charlie Pierce being one of the few adults in the room that is politics.
posted by Talez at 1:15 PM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

INFJ I seriously don't understand your argument about shame etc but it does sound hypothetical and as if you are seeking to explain someone else's thought process.* I don't know your reasons for feeling you can do this. However on the subject of women's rights over their own fertility I feel I've stated a case and don't need to elaborate. Should anyone feel embarrassed or shamed by that, well, that's way beyond my control.

*You know people who want to justify unreasonable behaviour always come up with a bunch of reasons, right?

Should people not push back against racism in case racists feel they're being called stupid? So much of the 'pro-life' rhetoric is nothing but punitive, sex-shaming vindictiveness. It is almost explicitly a way of kicking a person down at their most vulnerable. In a way, the polarising language, 'pro-life', pro-choice, obscures the issue, which is bodily autonomy as a basic human right; a right better served by comprehensive access to contraception of which abortion is merely the feature that comes into play after other interventions have failed.

Written in a hurry as I'm putting a little person in bed so will not be back to thread for a while.
posted by glasseyes at 1:17 PM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

Who pays for the staff to the special assistant? Us?
posted by JenMarie at 1:18 PM on April 21, 2017

Is there any indication that throwing women or LGBT people under the bus would win the Democrats enough voters to make a difference?

This is one of the notional plans for winning in 2020. If only we can stop scaring old ruralish white men in PA by standing next to scary black people or scary queer people or scary feminists, they'd vote for us again because we'll just be talking about giving them money instead of how black lives matter.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:19 PM on April 21, 2017 [11 favorites]

I mean, is there anybody here who thinks that DJT will back off the last moment wrt a gov't closure? To me it seems insane that he'd shut down the gov't over that fucking wall, but that fucking wall promise helped him get elected. No, he won't get the money, but he will get a crisis that he'll be able to blame on Schumer and Pelosi and his base will believe him.

Not to be all dark and shit, but a gov't shutdown seems to have Trump's name written all over it.
posted by angrycat at 1:24 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

INFJ: "They're 'scared off' because, to use erratic meatsack's words.. they're being labeled as an embarrassment for their opinion/belief. It has nothing to do with women, that's only the differing opinion. It has all to do with this attitude of "YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED!""

What I wanted to convey is that we should be ashamed of electing Democrats who are anti-choice. Our regressive elected officials should make us cringe and we need to kick them out the first chance we get. I am for sure embarrassed that the party occasionally backs people with damaging beliefs on reproductive rights. Aren't you?
posted by erratic meatsack at 1:25 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

I added "We 100% should be gearing up to primary the living fuck out of them" in that comment of mine to make it clear I was referring to those holding official positions.
posted by erratic meatsack at 1:27 PM on April 21, 2017

Capture and trial of Assange would not be the first capture/trial of a dissident journalist, that's all I'm saying. They'll start with the least sympathetic one so that he'll have the fewest allies, but it won't stop there.
posted by Frowner at 1:29 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Alex Jones releases statement on his ongoing custody trial: “I urge the press to be respectful and responsible"

What if it is just do a press-ona?
posted by srboisvert at 1:29 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

What if it is just do a press-ona?

Is there a black cat yelling at him to go to bed?
posted by Talez at 1:31 PM on April 21, 2017

Li'l things I can't unthink:

So, The Office? Chief of Staff to the Special Assistant to the Regional Manager?

Chaffetz, Enema of The State

As he's already running for 2020 it seems legitimate to hold him to unfulfilled 2016 campaign promises, including Mexico paying for his mythical wall (jaja good luck), rather than its funding being countenanced as a negotiating tool for, oh, anything.
posted by riverlife at 1:32 PM on April 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

glasseyes, I believe we're coming at this from fundamentally different paths.

I am putting myself in the shoes of a democrat who is pro-life but otherwise in favor of all the other issues that the democratic party is for. This Democrat is being told they're not welcome in the party by members in this thread, solely because they're pro-life. They're being stigmatized for their belief.

I, personally, think that stigmatization makes the party weaker as a whole. I guess I am more willing to accept pro-lifers if, together, the pro-lifers and pro-choicers come together to make a better USA where racism, sexism, and homophobia is less rampant and life-damaging.
posted by INFJ at 1:32 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

I mean, is there anybody here who thinks that DJT will back off the last moment wrt a gov't closure?

My guess is that at some point somebody will sit him down and explain what a government shut down actually means, and shortly thereafter he will publicly say something like "a lot of people don't realize just how bad a shutdown would be, but it would be very, very bad and would be a very, very bad thing for American businesses." So yeah, I think he will back off just like he backed off on forcing the health care vote.
posted by parallellines at 1:33 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Mulvaney says White House has offered Dems $1 in Obamacare funds for $1 in wall funds.

So they are promising to pay for Obamacare in the budget bill at the very same time they are promising to repeal Obamacare in the healthcare bill the same week.

This is Trump the magnificent deal maker? Do these guys even listen to themselves?
posted by JackFlash at 1:35 PM on April 21, 2017 [23 favorites]

I think people might be thinking of/ talking about different things when they mention "who gets to be in the tent". The "pro-choice as litmus test" people seem to be talking about potential candidates: who are we going to fight for in the *primaries*? The "we're a big tent and there's all sorts of compromises" people seem to be talking about voters: who are we going to target messages to and how?

If people can be specific about "we should primary such-and-such people" or "we should send X messages to Y people" then I suspect we'll find that there's a fair amount of as-yet-unrecognized agreement.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:38 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Why don't they just pull Mulvaney in front of the healthcare CEOs so he can explain why they won't be receiving their money?
posted by Talez at 1:38 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: I don't care which side you were on during the 2016 Democratic primaries. (In fact, I wish you'd all shut the hell up about that.)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:42 PM on April 21, 2017 [20 favorites]

This Democrat is being told they're not welcome in the party by members in this thread, solely because they're pro-life. They're being stigmatized for their belief.

Yeah, I'd say cry me a river on this one. Go vote for the antiwoman party, if you can't be convinced that women are people who deserve full control of their own health care. Some things are and should be non-negotiable.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:45 PM on April 21, 2017 [32 favorites]

I guess I am more willing to accept pro-lifers if, together, the pro-lifers and pro-choicers come together to make a better USA where racism, sexism, and homophobia is less rampant and life-damaging.

This literally reads to me the same as "the KKK and Black Lives Matter can come together to make a better USA where racism, sexism, and homophobia is less rampant and life-damaging."

If someone is in favor of forcing women to undergo childbirth against their will, they are diametrically opposed to combating sexism (and racism; black women die from pregnancy and childbirth related complications at a much higher rate than white women).

Every time you see or hear "pro life" (which sounds all nice and warm and fuzzy) replace it with "forced childbirth" because that's what it actually is, and there is nothing acceptable or normal or mainstream about it. If people want to hold that position, there's a Grand Old Party that nominates forced birthers that they can vote for -- or, wait, did they want a choice of forced birth candidates?
posted by melissasaurus at 1:46 PM on April 21, 2017 [45 favorites]

Jeff Sessions decries nonexistent New York murder epidemic
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:46 PM on April 21, 2017 [11 favorites]

INFJ: "I, personally, think that stigmatization makes the party weaker as a whole. I guess I am more willing to accept pro-lifers if, together, the pro-lifers and pro-choicers come together to make a better USA where racism, sexism, and homophobia is less rampant and life-damaging."

At some point this needs to work in real-life terms though, right? We need to elect people who are either pro-choice, or anti-choice. There is no middle ground for this issue. So how do you as a candidate get those who are anti-choice but otherwise Democrat to stick with the party and send votes your way? You probably negotiate and waver and don't raise too much of a stink when reproductive rights come under fire. You maybe use gentle, ambiguous, "inoffensive" terminology. You certainly don't take many pictures with rally signs featuring Planned Parenthood.

You pick a stance that doesn't do a damn thing for the women who need someone to do a damn thing for once.
posted by erratic meatsack at 1:47 PM on April 21, 2017 [10 favorites]

The wall that Trump promised -- over and over again -- that Mexico would pay for.

I don't want a wall, but I do want to troll back at Mick Mulvaney's logic. So if this $1 for healthcare and $1 for wall shit gets discussed, I would counter back one US dollar for the wall for every hundred dollars from Mexico. (Rub it in that Trump's promise was worthless.)
posted by puddledork at 1:47 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

I am willing to graciously accept the votes of pro-lifers for any pro-choice Democrat you care to name, and I defy you to find me anyone who says no, they shouldn't be permitted to sully our ballots with their shaded ovals. It's a fine Democratic tradition to be a complete prick in your private life but still do the right civic-minded thing every couple years when it really matters to the country.

Pro-life Democrats can give money to pro-choice candidates and causes, too. I would even say I welcome it. If anyone's nice pro-life mom had her donation huffily returned by Planned Parenthood, let me know and I will give them a talking-to.

If that's not inclusive, I'd like to know what is.
posted by queenofbithynia at 1:47 PM on April 21, 2017 [20 favorites]

Julian Assange is a scumbag.

He should be extradited to Sweden to stand trial for rape and sexual assault.

But Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has just confirmed that Assange's conspiracy theories about the US trying to kidnap him to be tortured and sent to a black site prison are now 100% true even if they were just fantasies and excuses back during the Obama years.

I really hate being put in the position of supporting Assange, so there's one more thing I despise about the President* and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. Because right here, right now, there is no way in hell I can support Assange being extradited anywhere the US torturers might get their hands on him.
posted by sotonohito at 1:47 PM on April 21, 2017 [15 favorites]

INFJ: "I am putting myself in the shoes of a democrat who is pro-life but otherwise in favor of all the other issues that the democratic party is for. This Democrat is being told they're not welcome in the party by members in this thread, solely because they're pro-life. They're being stigmatized for their belief."

Can't win 'em all. Moving on.
posted by TypographicalError at 1:48 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

I am willing to graciously accept the votes of pro-lifers for any pro-choice Democrat you care to name, and I defy you to find me anyone who says no, they shouldn't be permitted to sully our ballots with their shaded ovals

Maybe I'm misreading, but...

Go vote for the antiwoman party, if you can't be convinced that women are people who deserve full control of their own health care.

...

If people want to hold that position, there's a Grand Old Party that nominates forced birthers that they can vote for

----

Okay, see, the thing is, you aren't welcome.

OK. Let's slow down. Welcome in what sense, exactly? You're not welcome as a candidate? As an activist/organizer in progressive spaces? How?
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:51 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

Can't win 'em all.

I'd be happy if the Democrats could win, y'know, one.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:54 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

I am putting myself in the shoes of a democrat who is pro-life but otherwise in favor of all the other issues that the democratic party is for.

Yeah but you're speaking for them and I don't know why you think you can do that because you don't know what their mindset is. Plus, you know, about 5 different people have pointed out to you that your mother's position on this is pro-choice as she is not into forcing women to carry an unwanted pregnancy. That is the pro-choice position.
posted by glasseyes at 1:54 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

You're not welcome as a candidate?

No

As an activist/organizer in progressive spaces?

If you're gonna push anti-choice policies, then no

As a voter? You're welcome if you'll vote for pro-choice candidates, then great!
posted by Existential Dread at 1:55 PM on April 21, 2017 [19 favorites]

OK. Let's slow down. Welcome in what sense, exactly? You're not welcome as a candidate? As an activist/organizer in progressive spaces? How?

I'm not in charge of any of this stuff but I would say yes and yes. or no and no, rather. Nobody who is not prepared to convincingly advocate the pro-choice position should be asking for a leadership position of any variety.

I would add the qualifier "in the Democratic Party" but that's not even actually what I mean.

Giving respectful aid to those who are so prepared is a different matter and one I am fine with.
posted by queenofbithynia at 1:56 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh, how I wish that we could use terms that describe the actual viewpoints of people on abortion in an accurate way: one is either pro abortion rights, or anti abortion rights.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:58 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

I am willing to graciously accept the votes of pro-lifers for any pro-choice Democrat you care to name, and I defy you to find me anyone who says no, they shouldn't be permitted to sully our ballots with their shaded ovals.

Right here in this very thread:
I'm just going to say that I don't want people who are not pro-choice under my tent. It's a big tent, I understand that, and yet those assholes can go stand in the rain.

I don't know. I think I'm just a different kind of Democrat then a lot of you. I'm ok with that and I'll drop the issue at this point. You all make very valid points, and though we are in disagreement, I don't think any further input from me on the matter is going to change any minds.
posted by INFJ at 1:58 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Bloomberg has an unbelievable rundown of election irregularities in the Edrogan-for-dictator vote Trump endorsed.

Irregularities were reported elsewhere in Turkey too. For example, ballot-papers had one side marked “yes” and the other “no,” and voters were supposed to indicate their choice with an inked stamp that read “preference.” But many polling stations handed out stamps that read “yes” -- which they then had to imprint onto the “no” side of the ballot, if they opposed Erdogan’s reforms. It was confusing to say the least.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:58 PM on April 21, 2017 [15 favorites]

Exactly what are we supposed to do when Sanders starts talking about abortion, then? Or injecting himself into vulnerable house races?

I read that as "injecting himself into vulnerable horse arces."
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:04 PM on April 21, 2017

I don't know. I think I'm just a different kind of Democrat then a lot of you. I'm ok with that and I'll drop the issue at this point. You all make very valid points, and though we are in disagreement, I don't think any further input from me on the matter is going to change any minds.

I appreciate your feelings on the matter but since the comment you quoted was mine I'd like to rebut that I'm simply the kind of Democrat who has had an abortion and that I see being anti-choice as a denial of my basic humanity and control over my body. So those who do not support reproductive rights better feel unwelcome in my party because otherwise my party is turning its back on me and all women (and men) who want the final say over what happens inside their uterus.
posted by lydhre at 2:10 PM on April 21, 2017 [24 favorites]

Ryan Lizza: The White House Seems Excited to Shut Down the Government

While the potential for a government shutdown has been overshadowed by other events—Syria, North Korea, the attempted repeal of Obamacare—the Trump White House is suddenly seized with the issue. “Next week is going to have quite high drama,” a top White House official, who sounded excited by the coming clash, told me. “It’s going to be action-packed. This one is not getting as much attention, but, trust me, it’s going to be the battle of the titans. And the great irony here is that the call for the government shutdown will come on—guess what?—the hundredth day. If you pitched this in a studio, they would say, ‘Get out of here, it’s too ridiculous.’ This is going to be a big one.”
...
So far, it does not look like a bridgeable gap. “This is going to be high-stakes poker,” the White House official said. When I asked if a shutdown was likely, the official paused for several seconds. “I don’t know,” the official said. The official added, “I just want my wall and my ICE agents.”

posted by zachlipton at 2:13 PM on April 21, 2017 [17 favorites]

As I understand it, there are countries around the world who do a far better job than any U.S. state at reducing the rate of abortions, like Scandinavian countries, but they do so with thorough sex education and providing birth control, pre-natal care, and abortions via quality, fully accessible state-managed healthcare. And when I've told some self-described pro-life friends about this in years past, their ears have perked up.

Everyone prominent in the U.S. who makes abortion a central issue seems to be a craven asshole intent on cementing Republic of Gilead channels of social control through what they're calling their "pro-life" measures. We can't give any quarter on reproductive rights or any restrictions whatsoever around them, or any other such bullshit.

But it does make sense to leave a light on for the non-deplorable prisoners of Red State culture by saying, "Hey, do you want to actually reduce the number of abortions, well below what any wacko Ceaușescu or Erdoğan ‘birth control is treason’ reproductive-police-state could ever accomplish? Well, it just so happens that all of the policies pro-choice activists and others on the left pursue are what get the best results."
posted by XMLicious at 2:13 PM on April 21, 2017 [15 favorites]

I am completely disgusted. If my human rights are "negotiable" to you then you don't actually see me as human, and I want nothing to do with you.

And you should be shamed and stigmatized for that.
posted by schadenfrau at 2:14 PM on April 21, 2017 [29 favorites]

CNN: Sources: Russia tried to use Trump advisers to infiltrate campaign: The FBI gathered intelligence last summer that suggests Russian operatives tried to use Trump advisers, including Carter Page, to infiltrate the Trump campaign, according to US officials.

The new information adds to the emerging picture of how the Russians tried to influence the 2016 election, not only through email hacks and propaganda but also by trying to infiltrate the Trump orbit. The intelligence led to an investigation into the coordination of Trump's campaign associates and the Russians.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:15 PM on April 21, 2017 [16 favorites]

Trump’s Indonesian Allies In Bed With ISIS-Backed Militia Seeking to Oust Elected President

Shocking Exposé Reveals Trump Associates & ISIS-Linked Vigilantes Are Attempting Coup in Indonesia
posted by homunculus at 2:15 PM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

I'm not in charge of any of this stuff but I would say yes and yes.

That sounds totally reasonable. It's just when others (specifically not you here, you've been very clear) say things that strongly imply "your votes aren't welcome" that I think we are stepping into crazyland. Votes are those things we need to win. Let's get more of those.

-------------

I don't know how much this matters to people but fivethirtyeight attempted to characterize moderates and here's what they found. (I'm sorry I don't have the link handy, this was a year ago or so)

Moderates aren't moderate because, for most issues, they hold a position that's "somewhere in the middle". Moderates are just called moderates because their positions are not all left or all right. But on any given issue, they're just as likely to hold an extreme position as somebody that is partisan in a consistent direction. Keep that in mind when you consider supporting a "compromise" candidate; they just inhabit another corner of idea-space (really long detour into linear algebra elided...) not necessarily any closer to the ideas of the electorate than yours.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 2:16 PM on April 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

CNN: Sources: Russia tried to use Trump advisers to infiltrate campaign

I do love that every time Trump tries to get his administration to actually do something, more Russia stuff leaks.
posted by chris24 at 2:16 PM on April 21, 2017 [12 favorites]

But it does make sense to leave a light on for the non-deplorable prisoners of Red State culture by saying, "Hey, do you want to actually reduce the number of abortions, well below what any wacko Ceaușescu or Erdoğan ‘birth control is treason’ reproductive-police-state could ever accomplish? Well, it just so happens that all of the policies pro-choice activists and others on the left pursue are what get the best results."

I mean, we've BEEN doing this for eternity but I guess we can someday unlock the magic password that lets it sink in. In the meantime, Planned Parenthood gets defunded every time the wind changes and they just put another forced-birther on the Supreme Court.
posted by lydhre at 2:20 PM on April 21, 2017 [30 favorites]

The Gaffer: Equivocation, and overeagerness to compromise read like a lack of principle to a lot of people. I'm increasingly of the opinion that democratic candidates don't have a high enough or consistent enough turnout in part because the democratic party has an image of standing fast for nothing.

This is not a new idea - it's usually framed in terms of economic issues. But why just economic issues? I'm curious to see what would happen if a candidate took a very strong, even a fighty tone. Less "I support a woman's right to choose" and more "Someone else's body is none of your business, and I'm here to keep it that way."

Erratic Meatsack: So how do you as a candidate get those who are anti-choice but otherwise Democrat to stick with the party and send votes your way? You probably negotiate and waver and don't raise too much of a stink when reproductive rights come under fire. You maybe use gentle, ambiguous, "inoffensive" terminology. You certainly don't take many pictures with rally signs featuring Planned Parenthood.

I agree with both these posts. I think that Democratic candidates - not all, but many - have this reputation of being milquetoasts and flip-floppers who are all appeasement and no principle. This is, I think, a side-effect of having a big tent party whose people - as I've mentioned - don't have the authoritarian drive to fall in line behind whatever a leader says, simply because he (and I do mean *he*) is The Leader and Must Be Obeyed.

But I don't think it has to be this way. I think that standing on principle and letting the chips fall where they may isn't going to cost Democrats that much, and probably will help them in that it will get out voters who might have stayed at home. I think the BUT BATHROOMS! and BAYBEEZ! anti-choice socially conservative crowd has, by and large, defected to the Republicans. There is probably no getting them back.

If there was a candidate who could credibly promise, for instance, Medicare for all and a new Works Progress Administration that meant, if not jobs for all, jobs for a lot more, and at the same time said "Women have a right to control their own bodies and reproduction. I stand with Planned Parenthood. And I am not going to bar people from using the bathroom that belongs to their lived gender, no matter what gender was assigned at birth. I stand with women's and trans rights, and if you don't like it, you can lump it" - realistically, how many Dem voters would say, "Hmm, I could have free insurance! No more expensive premiums! And a job that matches my skills! BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PRESHUS BAYBEEZ and OMG CREEPS IN BATHROOMS! Republicans here I come!"

I really don't think that that slice of the population is that large. I think there would be more admiration for a candidate who stood on principle and wasn't Blue Dog/Republican Lite wishy-washy "Vote for me as the lesser of two evils!"

Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote, after all. And in the states she lost, it wasn't defecting Democrats so much as energized Republicans and Democrats who stayed home. I don't know that a Democratic candidate can lose the vote because of their pro-choice, pro-human-rights stance anymore. This isn't 1995. Big tent or no, Democrats can only be more attractive if they grew a spine.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 2:21 PM on April 21, 2017 [20 favorites]

From that CNN Article and my actual sleeping nightmares

Part of the problem for investigators has been that they lost their opportunity to conduct the investigation in secret after several leaks last year revealed FBI was looking at people close to the Trump campaign. After those reports, people that the US was monitoring changed their behavior, which made it more difficult for US officials to monitor them.

posted by Brainy at 2:29 PM on April 21, 2017 [11 favorites]

As I understand it, there are countries around the world who do a far better job than any U.S. state at reducing the rate of abortions, like Scandinavian countries, but they do so with thorough sex education and providing birth control, pre-natal care, and abortions via quality, fully accessible state-managed healthcare.

They do it through all those things, plus having genuinely pro-family policies that mean that an unplanned pregnancy is not a catastrophe. The typical woman in the US who gets an abortion is in her 20s, is poor or low-income, and already has one or more child. Many women have abortions because they don't think they can support their existing children if they have another baby. If we had genuine pro-family policies that included comprehensive healthcare, free family planning, easy, stigma-free access to abortion, and support for parents and families, then there would be fewer abortions in the US than there are, and everyone would be healthier and happier.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:30 PM on April 21, 2017 [16 favorites]

Brave Sir Chaffetz ran away.
posted by scalefree at 2:31 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

That was a big part of his campaign, sure. But the campaign's over so he doesn't have to say it anymore.

Well, the 2016 campaign's over. We're in the 2020 campaign.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:32 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Well, the 2016 campaign's over. We're in the 2020 campaign.

With a whole new set of campaign promises to break.
posted by scalefree at 2:33 PM on April 21, 2017

Who pays for the staff to the special assistant? Us?

Mexico!
posted by kirkaracha at 2:36 PM on April 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Interesting thing re Chaffetz: his campaign staff apparently registered the domain jason2028.com on 6 April. The "interesting" here is the date. Why 2028 and not, say, 2024? Because Chaffetz is apparently smart enough to realise that Trump isn't getting a second term, and a Republican isn't winning 2020, and a Democrat will be president for two terms, and he wants to run when there's an open field.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 2:37 PM on April 21, 2017 [24 favorites]

I mean, we've BEEN doing this for eternity but I guess we can someday unlock the magic password that lets it sink in. In the meantime, Planned Parenthood gets defunded every time the wind changes and they just put another forced-birther on the Supreme Court.

And maybe part of the reason why Clinton won the popular vote by more than the entire original population of the country is because that message has sunk in with many people. American Catholics (a group many of my conservative friends, and a few of my friends on the left, belong to, as well as many illustrious MeFites) have noticeably different attitudes on average from many Catholics in other parts of the world, for example.

I'm personally not going to give up on it, is all I'm saying, here in my swing state; the fact that the bad guys have to pervert the course of justice and democracy to advance their agenda shows how bankrupt that agenda is.
posted by XMLicious at 2:39 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Geez that article on Chaffetz.
posted by Yowser at 2:41 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

If Puffyeyes McAsshole thinks he has a shit-eating chance in hell of getting elected President in 2028, he's stupider than a sack of OH WAIT WE HAVE A PRESIDENT TRUMP NOW -

ALL PROGNOSTICATION MODELS NOW OBSOLETE

ERROR

ERROR
posted by darkstar at 2:44 PM on April 21, 2017 [13 favorites]

And maybe part of the reason why Clinton won the popular vote by more than the entire original population of the country is because that message has sunk in with many people. American Catholics (a group many of my conservative friends, and a few of my friends on the left, belong to, as well as many illustrious MeFites) have noticeably different attitudes on average from many Catholics in other parts of the world, for example.

New Analysis Finds Clinton, Not Trump, Narrowly Won The Catholic Vote In 2016

Early exit polls from the 2016 presidential election suggested U.S. Catholics favored then-candidate Donald Trump over his opponent, Hillary Clinton. But new data suggest these analyses may have missed the mark. Using data released by the American National Election Studies last week, political scientist Mark Gray discovered that Catholic voters were split 48 percent to 45 percent in favor of Clinton.

Gray, who heads Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, also found that factors such as age, geography and race significantly impacted how Catholics voted in the election. [chart]

Exit polls aren’t a perfect gauge of which people turn out to vote or who they cast their ballots for, especially when it comes to demographic subgroups. Gray told America Magazine he considered the ANES data more reliable. Gray’s analysis, released in a series of charts on Twitter over the last week, disrupts the narrative that a united “Christian America” elected President Donald Trump.

Exit polls released by CNN, The New York Times, and Pew Research Center shortly after the election told roughly the same story: A whopping 81 percent of white evangelicals, 61 percent of Mormons, and nearly 60 percent of Protestants backed Trump. Catholics, according to these polls, favored the Republican candidate by roughly 50-52 percent, compared to about 45 percent who voted for Clinton.

posted by chris24 at 2:45 PM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

The much more boring explanation for the jason2028.com thing is that they apparently already own jason2020.com and jason2024.com, both of which forward to Chaffetz' current jasonforcongress.com site. Likewise chaffetz2020.com and chaffetz2024.com; likewise jasonchaffetz2020.com and jasonchaffetz2024.com.

(Though, weirdly enough, jasonforcongress has gone from serving his actual page to me to serving a very generic 404 in the short time it's taken me to research and type this comment. Presumably transient and a coincidence, but who knows, maybe someone on Team Chaffetz is trying as we speak to hook up the new 2028 domains to the same autoforwarding the 2020 and 2024 once already did and goofed something up.)
posted by cortex at 2:45 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Jon Ossoff comes out against single-payer (4/14/17):

I asked Ossoff if he would support a Medicare-for-all proposal of the sort that Sanders backs. He would not. “I think we should be focused on incremental progress based upon the body of law on the books rather than going back to square one and proceeding from a starting point of ideological purity,” he said. “I think there needs to be less ideology around health care policy on the left and the right.” (Ossoff demurred on whether he’d back a Medicare buy-in option for Obamacare exchanges.)

No wonder Sanders hesitates on whether this guy is progressive.
posted by indubitable at 2:45 PM on April 21, 2017 [13 favorites]

Wait, he quit because he was scared of the town hall protests? He was scared of the: "A few protesters were masked and dressed in black. They worried Chaffetz most. They carried guns and, he would later learn, were prowling the parking lot trying to find his car."?

I mean if that's all it takes, I'll start shopping for my antifa outfit right now.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:46 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

No wonder Sanders hesitates on whether this guy is progressive.

Or he realizes he's running in a R +9.5 district and there's no chance of single payer until 2020 at the earliest.
posted by chris24 at 2:48 PM on April 21, 2017 [17 favorites]

whether this guy is progressive

Surely single-payer is not a requirement for being progressive? Some of the best universal health care systems in the world (in terms of both health achievement and spending) are not single payer (Germany, Japan, etc).
posted by thefoxgod at 2:48 PM on April 21, 2017 [19 favorites]

Further dull whois details: all the 2020 and 2024 variants were registered in January of 2015; the jason and jasonchaffetz 2028 variants were as noted registered April 6 of this year; but chaffetz2028 was registered on August 23, 2016. So at some point after saying "maybe 2020, maybe 2024", Team Chaffetz started to think "and maybe 2028?" but didn't do a thorough job on it? Or possibly some third party snapped up chaffetz2028 for one or another reason.
posted by cortex at 2:50 PM on April 21, 2017

As I understand it, there are countries around the world who do a far better job than any U.S. state at reducing the rate of abortions, like Scandinavian countries, but they do so with thorough sex education and providing birth control, pre-natal care, and abortions via quality, fully accessible state-managed healthcare.

Absolutely the best thing we could do for the entire human race right now would be to provide full reproductive health services and education to every woman on the planet. It would save an unbelievable amount of human suffering, a boatload of money, and give us a shot at controlling the population enough to avoid a total biosphere collapse.
posted by vibrotronica at 2:53 PM on April 21, 2017 [56 favorites]

(The other and maybe likelier major possibility in the 404 I tripped across is some sort of new-domain-unrelated changeup happening on Chaffetz's site reflecting the whole "what the fuck is going on with Jason Chaffetz right now" shenanigans more generally. Maybe this is even a clumsy-as-hell teardown of the site entirely, since if he doesn't intend to be running for congress, Jason For Congress isn't on message.

I miss when this sort of pedestrian web-management bullshit was the sort of thing we needed to dig through to keep ourselves occupied while the majority-share boring stretches of US politics played out.)
posted by cortex at 2:55 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Surely single-payer is not a requirement for being progressive?

It's difficult for me to find coverage of what kind of ads he's running, but there's also this reporting from NPR:

He may have gotten much of the party's liberal wing behind him, but Ossoff's ads on television tout places where he'd stand up to his party, like reining in spending and working to boost infrastructure. Some of his TV spots talk about how he'd stand up to Trump, but others don't even mention his party affiliation at all.

Progressives don't make "reining in spending" part of their campaign platform, it's an euphemism for austerity programs.
posted by indubitable at 3:02 PM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

I am putting myself in the shoes of a democrat who is pro-life but otherwise in favor of all the other issues that the democratic party is for.

Here's the thing. If you're pro-life for yourself and yourself only, and respect everyone else's autonomy to make their own choices, we're good. By all means, I will not force you to have an abortion you don't want.

But if you're pro-life in terms of making that decision for anyone besides yourself, such that you force anyone into childbirth that they didn't want.... you're a republican.
posted by Dashy at 3:03 PM on April 21, 2017 [24 favorites]

Or he realizes he's running in a R +9.5 district and there's no chance of single payer until 2020 at the earliest.

Similarly, maybe Sanders is doing him and the party a favor by declining to endorse him as a "true Progressive."
posted by notyou at 3:05 PM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

I think you're well aware of who's saying things like, "It's time to rein in Washington's out of control spending" in the US in 2017. It is not progressives.
posted by indubitable at 3:10 PM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Is the purpose of electoral politics to measure the temperature of the populace and then provide a candidate that most perfectly matches that temperature? Or is the purpose of electoral politics to persuade the electorate toward supporting good values — which is to say, left values — and toward rejecting the various immoralities of the right and of the center?

Is the primary purpose of electoral parties leadership, or should they instead primarily focus on data analysis?

(note: the Democratic Party has, with few exceptions — mainly the brief period when Howard Dean got to run the 50 state strategy, and those few early times that Obama used his gift for moral persuasion to move the country against white supremacy — opted for data analysis rather than leadership. We can see what data analysis has won for them.)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:11 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Is the purpose of electoral politics to measure the temperature of the populace and then provide a candidate that most perfectly matches that temperature? Or is the purpose of electoral politics to persuade the electorate toward supporting good values — which is to say, left values — and toward rejecting the various immoralities of the right and of the center?

I don't know about the purpose but the practical effect is that the candidate is the one supported by the most people that give a shit which is, for all practical purposes, a first approximation for electoral support in a FPTP electoral system.

It really comes down to one person representing anywhere between half a million and a million people. If you had 10 people representing half a million I'm sure you'd find more varied and nuanced viewpoints getting to the House.
posted by Talez at 3:17 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

Matt Taibbi: Yikes! New Behind-the-Scenes Book Brutalizes the Clinton Campaign: 'Shattered,' a campaign tell-all fueled by anonymous sources, outlines a generational political disaster

The Clinton campaign was convinced that Obama won in 2008 not because he was a better candidate, or buoyed by an electorate that was disgusted with the Iraq War. Obama won, they believed, because he had a better campaign operation – i.e., better Washingtonian puppeteers. In The Right Stuff terms, Obama's Germans were better than Hillary's Germans.

They were determined not to make the same mistake in 2016. Here, the thought process of campaign chief Robby Mook is described:

"Mook knew that Hillary viewed almost every early decision through a 2008 lens: she thought almost everything her own campaign had done was flawed and everything Obama's had done was pristine."

Since Obama had spent efficiently and Hillary in 2008 had not, this led to spending cutbacks in the 2016 race in crucial areas, including the hiring of outreach staff in states like Michigan. This led to a string of similarly insane self-defeating decisions. As the book puts it, the "obsession with efficiency had come at the cost of broad voter contact in states that would become important battlegrounds."

If the ending to this story were anything other than Donald Trump being elected president, Shattered would be an awesome comedy, like a Kafka novel – a lunatic bureaucracy devouring itself. But since the ending is the opposite of funny, it will likely be consumed as a cautionary tale.

Shattered is what happens when political parties become too disconnected from their voters. Even if you think the election was stolen, any Democrat who reads this book will come away believing he or she belongs to a party stuck in a profound identity crisis. Trump or no Trump, the Democrats need therapy – and soon.

posted by homunculus at 3:21 PM on April 21, 2017 [15 favorites]

> Matt Taibbi: Yikes! New Behind-the-Scenes Book Brutalizes the Clinton Campaign: 'Shattered,' a campaign tell-all fueled by anonymous sources, outlines a generational political disaster

Against Halperinism

As Pierce argues in an excellent recent post, the point about disappearing Trump is particularly important. Analyzing the outcome in the Rust Belt while mostly ignoring Trump is like sports talk radio callers who view a playoff loss solely through the lens of the losing team, while ignoring the plays the opposition had to make to win. I suppose it’s possible that a generic Republican nominee could have scrambled the electoral map like Trump did — but it’s far more plausible that they wouldn’t have. Either way, you can’t just ignore Trump, a very unique candidate both in terms of his strengths as well as his weaknesses, when you’re trying to figure out why he won. And perhaps better tactical choices could have caused Clinton to outperform the structural models by an even greater margin than she did, but the fact that her campaign had the same internal disagreements every campaign does isn’t actually evidence of this.

posted by tonycpsu at 3:27 PM on April 21, 2017 [31 favorites]

oh, the democrats are getting therapy - shock therapy
posted by pyramid termite at 3:28 PM on April 21, 2017

There's no value in salacious campaign post-mortem books by the same set of insider authors, Allen, Mark Halperin, pick your flavor of sycophant. 80k votes in the Great Lakes or no James Comey and that same book written by the same authors is called Shattered: The Heroic Tale of Breaking the Ultimate Glass Ceiling
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:29 PM on April 21, 2017 [60 favorites]

"She could understand why people would be pro-choice, but she was personally pro-life. She said on more then one occasion "If other women want to get an abortion, that's their business - but I could never do it.""

The way I see it, that's actually a pro-choice view. Saying "abortion is fine for other women, but I, personally, would never have one" is pro-choice - because choice is just that; my uterus, my business. As long as one is an advocate of the government staying out of personal choices, and the option of abortion open to a woman (or any gender with a uterus) who wants one - that's pro-choice in my book, even if one's personal view is "I would never ever ever in a million years have an abortion!"

QFT. I've managed to convince a couple of my Republican, Trump voting relatives that this view that they share is actually what pro-choice means. It's amazing how people can be hoodwinked into believing otherwise.
posted by jazzbaby at 3:29 PM on April 21, 2017 [34 favorites]

HOW THE FUCK ARE THERE STILL PEOPLE WHO THINK PRO-CHOICE MEANS MANDATORY ABORTIONS FOR FUN AND SWEET SIXTEENS

DO THEY NOT KNOW WHAT A CHOICE IS
posted by schadenfrau at 3:33 PM on April 21, 2017 [55 favorites]

Abortions for some, miniature American flag pins for others!
posted by Justinian at 3:34 PM on April 21, 2017 [18 favorites]

In the Clinton run, that problem became such a millstone around the neck of the campaign that staffers began to flirt with the idea of sharing the uninspiring truth with voters. Stumped for months by how to explain why their candidate wanted to be president, Clinton staffers began toying with the idea of seeing how "Because it's her turn" might fly as a public rallying cry.

good god
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:42 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

3,000,000 more votes dude
posted by kirkaracha at 3:45 PM on April 21, 2017 [12 favorites]

Robert Dreyfuss: Trump's Terrifying North Korea Standoff: We're learning what happens when two rampant narcissists who love to play with military toys butt heads

Three previous administrations have faced the North Korea challenge, and those tensions rose and fell during the Clinton, Bush II, and Obama eras. But all three leaders to varying degrees were predictable and at least sat atop mature, expert-laden governments. In contrast, Trump is mercurial, wildly unpredictable, and is not only utterly inexperienced in the nuance of diplomacy, but ignorant of even the coarsest outlines of how the world works. He's given the Pentagon free rein to use America's vast arsenal with little or no White House oversight. And Trump has left the State Department in Foggy Bottom, led by former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, as vacant as a ghost town.

"I don't think we've ever had a transition event since World War I when it was nearly April and you have no deputy secretary of State named, no undersecretaries, no assistant secretaries – the entire leadership roster is vacant," said former State Department official Nicholas Burns in late March.

Not having diplomats in place, and giving the generals an extra-long leash, is an almost perfect formula for blundering into a war.

posted by homunculus at 3:48 PM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

"faced with essentially meaningless messaging dilemma, staffers brainstorm and come up with some truly shitty ideas" is, like, dog bites man
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:48 PM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

Yes, I'm not surprised that neither Halperin nor Taibbi grasp the Catch-22 of female ambition in our culture.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:48 PM on April 21, 2017 [54 favorites]

Tangential to the North Korea situation, this is an interesting look at how new to American foreign policy the idea of a preemptive attack is, How America Shed the Taboo Against Preventive War:

A hidden assumption underlies the debate over North Korea. The assumption is that preventive war—war against a country that poses no imminent threat but could pose a threat in the future—is morally legitimate. To be sure, many politicians oppose an attack on practical grounds: They say the costs would be too high. But barely anyone in the foreign policy mainstream calls the idea itself abhorrent.

By historical standards, that’s astounding. Over the past two decades, American foreign policy has undergone a conceptual shift so complete that its current practitioners don’t even acknowledge how revolutionary their current views are. During the Cold War, the dominant figures in American foreign policy considered preventive war to be fundamentally un-American. A member of the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Reagan administration, transported to 2017, would wonder how their successors embraced a principle that they associated with the regimes America fought in World War II.

posted by peeedro at 4:02 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

futz: Republicans Sell Access to Congressional Staffers, Flouting Cardinal Ethics Rule

Documents obtained by The Intercept and the Center for Media and Democracy show that the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are both telling donors that in exchange for campaign contributions, they will receive invitations to special events to meet with congressional staff including chiefs of staff, leadership staffers, and committee staffers.

Trump: Clintons 'Made Millions Selling Access' (Wall Street Journal video, 6/7/2016 10:21PM)

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took aim at the Clintons for turning "the politics of personal enrichment into an art form" during a speech on Tuesday.

That was it - no rebuttal, no clarification. "Here's a crazy thing Trump said! Whoa, he's really going after Clinton!"

Gelatin: The Republicans didn't create the myth of the "liberal media" overnight. More media savvy than the journalists they sought to influence, they prevailed by repeating the charge over and over and over and over, and completely ignoring any counterclaim. Believing that the media is liberal is as essential to modern Republicanism as believing in tax cuts.
...
Notice a pattern here? They're all Republican lies. Republicans have to lie to enact their agenda, and if journalists aren't vigilant, they aid and abet them.

Exactly. They are complicit. And it isn't even about agenda items, it's looking to be the Republican way, more and more - take what you can, for as long as you can, rules and norms be damned.

And the media stepped back, pretending to be "fair and balanced," because "all politicians lie" ... disregarding the types and scales of those lies.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:08 PM on April 21, 2017 [27 favorites]

By historical standards, that’s astounding. Over the past two decades, American foreign policy has undergone a conceptual shift so complete that its current practitioners don’t even acknowledge how revolutionary their current views are. During the Cold War, the dominant figures in American foreign policy considered preventive war to be fundamentally un-American. A member of the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Reagan administration, transported to 2017, would wonder how their successors embraced a principle that they associated with the regimes America fought in World War II.

Did Domino Theory just disappear down the memory hole?
posted by indubitable at 4:08 PM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

By historical standards, that’s astounding. Over the past two decades, American foreign policy has undergone a conceptual shift so complete that its current practitioners don’t even acknowledge how revolutionary their current views are. During the Cold War, the dominant figures in American foreign policy considered preventive war to be fundamentally un-American. A member of the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Reagan administration, transported to 2017, would wonder how their successors embraced a principle that they associated with the regimes America fought in World War II.

Did Domino Theory just disappear down the memory hole?

U.S. Interventions in Latin America
posted by ActingTheGoat at 4:18 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Did Domino Theory just disappear down the memory hole?

That requires at least a passing familiarity with... the history of the past 100 years?

The Republican Party ladies and gentlemen: In the immortal words of Bill Hicks, "Wha'ca reading for?"
posted by mikelieman at 4:19 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

How America Shed the Taboo Against Preventive War

Are we pretty much Genghis Khan now? We knock on the city gates and demand that they submit to invasion, and then if they resist we slaughter every man, woman, and child.

If we nuke North Korea in response to them defending themselves against openly-declared invasion by our military forces, that'll be the case. In Iraq we restrained ourselves and killed only a quarter of a million people in a preemptive war, slowly.
posted by XMLicious at 4:21 PM on April 21, 2017

Buzzfeed writes not a listicle, but an article about a list: Louise Mensch Has A List Of Suspected Russian Agents:

Mensch, who sometimes tweets hundreds of times a day, has claimed or implied that targets ranging from top government officials to journalists to teenagers to anonymous twitter users are in thrall to Vladimir Putin.

Just since inauguration day, according to an extensive review of her tweets, the New York-based Mensch has accused at least 210 people and organizations of being under Russian government influence.

posted by zachlipton at 4:26 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Covering her bases.

"Mensch’s list includes 35 American politicians and government officials, 26 journalists, 26 organizations and corporations (among them think tanks, banks, media outlets, foreign intelligence agencies, and security firms), 18 Russians, 18 US citizens notable for political donations or affiliations, 80 low-profile Twitter accounts Mensch has characterized as “Putinbots” or similar (many of which appear to belong to Americans who support President Trump), and two British politicians. The list includes figures as disparate as Bernie Sanders and Sean Hannity."
posted by chris24 at 4:34 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's morning in Hong Kong and my dog and I were lying in bed and having a cuddle and I decided to catch up with the political threads. I am now having full-on rage attacks that any democratic candidates, let alone so-called progressives, would treat restricting reproductive choice as a flavour of possibility to be included in the big tent.

Women *DIED* because of this shit. Abortion rights are literally a fight for our lives as women. "this one issue? this one issue?" What on earth do you think is at stake? Curious for yourself? Take a look at the female mortality numbers in countries where most abortions are unsafe/illegal. Then come back and tell me this is a matter of different opinions. My mother told me hair raising stories of girls she knew who literally threw themselves down a flight of stairs rather than be forced to carry a baby to term. A girl on her street who cut her wrists when her efforts to self-abort didn't work. Restricting abortions doesn't end abortions. It does make them extremely unsafe.

I mean, I say this as a (mostly lapsed) Catholic who had long ago decided I would not be comfortable with abortion as a personal option. But -- hey!-- that has never kept me from being 100% unwaveringly pro choice. (See! No contradiction! Amazing!).

Listen, there is a middle ground in the sense of agreement that it's better to try to reduce the need for abortion through good access to birth control or in terms of support for women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. That's all fine!

But middle ground or "big tent" in terms of a candidate who literally is willing to step over the dead bodies of women on their way to office? Nope. Go away. This isn't a question like "do you feel the Dutch model of healthcare is superior to the French?"

I'm now going to walk my dog and continue to mutter to myself in a fury.
posted by frumiousb at 4:36 PM on April 21, 2017 [83 favorites]

The assumption is that preventive war—war against a country that poses no imminent threat but could pose a threat in the future—is morally legitimate.

So Pearl Harbor was morally legitimate? As was Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union?
You know who else invaded a country in Asia to get their oil?
posted by kirkaracha at 4:45 PM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Mensch, who sometimes tweets hundreds of times a day, has claimed or implied that targets ranging from top government officials to journalists to teenagers to anonymous twitter users are in thrall to Vladimir Putin [...] Just since inauguration day, according to an extensive review of her tweets, the New York-based Mensch has accused at least 210 people and organizations of being under Russian government influence.

Heh. Isn't there a line of thinking among conspiracy theorists that those who are loudest and kookiest among their cohort (David Icke, Alex Jones, etc.) are actually secretly being funded by Those In Power to make the rest of them look bad? Just sayin'...
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:56 PM on April 21, 2017

I can hardly wait to catch up on everything that's been said since 9 a.m. but, had to throw this out first. No one but the Miami Herald (yay MH) seems to have noticed.
Florida State Senator Frank Artiles resigne in light of his racist remarks
Or maybe there was another explanation for his abrupt about face.
posted by kemrocken at 4:57 PM on April 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

Remember Those Temporary Officials Trump Quietly Installed? Some Are Now Permanent Employees. In January, the Trump administration quietly dispatched more than 400 temporary employees across the federal government. Now dozens of them are getting permanent jobs.

Last month, ProPublica revealed that the Trump administration had installed hundreds of political appointees across the federal government without formally announcing them.

The more than 400 officials were hired in temporary positions for what the White House calls “beachhead teams.” Government hiring rules allow them to have those positions for up to eight months.

Now some of them are getting permanent federal jobs, oftentimes with little or no public notice.

--“At the bare minimum, we need to know their names since they are public officials shaping policy,” said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that advises new administrations on smooth transitions.

-- Take the Department of Homeland Security’s new chief of staff, Kirstjen Nielsen. She was a White House aide to President George W. Bush from 2003 to 2007 and then lobbied Homeland Security as president and general counsel at the Civitas Group. She then founded her own Washington firm, Sunesis Consulting, in 2012 that advised “senior domestic and foreign government officials” on disaster preparedness issues, according to her online biography.

-- Former lobbyists and corporate consultants who are now in key positons overseeing government regulations can be found across dozens of federal agencies, ProPublica and The New York Times found in an analysis of government records. In response to our reporting, seven U.S. senators sent a letter Thursday to the White House, urging the Trump administration to make all waivers to ethics pledges public and releasing White House visitor records.

More critters for the swamp.
posted by futz at 5:14 PM on April 21, 2017 [30 favorites]

I'm still gonna with "Mensch is a gamergator who ran a Breitbart clone."
posted by Yowser at 5:24 PM on April 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

WikiLeaks releases more top-secret CIA docs as U.S. considers charges

Posted online Friday, the release is the latest dump of classified documents stolen from U.S. government agencies. Those thefts include thousands of pages taken by Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
posted by futz at 5:52 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

Surgeon general dismissed, replaced by Trump administration (sorry this link gives you a kind of weird page if you're not on mobile; Google completely broke the web with AMP and insists they're doing us all a favor)

“Today, Dr. Murthy, the leader of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, was asked to resign from his duties as Surgeon General after assisting in a smooth transition into the new Trump Administration," the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.

"Dr. Murthy has been relieved of his duties as Surgeon General and will continue to serve as a member of the Commissioned Corps," the statement continued. "(Health and Human Services) Secretary (Tom) Price thanks him for his dedicated service to the nation. Rear Admiral Sylvia Trent-Adams, who is the current Deputy Surgeon General, will serve as the acting Surgeon General and assume leadership of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.”

So as with the US Attorneys, they made the Surgeon General resign not because they're bothering to actually find and name a new one, but just to get rid of him and let the deputy serve as the acting official. It's both incredibly petty and damaging.
posted by zachlipton at 6:19 PM on April 21, 2017 [26 favorites]

(sorry this link gives you a kind of weird page if you're not on mobile; Google completely broke the web with AMP and insists they're doing us all a favor)

Thank you. I didn't know what AMP was until now other than it was driving me nuts.
posted by futz at 6:31 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

uh, this sounds bad: Russia Sends Troops To North Korean Border As Tensions Escalate
posted by murphy slaw at 7:11 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

I know I should get my own blog, but I think this little anecdote may relate to this post: I blew up at work today and I will probably be in trouble come Monday.

A large group of lower enlisted (miltary) folks and civilians were having a very excited conversation just outside of my office about how awesome it is that we're finally going to "fuck up North Korea" and how awesome it was that we dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan. It sounded like 20 Boomhauers from King of the Hill. One guy's sole contribution was to interject "BOOM!" sporadically. That is not hyperbole. About 1/3 of the military kids were recent immigrants, from Eastern Europe, Africa and China. Yep, not U.S. nationals/citizens.

I tried to be calm but I'm sure I'll be reported. All I did was ask if any of them had ever seen combat, extreme violence and/or death. A couple said they had and I said "Then you should know better."

I gave a little spiel about the horrors of war and combat and humanity. I popped the balloon that needed popping...but I could see that some looked at me like I was a traitor or something. Most of them though, were like, "Thank you, Mr. SNS, I get it."

None of them were thinking critically until I stepped in. They were all excited by the prospect of violence. Excited like a band of primates willing to kill for a bunch of bananas...when, in reality, there are plenty of bananas for all of us primates.

I can't even describe my disgust: my horror upon realizing how simple and easily influenced/persuaded humans are.

It's a difficult lesson to learn, that we, as a whole, are still so simple and primitive.
posted by snsranch at 7:15 PM on April 21, 2017 [122 favorites]

Thank you snsranch for being a good leader.
posted by porpoise at 7:25 PM on April 21, 2017 [34 favorites]

What I wonder is why it works on Democratic voters

TV is our god, that is all ye need know.

my horror upon realizing how simple and easily influenced/persuaded humans are

TV is our god, that is all ye need know.

*empty channel static*
posted by petebest at 7:28 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

TV is our god, that is all ye need know.

I remember during Gulf War I, that the television coverage looked like a videogame and the people I was briefly viewing it with were all "woo hoo" in their reactions.

Sports, games, and domestic peace seem to condition us in the US in some, uh, problematic ways.
posted by puddledork at 7:34 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

(Emphasis added)
Hooters ‘calendar girl’ and Playboy ‘Miss Social’ were Artiles’ paid consultants

To many who knew Artiles over his six-year career in the state Legislature, there were two sides to him. One was the ferocious advocate for his legislation, the proud father of two daughters who boasts about their accomplishments on the softball field. The other is domineering, quick to anger and prone to insults — especially when he drinks — and who viewed his status as a powerful legislator central to his identity.

Huh. Sounds like some really complex issue that will take a long time to figure out.
posted by petebest at 7:35 PM on April 21, 2017 [21 favorites]

11 Republican AGs file on behalf of Exxon, claiming climate investigation is a ‘witchhunt’

surely they must have meant AsG?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:02 PM on April 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

'You're a monster': EPA chief Scott Pruitt visits Dallas' Earth Day event, is met with protests

Pruitt drew applause from the crowd when he said he would put an end to "regulation by litigation," in which the department settles suits by consent decree and bypasses rule-making procedures without input from the public.

I googled this phrase and Pruitt says it a lot. Does his suing the EPA over a dozen times fall into this category or is this a different beast?
posted by futz at 8:09 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's a different beast, and a not infrequent boogeyman among the right-wing think tank set. The complaint is about a practice sometimes known as "sue-and-settle" where an advocacy group files a lawsuit against the government so that the government will, instead of mounting a defense, enter into a consent decree agreeing to do something like regulate a pollutant or address a pollution source. And by doing it this way, they avoid some of the normal rulemaking processes that would apply and they bind the agency to a course of action.

It's been a big complaint of right-wing groups like the Chamber of Commerce. On the other hand, here's a law review article (which I haven't read beyond this summary) that goes into more detail and defends the practice.

In short, Pruitt is fine with lawsuits to stop the EPA from doing things, but furious over lawsuits to force the EPA to do things.
posted by zachlipton at 8:33 PM on April 21, 2017 [34 favorites]

It's a different thing. Still bullshit, but not quite such base hypocrisy.

Basically, there are lots of deadlines in the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, etc., for EPA to issue rules, or update existing rules, or approve/deny states' rules. EPA frequently misses those deadlines, because it doesn't have enough money and staff for all the jobs that the law says it's supposed to be doing. When a delay gets extra ridiculous, an environmental group will file a lawsuit, asking the judge to rule that EPA is in violation of a mandatory deadline and to set a reasonable timeline by which the agency must take action or it will be in contempt of court. EPA will settle these cases immediately, because there's no way it can win -- anybody with a calendar can see that it missed the original deadline, and lack of resources is no defense.

However, the settlements don't actually dictate the content of whatever rule is at issue -- they only say "you have until X date to do what the law said you were supposed to do three years ago." So the Chamber's complaint that EPA is bypassing the normal rulemaking process is largely nonsense -- there's still a full rulemaking process, with public notice-and-comment and whatnot, and the final result is often far short of what the environmentalists actually wanted the agency to do, prompting another lawsuit where they claim the rule is illegally lenient.

There's a valid case to be made that these suits let environmental groups decide for EPA which late rules they should be catching up on, and in which order, but Congress specifically designed these laws to allow suits for force action on overdue rules. If the system isn't working as designed, the failure is in industry's favor, because Congress never intended EPA to miss damn near every deadline they set. In an ideal world new regulations would come out way more often than they do under "sue and settle."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:43 PM on April 21, 2017 [23 favorites]

Fuck. This. Shit. Here's your "pro-life" judge, conservatives. Here's your guy. Murdering people in his first month on the job.

April 17th, 5 days ago, was his first official work day so it is even grimmer than that.

Forget Trump's first 100, what about Gorsuch's first 10?

"Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we just followed the plain text of the statute? What am I missing?" the 49-year-old justice asked.

After arguments, one veteran Supreme Court lawyer and observer shook his head and smiled about the line of questioning.

"Vintage Scalia," he said.

The day was far from over, however. On Monday night, the court issued an order in a death penalty case out of Arkansas and declined to lift a stay of execution that had been entered by the Arkansas Supreme Court. The order came at 12:44 a.m. ET.

Within 24 he voted in favor of executing someone. Can't wait for the next month to unfold. let alone the years to follow. Plain text indeed, actual humans beware.
posted by futz at 8:44 PM on April 21, 2017 [17 favorites]

Within 24 he voted in favor of executing someone.

This shouldn't be surprising. Gorsuch argued in a previous case that a truck driver should be fired for refusing to freeze to death on demand by his employer.

By the way, he is only 49 years old and will be on the Supreme Court for the rest of his life. He will leave a long legacy of death behind him.
posted by JackFlash at 8:52 PM on April 21, 2017 [14 favorites]

Trump Vows to Unveil Tax-Cut Plan Next Week, Surprising Staff

His announcement surprised Capitol Hill and left Mr. Trump’s own Treasury officials speechless as he arrived at the Treasury offices to sign directives to roll back Obama-era tax rules and financial regulations. Earlier in the day, when reporters asked Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, how far away a tax overhaul proposal was, he said he could not give an answer. “Tax reform is way too complicated,” he said.

“Tax reform is way too complicated,”

Hmm, seems to be a reoccurring theme in this administration.
posted by futz at 8:56 PM on April 21, 2017 [21 favorites]

This shouldn't be surprising.

It isn't surprising at all.
posted by futz at 8:59 PM on April 21, 2017

I don't know that much about military strategy but I don't see any way that a shooting war with North Korea doesn't automatically go nuclear. North Korea's major threat is that they'll kill huge number of civilians with artillery. So people begin dying in large numbers doesn't that push the United States to end it as quickly as possible?

So lots of South Koreans die, we use nuclear weapons for the second time, a moral atrocity that opens up a pandora's box of nuclear destabilisation. How in the world could anyone cheer that?
posted by rdr at 9:14 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

So lots of South Koreans die, we use nuclear weapons for the second time, a moral atrocity that opens up a pandora's box of nuclear destabilisation. How in the world could anyone cheer that?

The two pet trumpists I keep on my feed seem to think that it's because this will allow America to "get its balls back."
posted by codacorolla at 9:20 PM on April 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Remember Those Temporary Officials Trump Quietly Installed? Some Are Now Permanent Employees. In January, the Trump administration quietly dispatched more than 400 temporary employees across the federal government. Now dozens of them are getting permanent jobs.

They're creating a parallel bureaucracy loyal only to Trump.

The next step will be to repeal civil service protections. Then widespread purges of career employees, and replacing them with even more Trumpists. Or outsourcing their former positions to TrumpOrg enterprises. They've already laid the groundwork.

This is how you turn a democratic government into a kleptocracy.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:24 PM on April 21, 2017 [26 favorites]

How in the world could anyone cheer that?

Because human beings, for all these thousands of years of civilization, art and erudition, are still a bloodthirsty species in the main, whose primal urges are easily unleashed by tribalism, greed and fear.

I don't like to think too much about it, but when I do, I wonder how long it would really take our species to evolve out of this impulse, so that we are not, to borrow a line from The Great Gatsby, "drawn back ceaselessly into the past" into ever recapitulating our history of savagery.

I fear that level of genetic advancement couldn't happen within the next, oh, thousand generations, anyway. Not without some punctuating evolutionary event that eliminated that predisposition from our gene pool. It is not a thought that gives me peace.
posted by darkstar at 9:28 PM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

The two pet trumpists I keep on my feed seem to think that it's because this will allow America to "get its balls back."

For Trump himself it's his shot at immortality as the Man Who Dared use nuclear weapons.
posted by scalefree at 9:35 PM on April 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

> I fear that level of genetic advancement couldn't happen within the next, oh, thousand generations, anyway. Not without some punctuating evolutionary event that eliminated that predisposition from our gene pool. It is not a thought that gives me peace.

I think perhaps it's not about genetics.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:38 PM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

It's a common trope in American/Western stories for scores of faceless, nameless Asian hordes to die in order for an American/Western character to grow. You see it in Anne Hathaway's movie Colossal. You see it in the bloodthirst of those Trumpists. You see it casually referenced in Red Dawn...

Dr. Manhattan and The Comedian visit Vietnam.
posted by mikelieman at 10:14 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

They're creating a parallel bureaucracy loyal only to Trump.

The next step will be to repeal civil service protections. Then widespread purges of career employees, and replacing them with even more Trumpists. Or outsourcing their former positions to TrumpOrg enterprises. They've already laid the groundwork.

This is how you turn a democratic government into a kleptocracy.

This seems like a curiously competent plan for this administration. I don't doubt that this is why they'd like to do, but so far the Trump admin's planning strategy seems incapable of even that much. Most of their energy seems to be devoted to this daily rhythm:

a. Trump announces thing
b. People are handed blank sheets of paper and told to come up with everything to do with thing.
c. Trump announces new thing, possibly conflicting with old thing.
d. People are handed more sheets of blank paper.
e. Kushner gets a new assignment
etc.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 10:42 PM on April 21, 2017 [35 favorites]

This is not an "I told you so" post, it's just to say that re: North Korea, how else could it possibly end? It feels like the nuclear writing on the wall was there 30 years ago. I'm certainly not looking forward to the horrible casualties or whatnot, but barring a miracle, what other ending could the Kim regime come to? Their entire national being is built on brinksmanship. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but when you're surrounded by Japan, China, South Korea, Russia, and the US, and your strategy isn't "let's all play nice" but "I'll kill ya I swear I'll do it don't think I won't I'm a madman I tells ya"...

Again, I'm sorry to be blase about it, but it's felt inevitable for as long as I've been alive, and I'd really just like it to be over so we can start doing something constructive with the upper half of that peninsula.
posted by saysthis at 10:54 PM on April 21, 2017

Again, I'm sorry to be blase about it, but it's felt inevitable for as long as I've been alive, and I'd really just like it to be over so we can start doing something constructive with the upper half of that peninsula.

Don't be blase about it. You're glossing over a massive shelling of Seoul, and immense death and destruction on all sides, just so you can see the North get redecorated. That's such a glib statement about a war we don't have to fight.

Yeah, the Kims are assholes of the highest order. But they're assholes who know they'll lose everything in a struggle of any size greater than trading fire with South Korean patrol boats. They know that actually using their shiny new nukes and missiles will lead directly to their own destruction. And the Kims would rather have their power and luxuries than go out in a blaze of useless apocalyptic glory. They're not fundamentally nihilistic like ISIS. It doesn't have to end this way. No one should assume this was inevitable.
posted by honestcoyote at 11:34 PM on April 21, 2017 [64 favorites]

Yeah, the Kims are assholes of the highest order. But they're assholes who know they'll lose everything in a struggle of any size greater than trading fire with South Korean patrol boats.

Global Thermonuclear War. Aside from everything else said about it, the least stable madman moves first.
posted by mikelieman at 11:41 PM on April 21, 2017

This is not an "I told you so" post, it's just to say that re: North Korea, how else could it possibly end? It feels like the nuclear writing on the wall was there 30 years ago.

I can't believe I've lost the link to something I read so recently but either directly linked from this thread, or perhaps a link from a link, was a long-form piece explaining how Jimmy Carter, because he had played "good cop" with NK during his administration, had relatively warm personal relations with Kim Il Sung, and in 1994 went to NK partly at the behest of the Clinton administration and was able to negotiate the Agreed Framework.

Under the Agreed Framework, NK would accede to deep inspection of its nuclear sites and eventually surrender the equipment capable of creating a plutonium-producing fuel cycle, in exchange for fuel oil and the US and SK constructing two light-water nuclear plants for NK (which can't produce plutonium?), as well as several other provisions, and the US and NK would establish embassies with each other.

The deal fell apart eventually due to a lack of commitment and promise-breaking on the part of NK, SK, the Clinton administration, the U.S. Congress, and the Bush Administration who eventually really dynamited it by naming the "Axis of Evil" and then pre-emptively invading one of the other members of the Axis, Iraq, under completely false pretenses, thus convincing the remaining members of the Axis that yes, they definitely needed nukes.

So it was basically extortion on a nation-state scale, but it sounds as though, if everyone had actually been committed to it and sincerely tried to make it work, we could've had a non-nuclear NK in the 21st century. Then, my understanding is that during the last decade or so NK has had a practical need to open up commerce and society to the barest degree during the last few years. For example. It might be a very long road but it seems feasible that between the infiltration of the ideas and knowledge which might accompany material comforts, and pressures applied through diplomatic contact, change could come to NK. I mean, we've seen the opening of Myanmar.

But that would have cost money, and required deft and competent statesmanship, so just like dealing with climate change or giving people health care society simply cannot afford anything which might result in Mitt Romney and brood or Donald Trump and brood owning fewer yachts.

I mean if you think about it, nuclear weapons are 1940s technology. Non-proliferation isn't perfect but the fact that every nation on Earth which has sliced bread and helicopters doesn't already have nuclear weapons, and large international corporations aren't similarly armed, seems to indicate that something about that strategy is workable. Or was workable, until we got these U.S. administrations whose primary pasttime is setting alight the dearly-won achievements of preceding generations and dancing a jig as they burn.
posted by XMLicious at 12:29 AM on April 22, 2017 [43 favorites]

But that would have cost money, and required deft and competent statesmanship, so just like dealing with climate change or giving people health care society simply cannot afford anything which might result in Mitt Romney and brood or Donald Trump and brood owning fewer yachts.

And this is where I nod helplessly and say something blase. I know the facts and the history, and I agree that in a world of even slightly less shitty leaders, it's possible to steer NK right. Myanmar is the case study.

I wish I didn't think like this, but it's just...it's hard to see how NK won't blow up. Again, I don't want this, and it will be horrific, more horrific than my brain can really process, but it's like, between our Dear Leaders and Japan/South Korea/China/Russia, I just feel like it's time to stop hoping such a war won't happen. Trump is nothing if not adept at understanding his opponents' limits. The Middle East is a quagmire of people who routinely call each others' bluffs, but have little capacity for Armageddon-scale destruction, which is why Trump is just kind of like, "Ok, generals, you handle that, do whatever is America usually does over there". NK comes in two flavors, bluff and Armageddon. This is his thing.

If it happens, I think it would be in everyone's interest to think about what the best outcome could be. I have no horse in this race beyond, "This sucks." I want a better horse, but I feel like, because of Drumpf and all the other known quantities, war is coming to Korea. I don't want NK redecorated at the cost of Seoul, I just think it's nearly unavoidable at this point, and I'm looking for a silver lining.

I'm done venting. Thank you for allowing me this minor derail. Goodnight.
posted by saysthis at 4:24 AM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

So this is old news but umm, has anyone seen the photos of the White House Easter egg roll?

There's a certain, umm, uniformity of the children. They're all white. Maybe there's an exception or two.

When are Americans going to stop talking about this as a political problem to be solved or not solved by the Democrats, and as an existential threat to the majority of your population?
posted by Yowser at 6:04 AM on April 22, 2017 [9 favorites]

When are Americans going to stop talking about this as a political problem to be solved or not solved by the Democrats, and as an existential threat to the majority of your population?

What do you honestly think Trump means when he says "Make America Great Again". That segment of the population has seen the existential threat and have determined that the best way to deal with is is to stuff anything that isn't the white male patriarchy back into the marginal areas of society where they think "those" people belong.
posted by Talez at 6:19 AM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

So this is old news but umm, has anyone seen the photos of the White House Easter egg roll?

There's a certain, umm, uniformity of the children. They're all white. Maybe there's an exception or two.


Yeah, they didn't issue tickets for DC public schools. Which would've considerably affected the ethnic makeup. There are two plausible explanations here: petty revenge because Trump only got 4% of the vote in DC, or racism. (Or both, I guess!)
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 6:20 AM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]

There's also that the policy of the Trump administration and Education Secretary is that public schools are liberal indoctrination centers that must be destroyed.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:44 AM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

When are Americans going to stop talking about this as a political problem to be solved or not solved by the Democrats, and as an existential threat to the majority of your population?

You've posted this before - "when are Americans going to stop worrying about politics and instead worry about Looming Threat X?" Politics is how problems and threats gets solved. Not good intentions or opting off the grid or Revolution! To The Barricades! Civil Rights was accomplished through politics. The EPA - politics. To name two.

Politics shouldn't mean just "federal politics" - local and state count, too, as I've been banging the drum for yoinks. California is keeping its Clean Air Act no matter what Trump and Co. think, because Californians elected politicians who agreed to keep it. Gavin Newsom - a politician - wants to give all Californians health care.

By the same token, there were no (or few?) children of color at the White House Easter egg roll because a racist bloc of Americans elected someone who wants to roll race and gender relations back to the 1950's. Politics!

Deep-seated attitudes and societal racism aren't going to be solved by Democrats, but the Democrats are a damn sight better at race and gender issues than the Republicans, and will do a much better job with civil rights, job opportunities, police brutality, women's right to choose, etc., and other existential threats. In order to solve these threats, we've got to keep talking politics and working to elect more and better Democrats.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 7:00 AM on April 22, 2017 [40 favorites]

Yeah, they didn't issue tickets for DC public schools. Which would've considerably affected the ethnic makeup. There are two plausible explanations here: petty revenge because Trump only got 4% of the vote in DC, or racism. (Or both, I guess!)

Their excuse was that DC public schools were on spring break.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:04 AM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

On a Sunday?
posted by Artw at 7:14 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

It was on a Monday.
posted by unknowncommand at 7:17 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's a certain, umm, uniformity of the children. They're all white. Maybe there's an exception or two.

If you were the parent of a child of color, would you want your kid interacting with anyone in the Trump administration?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:18 AM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

This long account of Comey's decision making about the Clinton and Trump investigations is worth reading. I don't think there's anything really new, but it's helpful to see this stuff all in one place.

The takeaway seems to be that Comey and other folks in the justice department were in a very difficult bind, and the decision to announce the re-opening of the Clinton investigation to Congress in October was Comey's solution to preserving the FBI's reputation in case they had to announce some damning findings after Clinton had been elected. In hindsight, now that Trump has been elected--in large part because of that same decision--Comey comes off looking really, really bad.
posted by Dr. Send at 7:30 AM on April 22, 2017 [19 favorites]

From the rally in Asheville NC - DA drops assault charge filed after Asheville Trump rally

District Attorney Todd Williams said prosecutors made the decision to dismiss after speaking with downtown resident Shirley Teter, who said she was punched in the face while outside the rally at the U.S. Cellular Center.

Charges against a Flat Rock man who video appeared to show making threatening gestures and slapping and grabbing at anti-Trump protesters inside the arena have yet to be resolved, Williams said.

Charges against three other people stemming from incidents outside the rally were later dismissed.

posted by achrise at 7:37 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

The takeaway seems to be that Comey and other folks in the justice department were in a very difficult bind, and the decision to announce the re-opening of the Clinton investigation to Congress in October was Comey's solution to preserving the FBI's reputation in case they had to announce some damning findings after Clinton had been elected.

That's complete bullshit. They had no fucking clue what was on Weiner's laptop before Comey raced to put out a speculative and inflamatory statement in time to affect the election. There was no reason to say anything without having any new evidence. He absolutely knew exactly what he was doing.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:51 AM on April 22, 2017 [28 favorites]

Yes, that is bullshit. Comey says he was worried about the reputation of the FBI. What he means is that he was afraid that Republicans would say mean things about him if Clinton won. Republicans always say mean things when they don't win. Comey was making an explicitly political calculation as to what was safest for him while defying all precedent and rules of the justice department about interfering in elections.

If there were real justice, Comey would be rotting in hell.
posted by JackFlash at 8:04 AM on April 22, 2017 [28 favorites]

Yes, that is bullshit. Comey says he was worried about the reputation of the FBI. What he means is that he was afraid that Republicans would say mean things about him if Clinton won.

Case in point: Democrats accused Comey of throwing the election. He didn't give a fuck. Because he's a Republican. He only cares about what Republicans would've thought of him if Clinton had won.

There's no argument that comes close to passing the laugh test that it was anything other that a partisan hit job.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:06 AM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]

Oh, and let's not forget Comey was at the same time sitting on the Trump dossier, at least one FISA warrant and an active investigation into Trump's Russia connections without saying a goddamn word. So please, tell me more about James Comey: Bipartisan Man of Integrity.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:13 AM on April 22, 2017 [45 favorites]

For all the hand wringing and nitpicking here about what if Clinton had done this or Clinton had done that, the plain fact is that the polls were right. Clinton had the election comfortably in hand with a 6-point lead, which is huge in presidential elections, right up until the day Comey released his letter a week before the election.

As yet another example you can see here that Trump's favorability swung six points in a few days as a result of the Comey letter.

Comey handed the election to Trump.
posted by JackFlash at 8:17 AM on April 22, 2017 [61 favorites]

From the NYT article:

Fearing the backlash that would come if it were revealed after the election that the F.B.I. had been investigating the next president and had kept it a secret, Mr. Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the case was reopened.

That's some bullshit right there. The FBI was investigating both candidates and kept their investigation of Trump a secret.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:16 AM on April 22, 2017 [42 favorites]

I fear that level of genetic advancement couldn't happen within the next, oh, thousand generations, anyway. Not without some punctuating evolutionary event that eliminated that predisposition from our gene pool.

Obviously the fictional setting was inspired by us and our permanent story but lately I have found myself thinking about how we're in the phase of Vulcan history where they are just about to either destroy themselves or master logic. Just need to find a Surak...
posted by feloniousmonk at 9:26 AM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

Every nation on earth either has nuclear weapons, is developing nuclear weapons, or is trying to elect a fascist named Marine to lead them.

Maybe this whole sentence is a joke? Lest anyone think this is remotely true, even if you count states which formerly had nuclear weapons and abandoned or surrendered them, plus "weapons-sharing states" that host nukes on their territory but don't have their own capability to arm them, most of the map is grey.

Like for example Australia, even though it has nearly a third of the uranium reserves in the entire world, does not possess or pursue nuclear weapons.

That's why it was significant that Trump proposed during the campaign that he'd be in favor of South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia getting nuclear weapons. "Everyone will get nuclear weapons at some point, why bother trying to stop it" is Trumpian bullshit.
posted by XMLicious at 9:27 AM on April 22, 2017 [38 favorites]

Fearing the backlash that would come if it were revealed after the election that the F.B.I. had been investigating the next president and had kept it a secret, Mr. Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the case was reopened.

The thing that I find interesting is that this calculus was based on the expectation that Clinton was going to win, which was certainly the prevailing sentiment at the time. But making his decision on that basis swung the whole election and Comey ended up screwing himself, along with the rest of the country / world.
posted by Dr. Send at 9:48 AM on April 22, 2017 [8 favorites]

But making his decision on that basis swung the whole election and Comey ended up screwing himself, along with the rest of the country / world.

Yeah, that decision is the most boggling one. The question needed to be one of "do we reveal both the reopening of Clinton and the ongoing Trump or do we say nothing about both investigations?" They needed to be treated equally at that point, from my view.
posted by nubs at 9:59 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is an amazing NYT Op-Ed by Lawrence Downes: Let’s All Learn About Hawaii

Hawaii is well-known for its long tradition of welcoming and love, called the “Aloha spirit.” Alabama used to be famous for a spirit called “Jim Crow,” a system of laws to keep people with darker skin separate from white people.

What does “Jim Crow” have to do with Hawaii? A lot!

posted by zachlipton at 10:07 AM on April 22, 2017 [70 favorites]

Happy Earth day, everyone. If your city has a March for Science, you should get down there! It's so encouraging, much more hopeful than these MeFi threads. :-)
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:11 AM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]

McSweeney's The Love Song Of William J O'Reilly is even more on point now that he's out and Trump is still defending him.

Shall I grope her from behind? Do I dare to grab her peach?
I shall herald Trump, and hope they don’t impeach.
I have heard the women talking, each to each.

I do not think that they will sleep with me.

I have seen the lawyers walking down the hall
Deciding whether or not to give me the sack
But, like Ailes, they’ll cut me some slack.
Unless, of course, there are men who complain.
Until then, they will let me continue, round after round
Till the money stops flowing and ratings go down.

posted by corb at 10:12 AM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]

I don't care what you think of Julian Assange ... Unleashing Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III on the Bill of Rights is a ghastly prospect that should be fought at every turn.

When did Assange become an American citizen again? He isn't a "dissident journalist" in the context of any state. He's a global free agent. The Bill of Rights doesn't apply to an Australian sitting the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The New York Times should be indemnified against publishing leaks, sure. But Assange chose to operate outside the protections of his own state. I have sympathy for Pierce's point, and Greenwald certainly is a dissident journalist. Assange is a different thing entirely to me.
posted by spitbull at 10:33 AM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I agree Assange is different, but he is still a person, so should be afforded some protection under the bill of rights unless we wish to define him as a state (strange but I think possible).
posted by wobumingbai at 10:59 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

This long account of Comey's decision making about the Clinton and Trump investigations is worth reading. I don't think there's anything really new, but it's helpful to see this stuff all in one place.

This part caught my eye:

During Russia’s hacking campaign against the United States, intelligence agencies could peer, at times, into Russian networks and see what had been taken. Early last year, F.B.I. agents received a batch of hacked documents, and one caught their attention.

The document, which has been described as both a memo and an email, was written by a Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far, according to several former officials familiar with the document.

Read one way, it was standard Washington political chatter. Read another way, it suggested that a political operative might have insight into Ms. Lynch’s thinking.

Normally, when the F.B.I. recommends closing a case, the Justice Department agrees and nobody says anything. The consensus in both places was that the typical procedure would not suffice in this instance, but who would be the spokesman?

The document complicated that calculation, according to officials. If Ms. Lynch announced that the case was closed, and Russia leaked the document, Mr. Comey believed it would raise doubts about the independence of the investigation.

So Comey and the FBI intercepted -- from Russian sources -- political correspondence between Democrats (I assume) about his boss, which he thought could be used against him and the FBI. Essentially Comey allowed himself to be coerced by Russian hackers. And had access to unmasked intel about his boss. How is this not bigger news?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:02 AM on April 22, 2017 [34 favorites]

The difficult thing is drawing a line between "journalism" and "espionage". I have no idea where that might be, but by preference, I tend to err on the side of the individual as opposed to the State.

However, IF the US has evidence of unlawful acts independent of journalism, that's another sticky wicket.
posted by mikelieman at 11:05 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Happy Earth day, everyone. If your city has a March for Science, you should get down there! It's so encouraging, much more hopeful than these MeFi threads. :-)

I agree with OnceUponaTime. Our local March for Science this morning restored in me some sense of hope. There were students and young families and older people and quite a few of us boomers, with a strong feeling of sensibility and camaraderie.
posted by a fish out of water at 11:08 AM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

Assange deserves the same human rights as any refugee or stateless person, I concur. But the US Bill of Rights is no shield for him.
posted by spitbull at 11:18 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Every nation on earth either has nuclear weapons, is developing nuclear weapons, or is trying to elect a fascist named Marine to lead them. If you're not scared you should be.

Umm, why not both? France has seriously robust nukes.
posted by spitbull at 11:33 AM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

When did Assange become an American citizen again? He isn't a "dissident journalist" in the context of any state. He's a global free agent. The Bill of Rights doesn't apply to an Australian sitting the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The New York Times should be indemnified against publishing leaks, sure. But Assange chose to operate outside the protections of his own state. I have sympathy for Pierce's point, and Greenwald certainly is a dissident journalist. Assange is a different thing entirely to me.


but that's the kernel of it, isn't it?
Greenwald et al are dissident journalists, Assange is doing the equivelant of punching another kid in the face, then tattling on the kid to a teacher, then standing behind the teacher, while the teacher is lecturing the other kid with the bloody nose, throwing rocks.

I have respect for Greenwald, I'm entirely out of sympathy for Assange & Appelbaum. (yes, they are both active in the same context currently)
posted by xcasex at 11:41 AM on April 22, 2017

The protections afforded by the Bill of Rights apply to citizens​ and non-citizens alike.
posted by notyou at 11:43 AM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

Not when they aren't on American soil.
posted by toxic at 11:44 AM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

The context here is the DoJ's move toward charging Assange with a crime and trying him for same, which would require Assange to be on US "soil."
posted by notyou at 11:54 AM on April 22, 2017

Interesting to see Katha Pollitt take on her own magazine. I have several very lefty friends on FB and their reflexive and adamant defense of Russia has perplexed me. Guess I'm not the only one. The quoted section is the concluding paragraph.

The Nation: It’s Not ‘McCarthyism’ to Demand Answers on Trump, Russia, and the Election: Using the language of the anticommunist witch hunt for this moment is a mistake

I must say that I don’t understand this magazine’s adamant skepticism about the charges: If we don’t know what happened, what it entailed, and how far it extended, how can we be so sure that it didn’t matter? And I don’t understand the repetition of these particular words and historical tropes. It’s as if the fact that Russia occupies some of the same geography as the Soviet Union has trapped The Nation in the defensive attitudes of an earlier era. But Russia is not a communist country; it is a capitalist kleptocracy run by an autocrat and an enemy of human rights. If there’s a lingering legacy of McCarthyism around this issue, it doesn’t emanate from liberals but from the left, where some kind of subconscious sympathy with the state formerly known as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic curiously persists even though the place now embodies everything they oppose. If the country accused of the hack was, say, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, would we be talking about McCarthyism then?

posted by chris24 at 11:58 AM on April 22, 2017 [38 favorites]

Angela Merkel reportedly had to explain the 'fundamentals' of EU trade to Trump 11 times

President Trump did not understand that the US cannot negotiate a trade deal with Germany alone and must deal with the European Union as a bloc, a senior German official told The Times of London.

"Ten times Trump asked [German chancellor Angela Merkel] if he could negotiate a trade deal with Germany. Every time she replied, 'You can’t do a trade deal with Germany, only the EU,'" the official said.

They continued: "On the eleventh refusal, Trump finally got the message, 'Oh, we’ll do a deal with Europe then.'"

Merkel reportedly told her cabinet members that Trump had "very basic misunderstandings" on the "fundamentals" of the EU and trade.

Who knew International trade deals could be so complicated?
posted by futz at 11:58 AM on April 22, 2017 [104 favorites]

It seems dubious to me that the US could claim jurisdiction to try Assange while simultaneously claiming that the protections of the Bill of Rights don't apply. If the crime occurred where the US has jurisdiction, ie the United States, then Assange gets the protections of the Bill of Rights. If the US says Assange doesn't get that protection then they are saying the crime didn't occur where they have jurisdiction, almost by definition.
posted by Justinian at 12:00 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

Who knew International trade deals could be so complicated?

It's not just that. It's that SCROTUS is busy trying to make "deals" and he can't even remember what he said to another person the other day and take that into account so he's just making a giant cock up of everything no matter where he touches.

This administration is literally a chicken with its head cut off.
posted by Talez at 12:13 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

Trump to hold rally on night of White House Correspondents Dinner

This man is so predictable and the media will fall for it.
posted by futz at 12:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [13 favorites]

Holding a rally ont he night of the Correspondents' Dinner is a calculated effort to diminish the importance of the mainstream press and specifically the Washington press corps; this is a Bannonesque move, another way of breaking down the institutions that might provide nominal, informal checks (which are all that are left with the morally bankrupt GOP abdicating its duties int he other two branches of government).
posted by kewb at 12:20 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

Also, predictably, he has his very own so-called Philadelphia trump tower and a golf course there.
posted by futz at 12:23 PM on April 22, 2017

Tangientially related: I made good on my promise to busk at Back Bay Station in Boston today, in honor of the March for Science. For a bunch of reasons (including my amp--which broke on my way in), I only made $15. I will be donating this to the Science Club for Girls, a mentoring organization for girls in STEM. During my AmeriCorps Year of Service I worked with them and can vouch for their good work. Times are tight, but if you have the means I invite you to join me.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:23 PM on April 22, 2017 [27 favorites]

Unleashing Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III on the Bill of Rights is a ghastly prospect that should be fought at every turn. The only court in which Assange rightly should appear is in Sweden.

If we get the chance to put work in against Sessions, being an ally to minorities and immigrants in America comes first, and Julian Assange is very far down the list. He should be able to "defend himself" against Trump just like he says he did against Clinton, and if he can't, then he was never what he pretended to be anyway.

Assange's manipulation of the facts and his work turning Wikileaks into something between a cult of personality and a Russian client cut down the norms and rules of national and international order, and now the Devil has turned 'round and there's nothing left to protect him.

If you believe in a free press and personal liberty so much, maybe try not to help people who murder journalists and scoff at the very idea of civil rights, asshole.
posted by kewb at 12:38 PM on April 22, 2017 [13 favorites]

Also, predictably, he has his very own so-called Philadelphia trump tower and a golf course there.

I'm so grateful that Philadelphia is hosting the NFL draft through Saturday, so I doubt Trump would rally in Philadelphia. As far as I know Trump doesn't have a hotel in Philadelphia: it was never built.

Hasan Minaj is hosting the White House Correspondents dinner and Samantha Bee's hosting her own counter-event. I hope they feel totally unconstrained knowing that Trump is pre-emptively licking his wounds with a rally.
posted by gladly at 12:42 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Not when they aren't on American soil.

If the Constitution and Bill of Rights delegates authority TO THE GOVERNMENT, then when it says, "Person", that's different from "Citizen". They clearly use Citizen when they MEAN Citizen, so...

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

isn't for Citizens only, and I dispute the allegation that anything in there doesn't apply to the US Government, its officers, agents, employees, contractors, etc *EVERYWHERE*.

In other words, Guantanamo Bay was wrong. And anyone who said it was right was wrong. Dredd Scott levels of wrong.
posted by mikelieman at 1:11 PM on April 22, 2017 [22 favorites]

Some thoughts on Japanese nuclear potential. Should they build a bomb, it's highly likely South Korea would soon after.

Great article. And it doesn't explicitly say it, but note that nearly every country in East Asia was a conquered colony of Japan within the living memory of the oldest people. I met a co-worker's Korean grandfather who talked about being forced to speak Japanese rather than Korean in school.

So in terms of nuclear proliferation and the anxiety it produces in regional neighbors Japan is not just a normal domino falling, the way Germany would not be a normal domino in Europe if it developed its own weapons program.
posted by XMLicious at 1:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

Also, instead of nitpicking about which word is or isn't used in the Constitution, I would like to believe that we have principles that would apply to any person anywhere. We shouldn't refrain from torturing people because it may or may not be considered cruel and unusual punishment, we should refrain from torturing people because it's wrong.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [13 favorites]

Next Saturday night I will be holding a BIG rally in Pennsylvania

Has he visited any state that didn't vote for him since the election? Not doing so good on his "pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans."
posted by kirkaracha at 1:20 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Has he visited any state that didn't vote for him since the election?

He's been to the CIA, his golf course, and a shipbuilder rally in Virginia. He's visited Walter Reed and spoke at CPAC in Maryland. He flew to Delaware to greet the remains of Ryan Owens.
posted by peeedro at 1:35 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

President Trump did not understand that the US cannot negotiate a trade deal with Germany alone and must deal with the European Union as a bloc, a senior German official told The Times of London.

Sounds like a man who is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" to me. Seriously, this is just ridiculous. Regardless of any medical diagnosis the man may have, he is a deeply stupid person who believes he is very smart. That's downright dangerous to everyone on the planet.
posted by threeturtles at 1:37 PM on April 22, 2017 [61 favorites]

Ladies and gentlemen, the Ferengi in Chief!
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:03 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

> Holding a rally on the night of the Correspondents' Dinner is a calculated effort to diminish the importance of the mainstream press and specifically the Washington press corps; this is a Bannonesque move, another way of breaking down the institutions that might provide nominal, informal checks (which are all that are left with the morally bankrupt GOP abdicating its duties int he other two branches of government).

let's play resistance theorycraft for a second. assume the white house press corps is smart and good and 100% on the side of the resistance. what move do they make here? what do we hope that they do in response to this (really quite clever) media power play on the part of the fascists?

I have no idea. I mean what's going on is a war between the old institutions of liberal democracy and the emerging (vicious, planned-chaotic) institutions of internet neofascism, and what I want to happen is I want this particular old institution of liberal democracy to radicalize real quick — to make the Correspondents' Dinner a dead-serious "democracy dies in darkness and we mean it and we're gonna light the fascists up" resistance event. But I can't tell if that would even be a good move at this point.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:08 PM on April 22, 2017 [8 favorites]

Except the actual people who make up the WHCA still care way more about whether Sean Spicer buys them a drink than the old institutions of liberal democracy. Asking them to resist anything is a fools errand, or else they would've done it already.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:13 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

let's play resistance theorycraft for a second. assume the white house press corps is smart and good and 100% on the side of the resistance.

You stay home from all three competing events, and instead you double down on investigative journalism into every single slimy thing this administration is doing.

So, you know, nothing that the DC Press Corps is even remotely capable of doing or willing to do.
posted by kewb at 2:23 PM on April 22, 2017 [18 favorites]

Film the empty seat.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:24 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

Okay, but the rally still happens and the creeps in favor of kekocracy watch via brietbart or whatever, and they add the old-media non-coverage of the rally to their list of talking/bludgeoning points about old media institutions being out of touch with their new world order.

"Just ignore the attack" only works in an environment where conventional mass media are, collectively, the dominant medium.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:26 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

I agree they are incapable of staying home from the events, kewb, but there's been a lot of damn fine investigative journalism going on.
posted by Justinian at 2:26 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

How do we know whether there's more people who respect mass media or more people who respect fascist internet stuff? I'm not sure readership figures are the best metric here, but I'm not sure what is. I just wasted some time digging around sites for marketers, sites that talk about what platforms are most valuable for what types of advertising, and the consensus seems to be that the top three outlets in broad terms are HuffPo, the New York Times, and Buzzfeed, but that in terms of just politics, hard-right outlets get way more shares. I'd love to hear from people who actually know stuff about this.

You know the old "first they laugh at you then they fight you then you win" chestnut from Gandhi or whatever? I think the internet nazis see themselves in those terms — that they're the scrappy upstarts with new ideas — and I think that this is one of the many fronts where we're in real danger of skipping straight from laughing at them to watching them win.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:38 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

Kevin Drum throws down the gauntlet: Let's Talk About Bubbles and James Comey

I'm not sure how much clearer the evidence could be. Basically, Hillary Clinton was doing fine until October 28. Then the Comey letter cost her 2-4 percent of the popular vote. Without Comey she would have won comfortably — possibly by a landslide — even though the fundamentals predicted a close race.

That's it. That's the evidence. If you disagree that Comey was decisive, you need to account for two things. First, if the problem was something intrinsic to Clinton or her campaign, why was she so far ahead of Trump for the entire race? Second, if Comey wasn't at fault, what plausibly accounts for Clinton's huge and sudden change in fortune starting precisely on October 28?
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:43 PM on April 22, 2017 [53 favorites]

Bill Nye criticizes CNN on air for inviting climate change skeptic

Bill Nye on Saturday accused CNN of doing a "disservice" to viewers by bringing a climate change skeptic onto the network for a panel discussion.

"I will say, much as I love CNN, you’re doing a disservice by having one climate change skeptic, and not 97 or 98 scientists or engineers concerned about climate change," Nye said during an appearance on CNN's "New Day."

Perfect. This needs to be said by someone every time a media outlet pulls this bullshit for any topic.
posted by futz at 2:51 PM on April 22, 2017 [73 favorites]

Oh my god, Carter Page is coming on Smerconish on MSNBC to give a response to the Russian thing. No, dude. No. It's lawyer time. Pls no. Why are you doing this?

Like... I want him to be an idiot and do this. But... no. This is not how you behave? Get a lawyer!
posted by Justinian at 3:02 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

Oh my god, Carter Page is coming on Smerconish on MSNBC ...

When? Is Smerconish on msnbc too or have I gotten some Smers mixed up?
posted by futz at 3:05 PM on April 22, 2017

He's on CNN right now.
posted by futz at 3:06 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yes, I meant CNN. Sorry!
posted by Justinian at 3:08 PM on April 22, 2017

New Yorker round-up: Fox Lost Bill O’Reilly, But It Still Has Trump

Perhaps Bill O’Reilly filled a need for Fox News, as it built its brand and its culture. But it doesn’t really require him for that anymore. The network can always invite the President of the United States on, or just point a camera at him and let him speak. O’Reilly has lost his job, but Trump is just getting started with his.

The Emptiness of Trump’s “Buy American” Order

When Donald Trump unveiled his latest executive order, titled “Buy American and Hire American,” he made only the barest effort to conceal the fact that the announcement was nearly entirely one of theatrics and not of substance. He held his talk in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at Snap-on Tools, a firm that buys Chinese and hires Chinese, Argentinian, Brazilian, and Swedish. Seventy per cent of Snap-on’s sales are in the U.S., but many of its plants are in other countries. There is nothing wrong with Snap-on putting its factories overseas, it just makes it an odd place to hold a Buy American announcement. It’s reminiscent of President Trump’s celebration of jobs at a Boeing plant while the company was laying off workers.

The Real Trump Agenda: Helping Big Business -- a round-up of changes being pushed by big companies, and what the Trump administration is doing to make them happy.

The Looming Government Shutdown -- As the hundredth day of Trump’s Presidency approaches, the White House seems excited about the coming clash in Congress.

Next Saturday, April 29th, is President Trump’s hundredth day in office, a historical marker used by the press to assess a new President’s progress since the first term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. F.D.R. was grappling with the Great Depression, and he had a pliant Congress that would have passed almost anything he proposed. Presidents since then have often struggled to meet the expectations of the hundred-day report card but generally can point to a list of major legislative accomplishments. Trump does not have such a list. At the same time, the Trump White House is facing a much more consequential deadline, one that will help define his first months in office and perhaps his first term: absent a spending deal with Democrats and Republicans in Congress, next Saturday the government will shut down.

While the potential for a government shutdown has been overshadowed by other events—Syria, North Korea, the attempted repeal of Obamacare—the Trump White House is suddenly seized with the issue. “Next week is going to have quite high drama,” a top White House official, who sounded excited by the coming clash, told me. “It’s going to be action-packed. This one is not getting as much attention, but, trust me, it’s going to be the battle of the titans. And the great irony here is that the call for the government shutdown will come on—guess what?—the hundredth day. If you pitched this in a studio, they would say, ‘Get out of here, it’s too ridiculous.’ This is going to be a big one.”
...
But it’s not just the Democrats who oppose several Trump priorities. Congressional Republicans, who are generally united in support for the increase in defense spending, are divided on the border wall, which is not popular among border-state Republicans, and the deep domestic-spending cuts.

So far, it does not look like a bridgeable gap. “This is going to be high-stakes poker,” the White House official said. When I asked if a shutdown was likely, the official paused for several seconds. “I don’t know,” the official said. The official added, “I just want my wall and my ice agents.”

posted by filthy light thief at 3:10 PM on April 22, 2017 [15 favorites]

I don't know what to say about that. Page's whole shtick was slagging the "dodgy dossier", which he repeated with almost Homerian frequency, and saying this was actually Good News! For Carter Page! And he looked forward to his lawsuit and day in court.

He's either really stupid or... yeah I think that's probably about it.
posted by Justinian at 3:14 PM on April 22, 2017

In which Sean Hannity accuses the New York Times and/or the NSA of surveilling and "unmasking" him because the Times wrote an article about people outside the government the President sometimes talks to for advice and it included Hannity.
posted by zachlipton at 3:19 PM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

“This is going to be high-stakes poker,” the White House official said. When I asked if a shutdown was likely, the official paused for several seconds. “I don’t know,” the official said. The official added, “I just want my wall and my ice agents.”

Stephen Miller thinks he's the President now. Hell, he might as well be given Trump's level of comprehension about anything.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:47 PM on April 22, 2017 [9 favorites]

You know the old "first they laugh at you then they fight you then you win" chestnut from Gandhi or whatever? I think the internet nazis see themselves in those terms — that they're the scrappy upstarts with new ideas — and I think that this is one of the many fronts where we're in real danger of skipping straight from laughing at them to watching them win.

The problem with Gandhi's quote is that he argues that "fighting them" also leads to them winning. So what's left? Well, Gandhi relied on the conscience of English Liberalism, ultimately successfully. But Trump and his supporters aren't that; they are resolutely illiberal in their values.

As has been noted, Gandhi's strategy only works with opponents that perceive themselves *primarily* as reservoirs of a specifically defined set of liberal political values. The British had convinced themselves that their Empire served the spread of "civilized" liberal virtue, and had stopped trying to expand it. What Gandhi did was to expose the contradiction between the Empire's noble, liberal self-perception and the ugly, illiberal means of maintaining an Empire.

It worked only in a limited way for Martin Luther King, Jr., for much the same reasons, but in the U.S. national identity has never been as wholly identified with 19th century liberalism. From the very start, we've had conservatives who believe in various forms of natural aristocracy, and we have a calcified culture of racial hierarchy, in the way of most settler colonies that were also slavocracies. The English distance from slavery an d the lack of a need to justify and incorporate into the civic life of the home country insulated them from this, largely inadvertently. (Pretty much any country where slavery was institutionalized still has serious racial/ethnic conflicts and institutionally reinforced socioeconomic disparities.)

Against all of that context, "fight" and "at least refuse to be complicit in any way" are your remaining options.
posted by kewb at 3:48 PM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]

Pretty sure the Page interview was a repeat from this morning? I find this to be pretty telling:

(Fox "News") Trump lawyer told Carter Page to 'cease' calling self adviser, as Russia concerns intensified

Donald Trump’s legal team was trying to distance the president from international businessman Carter Page in the aftermath of the 2016 White House race, amid mounting questions about Russia influencing the outcome, according to a letter obtained by Fox News.

Attorney Don McGahn told Page in a December 2016 letter to “immediately cease” saying he is a Trump adviser and to stop suggesting he was more than a short-lived advisory council member “who never actually met with the president-elect.”

These trump dimwits never seem to catch on to the fact that every time they try to distance themselves they only succeed in drawing more scrutiny and looking guilty as sin. Check this out:

“You were merely one of the many people named to a foreign policy advisory committee in March of 2016 -- a committee that met one time,” McGhan, now White House counsel, also wrote in his letter to Page. “You never met Mr. Trump, nor did you ever ‘advise’ Mr. Trump about anything. You are thus not an ‘advisor’ to Mr. Trump in any sense of the word.”

Ummm, ok. Does McGhan not know that we have a brain, eyes, ears, and the internet. He's a lawyer that I would never hire. I am also a bit surprised that this fox article is so factual.
posted by futz at 3:49 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

Wouldn't it be funny if Fox had to switch gears and be real and progressive just to catch ratings?
posted by valkane at 3:52 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

John Marshall looks at next week's brinkmanship involving funding for the Trump Wall and Obamacare subsidies plus the threat of government shutdown: To Scare Dems, Trump Threatens to Light Himself On Fire.

The tl;dr is that he thinks, like with the ACHA, congressional republicans will probably blink first because they are divided over funding an unpopular wall versus defunding the increasingly popular ACA. But Marshall gives better odds for a shutdown than most because the White House doesn't seem to understand how comically bad their bargaining position really is.
posted by peeedro at 4:00 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

Yeah, but Paul Ryan understands the size of the pile of shit that he's being asked to clean up next week: Paul Ryan: Avoiding shutdown is GOP priority, not health care vote. After the AHCA debacle, Ryan might have learned how to count, and he knows he'll have his hands full just trying to keep the government running.
posted by zachlipton at 4:09 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]

After the AHCA debacle, Ryan might have learned how to count, and he knows he'll have his hands full just trying

Ok, but, counterpoint.
posted by supercrayon at 4:24 PM on April 22, 2017 [13 favorites]

I still think the Carter Page business is a whole lot of nothing. More like The Man Who Knew Too Little than Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I really hope he's just an appetizer.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Political institution building as an engineering project. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:21 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Trump sons take helm of company, eye domestic expansion

Both Eric and Donald Trump Jr. said they missed their father's presence. Eric Trump said he sometimes looks upon the stack of $1 bills that he won during a series of friendly business bets with his father.

The winner would give the other a dollar bill with a note scrawled upon it. The elder Trump would use the bills, or a newspaper clipping about a Trump property, as a means of communicating to his sons, and his trademark scrawl would carry his congratulations — or his wishes — to those he was training to someday lead his company.

"It was his way of saying 'Get this done' or 'Great job, ET - this is going to be amazing,'" said Eric Trump. "It's a simple way of communicating but I learned a lot. I miss that."

They obviously also spoke in person but this roundabout way of communicating seems to permeate trump's life including his administration. It's odd to me. I hope that I never have to fondly look upon a stack of dollar bills or (non-existent in my case) glowing fluff pieces about my family's businesses. They have to be complimentary articles, right? He wouldn't put his signature on anything negative would he?I wonder if Barron has a scrapbook of clippings about his dad's hotels/properties saying things like, 'Always con the city into giving you 10 more stories kid", "Hire the dumb ones son, LOYAL", "Aliases. HUGE. You were named after one of mine".
posted by futz at 5:31 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

OK so Mike Pence got up on stage with the Australian PM and said that the US would honor the refugee deal made with Obama. This is despite SCROTUS calling it a "dumb deal" and insisting it wouldn't be honored.

The phrase we have for this shit down under is "policy on the run".
posted by Talez at 5:36 PM on April 22, 2017 [9 favorites]

On another front, Neomi Rao sounds like one of the most potentially destructive choices so far: Trump’s pick for rules czar would hand more power to Trump.

"Rao would also be in a position to promote her conservative views. A critic of “the administrative state” that White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has vowed to deconstruct, Rao has written that the independence of federal agencies should be abolished, their rules subject to White House review, and the heads of those agencies subject to dismissal by the president."
posted by StrawberryPie at 5:37 PM on April 22, 2017

This week in Rex Tillerson's epic mismangement of / active attempts to destroy the State Department: despite the end of the hiring freeze, State refuses to continue a program designed to place the spouses of foreign service officers in jobs alongside them while stationed abroad.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:43 PM on April 22, 2017 [15 favorites]

This week in Rex Tillerson's epic mismangement of / active attempts to destroy the State Department: despite the end of the hiring freeze, State refuses to continue a program designed to place the spouses of foreign service officers in jobs alongside them while stationed abroad.

If they strangle the foreign service the power can be consolidated back into the President directly with little more than a whimper.
posted by Talez at 5:55 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

This is just wild speculation on my part but IMHO the reason Rex isn't doing anything is because he only has one job to actually do. His only job is to get that oil deal with Russia in place. Then, when the time is right, the sanctions will be dropped by the White House, shitfight with congressional Republicans be damned, and then everyone walks away with squillions of dollars; Tillerson from Exxon and Trump from Rosneft. If I was a man who bet on conspiracies that'd 100% be my go to choice. There's literally no other reason to bring Tillerson on board other than to make this particular conspiracy work.
posted by Talez at 6:02 PM on April 22, 2017 [20 favorites]

This week in Rex Tillerson's epic mismangement of / active attempts to destroy the State Department: despite the end of the hiring freeze, State refuses to continue a program designed to place the spouses of foreign service officers in jobs alongside them while stationed abroad.

If they strangle the foreign service the power can be consolidated back into the President directly with little more than a whimper.

This isn't even about power -- the Foreign Service has what power the President and the Secretary of State and the Ambassadors give it, and if they genuinely wanted that power back, they could simply take it without even that whimper. This is purely about "Fuck you, Department of State, you suck because we have no idea what you actually do, and we want you to hate your jobs."
posted by Etrigan at 6:05 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

The White House correspondents should postpone the dinner to the next week so they can all cover the rally.
posted by rhizome at 6:05 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

The White House correspondents should postpone the dinner to the next week so they can all cover the rally.

Noooooooo. This is a terrible idea. Terrible. Were you being sarcastic?
posted by futz at 6:08 PM on April 22, 2017

Only a little bit when I wrote it, but now: not at all.
posted by rhizome at 6:11 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Trump's objectively shitty first 100 days is a perfectly humilitating reason to change the dinner in order to hear him describe what Mr. Awesome has been up to, first hand.

This "challenge" is Trump sticking his neck out, daring people to give him the attention he's asking for, and which I'm not sure he can really handle. To really twist the knife, pressure him to do a press conference with questions afterwards.
posted by rhizome at 6:14 PM on April 22, 2017

Trump just can't stay away. He's at his DC hotel for dinner.
posted by zachlipton at 6:16 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

When I see the surrogates on TV talking about how they give Trump an A+ for his first 100 days and they've been superb I always wonder if their shame parts died off over time or if they never had any in the first place. I don't think I could bring myself to go on television and tell bald faced and damaging lies for money but then maybe they used to think the same thing and it just sort of crept up on them like a frog in boiling water.
posted by Justinian at 6:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [19 favorites]

Now they just bury that shame under a pile of money
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:20 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Trump's objectively shitty first 100 days is a perfectly humilitating reason to change the dinner in order to hear him describe what Mr. Awesome has been up to, first hand.

He does that all the time though.

This "challenge" is Trump sticking his neck out, daring people to give him the attention he's asking for, and which I'm not sure he can really handle. To really twist the knife, pressure him to do a press conference with questions afterwards.

This happens frequently too unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying. He has his own reality. Our reality is not his reality. Our truth is his fake news. It is pointless. Twisting the knife would be to completely ignore him but that will never happen.
posted by futz at 6:24 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

He has his own reality. Our reality is not his reality.

yes, actually it is - god help us all - he's going to shove his fucking reality down our throats
posted by pyramid termite at 6:30 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

He lies even when he doesn't have to. Why we would he change now?
posted by valkane at 6:52 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

This is from 2 days ago. I have searched this thread for everything that I could think of plus various urls and found nothing so...

Feinstein is waiting for family health issues to be resolved before announcing her 2018 plans

“The time is coming, be assured. I’ve had reasons for waiting, and so once those problems are solved, I’ll let you know,” Feinstein said after a town hall in Los Angeles.

Could be true. Could have also seen the writing on the wall that this next election might be a battle. Could be both.
posted by futz at 7:06 PM on April 22, 2017 [9 favorites]

Here's a new-to-me attempt to organize all the Trump Russia stories into a comprehensible narrative. Seems pretty good.

Some people might find it a little easier too follow than the timeline in this medium post (which badly needs ro be updated) or the Mother Jones timeline (ditto) or House Intelligence Committee member Devin Swalwell's Trump-Russia dramatis personae.

This really needs to be a book, already.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

On second thought, it's probably worth quoting the summary from that first link of my last comment. Gets to the point pretty well.

Established

Russian interests systematically interfered in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. The consistent thrust of this interference was to boost Trump as a candidate, and harm the candidacy of Clinton.

This interference effort involved senior intelligence officials and business leaders close to Putin, and was in some fashion approved of and directed by him.

There is an unusual density of business and personal contacts with Russian interests among several key people in Trump’s campaign and/or administration. You don’t see a similar density of contacts with other nations equally (or more) important to the U.S.

The contacts of several of these Trump confidants with Russia involved things that are illegal, either in initial commission or subsequent denial. Carter Page, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone certainly seem to be in this camp. Felix Sater, Jared Kushner, and Michael Cohen may well be.

Despite denials and disavowals, Trump has years-worth of history of praising Putin and seeking contact with him.

Despite denials and disavowals, Trump has years-worth of extensive involvement with Russian businesses and financiers, many of which are part of Putin’s inner circle, and some of whom have ties to Russian organized crime.

Reasonably Surmised

Since so many Trump confidants had senior Russian ties, and since senior Russian interests were so actively working to interfere in the election, these Russian interests would almost certainly have made use of these Trump contacts in some fashion.

Open Questions:

Were any of Trump’s confidants aware of Russian election interference efforts, either during the election or afterwards, and thus liable for not exposing them?

Or, even worse, were any of Trump’s confidants active, knowing participants in these efforts?

If so, was Trump aware of it, either during or afterwards, and thus liable for not exposing it?

Or, even worse, was Trump himself an an active, knowing participant in these efforts?

That’s where we are so far.

posted by OnceUponATime at 7:20 PM on April 22, 2017 [23 favorites]

I still think the Carter Page business is a whole lot of nothing. More like The Man Who Knew Too Little than Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I really hope he's just an appetizer.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 19:17 on April 22 [1 favorite +] [!]

Carter Page is the coffee we get before we're served the Jefferson Beauregard Sessions biscuits and gravy plate in this Cracker Barrel presidency.

It's coming. Kitchen's a little busy. Just wait a bit, hon.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:31 PM on April 22, 2017 [15 favorites]

i never, ever imagined i would ever say this, but can we eat at denny's instead?
posted by pyramid termite at 7:39 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]

Justinian: When I see the surrogates on TV talking about how they give Trump an A+ for his first 100 days and they've been superb I always wonder if their shame parts died off over time or if they never had any in the first place.

Neuroscientists recently found that with repeated lies, the brain becomes less and less sensitive to dishonesty, supporting ever larger acts of dishonesty.

It turns out that the brain also reacts very strongly to a first act of lying. But then as we keep on lying more and more, the brain kind of stops reacting to it. So we start by being aware of this maybe being a dishonest act, and we're at least aware of it. But over time, it just goes into the background and we don't pay attention to it.

Note that this was a study in a test setting, where the lies had no repercussions, though if you're not punished for your lies, what's the harm, right?
posted by filthy light thief at 7:46 PM on April 22, 2017 [14 favorites]

OnceUponATime: This really needs to be a book, already.

This is best as a "live" account online, because the pieces aren't all out in the open yet. Until then, it's an incomplete story, and as such, is misleading in ways we cannot tell until we know more.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:54 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Neuroscientists recently found that with repeated lies, the brain becomes less and less sensitive to dishonesty, supporting ever larger acts of dishonesty.

In other words, Göbbels was right. "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 8:14 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

it's an incomplete story

In wishing for this to be a book, I am actually wishing I were already living in a peaceful and prosperous future where all of this is exciting to read, instead of being terrifying to live through.

I realize we're not at the book writing part yet. But I'm desperately wishing we were! And if we ever get there, I am hoping someone will organize all this in a much easier to digest format than any of those links!
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:36 PM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

Well, this is great: North Korea warns Australia of possible nuclear strike if it 'blindly toes US line'
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:46 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

> This really needs to be a book, already.

> This is best as a "live" account online, because the pieces aren't all out in the open yet. Until then, it's an incomplete story, and as such, is misleading in ways we cannot tell until we know more.

I didn't take OnceUponATime's comment as meaning this needs to be a book right now!
Of course the story isn't finished.
posted by futz at 8:47 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Well, this is great: North Korea warns Australia of possible nuclear strike if it 'blindly toes US line'

Unlikely. Australia is almost as far as the US.
posted by rhizome at 8:52 PM on April 22, 2017

Just in: Trump says he'll eat a bug to distract the media. Tune in as every major outlet gives him dedicated coverage to see if it's true. [fake]
posted by supercrayon at 8:57 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

Trump awards Purple Heart during first visit to Walter Reed

"So I heard about this, I wanted to do this myself," Trump said as he placed the Purple Heart on the soldier's lapel. "Congratulations on behalf of Melania and myself and the entire nation. Tremendous, tremendous job, congratulations."

-- Many on social media noted that the President's congratulations seemed inappropriate. It is not the first time Trump has faced backlash for remarks about the Purple Heart. At a rally in Ashburn, Virginia, in August 2016, the then-Republican presidential nominee said he was given a medal by a veteran backstage.

"I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier," Trump said. The comments were denounced as disrespectful to veterans. Trump has also received scrutiny over student and health deferments that kept him out of serving in Vietnam.

And check out Melania's Inspector Clouseau getup.

cringe cringe cringe.

President Obama on the other hand.

Trump's decision to allow news media coverage of the medal ceremony was in sharp contrast to former President Barack Obama, who awarded Purple Heart medals during his own regular visits to Walter Reed but always did so behind closed doors.

Obama without a doubt from me, sat down with every military member and their family and had a poignant and heartfelt conversation out of the limelight. Ya know, just like a compassionate well adjusted adult and now I am really sad. Thanks Obama.
posted by futz at 9:16 PM on April 22, 2017 [73 favorites]

The stories of Obama visiting Walter Reed showed what a class act the guy is. The first picture in this article is probably my all-time favorite of him.
posted by peeedro at 9:31 PM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]

Just imagine Republicans if Obama had used wounded soldiers as props like...you know what, it's beyond parody now.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:43 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

Thank you peeedro (I never noticed the 3rd "e" in your username before now :)). I thought for sure that I knew which pic that would be but that is even better. The title of the article says it all:

Obama’s Sacred Duty: Visiting the Wounded at Walter Reed.

This was a photo op for trump. He used a wounded soldier and his family as a prop.
posted by futz at 9:45 PM on April 22, 2017 [13 favorites]

One more comment. Perhaps the family doesn't feel used at all and that is ok too. I also suspect that when the president and his team swoop in on your life you quickly become overwhelmed and just go with the flow. How do you say no the pootus?

Once again, the family may have been totally on board and enthusiastic about everything that happened and I am being my own mirror :/
posted by futz at 9:54 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

I think it's telling that we don't know anything about the guy getting the medal; we don't know his hometown, his unit, where he was stationed, or the action that led to his injuries. This is basic stuff that the White House should release to the press if they're trying to honor Sgt. 1st Class Alvaro Barrientos as the hero that he is. But they didn't bother, because this ceremony was all about making Trump look presidential.
posted by peeedro at 10:24 PM on April 22, 2017 [54 favorites]

huh. joanie died today, only in her mid-fiftys. but that pustulent little dickweed Chachi lives and breathes.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:27 PM on April 22, 2017 [15 favorites]

Slight derail.

Is Jeff Sessions, jug eared homunculi that he is, ever referred to as Jeff Secessions? If not, why?

That is all.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 10:32 PM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

Just imagine Republicans if Obama had used wounded soldiers as props like...you know what, it's beyond parody now.

I've been sick with the flu for about a week and a half now. I usually shake it off pretty easily, but this year not so much. I am finding myself gasping for breath with deep, painful coughs, on the regular. I was pretty delirious for a few days and can barely drive.

I am beginning to wonder how much of this is because my body's already weakened from being furiously, incandescently, angry at so many things this administration does and is doing. Even the shit where they don't have to be evil, they just can't help themselves.
posted by corb at 10:38 PM on April 22, 2017 [19 favorites]

Obama’s Sacred Duty: Visiting the Wounded at Walter Reed.

This was a photo op for trump. He used a wounded soldier and his family as a prop.

From peeedro's link above, can you imagine this being written about the current occupant of the White House?

Spouses, parents and children are often present, and Mr. Obama always addresses them by their first names. He sometimes hugs wives, but if a mother is there, he invariably says, “And moms get hugs,” and embraces her.

After the greetings, Mr. Obama sometimes calls in a military aide so he can award a Purple Heart or other citation. He asks if they have any questions or concerns and calls in another aide to take notes and follow through. The most common question deals with retiring from active duty, a laborious and often frustrating process for the wounded.

The visits end with Mr. Obama signing unit flags, books and anything else presented to him, and with a photographer taking group and paired shots. Sometimes families ask to have photos taken with their own phones, which Mr. Obama hands to his photographer.

In June, Mr. Obama visited the hospital’s physical therapy room, where amputees learn to walk again. One double-amputee gave him a push-up challenge, and Mr. Obama promptly shed his suit jacket, dropped to the floor and reeled off more than 20. Still wearing dress shoes, he joined another in jumping onto a 30-inch box.

“I can’t even put into words how impressed I was,” said Lt. Cmdr. John Terry, known as Jae, an amputee whose photo of himself doing lunges with Mr. Obama is among his most treasured possessions. “I will remember that day until I die.”
posted by ActingTheGoat at 10:46 PM on April 22, 2017 [49 favorites]

> Is Jeff Sessions, jug eared homunculi that he is, ever referred to as Jeff Secessions? If not, why?

Yes, but rarely (google gives like 3000 results).

I have a theory why "Jeff Secessions" doesn't really work as a mocking name. First, it's sort of rhythmically awkward, at least when I say it. Second, though, it's too... I dunno, matchy-matchy. The man is already named Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. The only part of his name that doesn't shout "sonofabitch slaver from a long line of sonofabitch slavers" is "sessions." Replace that with "Secessions" and you've got basically that thing that Kellyanne Conway wore to the inauguration, just with a bunch of confederate flags added to it.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:48 PM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]

I posted this link back in January, but it's relevant to the current discussion: What the President secretly did at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It describes how President Obama went to Newtown two days after the shootings and worked his way through room after room of grieving families, listening to them, hugging them, being there for them. Not for the cameras, but because this is what the job is. This is what we somehow expect a President to be able to do, to have the right words for an unspeakable occasion, to sit with grieving mothers and fathers and siblings. It's a job that, in short, requires unimaginable amounts of humanity, and it was easy to take for granted how much of that President Obama had in droves.
posted by zachlipton at 11:03 PM on April 22, 2017 [108 favorites]

Exactly zachlipton. Obama is a class act. There are so many stories about him just like the one you posted. There are probably many more that the public won't hear about for years and years.

He cried and was laughed at while John Boehner cried publicly a lot and received close to no criticism. He didn't deserve criticism after all and neither did Obama.

I wonder what the difference is between these two men that one would be judged so harshly for the exact same actions as the other? Hmmm.

Bad joke: trump's administration has more leaks than Boehner's tear ducts.
posted by futz at 11:42 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

State refuses to continue a program designed to place the spouses of foreign service officers in jobs alongside them while stationed abroad.

Bitches better get back in the kitchens, amirite?

Well, at least the march today was awesome.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:42 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

I don't know if this was posted or not, but I was pretty happy to see Perez draw a line in the sand about reproductive rights.

“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” Perez said in a statement. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”

posted by Anonymous at 12:00 AM on April 23, 2017

"Every nation on earth either has nuclear weapons, is developing nuclear weapons, or is trying to elect a fascist named Marine to lead them."

Maybe this whole sentence is a joke?

Or someone is woefully misinformed about geopolitics and arms treaties since the late sixties. Also, that fascist named Marine is in one of the handful of nations that definitely, provably has functional nuclear weapons.

_{[on preview looks like spitbull got there first]}
posted by aspersioncast at 12:05 AM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

When Nigel Farrage met Julian Assange.
posted by walrus at 1:15 AM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

When are Americans going to stop talking about this as a political problem to be solved or not solved by the Democrats, and as an existential threat to the majority of your population?

That depends on the Big Tent and where the existential threat falls vis a vis pissing into, out of or around said tent
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:49 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've written up more than a few Purple Heart incidents. And a few boilerplate speeches for my COs. I've never once used the word "Congratulations". Or "Tremendous." He has no idea. He never did. About any of this.
posted by Etrigan at 4:55 AM on April 23, 2017 [67 favorites]

He has no emotional imagination, i.e., empathy. (Maybe that's because he doesn't like to read? Or maybe that's why he doesn't like to read...)

He cannot conceive of what it might be like to go to war, lose a leg, feel traumatized, be deprived, survive despite the absence of something important.

He is despicable.
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:21 AM on April 23, 2017 [22 favorites]

My fantasy White House Correspondents' Dinner:

Alec Baldwin takes the stage as Donald Trump. He's wearing an earphone and hearing a live feed of Trump's rally. Baldwin repeats everything Trump says verbatim. Everybody laughs.
posted by mmoncur at 5:40 AM on April 23, 2017 [65 favorites]

The EPA wants to know what you think about scrapping air-pollution and radiation rules
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:24 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

WaPo: Nearing 100 days, Trump’s approval at record lows but his base is holding

I guess there's no such thing as Swayable Trumpists:

There are no signs of major slippage in support among those who voted for Trump. His approval rating among those who cast ballots for him stands at 94 percent. Among Republicans, it is 84 percent. Asked of those who voted for him whether they regret doing so, 2 percent say they do, while 96 percent say supporting Trump was the right thing to do.When asked if they would vote for him again, 96 percent say they would, which is higher than the 85 percent of Hillary Clinton voters who say they would support her again.

Trump is also satisfying the substantial share of the electorate that voted for him with some reservation. Among Trump voters who say they were “somewhat enthusiastic” or less excited about supporting him, 88 percent approve of his current performance and 79 percent say he understands the problems of people like them.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:07 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

OMB Director Mick Mulvaney on if Pres. Trump would sign a government funding bill without wall $: "We don't know yet."

The OMB director doesn't know the President's own position on funding the government. These fuckers are going to shut it down, watch Trump veto his own continuing resolution.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:14 AM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

Yeah, the weird part of the whole shutdown-crisis thing is that Trump doesn't have any means to put forward the bill he wants, AFAICT. Congressional Republicans are not really on board with the whole wall-funding thing, and a lot of them are getting the willies about shivving the ACA as transparently as withholding subsidies would do. If they send him a clean continuing resolution, what the hell can he do about it? Veto it? It hasn't seemed like much will actually turn Congressional Republicans against Trump, but his singlehandedly tanking their desperate attempt to avoid a shutdown just might mean they run out of patience with his shit.
posted by jackbishop at 7:21 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I guess there's no such thing as Swayable Trumpists:

He got 46% of the vote, Dukakis numbers. He's lost 5-10% of that in 3 months, which takes him to around 42-43%. While he won't lose tons more given how awful Republicans are, this is only going to go down further - however minimally - with his continued ineptitude, ineffectiveness and broken promises. He loses just 5-10% more and he's at or below Mondale numbers.

Assuming we keep our coalition motivated and able to vote, I like our chances. So I really don't care about swaying Trumpists. That time is better spent registering voters, protesting, calling, etc.
posted by chris24 at 7:27 AM on April 23, 2017 [31 favorites]

I guess Trump the military leader didn't work out, or are we expecting to see the bump for the cruise missiles and MOAB later?
posted by Artw at 7:34 AM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

He got 46% of the vote, Dukakis numbers. He's lost 5-10% of that in 3 months, which takes him to around 42-43%. While he won't lose tons more given how awful Republicans are, this is only going to go down further - however minimally - with his continued ineptitude, ineffectiveness and broken promises. He loses just 5-10% more and he's at or below Mondale numbers.

Yeah but the electorate is a forgetful and fickle thing. Hopefully, it holds until 2020 but I shudder to think what the electorate might forgive by 2018.
posted by Talez at 7:51 AM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

Honestly, I'm freaking out a bit, partly because the most vocal members of my state Indivisible group seem to be a lot more interested in infighting about the Democrats than in resisting Trump. I think it's going to be really hard to maintain any unified sense of resistance.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:53 AM on April 23, 2017 [13 favorites]

"Hey soldier you got your leg blown off. Congratulations. " wow. just wow.

WaPo: Nearing 100 days, Trump’s approval at record lows but his base is holding

I guess there's no such thing as Swayable Trumpists:

... and all the gnashing of teeth in this thread over what democrats should/should not be doing...

I said it about 1600 comments ago and I'll say it again - your two-party system is broken. Polarization and partisanship dominates. It's "them" and "us" and they're all evil and we're all good - for either of the two possible values. There's just about no place for moderate, centrist policies to find fertile ground and support. In almost every scenario it's party before policy.

Add to that your rigid as clockwork elections, where over half a politician's term is taken up with the machinations of getting reelected, not governing.

In a multi-party parliamentary system, issues often take precedence over party loyalty, and a large percentage of the electorate will vote for a different party based on issues or leadership without batting an eyelash. The ability to call snap elections puts issues squarely before the electorate, and disrupts all the plotting, scheming and bargaining of a scheduled election system.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different outcome.

I appreciate all the thoughts and comments expressed here - you have tough problems to solve - but all the "we" and "they" expressed here indicates to me that partisanship is once again going to block meaningful change.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:56 AM on April 23, 2017 [24 favorites]

Always with the negative waves facts, Artful Codger, always with the negative waves facts.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:02 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I do wish you luck and success, my friends. Just suggesting things.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:05 AM on April 23, 2017

Trump: I'm Not Even At 100 Days, You Miscounted

President Trump has now at least opened the door to denying he’s not even at 100 days, that people are miscounting and that is in fact at only just over 60 days.

I’ve been here 92 days, but I’ve only been working on the health care, you know, I had to get like a little bit of grounding, right? Health care started after 30 day(s), so I’ve been working on health care for 60 days.

Donald J. Trump Delivers Groundbreaking Contract on for the American Voter in Gettysburg

What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again. It is a contract between Donald J. Trump and the American voter – and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington.
...
Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
...
Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds.
...
On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.

This is my pledge to you.

posted by kirkaracha at 8:10 AM on April 23, 2017 [14 favorites]

Criticisms of partisanship would be meaningful if both parties were equally shit. The first problem is getting to the point where just keeping the GOP from fucking up everything for a decade or longer isn't a priority.

When we no longer have to worry about something as easy to legislate away from as the setup for SubPrime2: The Primening then we can talk about getting the parties to split up a bit.

But I also feel like splitting the parties would have to start with the GOP (and in my head it feels an awful lot like suggesting a geopolitical adversary unilaterally de-escalate) before the Dems could follow suit. Or we would look like Canada during the Harper years.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:11 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

And of course, from the other side the splitting issue looks the same.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:12 AM on April 23, 2017

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different outcome.

Insanity would be calling for a constitutional convention when the Republicans control every aspect of the American government, which would be the only way to change the things you're talking about.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:13 AM on April 23, 2017 [26 favorites]

Honestly, I'm freaking out a bit, partly because the most vocal members of my state Indivisible group seem to be a lot more interested in infighting about the Democrats than in resisting Trump. I think it's going to be really hard to maintain any unified sense of resistance.

Yea, this. Bernie vs. Abortion and Bros vs. "THE DNCCCCCCCC!!!" is the sum total of the local conversation I've seen in the last two weeks. With Perrillo v. Northam stepping right into the Bernie v. Hilary roles seamlessly and with zero recognition of any horribleness by Trumpublicans beyond a few people excited to see Bill Nye at the science march. Just look at Canada, the UK and the French left over the past 10-15 years and literally right now voting today to see how the left fighting itself instead of fascists can snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory even with overwhelming majority support on the "issues".
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:21 AM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]

Criticisms of partisanship would be meaningful if both parties were equally shit.

I might even agree with that assessment, but there's nothing about indulging that thought that's going to Make Things Better.


But I also feel like splitting the parties would have to start with the GOP (and in my head it feels an awful lot like suggesting a geopolitical adversary unilaterally de-escalate) before the Dems could follow suit. Or we would look like Canada during the Harper years.

To claw your way back from the abyss, let alone get back to some sensible governance, you need to reach and gain the support of moderate pragmatic Republicans. But in a rigidly bipolar system that's just about impossible. A moderate conciliatory Republican pisses off the louder extremists in the party, and the same is true for a moderate conciliatory Democrat.

In Canada the Harper years ended because many voters stopped supporting him. Could that even happen in the US - voters switching parties so easily? It seems that in US elections there's so many voters who are never going to switch, leaving very few actually in play.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:26 AM on April 23, 2017

I'm having a really hard time articulating a polite response to "Moderate Pragmatic Republicans" so I think I'm going to take a break from the politics threads for a bit.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:33 AM on April 23, 2017 [14 favorites]

I'm having a really hard time articulating a polite response to "Moderate Pragmatic Republicans"

"Name one. Literally just one. I'll wait."
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:36 AM on April 23, 2017 [17 favorites]

If approximately half of your fellow citizens are irredeemably evil, do you have a viable country?
posted by Artful Codger at 8:37 AM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]

...you have tough problems to solve, but all the "we" and "they" expressed here indicates to me that partisanship is once again going to block meaningful change.

In addition to a constitutional amendment to make things more like a parliamentary system, I think we would also need better pronouns in order to really form a strong majority and make desirable changes. (And I really am not mocking you. This is one of my pet theories, that when I say "I think" and "You think", where "you" is short for "someone else, not me", it can be very alienating to the "yous" that are listening. )
posted by puddledork at 8:38 AM on April 23, 2017

There's no 'I' in 'we' or 'they', but there's also no 'I' in 'our'.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:39 AM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

your two-party system is broken. Polarization and partisanship dominates.

The reason why this is because of two things. First, the Senate, where every state gets two Senators regardless of population. What this means is that states that represent 16% of the US population control half the votes in the Senate. More sparsely-populated and rural states tend to be more Republican. And second, the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives used to increase with population changes, until 1911, when it was fixed at its current size.Which means that there's a distortion of representation in the House (the smallest states have "at-large" districts which in some cases have half the number of residents of a typical urban district somewhere like California or New York).

The problem of the Senate can't really be addressed except by amending the Constitution; the problem of the House could be addressed by passing a new Apportionment Act that used the least-populous state as a yardstick for apportionment, which would result in a 600-member House of Representatives; the British House of Commons has 650, so it's a workable number. But thats not going to happen because the Republican Party has a majority in both houses of Congress, at present (in part thanks to gerrymandering and voter suppression), and the way things are works to their benefit.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 8:40 AM on April 23, 2017 [23 favorites]

Boston Herald: Jacoby Brissett [backup QB with the Patriots] writes moving letter to Barack Obama after visiting with Trump at the White House

The letter itself.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:43 AM on April 23, 2017 [18 favorites]

If approximately half of your fellow citizens are irredeemably evil, do you have a viable country?

It's more like a third, ands an equal mix of stupid and evil, though obvs there is a lot of overlap.
posted by Artw at 8:54 AM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

If approximately half of your fellow citizens are irredeemably evil, do you have a viable country?

3 million more votes suggest yes, but electoral college suggests no ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:55 AM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

I think it's pretty clear that the margin of fuckery the current political system introduces is unsustainable, even if it is sometimes short-term summountable if there's a really popular dem. Trump getting through is a sign of extreme brokenness.
posted by Artw at 9:00 AM on April 23, 2017 [13 favorites]

96 percent say they would, which is higher than the 85 percent of Hillary Clinton voters who say they would support her again.

Wait are you fucking kidding me? Who the fuck are these 15% of Clinton voters that are like "actually this Trump fellow is a pretty great guy! I regret my choice!"??
posted by corb at 9:09 AM on April 23, 2017 [14 favorites]

Jacoby Brissett [backup QB with the Patriots] writes moving letter to Barack Obama after visiting with Trump at the White House

"P.S Holla at me to help you with your broke jump shot"
posted by kirkaracha at 9:09 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

I’ve been here 92 days, but I’ve only been working on the health care, you know, I had to get like a little bit of grounding, right? Health care started after 30 day(s), so I’ve been working on health care for 60 days.

And really once you deduct the time he has spent sleeping, playing golf, and eating chocolate cake, it's really only about 9.5 days. He won't hit his "100 Days" until about half way through his Presidency.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:12 AM on April 23, 2017 [22 favorites]

Wait are you fucking kidding me? Who the fuck are these 15% of Clinton voters that are like "actually this Trump fellow is a pretty great guy! I regret my choice!"??

I think this is the "well, I gave the woman a chance, against my better judgment; won't make that mistake again; but I'm totally not misogynistic!" voter. See also, "I'm not racist for voting for Trump, I voted for Obama before!"
posted by melissasaurus at 9:21 AM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]

If approximately half of your fellow citizens are irredeemably evil, do you have a viable country?

have you ever taken american history 101?
posted by pyramid termite at 9:25 AM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

> If approximately half of your fellow citizens are irredeemably evil, do you have a viable country?

For years and years I've been saying that liberalism is no longer a popular ideology in America; the dominant ideologies are socialism/anarchism on the left and white nationalism/fascism on the right. The seeming success of liberalism — until relatively recently, both political parties were more or less liberal — was a result of the presence of liberal institutions of governance and a (broadly speaking) liberal media.

For years, we were a socialist-and-fascist nation wearing a liberal mask. We have in the last two years taken off that mask. What has been revealed is that we are vastly more fascist than we are socialist or anarchist.

Which is to say, no, we don't have a viable country. We have a fascist nightmare.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:38 AM on April 23, 2017 [21 favorites]

Lol at 100 actual work days for Trump arriving in 2019 sometime.

Make America wait again.
posted by spitbull at 9:52 AM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

One thing that's nice about how Trump counts time is that it allows me to feel really good about my progress as a grad student. "I finished my dissertation in three years! (all the time I wasted on metafilter doesn't count)."
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:03 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

For years, we were a socialist-and-fascist nation wearing a liberal mask. We have in the last two years taken off that mask. What has been revealed is that we are vastly more fascist than we are socialist or anarchist.

Historically, have there been any examples of a country choosing socialism over fascism? Arguably, FDR represents a triumph of liberal democracy over fascism, but fascism seems to be the default thing that people turn to whenever democracy becomes shaky.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 10:08 AM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

How do all of Trump's ardent supporters not read language like "but it's only been 60 days, really" as the type of pathetic excuse that it is. Strong men aren't supposed to make up excuses.
posted by Room 101 at 10:15 AM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

For years and years I've been saying that liberalism is no longer a popular ideology in America; the dominant ideologies are socialism/anarchism on the left and white nationalism/fascism on the right. The seeming success of liberalism — until relatively recently, both political parties were more or less liberal — was a result of the presence of liberal institutions of governance and a (broadly speaking) liberal media.

Sometimes you read something and you immediately know it fits right into an open spot nestled right next to your hypothalamus. And not the good parts of the hypothalamus: the seedy, dark parts where people get shanked in alleys.
posted by TypographicalError at 10:20 AM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

> Historically, have there been any examples of a country choosing socialism over fascism? Arguably, FDR represents a triumph of liberal democracy over fascism.

I'm sufficiently idiosyncratic to credit most of FDR's tactical leftism and the best parts of the New Deal to the liberals being terrified of Huey Long, which suggests one methodology for resisting fascism and liberalism: put relatively pliant liberals in charge and then scare them half to death and then keep them scared.

The first couple of years of the Russian Revolution were sort of decent, though the can of worms that that opens up — Trotsky killing the sailors of Kronstadt when they attempted to recall their representatives to the soviets, the Red Army using (basically) Red Wedding tactics to liquidate the Ukrainian Free Territory's Black Army — is too much for anyone to deal with. That revolution was pretty much strangled in its cradle by the White Army, and the bits that survived were distorted beyond recognition.

Most often when countries choose leftism, global capital disciplines them back into line real quick. See: the EU breaking Syriza, the US disposing of Allende's government through arranging a trade blockade and then a coup, the Stalinists betraying the anarchosyndicalists in Spain in order to maintain diplomatic relations with the liberal governments of Western Europe. Fascism doesn't provoke nearly as strong a response as even moderate leftism does, since fascism, unlike leftism, isn't really a threat to the rule of capital.

Liberation is really, really hard, and is everywhere met with overwhelming violence when it happens. And the tactics necessary for liberated people to mount an effective self-defense against capitalist violence are themselves terrible, and often lead to the right wing of the revolution murdering the left wing and installing an authoritarian government.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:36 AM on April 23, 2017 [27 favorites]

> If approximately half of your fellow citizens are irredeemably evil, do you have a viable country?

...For years, we were a socialist-and-fascist nation wearing a liberal mask. We have in the last two years taken off that mask. What has been revealed is that we are vastly more fascist than we are socialist or anarchist.

I asked that question as a poor Socratic attempt to point out that regarding your fellow citizens as "other" and unreachable and people you can't/won't work with, let alone try to understand, is probably a lousy starting point.

Instead, you seem to be doubling down on the "we're good, they're bad". Caring about those less fortunate than yourself isn't necessarily socialist; having concern about law-and-order isn't necessarily fascist...except in the US, it seems.

Besides some verifiable loons, there were a lot of otherwise passably sane reasonable people who supported Trump. Some were just habit voters, but alot simply have not been reached by either of the Dem or GOP establishments. And so they voted "aw, fuck it".

After Trump, who will get those hopefully regretful voters?
posted by Artful Codger at 10:36 AM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

(I can't find the first time I did my "the united states is a fascist-and-socialist country with liberal institutions" spiel here, but here's a comment along these lines that I made back in 2015, while in the midst of a burst of irrational optimism about the Sanders campaign.)

> I asked that question as a poor Socratic attempt to point out that regarding your fellow citizens as "other" and unreachable and people you can't/won't work with, let alone try to understand, is probably a lousy starting point.

It is possible that some ideas are really bad, and some ideas are really good, and that some of the really bad ideas can be endorsed by a majority of the people.

I don't doubt that it's possible to somehow convince people who have bad ideas — terrible ideas, ideas that lead to genocide when left unchecked — to drop their bad ideas and switch to good ones. But, well, reality exists, and one lousy aspect of reality is that there really are people who can't be reached, and who shouldn't be let anywhere near the levers of power. We must organize for us and against them, in the interest of politically marginalizing them.

Something we have learned in the wretched years 2016 and 2017 (and before that, through watching the Obama administration try and fail to negotiate with congressional terrorists and their tea party supporters in the 2010-2016 period) is that a policy of reaching out and compromise can be much less effective at moving minds than a policy of vigorous defense of humane values. The former practice seems like it's granting respect for the other, but really it comes off as insincere and condescending; the latter practice wins minds through the strong defense of a clear idea of right and wrong.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:49 AM on April 23, 2017 [31 favorites]

I suppose that in a rigidly bipolar system, that's the best you can hope for.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:55 AM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

basically, I feel you, but I also think that not thinking of this fight in terms of us-vs-them requires indulging in a version of the just world fallacy. it's not right, in a normative sense, that americans are likely more bad than good, but it might be an accurate description of who we are right now.

and, yes, the line between good and bad slices through us all, with all of us having in different measures some part of the good and some part of the bad.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:58 AM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

also ymmv with regard to the endorsement of SA in that comment from 2015. They lost me when they went all-in on Stein after the end of the democratic primaries — basically they maintained the "take off the liberal mask" line when it was the right time to instead shout "KEEP THE MASK ON KEEP THE MASK ON WE DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S UNDER THERE."

Also, SA in Seattle is (IMO) a somewhat different beast than SA in the rest of the country, thanks to the influx of new supporters inspired by Sawant's city council win. Prolly if you're looking for a socialist organization to join in this wretched year 2017, you should be looking at DSA rather than at the Trotskyist tendencies.

(though if you live in her district in Seattle you should definitely vote for Sawant every chance you get.)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:10 AM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

...aaaaand France is going to be a run-off between Le Pen and Macron!

Please tell me again how the problem here is a two-party system. bonus points for solving for Brexit
posted by juice boo at 11:19 AM on April 23, 2017 [17 favorites]

YCTAB - it occurs to me, that Kshama Sawant and the Socialist Alternative are doing something 100% right and which has my respect: going for a small, local office first. I just can't with splashy third party Presidential campaigns, and not because spoilers - it's because 1) local politics are important, 2) for a party to have any traction they have to have some sort of broad-based presence, and that means state and local political offices, and 3) I do not want an inexperienced President. Guess who has absolutely 0 political experience? Yup! You see where that's got us! I mean, even Ronald Reagan held the Cali governorship before he became President!

I want a President who has held office before! I want them to have paid their dues, and to know something of what holding political office entails. I think even someone who was liberal and well-meaning would have trouble as President if they were completely naive to political office.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 11:22 AM on April 23, 2017 [15 favorites]

After Trump, who will get those hopefully regretful voters?

See, that's the problem: they're not regretful.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:28 AM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

"Moderate pragmatic Republicans": So, we're going to characterize this health plan that boosts insurance companies as socialism and fascism and make the Occupy groups sound like leftist death squads.
Left: But--
MPR: Also, we're going to make a lot of noise about how awful racism is but support Jim Crow-style voting laws, and claim we're pro-choice but not get in the way of the US resembling The Handmaid's Tale.
Left: But--
MPR: Wait, we're not done yet. We're also going to tell LGBTQ people that they deserve basic human and civil rights, but only kinda-sorta at the state level as decided by the most bigoted politicians. Oh, and BTW we're going to make excuses for white supremacists and whine about how Obama's mild speeches on race only make racism worse.
Left: Maybe you could, I dunno...not do any of that?
MBR: Sorry, nope. Anyway, we're going to go vote in the primaries for guys who make veiled anti-Semitic remarks, hang out with groups who think LGBTQ people deserve to be killed, and want to take away 1st Amendment rights from Muslims. But not Trump, ick!

< Trump gets elected >

MPR: How could anyone have seen this coming?! I'm going to rend my garments but never substantially change my far-right positions, all the while complaining about how the left isn't cooperating.
Centrists: I know, right? This partisanship and polarization is out of control! Why can't the left reach out?
posted by zombieflanders at 11:56 AM on April 23, 2017 [61 favorites]

Trump: Mexico Will Pay 'At A Later Date' And 'In Some Form' For My Border Wall

trump must be exhausted from moving all these goalposts.
posted by futz at 11:58 AM on April 23, 2017 [17 favorites]

He's starting to talk like Yes Minister's Sir Humphrey, for whom "yes" really means: "at the appropriate juncture, in due course, in the fullness of time."
posted by zachlipton at 12:02 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

I've been looking over the full poll results from the ABC-Post poll mentioned upthread. The article says, "When asked if they would vote for him again, 96 percent say they would, which is higher than the 85 percent of Hillary Clinton voters who say they would support her again." But in the poll itself, I don't see any mention of Clinton. No questions ask about Clinton in any way. Where is that 85% claim coming from? Does anyone know?

The article also says, "The new survey finds 46 percent saying they voted for Clinton and 43 percent for Trump, similar to her two-point national vote margin. Asked how they would vote if the election were held today, 43 say they would support Trump and 40 percent say Clinton." But again, the poll itself doesn't mention Clinton. I can't find a question in the poll that looks anything like this bit reported in the article. The closest thing is the question put only to Trump voters asking whether they regret their vote. Does anyone know what is going on with this article?
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 12:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile, in France, it's looking like it will be a runoff between Macron and Le Pen, with Macron coming in at around 23% and Le Pen around 22%. The establishment is starting to converge around Macron. May 7th going to be interesting.
posted by zachlipton at 12:18 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Dan Quayle

Got me curious what he was up to. Apparently he is (surprise!) the epitome of worthless white male privilege. He wrote a couple of books after his flameout, got named to some boards of directors, and now has a role as nominal chairman of Cerberus Capital Management's Global Investments Division.

Sounds impressive. What it means in real life is that he is blatantly trading on his vice-presidential experience to swing deals for Cerberus. He tried to recruit Canadian ex-PM Brian Mulroney to join one failed takeover, and went to Northern Ireland to (successfully) acquire a debt portfolio in a deal under investigation by authorities in 3 countries amidst allegations of bribery, including an "SEC-FBI investigation trying to decide if Quayle’s role was an abuse of office given the status conferred on Quayle by his bring a former vice-president." Here's a very long and detailed account of the affair.
posted by msalt at 12:25 PM on April 23, 2017 [11 favorites]

Two-thirds of Americans think that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the country

Only 1 in 10 of those who voted for Trump in November think he’s out of touch — but 90 percent of Hillary Clinton voters do. Partisan views are slightly more moderate, with 20 percent of Republicans and 87 percent of Democrats holding that position.

When it comes to the Republican Party, the numbers are a bit worse. Sixty-two percent of Americans, and 30 percent of Republicans themselves, think that the GOP is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States.

But none of this means that Democrats are seen as echoing the concerns of the common man. In fact, the Democratic Party is viewed as more out of touch than either Trump or the party’s political opponents. Two-thirds of Americans think the Democrats are out of touch — including nearly half of Democrats themselves.
posted by futz at 12:30 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

On the Trump voters from the poll: I grew up in a Southern Baptist dry county in Kentucky. Here's the mind set: they drink heavily, but carry their alcohol in their car trunk, weave gun worship into their sermons, point the gun in their spouse's face, abduct their own children in an argument, make hideous racist comments then bristle a the suggestion that they own the meaning of their words---these voters will own Trump until one day, magically, none of them will have voted for him.
posted by effluvia at 12:31 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

Wow. Cerberus' co-founders were a Milken flunky and a major Madoff feeder. It's like it has always been the same mouths at the same trough. Then. Now. Forever.

https://www.deepcapture.com/tag/cerberus-capital/
posted by bootlegpop at 12:33 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Jonathan Livengood, here are the actual full results of the poll. I'm not sure how they came up with the 85% for Clinton figure either.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:33 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I would like to know, as a proud Democrat, what I'm out of touch with. We can play life experience bingo, try me.
posted by angrycat at 12:34 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

The party apparatus is not the same as the party membership, angrycat. A case can be made that the apparatus is indeed out of touch.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

I am still annoyed by that Purple Heart ceremony, which is probably a little irrational of me. There's video of the ceremony if you need proof that our president is devoid of any social grace. It's super condescending for President Touchy-Feely to be patting and rubbing the shoulders of a grown-ass man who lost his leg in a war like he's a sick child in a hospital bed. Also, kissing his wife twice(!) is a little excessive.

Instead of letting this ruin my Sunday I made something to mail to the White House. To honor Trump's first 100 days in office I will be sending him a participation award, and to recognize his spelling I will also include a super speller award. With these I will send a letter explaining that, in the absence of actual achievement, many psychologists believe that it's important for the president's self-esteem to recognize his participation along with my hopes that these awards would be proudly displayed on the refrigerator in the presidential residence.

I made these by googling "participation certificate maker" and there's lots of sites with different templates in case you too want to send Trump the recognition he deserves for his 100 days in office.
posted by peeedro at 12:38 PM on April 23, 2017 [41 favorites]

Personally I don't think there's any problem with our political system that couldn't solved by coming up with a means to stop the spread of propaganda in a post-media-gatekeepers world. I think "low information voters" are a weapon which can be used against a democracy, just waiting to be picked up by the savviest propaganda artists.

I've got this parenting book that I really love, "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk," which says...

When children want something they can’t have, adults usually respond with logical explanations of why they can’t have it.

Often, the harder we explain, the harder they protest.

Sometimes just having someone understand how much you want something makes reality easier to bear.

You can give the child his wishes in fantasy.

“I wish I could make the banana ripe for you right now"

Or like, "I wish I had magic powers and I could banish the whole football team to the outer darkness. They're jerks."

The kids know you can't do these things, but the fact that you want to do them shows that you really understand how they are feeling.

I think most of the advice in that book applies to adults too. I wonder if this is why Trump's supporters don't mind that he's lying to them. At least he's showing he understands.

Democrats are the "logical explanation parent" party, I guess.

So Democrats seem "out of touch" to some people, but really... They are just not as good at selling fantasies as people who are primarily propagandists and only notionally a governing party. (Not to mention Russian propagandists who are really nothing else.)

We need to have media gatekeepers again, but I don't think the government should be in charge of keeping those gates. The government and the media need to be kind of adversarial.

If we could solve that problem, though, I think all our other problems would become a lot more tractable.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:45 PM on April 23, 2017 [45 favorites]

More signs candidate recruitment is way up:

At least 15 declared candidates or contenders on the verge of announcing have emerged in districts that Democrats must win to take back the House, including in several districts where the party did not seriously compete in 2014 or 2016, according to party officials.

---

“This is unprecedented,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List, the progressive organization that trains and recruits women to run for political office. During the 2016 cycle, her group spoke with about 900 women interested in running for school board, state legislature or Congress. This year, they’ve heard from more than 11,000 women in all 50 states — with a few dozen seriously considering House races, she said.

posted by Chrysostom at 12:47 PM on April 23, 2017 [30 favorites]

Desperately Insecure, President Trump Holds a Fan Rally To Avoid a Comedy Roast

The bigger danger for Trump is that holding a pep rally at a time when his agenda is stalled and the press is openly hostile, makes the President look vain and weak. It gives him the impression of a man so afraid of a roast that he runs from it into the arms of his adoring fans. It reeks of cowardice. A celebrity who behaved that way would endure endless ridicule from the gossip magazines, and Trump is a tabloid celebrity who leveraged his outlandish personality into the White House.

It won’t matter much in the long run, but Trump’s actions once again show him as a thin-skinned man with no work ethic, no sense of humor and no ability to withstand even mild criticism. It will be a fitting miniature capstone on the molehill of his first hundred days’ achievements.

Amen.
posted by futz at 12:48 PM on April 23, 2017 [34 favorites]

A couple things:

I am absolutely not surprised that Trump voters are not regretful. Between choice-supportive bias, "myside" bias, and the backfire effect, they're basically hard-wired to not regret their "winning" choice--especially in an extremely polarized political climate.

I have listened to every episode of the radio show Indivisible. Frequently I disagree with what callers and commentators say. Frequently people call in with arguments that are staggeringly wrong on every count. But it has been an ongoing reminder that politics is not about facts, it is about human relationships. It is about how people feel about themselves and one another. Almost everyone shares the same values about their community: they don't want members of their community going without healthcare, they want everyone treated fairly by the law, they want everyone's child to get a good education. But the main issue is whom they define as "their community"--who they identify with on an emotional level. That's why facts don't work. You can't use statistics to change emotions. More and more and more, I am coming around to the idea that we cannot change minds or get people to listen to use without the emotional labor that comes with trying to connect with another human being on a fundamental level. It doesn't mean listening to them rant about how POC are lazy and taking their jobs. This means asking "What does a good community look like to you?", "What do you want for this future?", "What makes you afraid?", and "Why?" after all the above, and finding commonalities. We cannot force anyone to humanize us until we demonstrate our humanity on a personal level. This tactic isn't going to work with conspiracy loons, sadists, and extremists. But those are an extreme. I think a lot of Trump voters have simply never honestly engaged with anyone who's not like them, and have never even realized it's necessary.

Obviously, the incredibly shitty part of this is that it basically demands people who have been shat on and dehumanized their whole life to be polite and patient and smile at Biased Person who assumes 99% of people in their marginalized group are degenerate trash. Which comes to something else I've been thinking about--how important it is for people who aren't marginalized to do this emotional labor in their stead. Not as Savior Ally Person, but as someone who does their absolute best to listen to the needs of the marginalized, and then put in the hard work of communicating this to the Biased Person. Or at least get as far as they can, to the point where Biased Person actively wants to engage members of that community in an honest, open way.

I've been struggling to figure out how to do this in my own life, specifically with respect to racism. I'll take social media as an example--what I want to post is intelligent, frequently firebrand commentary that carries assumptions about the reader's knowledge and acceptance of academically-focused social justice terms and theories. Commentary that frequently comes from a Black perspective and is unafraid to discuss concepts of Whiteness, White supremacy, and the Black experience. Ijeoma Oluo's interview with Rachel Dolezal is a fantastic, enlightened piece of investigative journalism that should be read by anybody interested in racial justice and how white people fit into it.

But at the same time, I know that this beautiful piece of writing isn't going to do anything for the, uh, less racially educated White people I know. The title itself will immediately put a good chunk of them on the defensive. But Mother of a Black Child, a piece written by a White woman who adopted two Black children? TIt is an imperfect essay, to say the least. If I presented it to many of my friends who are POC, the next thing I'd have to do is go chasing after their eyeballs after they rolled across the floor. Yet the White people I'm talking about, the ones who shut down at the word "Whiteness", it'd be perfect for getting them to honestly think about the issues Dempster raises. Frequently I feel like I need a social media account for White people and another for POC, because the things the White people need to hear are the things that would make POC throw up their hands in frustration at the obviousness of it. I can still have these conversations with White people on a one-on-one level, but I still have not figured this social media thing out, and that is the primary way most people discover articles these days.
posted by Anonymous at 12:48 PM on April 23, 2017

But how can any rational person not think that the guy with a gold-plated sink on his private jet isn't out of touch?
posted by zachlipton at 12:50 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

Meanwhile, in France, it's looking like it will be a runoff between Macron and Le Pen, with Macron coming in at around 23% and Le Pen around 22%.

On the BBC coverage they just swapped positions to Le Pen at 24½% and Macron around 22%, with Mélenchon and Fillon just below 20%, and they said that ballots from the cities haven't been added to the count yet. Which would make it sound like it's not over yet, but the BBC is also declaring Macron and Le Pen the winners and Fillon has conceded.
posted by XMLicious at 12:54 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

But how can any rational person not think that the guy with a gold-plated sink on his private jet isn't out of touch?

Humans aren't rational. We never have been. In fact, emotions are fundamental to our decision-making abilities, to the point where if the parts of our brains that facilitate emotions are damaged, then our ability to make choices disintegrates even as we're still able to evaluate and think critically about different options.
posted by Anonymous at 1:00 PM on April 23, 2017

GAH.

President Trump on Sunday touted the recent polling out as the president approaches his first 100 days in office.

He tweeted:

"New polls out today are very good considering that much of the media is FAKE and almost always negative," the president tweeted Sunday.

"Would still beat Hillary in ........popular vote. ABC News/Washington Post Poll (wrong big on election) said almost all stand by their vote on me & 53% said strong leader.
posted by futz at 1:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Thanks Johnny Wallflower. Disappointing that the link in the article, which claims to be a link to the "full results" of the poll, doesn't actually lead to the full results of the poll.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 1:21 PM on April 23, 2017

President Trump on Sunday touted the recent polling out as the president approaches his first 100 days in office.

Could someone maybe tell Trump that he won, and it's time to stop campaigning for the job he already has and get the fuck to work doing the job he wanted.

Would have been a great thing for the AP reporter to mention.
posted by mikelieman at 1:28 PM on April 23, 2017 [13 favorites]

Humans aren't rational. We never have been. In fact, emotions are fundamental to our decision-making abilities, to the point where if the parts of our brains that facilitate emotions are damaged, then our ability to make choices disintegrates even as we're still able to evaluate and think critically about different options.

You seem to be saying that emotions are not rational or not part of a rational system for directing actions. But why think that? I would have thought that ability to make choices is part of being rational and that since having emotions is required for having that ability (in humans, anyway), having emotions is itself required for rationality (at least, in humans).

I take Damasio's research to show that being emotional, far from standing in opposition to being rational, is fundamentally part of being rational.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 1:30 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

"Would still beat Hillary in ........popular vote."

"Still" would imply you won the popular vote the first time, loser.
posted by chris24 at 1:31 PM on April 23, 2017 [50 favorites]

...he thinks he's in a reality show.

He thinks he can be voted out at any moment.

That's why he's still obsessed with who'd win the popular vote. He sees other countries calling elections, and he's wondering if it can happen to him.

There must be some way to use this.
posted by MrVisible at 1:39 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

"Still"

This one word terrified me. He's mentally ill, isn't he?
posted by tillermo at 1:48 PM on April 23, 2017 [20 favorites]

Nebraska Farmer Politely Schools Fox News Host On Dangers Of Keystone XL Pipeline

“Let me ask you, what’s the solution? Because we all want to achieve energy independence in this country,” Smith said. “This was an effort and a step in that direction. How do you achieve that?”

“This is not American oil, and it is going across America,” Tanderup replied, before being cut off.

“But it’s coming from Canada, rather than the Middle East, would be the argument,” Smith said.

“That’s true, but it’s going across America to be refined and exported, which is not for America’s use,” he replied. “If they do not mix some high-quality crude with this, the best they get is poor-grade diesel fuel, which we can’t even burn in this country.”

“Well, you’re opening the door to so many controversial discussions that would take all day to get there,” Smith said, ending the segment.

The video is worth a watch.
posted by futz at 1:55 PM on April 23, 2017 [19 favorites]

What is Trump's obsession with MS 13 gang members? Are there no other gangs? Why are only these people the very bad people?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:09 PM on April 23, 2017

Jonathan Livengood: It looks like Q 6 asked who they voted for, and 46 said Clinton, and Q9 was who would they vote for if the election was held again today, and only 40 of the respondents who were 2016 voters said Clinton. That's about 87% of 46.
posted by bardophile at 2:14 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Odd: @jonkarl: "This is highly unusual -- President will have dinner with the Justices of the Supreme Court on Thursday, according to the White House"

Besides the inaugural lunch, someone cited a dinner Roosevelt had in 1939, but this isn't something that normally happens.

[Insert your own joke here about being worried about the safety of RBG's food]
posted by zachlipton at 2:18 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

Both Eric and Donald Trump Jr. said they missed their father's presence. Eric Trump said he sometimes looks upon the stack of $1 bills that he won during a series of friendly business bets with his father.

Hmm, rich white assholes betting $1 as they screw people over for their own amusement... where have I seen that before? (language warning, but rest assured that Don Ameche felt bad about it too)

Where the hell is Beeks??
posted by Servo5678 at 2:20 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

Odd: @jonkarl: "This is highly unusual -- President will have dinner with the Justices of the Supreme Court on Thursday, according to the White House"

Uh, let's hear how many of them are going.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:26 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

WaPo: ‘Everyone tunes in.’ Inside Trump’s obsession with cable TV.

During a small working lunch at the White House last month, the question of job security in President Trump’s tumultuous White House came up, and one of the attendees wondered whether press secretary Sean Spicer might be the first to go.

The president’s response was swift and unequivocal. “I’m not firing Sean Spicer,” he said, according to someone familiar with the encounter. “That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.”

Trump even likened Spicer’s daily news briefings to a daytime soap opera, noting proudly that his press secretary attracted nearly as many viewers.
...
Another time, Trump took particular issue with the aesthetics of a male commentator who appeared sometimes as a guest on “Morning Joe,” and began pestering the hosts, imploring them to dump the analyst who so offended his visual sensibilities, said someone with knowledge of the episode.

posted by zachlipton at 2:27 PM on April 23, 2017 [12 favorites]

Odd: @jonkarl: "This is highly unusual -- President will have dinner with the Justices of the Supreme Court on Thursday, according to the White House"

Besides the inaugural lunch, someone cited a dinner Roosevelt had in 1939, but this isn't something that normally happens.

[Insert your own joke here about being worried about the safety of RBG's food]

I'm much less concerned about someone assassinating liberal justices than I am about a conservative court-packing plan. It was a nasty trick when FDR tried it and it's exactly the kind of rules-gaming runaround that someone like McConnell would come up with. And now that the filibuster is dead for supremes they could rubber stamp 5 more justices onto the court before you could spell "Handmaid's Tale".
posted by dis_integration at 2:29 PM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]

So even if we can straighten out the gerrymandering BS, what can we do about "Vote Fractioning"? Since when is a vote not counted as ONE vote?
posted by yoga at 2:33 PM on April 23, 2017

Well, first I'd want to read about it somewhere besides blackboxvoting which is the conspiracy site started up about the election of 2004 being stolen in Ohio, right?
posted by Justinian at 2:45 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

If you don't have the will to read the insane transcript of the AP Trump interview, Daniel Dale has a good synopsis tweetstorm. Each tweet has a screenshot of the relevant section of the transcript.

@ddale8
Like almost all Trump transcripts, this Trump-AP transcript is bonkers. https://apnews.com/c810d7de280a47e88848b0ac74690c83
Trump boasts that he appointed a Supreme Court judge even though he didn't mention a judge in his 100-day plan. Reporter informs him he did.
Trump explains that he only called NATO obsolete because he didn't know much about NATO:
Trump, doing his standard "many people" projecting, says "most people" don't think about Canada when they think about NAFTA:
Trump absurdly claims nobody before him has ever asked the prime minister of Italy to increase defence spending:
Trump gets even more brazen with his repeated lie about his singlehanded achieving of F-35 savings:
Trump calls media "very stupid" for pointing out his flip-flop on Chinese currency, wrongly suggests devaluation only stopped under him:
I've never seen this: the AP has to deem some of Trump's comments "unintelligible" even though it was a one-on-one Oval Office interview.
Trump made at least 15 "unintelligible" comments in his Associated Press interview, the AP transcript says. [my bold]
Trump claims the border wall will cost less than $10 billion, but it might be more "if I do a super-duper."
Trump: I don't talk to Merkel and May about the Iran deal. AP: Wait, you don't? Trump: I do but it's confidential.
Trump ludicrously says "a lot" of people say his first address to Congress was the "single best speech" ever given in the House chamber:
Trump twice claims that the Electoral College is biased in favour of Democrats, because Republicans always lose New York and California:
Trump repeats his obvious lie about Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings telling him he'll be the greatest president ever:
This is one of the funniest Trump-lie exchanges of all time. [Trump claims to never watch CNN. AP says he just said he did two minutes earlier. Hilarity ensues.]
Trump, who just scheduled an interview with Face the Nation, twice refers to it as Deface the Nation; brags his ratings are tops since 9/11:
In conclusion: professional news stories about Policy Statement X or Policy Statement Y do not convey what is going on in a Trump interview.
Media still hasn't figured out how to communicate that the president is lying, rambling, being untelligible, admitting massive ignorance.
posted by chris24 at 3:06 PM on April 23, 2017 [79 favorites]

Man... I'm watching Highlander III right now (aka Highlander: The Final Dimension) which I saw shortly after it was released, but I'm finding it far more entertaining than I did originally. It only came out in 1995 but watching it from the perspective of 165 days after 11/9 is a positively archaeological experience.

All of the details used to caricature NYC as a dystopian crime-riddled hellscape don't look scary at all compared to fascism and imminent "nuclear holocaust"! A man openly leering and wiggling his tongue at a woman was a stereotype of a lower-class non-white creep, rather than something you'd expect the President of the United States and his favorite television characters might do! Owning a large display screen was the signifier of extremely high social status!
posted by XMLicious at 3:12 PM on April 23, 2017

Dear "Attorney General" Sessions: You are a racist and a liar. Actually, just joking. Oh wait, your record shows you are a racist & a liar.

:)
posted by futz at 3:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [19 favorites]

Justinian so there's nothing on snopes, quora, and not much really when I google, other that Daily Kos bashing the article & calling Bev Harris a lunatic. Can you enlighten me on the verification of blackboxvoting as bullshit?
posted by yoga at 3:18 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

...aaaaand France is going to be a run-off between Le Pen and Macron!

Please tell me again how the problem here is a two-party system. bonus points for solving for Brexit

Let's talk France after the runoff, ok? Yes there's a western trend for nationalism right now, but the cases for Trump and Le Pen aren't identical.

Brexit - was a colossal blunder by Cameron trying to bandage the English Conservative Party back together. If Labour would grow a pair, they could run in this snap election on not going through with Brexit.
posted by Artful Codger at 3:20 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

Thankfully France didn't go for a LR-FN runoff. It's still disappointing that FN is even a contender but at least this time it isn't even a vote between the crook and the fascist. Just smash the fucking fascist and we'll hopefully see a repeat of fifteen years prior.
posted by Talez at 3:26 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

If Labour would grow a pair, they could run in this snap election on not going through with Brexit.

Labour could've stopped the election by voting against it in the Commons in the first place. With SNP and Lib Dems the votes would've been there to deny May a majority. And Corbyn has said that if he'd been PM he would've sent in the Article 50 notification as soon as the referendum result was in.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 3:34 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

> I'm much less concerned about someone assassinating liberal justices than I am about a conservative court-packing plan. It was a nasty trick when FDR tried it and it's exactly the kind of rules-gaming runaround that someone like McConnell would come up with. And now that the filibuster is dead for supremes they could rubber stamp 5 more justices onto the court before you could spell "Handmaid's Tale".

Hey, no joke. We've got to not be blithe about something like that. A successful courtpacking scheme is perfectly equivalent to the Enabling Acts; it guarantees that government will be executive-run calvinball for the indefinite future.

If I were time-traveled back to the Great Depression I would have supported FDR's courtpacking scheme because it would have been in no-foolin' terms a revolution. I am unfortunately here in this terrible terrible 21st century and so I must warn about court packing schemes as the moment because a successful one would be equivalent to a revolution.

I've been looking for a test that I could use for making the decision to try to find another continent to live on for a little while, and I think maybe "courtpacking scheme" is it.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

> Thankfully France didn't go for a LR-FN runoff. It's still disappointing that FN is even a contender but at least this time it isn't even a vote between the crook and the fascist. Just smash the fucking fascist and we'll hopefully see a repeat of fifteen years prior.

but please, please, smash the fucking fascist. the fate of the world depends on it.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Corbyn has said that if he'd been PM he would've sent in the Article 50 notification as soon as the referendum result was in.

It's amazing how many people outside the UK think Labour is opposed to Brexit, when the opposite is true. I agree that rationally a party that sings the Internationale ought to be pro-EU, and that in any event the Opposition should have opposed a Tory machination, but this is the party that elected Corbyn, so ...
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:46 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's amazing how many people outside the UK think Labour is opposed to Brexit, when the opposite is true. I agree that rationally a party that sings the Internationale ought to be pro-EU, and that in any event the Opposition should have opposed a Tory machination, but this is the party that elected Corbyn, so ...

IMHO socialists like Corbyn aren't so much anti-EU more they're just pissy about bureaucratic technocrats not tending towards socialist.
posted by Talez at 4:10 PM on April 23, 2017

It's amazing how many people outside the UK think Labour is opposed to Brexit, when the opposite is true.

I wouldn't say "the opposite is true"; Labour is divided on the issue, just not as obviously as the Tories. Corbyn was a Bennite, and Tony Benn was very much a Eurosceptic, as were a lot of "Old Labour" (it's worth remembering that it was a Tory government under Ted Heath that took Britain into the EU). It wasn't until the Smith/Blair/Brown "New Labour" that Labour became more pro-EU.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 4:11 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Can you enlighten me on the verification of blackboxvoting as bullshit?

Not without a time machine to go back to 2005. There was a lot... and I mean a lot... of discussion of the Ohio 2004 thing back then. But it's been, uh, over a decade.
posted by Justinian at 4:16 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Although it occurred to me... google kind of IS a time machine for back to 2004/2005! What a world we live in.

Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried. From the NYT. This is more a debunking of the whole conspiracy blogosphere but blackboxvoting is quoted in the lede.

IMO this is sort of how the Fake News Checklist is relevant. Is this news about voter fraud coming from a reputable source like the New York Times, WaPo, LA Times, CNN (really... compared to random blogs...), the BBC, or any number of other reputable sources? Or is it a random website and mentioned nowhere else?
posted by Justinian at 4:20 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

Here is blackboxvoting being pushed by Infowars and Alex Jones. Need I say more?
posted by Justinian at 4:22 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

I don't know about current events, but hey, as in information technology professional with many years of experience wearing all sorts of different colored hats, there *was* a compelling case for the servers in Ohio being thrown into DR mode, votes loaded into the DR instances, and then those DR instances migrated back to production at the time. I vaguely recall a flowchart clearly illustrating the risk.
posted by mikelieman at 4:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

Not to abuse the edit window. I may or may not have Eudora archives of the relevant mailing lists, but really, relitigating anything, much less 2004 is pointless other than analysis in the context of actually formulating actual strategy going forward ( as opposed to just doing it to do it... )
posted by mikelieman at 4:39 PM on April 23, 2017

Hey, no joke. We've got to not be blithe about something like that. A successful courtpacking scheme is perfectly equivalent to the Enabling Acts; it guarantees that government will be executive-run calvinball for the indefinite future.

We're there now. They successfully stole a Supreme Court seat and ended the filibuster to do it. They're going to get at least one, possibly 2 or 3 more appointments in the next four years, and then it's all over anyway. Court packing is the only hope we have now of ever again having a country not ruled under the iron fist of a conservative judicial theocracy. If there's ever another Democratic President, Democrats have to either impeach Gorsuch and every subsequent Justice appointed by Trump, or create new seats. There's nothing sacred about the number 9, and creating more seats is more legitimate than what Republicans just did. File this under: play the same game. Don't unilaterally disarm. When they flip over the table, pick it up and smash their faces in with it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:52 PM on April 23, 2017 [20 favorites]

I hear you, but neither of those things is going to happen. It just isn't. You might as well hope for the Constitution to be amended so Obama can run again and he becomes President in 2020.
posted by Justinian at 4:54 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

You're right, it'll take until they have a 7-2 permanent majority and repeal child labor laws and Social Security, which they absolutely will do. But it certainly won't happen if we preemptively accept what they did as legitimate and say there's nothing we can ever do about it. We can. And it'd be perfectly constitutional.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:58 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

at least 15 "unintelligible" comments in his Associated Press interview

i found substituting "clusterfuck" in place of "unintelligble" makes it a more palatable read.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:01 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

oh, don't get me wrong. I am 100% for courtpacking schemes from the left. courtpacking schemes from the right, though, that's bad news.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:12 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's really hard to overstate how batshit the AP interview transcript is. Like, a fair headline for the interview would be "President of the United States speaks gibberish," because that's really more important than any individual thing. But this is a really revealing exchange:

AP: You've talked a little bit about the way that you've brought some business skills into the office. Is there anything from your business background that just doesn't translate into the presidency, that just simply is not applicable to this job?

TRUMP: Well in business, you don't necessarily need heart, whereas here, almost everything affects people. So if you're talking about health care — you have health care in business but you're trying to just negotiate a good price on health care, et cetera, et cetera. You're providing health. This is (unintelligible). Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government, involves heart, whereas in business, most things don't involve heart.

AP: What's that switch been like for you?

TRUMP: In fact, in business you're actually better off without it.

AP: What's making that switch been like for you?

TRUMP: You have to love people. And if you love people, such a big responsibility. (unintelligible) You can take any single thing, including even taxes. I mean we're going to be doing major tax reform. Here's part of your story, it's going to be a big (unintelligible). Everybody's saying, "Oh, he's delaying." I'm not delaying anything. I'll tell you the other thing is (unintelligible). I used to get great press. I get the worst press. I get such dishonest reporting with the media. That's another thing that really has — I've never had anything like it before. It happened during the primaries, and I said, you know, when I won, I said, "Well the one thing good is now I'll get good press." And it got worse. (unintelligible) So that was one thing that a little bit of a surprise to me. I thought the press would become better, and it actually, in my opinion, got more nasty.

We'll ignore, for the moment, the fact that he pivots to complaining about the press. Think about what he said there. He's outright saying that he learned that the President has to care about other people, whereas that was a liability in business (see also: everything about how he ran his business). And that the fact that the President is expected to have a heart was some kind of a surprise to him. And gosh, some basic notion of caring about people extends to everything in the job, even taxes. Who could have known Presidenting meant giving a shit about people? Add that to the list of surprises alongside 'North Korea is complicated.'

I don't know how anyone can sit there and interview him, listening to him say this, and not say "my god, this is sociopathic." Because his statement that "here, almost everything affects people" is flatly ignoring that his actions had consequences before too, that real people were being screwed out of their livelihoods by his failure to pay his vendors, that his choice or lack thereof of health plans for his employees affected their lives too, that the people who blew their life savings on Trump University courses suffered so he could profit. This is literally a 70-year-old man announcing to the world that he's beginning to develop a preschool-level understanding of empathy.
posted by zachlipton at 5:21 PM on April 23, 2017 [90 favorites]

What is this about (from the AP interview)?

TRUMP: I am going to either renegotiate [NAFTA] or I am going to terminate it.

AP: Termination is still on the table.

TRUMP: Absolutely. If they don’t treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA.

AP: What’s a timeline for that decision?

TRUMP: It’s a six-month termination clause, I have the right to do it, it’s a six-month clause.

Who on Fox News was saying this? Does he know that NAFTA has been in force for a generation, and you can't just 'terminate' something like that without massive effects?

I know, he doesn't know. But this "six-month termination clause" thing seems weirdly specific and someone is feeding it to him.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:29 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]

I am 100% for courtpacking schemes from the left. courtpacking schemes from the right, though, that's bad new

The thing is though, you can't push for one without normalizing the other and making it seem more attractive.
posted by corb at 5:29 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

As a philosophical matter that ship has sailed with the Republicans treatment of Garland. Everything is now on the table as Republicans have shown. But as a practical matter you're right, it may not be an effective way to deal with the court.
posted by Justinian at 5:34 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

The thing is though, you can't push for one without normalizing the other and making it seem more attractive.

Strike first. Admit DC or PR as a state. Constitutional amendment fixing the Court at 11, or 13, whatever. This is how Republicans would play it, have already played it to maintain illegitimate control of all branches with a minority of the population, that's the kinds of tactics we need to have ready in response. If there's ever a Democratic majority again, failing to take control of the Court will mean it's the last one, if we havent already seen the effective end of democracy by 2020 already.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:40 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

The Republicans are the only ones who can halt the cascading escalation they've triggered. The rest of us can't just abandon an entire branch of government—specifically, the branch with lifetime appointments—to no-rules domination by one end of the political spectrum—to one political organization and its funders-slash-agenda-setters.
posted by XMLicious at 5:45 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

Strike first. Admit DC or PR as a state. Constitutional amendment fixing the Court at 11, or 13, whatever.

The former would require 2/3 majorities in both Houses, the latter would require 3/4 of states to go along.
posted by Justinian at 5:48 PM on April 23, 2017

The president appears to be sundowning over the course of that AP interview :(
posted by theodolite at 5:49 PM on April 23, 2017 [12 favorites]

> The thing is though, you can't push for one without normalizing the other and making it seem more attractive.

So everyone important should lie about it until we don't need the norm anymore. Never bring deontological ethics to a consequentialist fight.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:53 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Honestly though, it says a lot about the stabilty of the country that we can have a total crazy person as president, and (so far) I've still got hot water.
posted by valkane at 5:55 PM on April 23, 2017 [24 favorites]

This reads to me like he thinks he's telling this Elijah Cummings story for the first time and gets confused when the interviewer pushes back:

TRUMP: ...Look, I met with Congressman Cummings and I really liked him, a lot. Elijah Cummings (of Maryland). I really liked him a lot. And during the conversation because we have a very strong mutual feeling on drug prices. He came to see me, at my invitation, because I saw him talking about, he came to see me about drug prices because drug prices are ridiculous. And I am going to get them way, way, way down and he liked that. He said you will be the greatest president. He said you will be, in front of five, six people, he said you will be the greatest president in the history of this country.

AP: He disputed that slightly.

TRUMP: That's what he said. I mean, what can I tell you?

AP: Yeah.

TRUMP: There's six people sitting here. What did he, what, what do you mean by slightly?

AP: He said, he said that he felt like you could be a great president if and then —

TRUMP: Well he said, you'll be the greatest president in the history of, but you know what, I'll take that also, but that you could be. But he said, will be the greatest president but I would also accept the other. In other words, if you do your job, but I accept that. Then I watched him interviewed and it was like he never even was here. It's incredible. I watched him interviewed a week later and it's like he was never in my office. And you can even say that.

posted by theodolite at 5:56 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

Honestly though, it says a lot about the stabilty of the country that we can have a total crazy person as president, and (so far) I've still got hot water.

So you're saying you've got gas
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:58 PM on April 23, 2017

You know, I'm no longer sure about my assertion that statehood requires a 2/3 majority vote. It may be a simple majority?

If so, that would be the way to go. Not court packing, but America packing!
posted by Justinian at 5:59 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

Making America Great Again, by making more of it!
posted by zachlipton at 6:01 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

Make Canada Jumpy Again
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:02 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'll take that also, but that you could be. But he said, will be the greatest president but I would also accept the other.

JMFingC.

You can find more coherent thought from a 1990's IRC bot than the current President* of the United States.

He only accepts what he wants to hear and is completely divorced from reality.
posted by porpoise at 6:12 PM on April 23, 2017 [14 favorites]

If so, that would be the way to go. Not court packing, but America packing!

Don't you want more America, Mr Trump? Who could say no to more America.
posted by dis_integration at 6:14 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

> Honestly though, it says a lot about the stabilty of the country that we can have a total crazy person as president, and (so far) I've still got hot water.

"And as I fell past the 20th floor I said 'so far, so good!'"
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:21 PM on April 23, 2017 [28 favorites]

Justinian: "You know, I'm no longer sure about my assertion that statehood requires a 2/3 majority vote. It may be a simple majority?"

There's nothing in it in Article IV, Section 3:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

Best I can determine, the Congressional part of the process is the same as any standard legislation.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:28 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

So, yeah, PR could be admitted as a state the next time the Ds control both houses and the Presidency. If they want to be a state. I wouldn't blame them for going all HELL NO now that they see how dumb we are. Although judging from some of the economic decisions they've made in the last two decades perhaps they'd fit right in.
posted by Justinian at 6:30 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Probably simpler to break California into 20 or 30 safely left-leaning states.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 6:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

If so, that would be the way to go. Not court packing, but America packing!

If the Democrats (or some new party) ever gets to the point where this is possible -- and that's a huge if -- the way to play it is to package a 10 point plan for fairness, and push this all through as a package. Other elements would include:

-- constitutional amendment (or court decision) banning gerrymandering
-- consitutional admendment (or court decision) establishing one person one vote, which AFAIK is not actually law
-- Constitutional amendment (or court decision) emphatically stating that the expenditure of money is not free speech.
-- A comprehensive law establishing free speech for scientists and government employees funded or employed by the federal government
-- reform of drug study law (must register all studies in advance and report negative findings)
-- law or constitutional amendment making it illegal to suppress votes or intimidate voters based on partisan affiliation or race or age
-- filibuster in constitution
-- Supreme Court nominations automatically advance to the floor if not voted on by committee in 90 days.
-- uniform rules for voter registration that basically automatically register everyone. I mean, why not?
-- serious felony penalties for voter suppressive dirty tricks (announcing change in voting days or locations, etc.)
-- financial donor limits for campaigns with same day online reporting; serious penalties for any evasions.
I'm sure there's more, that's just off the top of my head.
posted by msalt at 6:40 PM on April 23, 2017 [24 favorites]

Daily Beast: Senate Trump-Russia Probe Has No Full-Time Staff, No Key Witnesses: "There are just seven part-time staffers working on the Senate inquiry. None of them are trained investigators. And they haven’t interviewed a single player in Trump’s orbit."

There is no real investigation. It's all a sham, just one that the Senate is slightly better at maintaining than the House. We need an independent investigation.
posted by zachlipton at 6:40 PM on April 23, 2017 [41 favorites]

no no no no no

Under fire for recent Holocaust flubs, Trump will headline Days of Remembrance ceremony

I know that it is customary for the president (I have been avoiding saying that) but but but surely an exception could be made? The backlash prevents him from backing out...a doctor's excuse perhaps? Food poisoning from meatloaf? Foot caught behind giant dangling uvula? Head Up Ass Disease?
posted by futz at 6:41 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

The former would require 2/3 majorities in both Houses, the latter would require 3/4 of states to go along.

Admitting that many more states takes simple majorities. Think bigger.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:42 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Monica Crowley Lost White House Job, Now She’s Got One With Pro-Russian Oligarch: "Plagiarism disqualified her from joining the U.S. National Security Council, but a Fox News contributor just registered as a lobbyist for a Ukrainian billionaire."

Under fire for recent Holocaust flubs, Trump will headline Days of Remembrance ceremony

He shouldn't be "headlining" because he clearly has nothing of value to contribute; he should sit there and fucking listen. Perhaps he'll learn something.
posted by zachlipton at 6:45 PM on April 23, 2017 [13 favorites]

hey we're playing wishlist.

-- nationalize major banks
-- nationalize power generation and distribution
-- full workplace democracy
-- free childcare
-- universal basic income
-- universal health care
-- tobin tax to fund previous three items
-- free university, with undergraduate students given stipends to cover expenses.
-- 32 hr work week, to be revised further downward on aggressive timetable. the plan is increasing demand for labor through reducing supply. (this is, incidentally, also a big reason for the UBI and the free college -- allow people to live insofar as possible without working, in order to improve labor's bargaining position by reducing supply).
-- minimum wage 22.00 indexed to inflation
-- rent maximums (if they don't rip us off through wages they rip us off through rent).
-- if landlords fail to coöperate, land reform.
-- nationalized trucking (for food distribution; that's a spot revolutionary governments get attacked at)

If your plan, in practice, requires fighting a war to implement, you should at least wish big with your wishlist. Not doofy procedural stuff that can be hacked in other ways even after you patch it against the current set of hacks.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:49 PM on April 23, 2017 [50 favorites]

There is no real investigation. It's all a sham, just one that the Senate is slightly better at maintaining than the House.

But I thought Mark Warner would save us? There can't be a real investigation in Congress, it has to be an independent commission with subpoena power, funding for staff, everything, just like the 9/11 Commission was a real thing. Republicans won't do it, and there's precious few Democrats who are capable of it either.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:49 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Probably simpler to break California into 20 or 30 safely left-leaning states.

At least 4: Southern California aka Alta California (capital in LA), Central California aka Big Sur (capital in Santa Barbara or Monterrey), Northern California aka Jefferson (capital in San Francisco), and Eastern California aka Sierra (capital in Sacramento). Sierra might even be a swing state; that's cool.
posted by msalt at 6:54 PM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

If your plan, in practice, requires fighting a war to implement, you should at least wish big with your wishlist. Not doofy procedural stuff that can be hacked in other ways even after you patch it against the current set of hacks.

I think it's going to be easier to sell a plan based on fairness that favors no party (except to the extent that it undoes anti-democratic manipulations) than to sell a plan of socialist reform that a large number of Democrats wouldn't support in many particulars.

Who exactly is the constituency for the items on your list? Most Americans have never heard of many of them. The Tobin tax? Land reform? Nationalized trucking? Bernie Sanders doesn't even support half this stuff.
posted by msalt at 6:58 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

My point is that packing the court or manipulating states is only going to be acceptable if it's coupled with a clear and objectively defensible plan to reinstate fairness.
posted by msalt at 6:59 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

You've got​ my vote, You Can't Tip a Buick.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 7:00 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

law or constitutional amendment making it illegal to suppress votes or intimidate voters based on partisan affiliation or race or age

Maybe I'm missing something, but we already kind of have this for race, sex, and age... I'm sure there could be laws to better guarantee those rights though as they're frequently violated, and automatic registration could make a difference. And there could be a consolidation of Constitutional rights just saying that everyone has the right to vote, if that made legal sense, but that "everyone" doesn't include corporations.
posted by XMLicious at 7:01 PM on April 23, 2017

Number of Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions by Congressional District

And ACASignups: The CAP spreadsheet is extremely handy, and they deserve full credit for crunching the numbers. Unfortunately, it's only available as a single massive spreadsheet, so I've takent the liberty of grouping all 435 CDs together by state into shareable JPG images.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:14 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]

shit, also forgot

-- embed political officers with hiring/firing privileges in all police departments.

> I think it's going to be easier to sell a plan based on fairness that favors no party (except to the extent that it undoes anti-democratic manipulations) than to sell a plan of socialist reform that a large number of Democrats wouldn't support in many particulars.

So I guess what I'm trying to do with this wishlist is I'm trying to indicate that things like the "hey let's make 20 californias then we can push through a reform package" would be met with organized violence from the right and maybe even result in a civil war, without us really knowing which side the U.S. military would be on.

So although my scheme may seem more radical than yours, your scheme is a radical non-starter because of the mechanism proposed to implement it. If we're ever in a situation where something like 20 Californias becomes a plausible plan to the majority of the population, I assure you the mood of the country will be more in favor of something on the hard left than in favor of a weird mishmosh of mostly procedural liberal reforms.

People don't get behind "find the most fair solution" when push comes to shove -- when something might start a war. And they're not wrong; "find the most fair set of rules" is a condescending-seeming stance when dealing with serious questions, since it positions the person taking that stance as outside and above the debate.

Bracketing off my "no, seriously, that would start a war" point, we as a group and as a class (I think the average mefite is some sort of of academic and/or managerial and/or technical and/or political position, and thank you so much to everyone that doesn't fall along those very white-collar axes for keeping us from drifting off entirely into the superstructure), um, we as a group and as a class need to start thinking in terms of what values we specifically privilege. I think it is of vital importance for everyone everywhere on the left or even in the liberal center to start thinking in terms of material benefits instead of formal ideas of fairness. People who are hungry need food. My neighbors who are living in tents — and a lot of my neighbors are living in tents — need housing. Kids need breakfast. Old people need housing subsidies. People who are sick need health care. People on opiates need treatment. Cops need to lay off. The rich need brought down and everyone else needs brought up. Make people happier. Have a platform that's about making people happier. Do work in communities to make people happier, even if it's not connected to an election. And also register people to vote.

Simple values.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:16 PM on April 23, 2017 [23 favorites]

A pair of related links: Politico: How Trump Succeeds Without Succeeding: "He has made a career of convincing people that his failures were the exact opposite. Can he pull it off again?"

Critics have expressed amazement at this self-assessment. How, wonder people who are even fleetingly familiar with presidential history, can Trump look back at the past three months and seriously say they were the best ever?
...
These three statements, 53 words in all, are potent shots of unadulterated, time-tested Trump—short, confident declarations of success, in spite of objective evidence of failure, uttered with total disregard for the parsing and fact-checking that constitutes so much of the coverage of him and his administration. Biographers, ex-employees, veteran New York City gossip columnists, public relations professionals and political operatives from both major parties say recognizing this well-established pattern of behavior—stumble, proclaim victory, move on—is imperative to understanding Trump.
...
“He’s not successful at what he claims to be successful at,” said Tim O’Brien, the author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. “He is, however, arguably the most successful self-promoter in United States business and political history. And that’s a form of success.”

Slate: There’s No News Right Now Because Trump Doesn’t Actually Do Anything:

None of this is really surprising. As has been well-documented, Trump—though he claims to be a "builder"—actually made most of his hay in the private sector by licensing his name. He's the guy who makes big promises at the ribbon-cutting and gets the name of the project in the newspaper, not the guy who gets the permits and arranges the funding and hires the subcontractors. He doesn't make things; he talks. (When he does try to make things, they go bankrupt.)

posted by zachlipton at 7:18 PM on April 23, 2017 [24 favorites]

Pelosi: 'Of course' Dems can be against abortion
posted by indubitable at 7:46 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Pelosi: 'Of course' Dems can be against abortion

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory there.
posted by jaduncan at 7:50 PM on April 23, 2017 [18 favorites]

I know, he doesn't know. But this "six-month termination clause" thing seems weirdly specific and someone is feeding it to him.

I'm no expert but google says it's a reference to this Article 2205: Withdrawal

A Party may withdraw from this Agreement [NAFTA] six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

So, maybe it's part of the treaty, but it's an incomprehensible bargaining position. He's saying, "if you don't give me what I want, I'm going to crater the US economy and that will be mighty inconvenient for you."
posted by peeedro at 7:52 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

>> Pelosi: 'Of course' Dems can be against abortion

> Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory there.

Let's move the democratic party house leadership across the bay. Barbara Lee for Speaker.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:05 PM on April 23, 2017 [12 favorites]

"Sorry Nancy, the House leadership position can't afford Pacific Heights anymore. so it's moved over to Oakland."
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:06 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]

So much winning. How's that 100 days coming along Donny?

WH officials: Busy week, but no health care vote or shutdown

Conversations with senior administration officials and Republicans close to the White House offer CNN this lay of the land and a reality check:

- No House vote on health care is expected this week. Despite a flurry of activity last week, there is no expectation of a vote actually happening before Friday. Officials would still like to see a vote happen, and the White House might still talk about it in the coming days, but legislative action is "highly unlikely, and we know that," one official says. A senior administration official said there is now less pressure to get a vote to repeal and replace Obamacare this week. Last week, White House and congressional sources said the White House was eager to make another run at the issue before Trump reached "100 days" in office, despite concerns among GOP leaders that the votes simply weren't there in the House. "If we have the votes it will happen. If not will keep working," the official said.

- The government will not shut down, officials said. That's a directive straight from Trump. Top administration officials explained to the President this weekend that the most likely scenario is a short-term fix that would last a week or so until a deal is reached. "There's no interest in a shutdown," an official says, adding they will "do what it takes" to avoid one.

- A flurry of executive orders are coming this week. There will be at least four, and possibly as many as six, as the West Wing tries to show action, officials told CNN. Orders are expected on veterans' issues, energy, agriculture and trade. This is the top way the administration "hopes to show action" this week given the absence of legislation, an official said. "You will see the President all the time this week, multiple times a day, showing his accomplishments and work," the official said, acknowledging privately that the best way to counter the argument that the first 100 days have been unsuccessful is to "have the President everywhere."

posted by chris24 at 8:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

Pelosi can keep a fractured and fractuous coalition in lockstep better than most broadway choreographers handle their cast.

Let me tell you about Rhode Island. Dick Nixon stripped away the fleet because we refused to vote to re-elect his crooked ass, one of two states in the nation. We almost did it again to Regan.

We're not a reliably blue state. We're less than three years on from our last disastrous Republican governor. Holding onto the reigns of power, even in reliably "blue" states is fucking hard.

Jim Langevin is a representative from Rhode Island. He is a pro-life Democrat.

He's also rabidly pro-everything-else the progressives are into, and if you want to play identity games, he's a quadriplegic.

Pelosi, unlike Boehner, unlike Ryan, unlike McConnell, unlike Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, knows how to count votes.

Pro-choice will never be under threat with her in charge. A Democratic house majority will always be a threat with her in charge.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:20 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

- The government will not shut down, officials said. That's a directive straight from Trump. Top administration officials explained to the President this weekend that the most likely scenario is a short-term fix that would last a week or so until a deal is reached. "There's no interest in a shutdown," an official says, adding they will "do what it takes" to avoid one.

I thought his whole negotiating strategy was to never tell anyone what he's thinking. Now he's just admitting he'll do anything to avoid a shutdown? Please tell me Pelosi and Schumer aren't so stupid so as to bungle this opportunity they've been handed on one of Trump's gold-plated platters.
posted by zachlipton at 8:21 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

Please tell me Pelosi and Schumer aren't so stupid so as to bungle this opportunity they've been handed on one of Trump's gold-plated platters.

Well, but only the majority can force a shutdown. What's the opportunity, exactly, for the Dems?
posted by dis_integration at 8:23 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm guessing the opportunity is some Freedom Caucus nutjobs might be keen to shut down the government to get their extreme demands and Ryan might not have their votes. Thus possibly necessitating Dem votes for a CR.
posted by chris24 at 8:26 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's going to take Democratic votes to fund the government (both because it takes 60 votes in the Senate, and because a chunk of Ryan's right wing won't vote for a spending bill unless half the cabinet is defunded and Planned Parenthood is outlawed). So the best case is that the Republicans need 8 Democrats in the Senate. But in the House, the Republicans have used Democratic votes to fund the government every single time since they took the majority in 2011, and they presumably will again.

The opportunity is that Trump has apparently instructed his staff that avoiding a shutdown takes precedence over everything else. They can sit there and say "we'd like money for the wall" and Democrats can say "I'd prefer not to. How about a shutdown instead?" over and over again and the Dems will win every time, because Trump has no leverage if his negotiating position puts avoiding a shutdown as the top priority.
posted by zachlipton at 8:31 PM on April 23, 2017 [17 favorites]

They already look stupid over the ACA thingy, no way will they shut down the government. Or maybe they will? Anyway, they sure do look stupid.
posted by valkane at 8:35 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

it suddenly strikes me that we might survive just because trump is maybe the most Dutch Book-able people in the world.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:36 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

Trump reschedules dinner with Supreme Court justices

...White House said Sunday evening the event will take place on a future date because of scheduling conflicts.

Newly confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch was slated to attend, but it was not clear which of the eight other justices might be present.

Maybe gorsuch was the only one who accepted? Once again, the WH gets ahead of itself and announces that something is going to happen before they have confirmed that *thing* would actually happen. If that is actually the truth of what happened happened happened...
posted by futz at 8:36 PM on April 23, 2017 [13 favorites]

Remember that Bannonism exists; dude is off center stage right now, but given his Leninist delusions I'm sure he's still playing at constructing a shadow state to which he can transfer all power. the republican party paralyzing the institutions of liberal democracy is good for that.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:39 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Remember when Bush was president, and fox news reigned supreme? When even questioning the administration made you unamerican? Last time I looked, Fox news is ashambles, and the current republican president is making excuses about science, and avoiding anything that puts him in front of an audience he doesn't control. I like that.
posted by valkane at 8:45 PM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]

And ACASignups: The CAP spreadsheet is extremely handy, and they deserve full credit for crunching the numbers. Unfortunately, it's only available as a single massive spreadsheet, so I've takent the liberty of grouping all 435 CDs together by state into shareable JPG images.

Topher Spiro and CAP have been kicking all with this data, but it also highlights the fact that Democrats are doing a crappy job of messaging. Little messages like this that undermine the Trump agenda should be absolutely everywhere:

• Donald Trump and Paul Ryan want to kick N of your neighbors off their health insurance. Ask your Congressman why he wants his constituents to lose their insurance.
• Donald Trump said Mexico was going to pay for the wall, but now he's threatening to defund people's health insurance unless American taxpayers pay for it
• Donald Trump promised to never take a vacation as President. He's gone to Mar-a-Lago every other weekend

Yes, ads like this cost money, but we're also in an age where pissed off Democrats can raise millions online to support Ossoff, and I suspect there's a willingness to support something like this if it can show clear results, as opposed to yet another horrible DNC fundraising email where you're just being asked to throw money into some kind of giant pot for unspecified purposes. I'm wondering what a Kickstarter for Democratic political ads would look like, a super transparent campaign-by-campaign "you're paying for us to get this message out to these people; we won't waste your money on consultants" kind of thing.

It doesn't seem like this should be such a hard problem. If Facebook feeds full of fake news can have a demonstrably huge impact, why can't we pay to pump actual news like this into people's feeds? Will it be effective? I have no idea, but these are stories that need to get told somehow, and advertising seems like the best way to reach the people who could be on the fence.
posted by zachlipton at 8:52 PM on April 23, 2017 [36 favorites]

Jim Langevin is a representative from Rhode Island. He is a pro-life Democrat.

Langevin is a Blue Dog hypocrite who hates abortion but loves those sweet sweet stem cells because they may benefit him someday. His disability doesn't prevent him from being deeply disappointing.

RI isn't a blue state. It's a Catholic blue state. Until, what, two months ago, our State Senate majority leader was anti-choice and anti-SSM. Wicked Democrat. Wicked Catholic. (With no offense meant to our progressive Catholics here, some of whom live in RI, even!) Whitehouse has been doing alright, but as a self-proclaimed environmentalist, he hasn't been taking care of his own yard. Reed is functionally useless.

But we have David Cicilline. Author of the House letter against Bannon. Participant of the sit-in with Lewis. Making it a point to have town halls in every town in his district. If this country is ever ready for the first openly gay President, I hope he's the one. (He's also very charming in person.)
posted by Ruki at 9:07 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

I'm wondering what a Kickstarter for Democratic political ads would look like, a super transparent campaign-by-campaign "you're paying for us to get this message out to these people; we won't waste your money on consultants" kind of thing.

Do we have to have the party apparatus behind us? could this be done by some sort of KickstartPAC?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:07 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

Let me tell you about Rhode Island. Dick Nixon stripped away the fleet because we refused to vote to re-elect his crooked ass, one of two states in the nation.

A gentle correction from a neighbor to your north: Nope. Massachusetts was the only state to vote for McGovern (along with the District of Columbia). As Watergate reached its crescendo, you could get bumper stickers that read "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts" and "Nixon: 49; America: 1"
posted by adamg at 9:13 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

"You will see the President all the time this week, multiple times a day, showing his accomplishments and work," the official said, acknowledging privately that the best way to counter the argument that the first 100 days have been unsuccessful is to "have the President everywhere."

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. There is just no way this will end well or anywhere in well's area code even.
posted by scalefree at 9:28 PM on April 23, 2017 [13 favorites]

"You will see the President all the time this week, multiple times a day, showing his accomplishments and work," the official said, acknowledging privately that the best way to counter the argument that the first 100 days have been unsuccessful is to "have the President everywhere."

Spend the week in a sensory deprivation tank, got it.
posted by dirigibleman at 9:32 PM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]

What's the opportunity, exactly, for the Dems?

Ryan doesn't control the Freedom Fuckups. There's 35-40 Republican 'No's for every single budget that doesn't end the federal government entirely, or at a minimum zero out all domestic spending. He needs Democrats. The dynamic that sunk Boehner hasn't changed at all, it's just been 16 months of Ryan living on borrowed time because he hasn't had sit on the big-boy-pot and pass a budget on his own yet. Boehner's last gift was to punt everything until after the 2016 election, and there was no appetite for anything other than a clean CR knowing Obama was on his way out during the transition. But most people don't know that. They still think Republicans are adults know what they're doing. But they're not. And now it's put up or shutup time. And Ryan knows 40 of his members are disturbed little children who can't even read and torture cats behind the barn.

They have nothing, literally nothing, to show for winning complete control, and shutting down their own government would be as good as admitting what we all know anyway, Republicans are utterly incompetent and without any agenda other than tax cuts for rich people, and they're so incompetent they can't even do that apparently. There's no way to spin this as Democrats fault. Especially not with Trump making demands like fund the wall. Fine, fund it, you control everything, fucknugget. What's the problem? Pass it. There's nothing Democrats can do to stop it.

But.

If you can't pass your own damn budget to fund your own damn government that you control 100% of, why should Democrats lift a finger to help you? If Ryan has to come begging to Democrats after all this, why shouldn't they make demands for helping, AGAIN, to pull Republicans out of the shit-bonfire of their own making?
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:34 PM on April 23, 2017 [43 favorites]

>"You will see the President all the time this week, multiple times a day, showing his accomplishments and work," the official said, acknowledging privately that the best way to counter the argument that the first 100 days have been unsuccessful is to "have the President everywhere."

okay so if someone offers to show you a weird flashing staticky image any time in the next week, don't look at it. and if you see a banner ad that seems to fit that description, close the page IMMEDIATELY. They've developed something called snow crash. If you're exposed to it, you'll see, hear, and think nothing but trump. you'll babble in ancient sumerian sentences, discrete single-syllable sounds like "bi glig te re fic pon ti pool sad," and people who hear your babbling may be infected as well.

Computer programmers are particularly susceptible to infection with this virus!

Keep yourselves safe! Stay off of L. Bob Tillerson's raft! Stop trump crash!
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [19 favorites]

Sudden thought.

I know what the Democrats should ask for in exchange for a continuing resolution.

Trump's resignation. Just put it out there. "We'll do it if he resigns. Immediately. Otherwise, it's his problem."
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:39 PM on April 23, 2017 [38 favorites]

Mon Apr 24, 2017 | 12:16am EDT Carrier group heads for Korean waters as Trump calls leaders

South Korea said on Monday it was in talks about holding joint drills with a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group, as U.S. President Donald Trump called the leaders of Japan and China amid fears North Korea could conduct another nuclear test.

Trump was due to call Chinese President Xi Jinping after talking with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier on Monday. Reclusive North Korea said at the weekend it was ready to sink the U.S. aircraft carrier, which Trump had ordered to waters off the Korean peninsula as a warning to the North.

Japan said on Sunday it had sent two Japanese destroyers to join the carrier group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, for drills.

-- Adding to the heightened tensions, North Korea detained a U.S. citizen on Saturday as he attempted to leave the country.

North Korea detains third U.S. citizen

North Korea warns Australia of possible nuclear strike if it 'blindly toes US line'

-- North Korea’s state new agency (KCNA) quoted a foreign ministry spokesman castigating Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, after she said the rogue nation would be subject to further Australian sanctions and for “spouting a string of rubbish against the DPRK over its entirely just steps for self-defence”.

“If Australia persists in following the US moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK and remains a shock brigade of the US master, this will be a suicidal act of coming within the range of the nuclear strike of the strategic force of the DPRK,” the report said.

“The Australian foreign minister had better think twice about the consequences to be entailed by her reckless tongue-lashing before flattering the US.”

All bark, no bite? Whatever the situation I do not trust that the current administration is capable of deescalating.

Oh LOOK, from just 4 hours ago:

US tells North Korea to cease 'destabilizing actions and rhetoric'

Someone should have a chat with Tillerson, Pence, et al, and the so-called armada positioning itself off the Korean coast. Holy fucking shit this Admin is so fucking dangerous and stupid.
posted by futz at 9:52 PM on April 23, 2017 [13 favorites]

An oddity in the President's public schedule for tomorrow:

" "*5:30PM THE PRESIDENT participates in a reception with conservative media*
**
* *"Chief of Staff Patio"
""
" Closed Press"

Ignoring, for a moment, the strangeness of a reception with the press that is "closed press," can you imagine the howls of outrage if President Obama literally announced he was going to hold a reception just with "liberal media?"

Also on the agenda, "dinner with Senator and Mrs. John McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham." Tune in tomorrow night to find out if meatloaf will be the only item on the menu.
posted by zachlipton at 10:06 PM on April 23, 2017 [22 favorites]

Jay Rosen (one of the most independent 'media people' and the contrarian who least often makes me cringe): “The Trump White House has turned into a kind of playground for the press.” More than 35 White House correspondents spoke to Politico about what it's like for them. They want you to know they're having a blast. It's good to know somebody besides The Donald is having fun.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:27 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

Trump is a fan of Spicy Time, allegedly for the most idiotic reason possible [WaPo]:

The president’s response was swift and unequivocal. “I’m not firing Sean Spicer,” he said, according to someone familiar with the encounter. “That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.”

Trump even likened Spicer’s daily news briefings to a daytime soap opera, noting proudly that his press secretary attracted nearly as many viewers.

Also:

Some White House officials — who early on would appear on TV to emphasize points to their boss, who was likely to be watching just steps away in his residence.

I'd be slightly embarrassed that my own staff thought I gained 90% of my understanding of the world through terrible reporting.
posted by jaduncan at 10:31 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

> I'd be slightly embarrassed that my own staff thought I gained 90% of my understanding of the world through terrible reporting.

who's got time to be embarrassed with all these simulacra precessing so quickly everywhere.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:14 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'd be slightly embarrassed that my own staff thought I gained 90% of my understanding of the world through terrible reporting.

Except it's the best reporting! Plus he's un-embarrassable.

Larry David has a lot to answer for.
posted by rhizome at 12:01 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

[Sunday 4/23] FBI director James Comey arrives in Queenstown for 'Government conference'

FBI director James Comey has arrived in Queenstown for a 'top-secret' spy conference.

-- Before Comey's arrival, a CIA jet touched down on the tarmac at Queenstown Airport.

-- A quick Google search of the registration number on the white, Gulfstream Aerospace's tail revealed United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) owns the jet.

-- The Gulfstream has joined a second private jet at the airport, acting as added confirmation that the "Government conference" set to play out at luxury Millbrook Resort in Arrowtown in the coming week, is a meeting of spying network Five Eyes - the global alliance of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

A fleet of undercover police cars and a security vehicle drove onto the tarmac ahead of the jet arriving.

CIA director Mike Pompeo is among members from 15 agencies believed to be attending the conference and may well have been among those onboard the plane, which jetted in via Wellington.

-- A spokeswoman for the Department of Internal Affairs told the Weekend Herald that they were not involved in the visit, which was just as much of a mystery to them as the public.

The spokeswoman said if the highly secretive visit involved a head of state or ex-head of state, the department would typically be involved with organising vehicles and security with police.

I can't tell from the article or a quick google, what is the Department of Internal Affairs exactly?

-- Prime Minister Bill English's office this week confirmed there would be not one, but a number of VIP visitors.

-- It is not known which government ministers are attending the Queenstown conference, however Minister for the Government Communications and Security Bureau (GCSB) and Security Intelligence Service (SIS) Chris Finlayson's is expected to make an appearance.

[Monday 4/24] United States Government plane lands in Queenstown ahead of secret spy conference

-- A United States Government plane has landed in Queenstown early this morning, as a "top-secret" spy conference begins this week.

The plane's registration number is identified on the Planespotters website as belonging to a 15-year-old US Air Force Boeing C-40.

It is not known who was travelling on the plane before its arrival.

-- The conference is believed to be being attended by 15 agencies and a meeting of spying network Five Eyes - the global alliance of the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Intriguing...pun intended. I am a sucker for this kind of stuff. Wonder if anyone dares leak anything. If this reporting is accurate about the nature of this gathering you would have to be a fucking dolt to try and do so. So yeah, I expect some dolt American to do just that. Plus, holy moly, given the people involved the phones/devices at this "conference" are ripe for the picking, plucking, and Surveilling. Good opportunity to catch a bad actor. Or maybe they are just meeting for a week long bird watching expedition.
posted by futz at 12:14 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

He set the standard for un-embarrassable-ness (is that a word?) before Larry David got his first writing gig,
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:15 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Admitting that many more states takes simple majorities. Think bigger.

So the Democrats get simple majorities in both Houses and the Presidency. Then they admit enough states that they have a 3/4 majority and pass whatever amendments they want. States have to have at least 60k people but California can do that for a bunch of little guys! That's brilliantly evil.

I love it. It won't actually work since I believe there is only a mechanism for creating states from new territories and creating a shitton of littler states out of California would probably be successfully challenged in court as not complying somehow but I like the way you think.

The simpler solution is probably hoping all the dumb assholes get old and die before that becomes necessary. Here's hoping.
posted by Justinian at 12:24 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

The simpler solution is probably hoping all the dumb assholes get old and die before that becomes necessary

Youth culture delusion. There are plenty of new dumb assholes to replace them.
posted by thelonius at 12:28 AM on April 24, 2017 [26 favorites]

Youth culture delusion. There are plenty of new dumb assholes to replace them.

Indeed. They are called alt-assholes.
posted by bootlegpop at 12:35 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

I can't tell from the article or a quick google, what is the Department of Internal Affairs exactly?

They are the branch of the public service responsible for citizenship, births, deaths and marriages, and providing policy advice on local government. They don't have anything to do with intelligence services. I think, however, they are usually responsible for organising visits of foreign government representatives, which is probably why the newspaper contacted them for comment in this situation.
posted by lollusc at 12:44 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

One more even that I wasn't aware I still possessed:

TRUMP: No I have, it's interesting, I have, seem to get very high ratings. I definitely. You know Chris Wallace had 9.2 million people, it's the highest in the history of the show. I have all the ratings for all those morning shows. When I go, they go double, triple. Chris Wallace, look back during the Army-Navy football game, I did his show that morning.

AP: I remember, right.

TRUMP: It had 9.2 million people. It's the highest they've ever had. On any, on air, (CBS "Face the Nation" host John) Dickerson had 5.2 million people. It's the highest for "Face the Nation" or as I call it, "Deface the Nation." It's the highest for "Deface the Nation" since the World Trade Center. Since the World Trade Center came down. It's a tremendous advantage.

posted by jaduncan at 1:13 AM on April 24, 2017 [12 favorites]

In a better world, NPR would just start reading his list of things he promised, and indicate, "Met Expectations", "Did Not Meet Expectations" for each one.

In a loop. Like fundraising. Hey. Any NPR folks. I'm good for $100 if you do this.
posted by mikelieman at 1:59 AM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

Trump likes Twin Towers that didn't get knocked do--

shit I can't do it

fuck

fuck this guy
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:27 AM on April 24, 2017 [17 favorites]

Trump likes Twin Towers that didn't get knocked do--

He literally bragged on 9/11 that he now had the tallest building in Lower Manhaatan. Which was of course a lie.
posted by chris24 at 3:56 AM on April 24, 2017 [23 favorites]

In a loop. Like fundraising. Hey. Any NPR folks. I'm good for $100 if you do this.

FML, NPR just gave the Heritage Foundation guy the mic for a few minutes to say that Trump hasn't gotten anything done except maybe roll back Obama's executive orders, which is in theory good for business, but the stock market is still uncertain about the business climate. Trump needs a big win this week. AND he then gave Trump a "B".

Man, do I miss the "Equal Time" rule. The Point-counterpoint format had it's own issues, but it was still better than this.
posted by mikelieman at 4:03 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

White House Facebook link: Tune in today at 10am EDT as President Donald J. Trump calls NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson and congratulates her for breaking the U.S. record for cumulative time in space.

I can only imagine how well this is going to go. After the AP interview, and with the Holocaust statement toady, I feel like our roller coaster is headed up the hill again.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:14 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

NPR mentioned that Ivanka Trump was going to sit in on the call to Astronaut Whitson. At least that's what I thought I heard.
posted by ZeusHumms at 5:57 AM on April 24, 2017

with the Holocaust statement toady

Is this a new White House staff position, or a typo for "today"?
posted by thelonius at 5:59 AM on April 24, 2017 [23 favorites]

I think it's just another way to refer to Spicer.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:06 AM on April 24, 2017 [39 favorites]

Right. Got my postcard for today: To 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We need a President in the White House not a show biz celebrity. Worry about running the country instead of obsessing over your TV ratings.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:25 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Is this a new White House staff position, or a typo for "today"?

Both?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:32 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Youth culture delusion. There are plenty of new dumb assholes to replace them.

A renewable resource!
posted by Meatbomb at 6:34 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

China's president has urged US President Donald Trump to show restraint in dealing with North Korea. Trump also spoke with Japan's premier Shinzo Abe as a US fleet heading to Korean waters trained with Japanese warships.

Because if there's one thing SCROTUS is known for it's restraint.
posted by Talez at 6:35 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

TPM Editorial: Trump: They Were Supposed to Love Me, based on an AP interview with him conducted on Friday 4/21.

One wonders.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:41 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

Philip Bump, WaPo: The farthest place on Earth from the Trump brand? A ghost town on a desert island.

Perhaps your life’s dream is to put as much distance as possible between yourself and a property that bears the president’s last name. […] There is, in fact, the perfect location for those adventurous enough to seek it out: a small island off the coast of Angola that the Voronoi passes directly through. It is called Baia dos Tigres, once a sandy spit of land near the Angola-Namibia border that became an island in the 1960s when a heavy storm washed away the connection to the shore. (The “Tigres” refers to the striped pattern formed by darker and lighter sand.) The storm also washed away the pipeline that was providing the island with fresh water, leaving the small population in the town of São Martinho dos Tigres having to ship in water from the mainland. When civil war broke out in Angola in the 1970s, the town was abandoned.

And now it awaits you.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:53 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Trump Will Provoke a Crisis or Be Humiliated This Week
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:54 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

that's a boolean 'or', too...
posted by thelonius at 8:09 AM on April 24, 2017 [25 favorites]

the way to mangle trumps name that i always want to do (but that I typically refrain from doing) is by referring to him is as "trumps"; plural, lowercase. I don't know why this entertains me — maybe by analogy to how Jon Bois' CLARENCE BEEFTANK character refers to liquids as plurals, so for example he might ask you for a glass of milks.

Also, there's a certain refusal to ascribe agency to Trump involved in calling him trumps. "trumps is doing [x]" makes it seem like he's the collection of entities trying to puppet him, rather than a human competent to operate at the level required for a head of government.

okay also it sounds like a name you'd give a cute (but maybe gassy) puppy, and I'd totally rather think about a gassy puppy than about the united states's decline into bad anarchy incompetently overseen by a senile reality show nazi.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:18 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

TPM Editorial: Trump: They Were Supposed to Love Me, based on an AP interview with him conducted on Friday 4/21.

Sometimes it feels like I am living in the plot of the movie Jodaa Akbar, a film whose last 45 minutes seemed to be entirely devoted to everyone under Akbar's power being forced to eventually admit that he was a great guy and a wonderful ruler. But in that case the movie went to enormous lengths to convince me that he was, in fact, a great guy and a wonderful ruler. It didn't show me a the career of Mussolini and then try to persuade me that he was the best thing ever for Italy.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 8:24 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm dying of curiosity as to why Trump was unintelligible in the AP interview. Is it word salad? Grunting? Slurred speech?
posted by angrycat at 8:27 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm guessing it was just wordless sputtering, Angrycat.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:30 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I like to think of the "unintelligible" as just some running commentary by the editors. Most of those responses were barely comprehensible. If I do a super-duper.
posted by dis_integration at 8:31 AM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]

But hey, at least he's made everything feel like 9/11 all of the time. He can put that on his accomplishments list.
posted by Artw at 8:40 AM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

Please stop typing "SCROTUS", it is confusing because it looks way too close to SCOTUS and I keep thinking you're saying something about the Supreme Court

I'm chuffed to see liberals still floating trial balloons, looking for their very own OBUMMER
posted by beerperson at 8:42 AM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

Obama live stream link (12 noon Eastern, so 17 minutes from now)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:44 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

If we're ever in a situation where something like 20 Californias becomes a plausible plan to the majority of the population, I assure you the mood of the country will be more in favor of something on the hard left than in favor of a weird mishmosh of mostly procedural liberal reforms. People don't get behind "find the most fair solution" when push comes to shove -- when something might start a war.

I guess we just disagree. I can't think of anything more likely to cause civil war than Democrats coming to power by a slim majority and imposing drastic new government controls, like seizing and nationalizing the trucking industry (especially since truckers are a potent symbol of independence and individualism).

Reinstalling a system of objectively fair electoral reforms, after an increasingly disastrous stretch of partisan anti-democratic manipulations, is IMHO the only way such bold changes wouldn't lead to street violence or worse. Even the current power-hungry Republicans are careful to dress their voter suppression strategy as protecting a fair vote against fictional "voter fraud." Doing the right thing matters, at the very least as rhetoric, and the reforms I'm suggesting would be fair in reality too.
posted by msalt at 8:53 AM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

Also, 20 Californians is way too extreme and not supportable by any logic. As I suggested above, 4 Californian states would be about right, giving them each a size and population slightly larger than most states. Add in DC and Puerto Rico, both also entirely reasonable, and you've made a major change that is not blatant Senate packing.

The scenario where this would be possible would be a blatantly manipulative Trump/Bannon regime crashing and burning on its own delusions, which is a very real prospect in the next 4-8 years. Ideally, the Republican party would split between the Leninists and the currently cowed moderates, happy to become the loyal opposition without the current iron discipline imposed by the Koch/Mercer/movement conservatives and their money.
posted by msalt at 9:04 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I am so happy to watch President Obama appearing at the University of Chicago this morning. It matters not at all what he is saying. I feel irrationally hopeful, I know it's irrational and that's fine with me.

/derail. Please return to our regularly scheduled firestorm.
posted by Silverstone at 9:05 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

And yeah, agree to disagree I suppose: I think your mental model for how humans act in our political climate is badly off. Even a narrow defeat of trumpsism by the Democrats will inevitably spark off reaction from the right; a defeat of trumpsism followed by a stunty plan to pack the legislative branch would get the oath keeper types to move from ballot box to ammo box real quick. They will not be fooled by the cover story of "oh, we just want to institute permanent democratic rule to make everything more fair." They'll call you commie anarchists no matter what you do.

I think if politics worked the way you describe, we would be in the middle of the transition from the end of President Lessig's government — his campaign. finance referendum having been passed, he's making good on his promise to resign — and we're all looking forward to hearing our new President Lincoln Chaffee's plans for implementing the metric system.

Politics isn't a nice game in the best of times. It's especially not a nice game now. "20 Californias" should be thrown on the same "bad in theory disastrous in practice" pile with #calexit and similar absurdities.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:09 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

4 californias is just as much of a "formally possible-ish, but politically-materially impossible without war" as 20 Californias. Apologies for enjoying saying "20 Californias" so much, though.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:16 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

AlterNet: Melania Trump Profile Says She’s ‘Frosty’ With Ivanka and ‘Never Had Any Interest’ in First Lady Job, based mostly on a Vanity Fair profile.

"She never wanted this, and never had any interest"
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:18 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

Maybe we should start by getting Republicans to accept the existence of the one California we actually have before we go creating new ones.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:23 AM on April 24, 2017 [32 favorites]

breaking up california and subsequently adding anywhere between 2 to 6 republicans to the senate seems like an odd way to advance democratic objectives but whatevs
posted by entropicamericana at 9:31 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

AlterNet: Melania Trump Profile Says She’s ‘Frosty’ With Ivanka and ‘Never Had Any Interest’ in First Lady Job, based mostly on a Vanity Fair profile.

"She never wanted this, and never had any interest"
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:18 on April 24 [1 favorite +] [!]

I predict that 'Poor Melania' ramps up as Mother's Day approaches.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:32 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

the reforms I'm suggesting would be fair in reality too.

But the political situation we're confronting is that for a large segment of the population, reality no longer matters. The electoral reforms you're suggesting are mathematically fair, and politically just. The republican base just doesn't give a shit about math and they don't give a shit about justice. They've convinced themselves that what's "fair" is whatever allows them to win.

It only takes that 30-40% still holding strong for Trump in unreality-world to cause a massive amount of chaos and violence.

Not that I have a solution to this or anything. But truth and facts don't seem to be working.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 9:32 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Bit of a scare this morning: What is EPA Open Data, and why would it shut down? (PopSci)

On Monday, millions of Americans woke up to a startling surprise: data that was set free would once again be locked away. According to a pop-up that appeared on the EPA Open Data website, its days are numbered—the message stated that the site would cease to exist as of April 28, 2017. It turns out this isn't quite true, but the site isn't exactly safe, either.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:36 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

breaking up california and subsequently adding anywhere between 2 to 6 republicans to the senate seems like an odd way to advance democratic objectives but whatevs

Elon Musk is going to pick up Orange County and drop it in the Central Valley. Why do you think he started The Boring Company? Right now his automated boring drones are carving the Earth ready for a Falcon 9 to pick it up and then land with it. Then we can subdivide LA into three states and the Bay Area into three states, all safe D senators.

THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE. IT ALL MAKES SENSE.
posted by Talez at 9:36 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis Makes Unannounced Trip to Afghanistan. I was unimpressed by these surprise visits under the Bush administration and under the Obama administration, and I'm unimpressed now. We invaded Afghanistan 16 years ago. Not being able to announce a visit up front is an admission we've failed. Time to go.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:42 AM on April 24, 2017 [15 favorites]

Health care for poor people? Only if they behave, Kentucky governor says.
evin’s plan is in fact a benefit cut. Kentucky’s Medicaid program currently includes vision and dental. If you’re eligible for Medicaid in Kentucky, then you’re eligible for coverage of regular tooth checkups and eye exams under state law. Bevincare would “enhance” Medicaid benefits by taking several of them away. You will lose the security of knowing your eye doctor and dentist will see you when you need them, and gain the exciting new opportunity to earn chits toward the cost of those same services. But to accrue those chits, you must live by Bevin’s rules. MyRewards points accumulate based on the enrollee’s participation in job training, health screening, smoking cessation, volunteer, and educational programs, at the rates listed below: ...
Bevin’s behavioral incentives effectively convert his definition of good character into a state-enforced moral code which everyone who can’t afford health insurance must follow — and whose compliance the state must monitor.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:48 AM on April 24, 2017 [36 favorites]

Honestly though, it says a lot about the stabilty of the country that we can have a total crazy person as president, and (so far) I've still got hot water.

Soon with bonus unidentified industrial contaminants!
posted by srboisvert at 9:49 AM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

Glenn Kessler, (WaPo:) Who was the ‘somebody’ who issued a 100-day plan for President Trump?

The Fact Checker will have a full fact-check of various claims made by President Trump in his interview with the Associated Press. But we were especially puzzled by this claim by the president that “somebody” put out the concept of a 100-day plan and that he’s “mostly there on most items.”

Who was that “somebody” who put out the plan?

It was somebody named Donald Trump.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:50 AM on April 24, 2017 [31 favorites]

MyRewards points accumulate based on the enrollee’s participation in job training, health screening, smoking cessation, volunteer, and educational programs

Because the sicker you are, the more inspired and courageous and indefatigable you become, right? I mean, as long as you're morally pure.
posted by contraption at 9:59 AM on April 24, 2017 [22 favorites]

Because what sick people need is job training and volunteer opportunities.
posted by Soliloquy at 10:04 AM on April 24, 2017 [18 favorites]

But to accrue those chits, you must live by Bevin’s rules.

This is totally not Big Government because IOKIYAR.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:13 AM on April 24, 2017 [20 favorites]

But to accrue those chits, you must live by Bevin’s rules.

More proof that for modern Republican leaders, the real treasure is the suffering they caused along the way.
posted by lord_wolf at 10:17 AM on April 24, 2017 [43 favorites]

I remember when the right saw the state dishing out rewards and punishments for adherence to a moral code as the final stage in a Communist Totalitarian Nightmare. Just a couple years ago there was that freak-out about China's "social credit system."
posted by skymt at 10:21 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

Doug Muder with another gem at The Weekly Sift, and relevant to the Future of Democracy discussions in this thread...

Simplifying greatly, so far societies have come up with only three basic types of motivating stories:

-tribalism. Those of us united by blood and soil are in a zero-sum competition with everybody else. Either we dominate them or they’ll dominate us.

-transcendent religion. We worship the universal God who has told us exactly how he wants human beings to live. By adopting our ways and worshiping our God, anyone can join us.

-humanism. We stand for universal values that apply to everyone whether they believe in them or not. Truth is objective and can be found by rational methods available to all. But our understanding of Truth is always open to improvement through exploration and the development of new ideas.

[Muder implies "humanism" motivated Soviet revolutionaries, American liberals, and colonial expansionists... This is not a list of ideologies, it's a list of reasons people are motivated to fight for their ideology.]
...
We have never fully lived by the values we profess. But they continue to be great values, and they deserve a story that explains why.

I see some arguments presented here as essentially tribalist: "Let us do what we must to get what we need for ourselves." (Though it's not clear who "us" is... Socialists? MeFites? The working class? Intellectuals? Democrats? Everyone who isn't a white supremacist or else a Christian dominionist? What unites "us"?)

But to me, the tragedy of the commons means that tribalism dooms us all, including the "winning" tribe. So I don't really want to motivate people with that kind of story.

I think Cory Booker's DNC speech offers an alternative. A deeply powerful progressive narrative that we ought to be shouting from the rooftops. "The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve towards justice, we must bend it."

It's the same message we find in Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech: "In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. [...] That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb."

I'm there, right now. I want to fight, not just for any of the social or economic or political "tribes" I belong to, but for the future of the human race. I'm interested not in winning a war but in ending war and the need for it. I'm not fighting for "us," I'm fighting against the concept of an "us" that is smaller than the whole of humanity. And I think that kind of motivation is plenty powerful, and we can win with that message, if we believe in it.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:21 AM on April 24, 2017 [34 favorites]

Just me, or does this sounds like a sales pitch for war?

Entire U.S. Senate to go to White House for North Korea briefing

Top Trump administration officials will hold a rare briefing on Wednesday at the White House for the entire U.S. Senate on the situation in North Korea, senior Senate aides said on Monday.

All 100 senators have been asked to the White House for the briefing by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the aides said.

While top administration officials routinely travel to Capitol Hill to address members of Congress on foreign policy and national security matters, it is unusual for the entire 100-member Senate to go to such an event at the White House, and for those four top officials to be involved.

U.S. officials have expressed mounting concern over North Korea's nuclear and missile tests, and its threats to attack the United States and its Asian allies.

President Donald Trump criticized North Korea's "continued belligerence" and said its actions were destabilizing during a telephone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday, the White House said.

posted by chris24 at 10:28 AM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

Polling news:

* Typical mid-term stay-at-homers expressing strong interest in voting (WaPo):

In a new survey, taken in the first week of April by Global Strategy Group and Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, Priorities USA found that Democrats who tend to sit home in midterm elections were unusually motivated to turn out in 2018. Fifty-eight percent of “drop-off” voters said they were extremely motivated and enthusiastic about voting in the 2018 elections, rating their interest as nine or 10 on a 10-point scale. An additional 22 percent of the voters were “somewhat” motivated to turn out.

===

* Dems excited about voting in 2018 (PPP):

Democrats lead the generic Congressional ballot 47-41. But what's more notable is the enthusiasm imbalance. 63% of Democrats say they're 'very excited' about voting in the 2018 election, compared to only 52% of Republicans who express that sentiment. When you look at the 2018 House picture just among the voters most excited about turning out next year, the lead for Democrats grows to 19 points at 57-38. Republican leaning voters are comparatively disengaged, with the GOP holding advantages only among voters who are 'somewhat excited' (48-40) and 'not that excited' (46-31).

and, Obamacare faves continue to climb:

We find 47% support for it on this poll, but more notable than that we find the
level of opposition to it down to only 31%. Even among Republican voters there's now barely a majority- 51%- that expresses opposition to the ACA. Just 30% of voters want to repeal it, compared to 62% who say the best path forward is to keep what works in it and fix what doesn't.

posted by Chrysostom at 10:28 AM on April 24, 2017 [19 favorites]

From yesterday: We'll ignore, for the moment, the fact that he pivots to complaining about the press. Think about what he said there. He's outright saying that he learned that the President has to care about other people, whereas that was a liability in business (see also: everything about how he ran his business). And that the fact that the President is expected to have a heart was some kind of a surprise to him.

Yet many of Trump's voters -- at least the ones NPRs interviews on what seems like a daily basis -- say they did so because they feel Trump cared about their problems.
posted by Gelatin at 10:29 AM on April 24, 2017 [10 favorites]

they feel Trump cared about their problems.

Because he railed against the people they blame for their problems.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:35 AM on April 24, 2017 [29 favorites]

Just me, or does this sounds like a sales pitch for war?

Entire U.S. Senate to go to White House for North Korea briefing

Sounds more like a bullshit power move to me.

"Oh, those Senators think they're so important? I'm going to summon them to my presence and then have my underlings talk at them. That'll show them who's really in charge."
posted by Etrigan at 10:36 AM on April 24, 2017 [32 favorites]

I wonder how many Dem senators will just say fuck off, if you want to talk to all of us come to the Hill?
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:38 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

You have more optimism than me, OHenryPacey. I wish they would stand up for themselves and say no, but I'm doubtful.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:40 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

Is this like the dinner with SCOTUS where they're announcing a thing without knowing if anyone is actually coming
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:41 AM on April 24, 2017 [12 favorites]

I wonder how many Dem senators will just say fuck off, if you want to talk to all of us come to the Hill?

Every Democrat should open every remark for the next week with "I'd love to speak with Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis, Director Coats, and Chairman Dunford. Here's my Senate office number. I'll invite a bunch of my friends to come by too."
posted by Etrigan at 10:42 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

People thought Trump cared about their problems because they projected onto him what they wanted to believe. He was the Republican candidate, and he said the right (wrong) things about women and non-white people. Obviously that meant he was on their side.
posted by tocts at 10:45 AM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

NPR just gave the Heritage Foundation guy the mic for a few minutes to say that Trump hasn't gotten anything done except maybe roll back Obama's executive orders, which is in theory good for business, but the stock market is still uncertain about the business climate. Trump needs a big win this week. AND he then gave Trump a "B".

Well, that's only fair. During Obama's presidency NPR also brought on conservative commentators to provide their opinions.
posted by Gelatin at 10:46 AM on April 24, 2017 [12 favorites]

The biggest sign that the White House is determined to put on a new face to make people think the first 100 days have been going great: Spicey time actually started on time.
posted by zachlipton at 10:47 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I mean, if I was a Kentuckian, I would take offense because maybe he thought my "unique needs" were that I was an irresponsible pitiful excuse for a human being that didn't deserve healthcare because I was too stupid to eat anything but junk and probably deserved to die unless I could prove otherwise.

Because that's basically what he's saying.
posted by emjaybee at 10:47 AM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

Trump calls NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson, discusses timing of a manned Mars mission:
“Well, I think we want to do it in my first term or at worst in my second term,” Trump said, “so I think we’ll have to speed that up a little bit.”
Trump's proposed budget cuts $200m from NASA, including ending the Europa landing, asteroid redirect mission, several climate change programs, and its education program. But he wants to move up a manned Mars landing from his own previously announced target of 2033 by about twelve years.

He seriously thinks it's possible to plan and complete a manned mission to Mars within three years.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 10:54 AM on April 24, 2017 [40 favorites]

Greg Nog: Kentuckians do not have any "unique" needs. We have the same needs as the rest of Americans. We need healthcare. We need medical care and dental care. It's that simple.

Any state-level overly-complex plan that doesn't promise simple, straightforward healthcare with strength of the federal government backing that promise is a song-and-dance to distract us while poor people die.

I hope someone from the Kentucky and national Democratic Party is reading this thread, because that's a killer ad, right there.
posted by Gelatin at 10:56 AM on April 24, 2017 [19 favorites]

Spicey time actually started on time.

"We're making big progress on punctuality. Yuge progress. No other administration has ever been so punctual."
posted by kirkaracha at 11:00 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

T.D. Strange: "“This is going to be high-stakes poker,” the White House official said. When I asked if a shutdown was likely, the official paused for several seconds. “I don’t know,” the official said. The official added, “I just want my wall and my ice agents.”

Stephen Miller thinks he's the President now. Hell, he might as well be given Trump's level of comprehension about anything."

I just want to return briefly to this New Yorker article that came out last Friday. I know it's madness (like, what else is new?) but I really don't think this is Stephen Miller here -- it's Trump. It's 100% Trump. The New Yorker knows what they're doing. They're quoting him verbatim to make it very clear who the anonymous "top White House official" in that piece is. These are all of the quotes attributed to that top White House official:

• “Next week is going to have quite high drama,”
• “It’s going to be action-packed. This one is not getting as much attention, but, trust me, it’s going to be the battle of the titans. And the great irony here is that the call for the government shutdown will come on—guess what?—the hundredth day. If you pitched this in a studio, they would say, ‘Get out of here, it’s too ridiculous.’ This is going to be a big one.”
• “There’s a big spread between the bid and the ask here,”
• “This is going to be high-stakes poker,”
• “I don’t know,”
• “I just want my wall and my ICE agents.”

The second and last quotes are really the ones that pin it. And, of course, for Trump, this probably seems perfectly normal to him since I seem to recall reading that he would often give anonymous quotes about himself to various tabloids, especially when he was going through his divorces.
posted by mhum at 11:01 AM on April 24, 2017 [47 favorites]

“Well, I think we want to do it in my first term or at worst in my second term,” Trump said ...

Give him marks for a little insight if he expects his second term to be the worst.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:06 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Obama’s Barrage of Complete Sentences Seen as Brutal Attack on Trump

In an appearance at the University of Chicago on Monday, former President Barack Obama unloaded a relentless barrage of complete sentences in what was widely seen as a brutal attack on his successor, Donald Trump.

Appearing at his first public event since leaving office, Obama fired off a punishing fusillade of grammatically correct sentences, the likes of which the American people have not heard from the White House since he departed.

posted by kirkaracha at 11:12 AM on April 24, 2017 [88 favorites]

Jim Acosta: "Why is there even discussion about shutting down the government to pay for the wall? Isn't Mexico supposed to be paying for the wall?"

Spicer: we're not shutting down the government and the President will keep his promise.
posted by zachlipton at 11:12 AM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]

Which promise? The one he actually spoke, or the one he just now retroactively made up in his head?
posted by mrgoat at 11:16 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

He seriously thinks it's possible to plan and complete a manned mission to Mars within three years.

It could be done, if we didn't get bogged down in the details like life support systems on the rocket or the return trip. Or training an astronaut to do the job; I say we get a celebrity for it. Someone with power. Someone who would make a tremendous splash in the media. Definitely an older white male businessman-type, because it would be the ultimate publicity stunt. Yuge!
posted by Soliloquy at 11:19 AM on April 24, 2017 [25 favorites]

And we'll make the Martians pay for it, too.
posted by uosuaq at 11:19 AM on April 24, 2017 [42 favorites]

>Appearing at his first public event since leaving office, Obama fired off a punishing fusillade of grammatically correct sentences, the likes of which the American people have not heard from the White House since he departed.

Just catching up after a long weekend, and I literally teared up at the links posted above about Obama's visits to Walter Reed. I mean, I knew about those, and I even read an article (that very article?) about Obama's quiet, private, Purple Heart ceremonies, back when he was President.

I just wasn't prepared for how much I'd miss that level of ... compassion, competence, coherence, you name it.

Meanwhile, I see that the garbage fire continues unabated, but no one has been nuked.

Yet.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:20 AM on April 24, 2017 [10 favorites]

He seriously thinks it's possible to plan and complete a manned mission to Mars within three years.

Great! Let's just send him, his whole cabinet and all of the GOP as the first occupants.
posted by yoga at 11:28 AM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

Give him marks for a little insight if he expects his second term to be the worst.

Trump gets no marks for insight at all if he expects to have a second term.
posted by Gelatin at 11:30 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

From T.D. Strange's link to Brian Beutler's Trump Will Provoke a Crisis or Be Humiliated This Week:

The White House has offered to pay out the subsidies only if the bill also funds the border wall. If Trump gets what he wants, everyone will be fine; if Trump doesn’t get what he wants, he will take insurance away from millions—and the government might shut down! Defeat me, he intones darkly, and I will pants myself. This only makes sense as a shakedown if we assume Trump has badly miscalculated the politics—but if he’s miscalculated the politics, he presumably thinks he has a much stronger hand than he does. This is how a shutdown that most Republicans don’t want, and an insurance market collapse that most Republicans also don’t want, might happen on a Republican president’s watch. Indeed, at his direction.

There ought to be some kind of medal for writing "Defeat me, he intones darkly, and I will pants myself." If that doesn't sum up everything.
posted by zachlipton at 11:34 AM on April 24, 2017 [46 favorites]

Obligatory Dan Savage link.

And from his Instagram:
This morning I had the distinct pleasure of mailing off checks to Planned Parenthood ($33,333.34), the ACLU ($33,333.33) and the International Refugee Assistance Project ($33,333.33)—money we raised selling ITMFA ("Impeach The Mother Fucker Already") buttons, t-shirts, hats, stickers, coffee cups, and lapel pins at www.ITMFA.org and www.impeachthemotherfuckeralready.com. And I got to mail those checks out because nearly 10,000 Savage Love readers and Savage Lovecast listeners have ordered #ITMFA gear over the last eight weeks!
posted by yoga at 11:35 AM on April 24, 2017 [30 favorites]

Scott Lemieux, "Working the Refs Works:

Republicans attack the media and people who opposed their interests no matter what; Democrats are often timorous about criticizing both the press and people like Comey even when it’s eminently justified. The incentives this creates are predictable and, in 2016, disastrous.

The idea that Democrats shouldn’t criticize the media’s awful coverage of the 2016 election or Comey’s indefensible election tampering even though doing so is both politically useful and clearly correct on the merits because it would interfere with discussions of how someone who will never run for president again sucks is, in other words, absolutely insane.

Notice also that none of the Republicans' actual behavior indicates they believe any such thing as a "liberal media" really exists.
posted by Gelatin at 11:38 AM on April 24, 2017 [21 favorites]

The State Department has a new spokesperson, former Fox and Friends host Heather Nauert. Maybe Tillerson is trying to get his boss's attention.
posted by peeedro at 11:41 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

‘I miss having a human president’: The internet welcomes back Obama and his ‘intelligible words’
posted by homunculus at 11:44 AM on April 24, 2017 [22 favorites]

Tillerson actually doing anything seems fantastically unlikely.
posted by Artw at 11:45 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Great! Let's just send him, his whole cabinet and all of the GOP as the first occupants.

"Forget being president of a country, you could be president of a whole planet! And Obama wouldn't do it. We offered it to him but he didn't have the stones."
posted by kirkaracha at 11:47 AM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

The 100 Days: Who Can Stop an Unfit President*? Troubling signs in Trump's Associated Press interview.
posted by homunculus at 11:48 AM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

Senate Russia probe flounders amid partisan bickering

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking minority member on the panel, has repeatedly said the Russia investigation “may very well be the most important thing I do in my public life.” And until now, Warner has sought to project an appearance of bipartisan unity with Burr, portraying the probe as a methodical inquiry that will follow the facts wherever they lead.

But Warner’s handling of the probe has led to grumbling among some of his Democratic colleagues that he has been too reluctant to challenge Burr and press for more aggressive action — for fear of undercutting the perception that he and the Republican chairman are working cooperatively together. “He’s been afraid to even bring up the S-word,” said one source familiar with the details of the investigation, referring to the panel’s authority to issue subpoenas for documents.
posted by futz at 11:48 AM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

Anti-Semitic incidents rose a whopping 86% in the first 3 months of 2017
posted by futz at 11:51 AM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

WSJ: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%:

President Donald Trump has ordered White House aides to accelerate efforts to draft a tax plan slashing the corporate rate to 15% and prioritizing cuts in tax rates over an attempt to not increase the deficit, according to a person familiar with the directive.

During a meeting inside the Oval Office last week, Mr. Trump told staff he wants a massive tax cut to sell to the American people, the person said. It was less important to him if the plan loses revenue. Mr. Trump told his team to “get it done,” in time to release a plan by Wednesday.

Cut taxes for corporations, don't bother figuring out how to pay for it. Great. It's interesting because Pew just put out a study on people's frustrations with the federal tax system. The #1 complaint: "some corporations don't pay their fair share," followed closely by "some wealthy people don't pay their fair share." In comparison, people were far less bothered by the amount they pay in taxes personally. So naturally, Trump's tax plan will be all about doing exactly the opposite.

Bonus absurdity: @KellyO: At WH, @realDonaldTrump asks UN Security Council reps "Does everybody like Nikki? Good, otherwise she could be easily be replaced."

In other news, the State Department is literally promoting Mar-a-Lago on a government website.

Finally, Senate Russia probe flounders amid partisan bickering. Sen. Burr is refusing to sign letters to request any evidence from the Trump campaign. This entire investigation is a sham, and Senate Democrats are too chickenshit to stand up and say so.
posted by zachlipton at 11:54 AM on April 24, 2017 [54 favorites]

Senate Russia probe flounders amid partisan bickering

How vexing it is to read that the "partisan bickering" is among Democrats who disagree with the ranking member's inexplicable decision to help the Republicans' partisan soft-pedaling the investigation.
posted by Gelatin at 11:55 AM on April 24, 2017 [21 favorites]

This entire investigation is a sham, and Senate Democrats are too chickenshit to stand up and say so.

This is one of the few times recently that being in California and calling senators feels more productive than just chiming in with 'keep up the good work', since both Feinstein and Harris are on the committee, pushing them to make a stink about the stalling might actually accomplish something.
posted by TwoWordReview at 12:04 PM on April 24, 2017 [24 favorites]

Politico: Trump dinner with Supreme Court justices postponed

Another White House official said the dinner had been tentatively set on the president's schedule, but should have been removed before the weekly outlook was shared with reporters over the weekend.

"There were preliminary discussions at a staff level, but no invitation was extended or accepted," the second Trump aide said.

How damn clueless do you have to be to publicly announce a dinner with the Supreme Court before you've actually invited, well, the Supreme Court?
posted by zachlipton at 12:07 PM on April 24, 2017 [21 favorites]

Consumerist: 21 Attorneys General Call Out Education Secretary DeVos For Removing Student Loan Protections

“The guidance revoked by the Department was expressly designed to protect borrowers and correct pervasive student loan servicing failures that harm student loan borrowers and their families,” the letter states. “By revoking these critical protections, the Department has abdicated its responsibility to student loan borrowers.”

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:13 PM on April 24, 2017 [36 favorites]

"I also want to say to you that I have long felt that the United Nations is an underperformer, but has tremendous potential,” Trump said, according to the press pool that was ushered into the White House’s state dining room for the beginning of his working lunch with the Security Council ambassadors. “We must also take a close look at the U.N. budget. Costs have absolutely gone out of control."

“I want to thank Ambassador Nikki Haley for her outstanding leadership and for acting as my personal envoy on the Security Council. She is doing a good job. Now, does everybody like Nikki?” Trump said. “Otherwise she could be easily replaced, right? No, we won't do that. I promise you we won’t do that. She’s doing a fantastic job.”

This is so embarrassing for our country. He spent today hectoring ambassadors to the UN Security Council.
posted by winna at 12:17 PM on April 24, 2017 [14 favorites]

CNBC says LePen just stepped down as leader of National Front Party?
posted by emjaybee at 12:19 PM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]

“I want to thank Ambassador Nikki Haley for her outstanding leadership and for acting as my personal envoy on the Security Council. She is doing a good job. Now, does everybody like Nikki?” Trump said. “Otherwise she could be easily replaced, right? No, we won't do that. I promise you we won’t do that. She’s doing a fantastic job.”

Sounds like someone was getting some good press and had to be reminded of her place.
posted by Etrigan at 12:19 PM on April 24, 2017 [18 favorites]

Daniel Dale continues to do the Lord's work. God, look at that stupid photo; Trump probably spent at least an hour practicing his Serious Face and decided that weird fingertips-on-the-desk stance projected "READY TO SPRING INTO DECISIVE ACTION" instead of "I EXPERIENCE CHRONIC BACK PAIN AND HAVE TROUBLE STANDING UP STRAIGHT."
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:20 PM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Cut taxes for corporations, don't bother figuring out how to pay for it.

Oh, don't worry, they've got ideas that, naturally, involve screwing the working class over.
posted by azpenguin at 12:24 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

The Daniel Dale article explains that [unintelligible] comment we were puzzled about earlier: "Sixteen times during the interview, the AP recorded a Trump remark as “unintelligible,” a notation that is highly unusual for a one-on-one interview in a silent setting like the Oval Office.

Pace explained to the Star that one of Trump’s aides, who did not want his or her comments included in the transcript, kept talking at the same time as him. This is itself highly unusual."

So basically his puppetmaster was talking, trying to get President Mynah Bird to say the right gibberish. We really need to know who that was and their remarks should be in the transcript too.
posted by winna at 12:28 PM on April 24, 2017 [53 favorites]

CNBC says LePen just stepped down as leader of National Front Party?

BBC reports the same.

I guess it's some weird attempt to pretend that she's not a far-right candidate?

"'This evening I decided to take my leave of the presidency of the National Front,' she told TV channel France 2.

"'I will be above partisan considerations.'
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:28 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

CNBC says LePen Le Pen
posted by Mister Bijou at 12:28 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

"Now, does everybody like Nikki?” Trump said. “Otherwise she could be easily replaced, right?"

Can we just declare the United States a hostile work environment and sue it under Title VII
posted by theodolite at 12:29 PM on April 24, 2017 [38 favorites]

"'I will be above partisan considerations.'"

I.e., "I'm getting desperate for you to forget who I actually am and what I actually stand for, because that's the only way I have even a snowball's chance in hell of getting a majority of the vote."
posted by darkstar at 12:33 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

CNBC says LePen just stepped down as leader of National Front Party?

Le Monde is reporting this as well.
posted by Heretic at 12:38 PM on April 24, 2017

Ivanka Trump faces skeptical audience in Berlin : “The Germans are as bemused as everybody else is, in attempting to navigate how this White House manages its official relationships,” said Constanze Stelzenmuller, an expert on German policy and politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

But knowing how heavily the president relies on his family members as top West Wing advisers, Stelzenmuller said, “it seems obvious that you would engage Ivanka Trump. Merkel is saying, ‘This is the hand I’ve been dealt, and this looks promising.’”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:46 PM on April 24, 2017

CNBC says LePen just stepped down as leader of National Front Party?

Shortly afterward, Le Pen announced the founding of The National Bocialist Party
[fake]
posted by murphy slaw at 12:47 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

"'This evening I decided to take my leave of the presidency of the National Front,' she told TV channel France 2.

"'I will be above partisan considerations.'

Dying


So what happens if she wins the presidency? Does she just pop back into her party with a 'just kidding'? Is she a powerless president with no constituency?
posted by Existential Dread at 12:50 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

If she loses, does she lose all support on both sides?

oh please oh please oh please
posted by Existential Dread at 12:51 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

So basically his puppetmaster was talking, trying to get President Mynah Bird to say the right gibberish. We really need to know who that was and their remarks should be in the transcript too.

He can't be left alone. Because he has dementia.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:53 PM on April 24, 2017 [37 favorites]

From the Le Monde link:

"Asked if there are any ongoing contacts with members of the Republican party, Marine Le Pen insists that "yes, there are contacts in progress".

I think it's all about that.
posted by walrus at 12:54 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

State Dept. blog promotes Trump's Mar-a-Lago, prompting ethics concerns: President Donald Trump personally owns Mar-a-Lago, his private club on Florida's eastern coast. But that didn't stop the State Department, in a blog post on the United States Embassy in London's website, from touting the property.

In a markedly promotional blog post from April 5 that could eventually benefit the President's bottom line, should it spur membership or foreign visits, the embassy writes that the property has "become well known as the President frequently travels there to work or host foreign leaders."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:04 PM on April 24, 2017 [14 favorites]

Washington Post: Trump to issue new order calling into question two decades of national monument designations

...

This sounds like another executive order that will say much and do little, but maybe Trump is planning on upending nearly several decades of settled precedent?

He probably cares more that he has something to show for his first 100 days.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:11 PM on April 24, 2017

This sounds like another executive order that will say much and do little, but maybe Trump is planning on upending nearly several decades of settled precedent?

Trump Is Writing Fake Executive Orders Because He Doesn’t Know How to Be President

This one is a bone to the Cliven Bundy/Orrin Hatch wing of the Republican party, the Koch backed interests funding sovereign citizen groups and arguments to coerce the federal government to sell off vast areas of land for exploitation. Designating land as a national monument makes that infinitely harder. The order might do nothing, but playing footsie with domestic terrorist groups like the Bundys is dangerous regardless.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:14 PM on April 24, 2017 [29 favorites]

He seriously thinks it's possible to plan and complete a manned mission to Mars within three years.

According to the Cosmic Train Schedule [real] , he better get Congress to appropriate some money real-fucking-fast if he wants to make it...

Departing Earth         Arriving Mars 	
4 	30 	2018 	1 	15 	2019
6 	18 	2020 	3 	4 	2021
8 	7 	2022 	4 	22 	2023

posted by mikelieman at 1:14 PM on April 24, 2017 [16 favorites]

Le Pen renounced her party leadership, not membership. She's still running as the candidate for Front National.
posted by theodolite at 1:16 PM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

In the spirit of trying to think positively and constructively about the future (which I have told myself that I need to do more of, rather than wallowing in the morass that is Trumplandia), I am focusing more and more on folks like Jon Ossoff and Ted Lieu.

All of these folks seem interesting, and poised for future success at higher levels of government.

One more I'd add to the list is Jason Kander: Georgetown Law, former US Army Intelligence Captain, former Missouri State Rep, former Missouri Secretary of State, current leader of "Let America Vote", an organization dedicated to ending voter suppression and gerrymandering. You probably remember Kander as the Dem who ran for Senate against the incumbent Roy Blunt in a red state and came within 3% of winning (and in doing so, garnered about 1.3 million votes). He's also not bad at making an impression (youtube link).

Considering how Barack Obama went from relatively unknown outside of Chicago to winning the Presidency within a few years, and given how ready the U.S. in 2020 will be to unseat an unpopular Trump, I'm happy that we have a deep bench of exciting new prospects - of different gender and ethnicity - rising through the channels. Now we just have to make sure they get the attention and resources to succeed.
posted by darkstar at 1:16 PM on April 24, 2017 [26 favorites]

Of Course Donald Trump Jr. Spent Earth Day Shooting Prairie Dogs

Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of the President of the United States of America, spent Earth Day on Saturday shooting bullets at prairie dogs, which is listed as a "species of concern" for endangerment.

Trump Jr. spent the weekend in Montana with Republican candidate for the U.S. House Greg Gianforte, who said of the trip: "As good Montanans, we want to show good hospitality to people. What can be more fun than to spend an afternoon shooting the little rodents."

It is not illegal to hunt prairie dogs, but it's also not exactly ethical, the Humane Society told ABC Fox Montana. Besides, just look at how adorable these little critters are.

Now is also an especially inopportune time to hunt prairie dogs, as they are currently in the middle of their breeding season.
posted by futz at 1:20 PM on April 24, 2017 [29 favorites]

I would love a Kander/Buttigieg ticket.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:22 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

fucking Ramsay Bolton Trump here. Jesus.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:24 PM on April 24, 2017 [17 favorites]

Dear Conquering Aliens:

Now would be a good time.
posted by emjaybee at 1:25 PM on April 24, 2017 [19 favorites]

If aliens come looking for someone to abrupt and hunt as big game in a Twilight Zone type setup...
posted by Artw at 1:26 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Predators vs. Aliens Oligarchs
posted by Existential Dread at 1:27 PM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

prairie dogs are a prime reservoir for yersinia pestis, the black plague bacillus.
would be a damn shame if the First Jagoff paid for his fun with some buboes.
posted by murphy slaw at 1:27 PM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

All of these folks seem interesting, and poised for future success at higher levels of government.

Well, that list still has Tulsi Gabbard on it, probably should scratch her off.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:31 PM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

"I made these by googling "participation certificate maker" and there's lots of sites with different templates in case you too want to send Trump the recognition he deserves for his 100 days in office."

I love this idea, I think we should all do it, and I also found an award for counting to 100.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:43 PM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

Also, Jason Kander's uncle is John Fucking Kander, as in half of Kander and Ebb, as in "the songwriters for Cabaret and Chicago," so the musical performances at his inauguration would be amazing.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:45 PM on April 24, 2017 [26 favorites]

Pelosi and Perez should probably get on the same page re: abortion. Pelosi was on Meet the Press saying that of course you can be pro-life and a Democrat at the same time.

I suppose both Pelosi and Perez can be right if one was speaking about is and the other about ought. Pelosi is correct that there are pro-life Democrats and Perez is right that the position of the Democratic party is and should remain officially pro-choice.
posted by Justinian at 1:56 PM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

Gorka Storms Out Of Georgetown Panel After Tough Student Questions
After a total of five students directed questions at him, Gorka departed, saying he wanted to give the rest of the panelists an opportunity to talk.
“He just stood up and walked out,” Meshnick said. “He was sitting in the middle of the panel and there was no evidence he was supposed to leave early. It was clear he was uncomfortable. He was huffing and puffing and just very angry.”

Sounds like this Alpha Male was out of his safe space.
posted by PenDevil at 1:58 PM on April 24, 2017 [74 favorites]

Obama’s hidden Iran deal giveaway

By dropping charges against major arms targets, the administration infuriated Justice Department officials — and undermined its own counterproliferation task forces.

When federal prosecutors and agents learned the true extent of the releases, many were shocked and angry. Some had spent years, if not decades, working to penetrate the global proliferation networks that allowed Iranian arms traders both to obtain crucial materials for Tehran’s illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs and, in some cases, to provide dangerous materials to other countries.

“They didn’t just dismiss a bunch of innocent business guys,” said one former federal law enforcement supervisor centrally involved in the hunt for Iranian arms traffickers and nuclear smugglers. “And then they didn’t give a full story of it.”

These really were some bad dudes they released.
posted by futz at 1:59 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Obama’s hidden Iran deal giveaway

Interesting that the article came out today. Coincidence?
posted by futz at 2:01 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

It really pleases me that Gorka's despicable nature is becoming largely known.
posted by angrycat at 2:06 PM on April 24, 2017 [14 favorites]

Glenn Kessler, (WaPo:) Who was the ‘somebody’ who issued a 100-day plan for President Trump?

Sure Trump said it. But it was somebody else's idea for him to say it so it doesn't count. No he doesn't remember who, probably just someone who works for him.
posted by scalefree at 2:19 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Surely this is a job for a Meredith.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 2:21 PM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]

Sure Trump said it. But it was somebody else's idea for him to say it so it doesn't count. No he doesn't remember who, probably just someone who works for him.

Oh my, is it time for the return of. . . MEREDITH!
posted by Kitty Stardust at 2:22 PM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

> State Dept. blog promotes Trump's Mar-a-Lago, prompting ethics concerns

And along with the obvious ethics issues of using federal resources to promote a Trump holding, that fucking State Dept page uses the header "A Dream Deferred" to tell the story of how the Marjorie Merriweather-Post, the heiress of the Post cereal fortune, bequeathed her Mar-a-Lago estate to the US gov't with the intention that Presidents would entertain foreign dignitaries there. This never happened while the gov't owned it, and the gov't finally sold it in 1981 b/c it was too costly to maintain. Eventually Trump bought it, and -- as the State Dept puts it -- "Post’s dream of a winter White House came true with Trump’s election in 2016." How delightful!

That's right: a wealthy white heiress' desire to have extravagant parties for foreign luminaries thrown at her massive, unsustainable estate was the dream deferred.
posted by Westringia F. at 2:24 PM on April 24, 2017 [60 favorites]

It really pleases me that Gorka's despicable nature is becoming largely known.

lol. Who knew Universities had WiFi on campus?
posted by mikelieman at 2:29 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

If we hadn't fired all those NEA nerds maybe we'd know what happens to a dream deferred. Ah well
posted by theodolite at 2:29 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

That's right: a wealthy white heiress' desire to have extravagant parties for foreign luminaries thrown at her massive, unsustainable estate was the dream deferred.

Why stop at that?

I’ve known golf courses:
I’ve known golf courses ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the golf courses.

I made par at Pebble Beach when dawns were young.
I fired a caddy at St. Andrews and it lulled me to sleep.....
posted by thelonius at 2:37 PM on April 24, 2017 [14 favorites]

If a key moment in your first 100 days is "a photo op with senators" I would suggest you just do away with the bar entirely, because surely it can't be lowered any further.
posted by supercrayon at 2:38 PM on April 24, 2017 [23 favorites]

Just logistically, where the hell do all 100 Senators and their staff sit in the White House while Trump stumbles though what should be a pretty technical briefing about North Korean intelligence, if he weren't a complete vegetable with a 100 word vocabulary? Even the East Room is going to be a tight fit. He wants the whole Senate to cram in on patio chairs?
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:42 PM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

No no, he meant The Southern White House. Of course, anyone who's not a Mar a Lago member is gonna have to cough up some dough...
posted by Existential Dread at 2:44 PM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Tiny but significant norm-eroding “tell”: official State Dept release refers to "Democrat” party, a Gingrich-Limbaugh intentional diss
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:46 PM on April 24, 2017 [40 favorites]

Roey Hadar, a senior at Georgetown, told TPM that he asked Gorka if he believed “harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric in the media and in government” fueled extremism and legitimized groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Gorka replied that Hadar was “committing cultural appropriation and arrogance,” according to Hadar’s account and those of several journalists present.

What does this even mean?
posted by orrnyereg at 2:49 PM on April 24, 2017 [18 favorites]

Just logistically, where the hell do all 100 Senators and their staff sit in the White House

Sometimes meeting at the White House is shorthand for the White House grounds which include the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the New Executive Office Building. Just like when senators meet at the Capitol, that could mean the Capitol building itself or one of the three Senate office buildings.
posted by peeedro at 2:52 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I suppose both Pelosi and Perez can be right if one was speaking about is and the other about ought. Pelosi is correct that there are pro-life Democrats and Perez is right that the position of the Democratic party is and should remain officially pro-choice.

Yeah, I think the Pelosi thing is being blown all out of proportion. Of course there are pro-life Democrats - just like there are anti-gay Democrats and pro-gun Democrats - but that doesn't mean that the party is going to change its positions to attract or satisfy those people. There's no rule saying that you have to personally believe everything in the party platform in order to be a card-carrying Democrat.

But yes, the Democratic party, as a whole, is pro-choice and supports pro-choice policies. Most of the party membership agrees with this, and some do not but continue to be Democrats. I think people just love to hate Pelosi for some reason.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 2:59 PM on April 24, 2017 [18 favorites]

"some reason" isn't a mystery there. Pelosi's a woman, and a party insider, and Fox has been running hit pieces on her for what, a decade? More?
posted by Archelaus at 3:01 PM on April 24, 2017 [11 favorites]

> Yeah, I think the Pelosi thing is being blown all out of proportion.

The press has had an insatiable hunger for "DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY" stories for decades, and the 2016 primary followed by their loss to Trump has only made it worse. Any shred of evidence that can be squinted at for a story about divisions within the Democratic ranks will be seized upon to get those sweet, sweet clicks. Meanwhile, POTUS45 can't form complete sentences, and has been in open warfare with his own party.

In conclusion, both sides are lands of contrasts.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:05 PM on April 24, 2017 [15 favorites]

If, if Abe Lincoln came back to life, he would lose New York and he would lose California

Abraham Lincoln won California and New York in the 1860 and 1864 elections.

1) I think reanimated Lincoln would've won handily in 2016.
2) I know he means Lincoln would lose as a Republican, but Lincoln would never get the nomination in today's Republican Party.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:06 PM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

Trump Holocaust Remembrance speech uses same wording as Holocaust Museum website

Head Desk
posted by futz at 3:15 PM on April 24, 2017 [45 favorites]

Just imagine the insults Trump would have hurled at Abraham Lincoln as his primary opponent.

Stinkin' Lincoln! Stinkin' Lincoln!

Dirty Douglas! Dirty Douglas!
posted by mazola at 3:16 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Meredith!
posted by zachlipton at 3:17 PM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

trump would die of hand envy
posted by ryanrs at 3:24 PM on April 24, 2017 [10 favorites]

Well, we've seen what happens when he tries to talk about it in his own words.
posted by NMcCoy at 3:33 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

Marjorie Merriweather-Post, the heiress of the Post cereal fortune, bequeathed her Mar-a-Lago estate to the US gov't with the intention that Presidents would entertain foreign dignitaries there.

you think that's awful, you should see what postumville looks like now

i had a girlfriend on marjorie street ...
posted by pyramid termite at 3:37 PM on April 24, 2017

Yeah, as much "fun" as it would be to have him write his own Holocaust memorial speech, we don't need any more of that kind of painful gaffe. In this instance he can stand on the shoulders of his betters if it means getting it right.
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:51 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

In this instance he can stand on the shoulders of his betters

So on the shoulders of pretty much anyone then.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:54 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Speaking of the Bundys - Judge declares mistrial in Bundy Ranch standoff case
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:56 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

While looking up insults and bromides against Lincoln, thanks to the comments above, I ran into a few which are perfect for practically anything the current Republican president utters (or tweets):

“involved, coarse, colloquial, devoid of ease and grace, and bristling with obscurities and outrages against the simplest rules of syntax.”

or

“We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them, and they shall be no more repeated or thought of.”

or, or

“We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln Trump could produce a paper so slip-shod, so loose-jointed, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp.”
posted by honestcoyote at 4:05 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Speaking of the Bundys - Judge declares mistrial in Bundy Ranch standoff case

Yow, from the article, regarding convictions which stand:

Gregory Burleson, an active member of Arizona militia groups who used to be a paid FBI informant, and Todd Engel, an Idaho resident, both were convicted of obstruction of justice and interstate travel in aid of extortion. Burleson also was found guilty of assault on a federal officer, threatening a federal law enforcement officer, interference with interstate commerce by extortion, and multiple firearms charges.

Burleson faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 57 years. Engel faces roughly 20 years.

posted by Existential Dread at 4:34 PM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

The State Department delete the tweet pimping Mar-a-Largo. Maybe someone read 5 CFR 2635.702 and realized it can be applied to regular employees, not just the Trump family.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:09 PM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

Yow, from the article, regarding convictions which stand: [57 years and 20 years]

On the other hand, if they were black they would have been executed on the spot.
posted by ryanrs at 5:16 PM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

4 californias is just as much of a "formally possible-ish, but politically-materially impossible without war" as 20 Californias.

Not sure why. Didn't we determine earlier that new states just require a simple majority in Congress, plus -- in this case -- consent of the state involved? A ton of new political opportunities for California politicians would probably have huge support in the Cali legislature.
posted by msalt at 5:31 PM on April 24, 2017

Again, you are talking in terms of formal law. I am talking in terms of the material situation. Breaking up voltron-california into its component parts in order to lock down a democratic majority would result in widespread resistance from the entire right, even if you pretty please promised to never do anything with the power other than set fair rules. maybe especially if you pretty please promised that, since it would come off disingenuous.

Your plan is naïve, and your "but it's legal!" stance doesn't make it any less naïve
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:36 PM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Hahahaha. Even Jimmy Carter is trolling Trump.

@CarterLibrary
Jimmy Carter's first 100 days..
Laws passed: 22
Executive orders: 16
Approval rating: 63 percent
posted by chris24 at 5:39 PM on April 24, 2017 [59 favorites]

As fun as it is to talk about, YCTaB is correct. The current Republican stranglehold on the United States government will be redressed in one of two ways; at the ballot box with increased Democratic turnout overcoming unjust and morally repugnant Republican shenanigans to disenfranchise voters, the legacy-of-slavery electoral college, and House gerrymandering... or with civil war. That's it.
posted by Justinian at 5:39 PM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]

Wow, remember when we were just fantasizing about winning an election in 2018 and 2020? Now we've given up on that and we're fantasizing about making lots of little Californias to save us. I feel like somehow we've lost hope and are looking for a miracle...
posted by mmoncur at 5:41 PM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]

The State Department delete the tweet pimping Mar-a-Largo. Maybe someone read 5 CFR 2635.702 and realized it can be applied to regular employees, not just the Trump family.


Isn't deleting a tweet also breaking the law?
posted by mmoncur at 5:41 PM on April 24, 2017 [12 favorites]

If Democrats had the power to enact any of the crazy political changes being suggested, then the crazy changes would not be unnecessary. You're making the case that a party that controls the house, the senate, and the presidency would need to gerrymander the states because, what, the current makeup prevents said party from achieving power? That scenario is incoherent.
posted by ryanrs at 5:43 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

RE: Langevin, doesn't he have a pretty convoluted stance on abortion?
posted by Apocryphon at 5:45 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

If Democrats had the power to enact any of the crazy political changes being suggested, then the crazy changes would not be unnecessary. You're making the case that a party that controls the house, the senate, and the presidency would need to gerrymander the states because, what, the current makeup prevents said party from achieving power? That scenario is incoherent.

Not at all. The point is to turn a slim majority into enough political power to amend the Constitution overnight. The way to do this if you are the Democrats -- assuming you get a majority again and the Republicans haven't beaten you to it -- is to take a very Democratic and very populous state, like California, and break it into enough smaller states (which requires only a majority in Congress together with a majority vote in the state legislature) that you have 2/3 of the seats in the House and Senate and 3/4 of the states under solid Democratic control.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 5:47 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

A tweet from David Corn noting the 78% voter turnout in the French election.

Yes, I know we have bigger problems and turnout won't solve everything, but if we could at least get Democrats to the damn polls in the midterms, it would help. Offer rides, help people apply to vote absentee or by mail, maybe even band together to provide volunteer childcare or "I'll sit with Grandma while you go vote."

Low turnout isn't helping Democrats, and I find it disgraceful that Americans just love to bang on about Freedom and Democracy and Right To Vote and blah blah fishcakes and then...don't vote. (No, US MeFites, I know you do! #notallAmericans)
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 5:49 PM on April 24, 2017 [14 favorites]

Yeah, the thing driving my "if your plan would result in civil war your wishlist better be big" stuff over the last few days is a sense that the only thing that could even plausibly inspire the good side populace to fight the war that four-californias, or #calexit, or whatever would entail would be radical social change resulting in an egalitarian economic order. No one in California's gonna fight and die at the front just to keep their shitty boss in charge and protect the property rights of the companies that own their student loan debts and defend their right to pay 2500 dollars for a room in a shitty apartment.

If your plan requires war, think in revolutionary terms. If your plan is reformist, find a method of implementation that won't cause a war. (good luck!)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:49 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

I think it's quite likely that You Can't Tip a Buick is right to say that this would result in civil war. But it would result in civil war in roughly the same way as last time. One side would do something legal to try to redress an excess from the other side. And then the other side would start shooting.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 5:50 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

... to take a very Democratic and very populous state, like California, and break it into enough smaller states (which requires only a majority in Congress together with a majority vote in the state legislature) that you have 2/3 of the seats in the House and Senate and 3/4 of the states under solid Democratic control.

And then you fight a war. either that or pretend you wouldn't need to and enjoy being at the receiving end of a polite little coup.

(wait, you say, it wouldn't be legal for the right to go to war after you implement this scheme. to which I say: so?)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:51 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Just getting rid of the electoral college would make any of the more drastic plans unnecessary. But talking about more drastic solutions makes electoral college reform seem less impossible. There's value in starting to mainstream hardline tactics, Republicans didn't get to stealing a Supreme Court seat and having the media and the entire country shrug like it was a normal thing overnight. They had a sustained campaign of changing the rules slowly in their favor and normalizing extremist procedure for 30+ years.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:52 PM on April 24, 2017 [9 favorites]

So what would you do if the Republicans tried this? After all, they currently hold the necessary power to implement this plan.
posted by ryanrs at 5:53 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

So what would you do if the Republicans tried this? After all, they currently hold the necessary power to implement this plan.

Leave the country.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 5:54 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

The 4 new Californias are presumably going to be part of the same electoral map as The 5 Texases.

Note that the hypothetical divided Texas discussed there is a net electoral college loss for the Republicans, because some of the new states would likely vote D, splitting the electoral votes that previously went 100% to the Republican candidate. The same would be a risk of any scheme to divide California.
posted by mbrubeck at 5:58 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

I feel like somehow we've lost hope and are looking for a miracle...

I think in part we are.

The 2018 and 2020 elections are, I think, where we find out if America has a future or if the Republican theft of the Supreme Court was their opening move in eradicating democracy. State legislatures controlled by Republicans are gearing up to re-issue all manner of voter restriction laws that they didn't think could get through the Court, the case we'd hoped would end gerrymandering is all but guaranteed to fail on a 5-4 vote now, and generally we're running close to the ragged edge here.

I'm holding out hope that we can win and stop the Fascism, but it's a hope that I worry is just whistling past the graveyard.

It doesn't surprise me that there's a lot of people looking for a miracle, we're getting desperate and we're feeling hopeless.

I'd like to see us channel that into a big voter turnout, because we're going to need it to overcome the gerrymandering and vote suppression.
posted by sotonohito at 5:59 PM on April 24, 2017 [19 favorites]

>So what would you do if the Republicans tried this? After all, they currently hold the necessary power to implement this plan.

Flee to Berlin. The left here isn't organized or armed enough to fight a war.

(I see Jonathan Livengood has roughly the same idea)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:00 PM on April 24, 2017

Trump Holocaust Remembrance speech uses same wording as Holocaust Museum website

Even the bit about stopping by the gift shop on the way out?
posted by scalefree at 6:02 PM on April 24, 2017

Trump Said to Plan 20% Tariff on Canadian Softwood Lumber

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he would impose a 20 percent tariff on Canadian softwood lumber, according to a White House official and two people present when he made the comment at a reception for conservative journalists.

The action on a long-simmering trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada would increase the cost of building houses and cause American businesses to hunt for supplies in other countries.

“We’re going to be putting a 20% tax on softwood lumber coming in -- tariff on softwood coming into the United States from Canada,” Trump said, according to a tweet by Charlie Spiering, a White House correspondent for Breitbart News.
posted by futz at 6:02 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

wait, you say, it wouldn't be legal for the right to go to war after you implement this scheme. to which I say: so?

I definitely never said that. I said that we would end up in civil war in basically the same way as last time. (Recall that last time, there was a perfectly legal, though contentious, election followed by shooting from the losing side. In the hypothetical scenario being discussed here, there would be a legal change in the make-up of the states and then -- we both think -- shooting. I agree that whether the shooting is legal makes very little difference in the end, except perhaps with respect to how the history books record it. I think we actually agree on much more than we disagree on with respect to this hypothetical.)

In any event, I don't think this is anything to get worked up about. I don't think anyone is going to actually do any of this. But I like thinking about the limits of the rules and about how the Constitution is -- for all of its genius -- a badly thought out document in many ways.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 6:03 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Right now the thin strand of hope is that France will reject Le Pen, that the EU will hold together, and that we'll get to spend the next 40 or so years of our lives trying to slowly, messily untangle the damage that the Trumpists have already done and will continue to do until they're removed from power.

But if France falls to fascism, we're fucked.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:04 PM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

Based on the political geography of 2017, a civil war would look like 50 simultaneous Aleppo sieges.
posted by theodolite at 6:04 PM on April 24, 2017 [8 favorites]

Not that I don't think it's a possible outcome, but it seems we should at least note in passing that an actual military civil war in a country that will probably have both nuclear weapons and autonomous hunter-killer drones that can accept instructions like "just kill all the Patriots fans" won't actually redress any problems. Or, from another perspective, will solve all problems permanently.
posted by XMLicious at 6:04 PM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

did you know that those who wrote and enacted our current constitution did not follow the rules of the articles of confederation to do so?

my point is that there is precedent for starting from scratch, and not requiring the process of forming a new government to be approved by 3/4 of the states

there were many who disagreed with the process followed to ratify our constitution - at the end of the day, they were effectively told - do it with us our way or go it alone

that might cause a civil war of course - but it's hardly less dangerous than the constitutional convention some want to convene, which would be an utter dystopian mess

and it's certainly more likely than a hundred million californias - if they can do it, why not texas? why not georgia? etc etc
posted by pyramid termite at 6:04 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Folks, let's walk it back from civil war etc, it makes the threads less usable for the many people who want to hear updates/substantial analysis, but who don't want to be drowned in repetitive hopeless/doomy/tough-talk hypotheticals.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:08 PM on April 24, 2017 [39 favorites]

So apparently a roundtable on Fox today recommended Trump launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on North Korea. WTF? How are we putting such profoundly broken human beings on national TV? These people are sociopaths.

I wish they could look at these photos out of North Korea and, despite some of them certainly staged for Westerners, see the people as actual human beings trying to live their lives as best they can.

It feels like this country is turning darker and colder every day.
posted by bluecore at 6:09 PM on April 24, 2017 [40 favorites]

the cold and awful assumption is that we can use nuclear weapons again and the world and the people in it, including our own citizens, will not be affected by it and will eventually accept it as normal

it won't happen - i think many people will revolt
posted by pyramid termite at 6:13 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Okay but also could we back off a little from zany schemes? "nothing in the rules says a dog can't play football!" isn't a useful approach for understanding real political situations.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:14 PM on April 24, 2017 [20 favorites]

But Warner’s handling of the probe has led to grumbling among some of his Democratic colleagues that he has been too reluctant to challenge Burr and press for more aggressive action — for fear of undercutting the perception that he and the Republican chairman are working cooperatively together. “He’s been afraid to even bring up the S-word,” said one source familiar with the details of the investigation, referring to the panel’s authority to issue subpoenas for documents.

I don't see how you even have an investigation without subpoenas
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:18 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

"hey, you wanna answer some questions about this suspicious stuff?"

"No."

"...well okay then, nice talkin' to ya"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:20 PM on April 24, 2017 [11 favorites]

This President still ain't much.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:30 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Couple deleted, let's leave off the secession stuff, we've been around that a number of times earlier and corollary, it leads to the doomy/civil war thing again.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:36 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

NK ain't gonna do nothin'. They and the people in those pictures, which are great, are just a toy to be batted around by global frat boys. I don't think the heat has turned up far enough for KJU to waste the country, which is the only thing that would result. For the chance to sputter a dirty puddle jumper out of the (hopefully) country?

These are the questions: will NK exist anymore afterwards, and is that a good reason for them to take the initiative in the process? It's such a ridiculous topic.
posted by rhizome at 6:46 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Trump backs away from demand for border wall money

Trump told a gathering of around 20 conservative media reporters Monday evening that he would be willing to return to the wall funding issue in September, according to two people who were in the room. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the get-together, which was not originally intended to be on the record.
posted by futz at 6:48 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Putin's Calexit troll already went back to Russia, focus on winning the midterms and reforming the Dems.
posted by benzenedream at 6:49 PM on April 24, 2017 [11 favorites]

Trump is saying the "wall" now might just be blimps and motion detectors (which I already thought were being used) and other non-wall shit.
posted by rhizome at 6:55 PM on April 24, 2017

Trump is saying the "wall" now might just be blimps and motion detectors

Its like he's asking us to make the "Enormous bag of wind decides to protect border with enormous bags of wind" jokes.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:59 PM on April 24, 2017 [12 favorites]

I know what you're thinking. What could be funnier than a mashup of Trump's speeches sung just like an early 2000's "Unplugged Emo" style? Well, boy howdy, let me show you Trumps Tweets sung in a fully electrified early 2000's Emo style.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:08 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Man, I wish they allowed themselves to repeat lines in those things. People won't mind if you make a chorus.
posted by rhizome at 7:14 PM on April 24, 2017

Senate Russia investigation to add 2 more staffers after pace criticized

The additional staffers -- including one Republican and one Democrat, versed in the National Security Agency collection tactics -- come as some sources on the committee have grumbled behind the scenes about the pace of the investigation.

-- Wyden also declined to say whether he's confident in Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr's leadership atop the panel. He said he's counting on Warner to help pick up the pace.

-- An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Monday found that 73% of respondents want an independent commission instead of Congress to investigate Russia's interference. Only 16% of respondents said they preferred Congress.

Two new staffers. Somebody hold me down while I feebly say "yippee".
posted by futz at 7:17 PM on April 24, 2017 [18 favorites]

Trump is saying the "wall" now might just be blimps and motion detectors (which I already thought were being used) and other non-wall shit.

I've kind of expected something like this since the campaign, because I would think it'd be much easier to skim money off of the firm manufacturing mines for a minefield, plus it's cheaper than a wall, even if he has lots of experience skimming money off of construction projects.
posted by XMLicious at 7:17 PM on April 24, 2017

Are these... motion sensor mines? I don't think we can put bouncing betties on our southern border...
posted by Justinian at 7:20 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

firm manufacturing mines for a minefield

I have been wrong about many things so far, but I feel okay saying that there isn’t going to be a minefield on the US-Mexico border.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:20 PM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Not to get all technical here, but if we're going to have a dystopian nightmare future, won't they be rigid airships, and not blimps?

What fun is dystopia if it's not steampunk AF?
posted by chris24 at 7:23 PM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

Put a couple of railguns aloft, heck, you could use anything as material, couple of tons of ice....
posted by valkane at 7:27 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis Makes Unannounced Trip to Afghanistan.

And this happened.

US general in Afghanistan suggests Russia arming the Taliban

-- At a news conference with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at his side, Gen. John Nicholson, the American commander in Afghanistan, wouldn't provide specifics about Russia's role in Afghanistan. But said he would "not refute" that Moscow's involvement includes giving weapons to the Taliban.

Earlier Monday, a senior U.S. military official told reporters in Kabul that Russia was giving machine guns and other medium-weight weapons.

-- "We'll engage with Russia diplomatically," Mattis said. "We'll do so where we can, but we're going to have to confront Russia where what they're doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries."

"For example," Mattis told reporters in the Afghan capital, "any weapons being funneled here from a foreign country would be a violation of international law."

-- Referring to the Russians again, Nicholson said "anyone who arms belligerents who perpetuate attacks like the one we saw" isn't focused on "the best way forward to a peaceful reconciliation."
posted by futz at 7:30 PM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

I forgot to post this last night since there's a delay before they put it on YouTube: Last Week Tonight: Ivanka & Jared. A discussion of how Ivanka doesn't seem to be a moderating influence on anything and Jared is entirely unqualified, so why the heck do people keep praising them.
posted by zachlipton at 7:39 PM on April 24, 2017 [25 favorites]

Physical Attractiveness Stereotype.

The physical attractiveness stereotype is a tendency, described by psychologists, to assume that people who are physically attractive also possess other socially desirable personality traits.

tl;dr people think Ivanka is a good person because she's pretty and Jared because he's handsome although he comes across as a smarmy MF to me.
posted by Justinian at 7:42 PM on April 24, 2017 [29 favorites]

Oh, this happened too.

U.S. submarine makes South Korea port call, North remains defiant

A nuclear-powered U.S. submarine made a port call in South Korea on Tuesday in a show of force amid concerns that North Korea may mark the foundation of its military with a missile launch or a nuclear test, defying U.S. and Chinese pressure.

-- South Korean and U.S. officials have feared for some time that a sixth North Korean nuclear test could be imminent. Speculation has grown that such a test, or another long-range missile launch, could coincide with the 85th anniversary of the foundation of the North's Korean People's Army on Tuesday.

-- Two Japanese destroyers conducted exercises on Monday with a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group that is also headed for Korean waters, sent by Trump as a warning to the North.
posted by futz at 7:53 PM on April 24, 2017

Wait, am I reading that Bundy ranch thing right? The FBI informant got the longest sentence?
posted by corb at 7:54 PM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

Now we finally know how bad voter fraud is in North Carolina

For years, Republicans in North Carolina have alleged that in-person fraudulent voting is widespread while Democrats have said it is non-existent. But no one knew for sure, leaving the two sides talking past each other on voter ID.

On Friday, the State Board of Elections released the results of an extensive, objective audit of the 2016 election. It found that 4,769,640 votes were cast in November and that one (1) would probably have been avoided with a voter ID law. One out of nearly 4.8 million.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:02 PM on April 24, 2017 [93 favorites]

> Right now the thin strand of hope is that France will reject Le Pen...

The actual election results for the first round came in within 1% of what the polls were predicting for all the main candidates. The same polls have Macron, the centrist, pro-EU, pro-immigrant candidate, beating Le Pen by about 25% in the second round on May 7. It would take a miracle for Le Pen to overcome that.

I'm not expecting divine intervention to save the FN.
posted by nangar at 8:31 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Astronaut’s Reward for Spending Record Amount of Time in Space Is Talking to Donald Trump About Urine

Trump also learned how astronauts get water in space. Whitson, telling Trump that it’s such a “precious resource” said that they were “cleaning up our urine and making it drinkable. And it’s really not as bad as it sounds.”

“Well, that’s good,” Trump replied. “I’m glad to hear that. Better you than me.”

Not that the earthbound Orange One grokked what she was saying...

She spoke about how precious water is and in one short statement stood up for Science, Conservation, and Human ingenuity. Yay Peggy Whitson. I can only imaging the unearthly chuckles that were had after they made absolutely sure that the connection was terminated.
posted by futz at 8:40 PM on April 24, 2017 [15 favorites]

> The actual election results for the first round came in within 1% of what the polls were predicting for all the main candidates. The same polls have Macron, the centrist, pro-EU, pro-immigrant candidate, beating Le Pen by about 25% in the second round on May 7. It would take a miracle for Le Pen to overcome that.

I'm not expecting divine intervention to save the FN.

Counterpoint: it is the year 2017.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:44 PM on April 24, 2017 [10 favorites]

Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron
posted by futz at 8:48 PM on April 24, 2017 [7 favorites]

"We'll engage with Russia diplomatically," Mattis said. "We'll do so where we can, but we're going to have to confront Russia where what they're doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries."

"For example," Mattis told reporters in the Afghan capital, "any weapons being funneled here from a foreign country would be a violation of international law."

Not cool Russia, we would never arm Afghan militants that were fighting you! We definitely wouldn't then turn that into a movie starring Tom Hanks. It's contrary to international law!
posted by ActingTheGoat at 9:10 PM on April 24, 2017 [19 favorites]

"Better you than me.”

Donny, for once, speaks the truth.
posted by dirigibleman at 9:16 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Okay but also could we back off a little from zany schemes? "nothing in the rules says a dog can't play football!" isn't a useful approach for understanding real political situations.

I take it you've been secretly reading my Facebook stream!

There's nothing in the rules that says a dog can't play basketball!

Also, there's nothing in the 17th Amendment that prohibits electing both of a state's senators at once by taking the top two candidates, where each voter gets one choice. If every state were to do this, most states would have 1 Dem and 1 GOP senator, but really solid states might have 2 Dem or 2 GOP*. This would end up more accurately reflecting the composition of the country.

*By opening two seats at a time, third parties also become more viable. So those states that might have elected 2 Dems might end up electing 1 Dem and 1 Green, and those states that might have elected 2 GOPers might end up electing 1 GOP and 1 libertarian.

posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:27 PM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

ELECTIONS UPDATES

* MT-AL

-- Quist picks up endorsement by Montana Sportsmen Alliance. Guns, hunting, and usage of public land have been major issues in the race.

-- DJT Jr. was out in MT to stump for Gianforte the other day.

-- Still no real polling of this race, which is frustrating.

===

* VA-GOV

-- Elizabeth Warren has endorsed Tom Perriello for the Dem nod. As noted previously, Perriello is the sorta more progressive one.

===

* Also, two CT state House special elections tomorrow, HD-7 and HD-68. Neither of these expected to be exciting - no R filed in HD-7; HD-68 is heavily R (it went for Trump 65-32).
posted by Chrysostom at 9:31 PM on April 24, 2017 [11 favorites]

This is a fine article from Politico: Trump’s Fake War on the Fake News. Mostly, it's about an incompetent White House press operation, White Hour officials who cozy up to the press in private as they decry "fake news" in public, leaks everywhere, and, well, this:

On top of the sloppiness, there is the lying. One veteran White House correspondent said he was warned by a transition official to be wary of good color emanating from the Trump camp on background. “They will screw with you,” the correspondent was told. “They will feed you things that are not true.”

Bannon, it is worth noting, is a devoted reader of the “neoreactionary” internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin, an advocate of the strategic benefits of spreading misinformation. But two people close to the administration say that White House staffers do much of their lying for sport, rather than to further any larger agenda.

“They all lie,” said a conservative journalist with close ties to the West Wing, who described an informal contest to smuggle the biggest whoppers into print. “It’s a game to them.”

A conservative activist close to the administration said a member of the White House communications team recently divulged the same to him over drinks. According to the activist, the staffer described the attitude inside the press shop toward lying to reporters as: “They’ll print what they want anyways, so we may as well have fun.”

There have certainly been signs of this, and since there are no consequences for lying, there's no consequences for White House staff feeding disinformation to the press with the intent of discrediting reporters.

And as to why this all matters:

“If you’re doing anything involving any sort of palace intrigue, they are crazy cooperative,” said one reporter, voicing a common observation. “But if you have any sort of legitimate question, if you need a yes or no answer on policy, they’re impossible.”

Yet media companies are "laughing all the way to the bank," with subscriptions and ad rates through the roof and everyone having a great time profiting off this disaster. We are so screwed. And to add one of my own pet peeves, briefing room questions are usually focused on whatever stupid story the White House wants us to think about, usually a tweet or something, and not the more novel questions that need to be asked, say Gorka's Nazi affiliations.
posted by zachlipton at 9:39 PM on April 24, 2017 [34 favorites]

oneswellfoop did a driveby link to that. Not sure why he didn't link to it directly. I was wondering why it wasn't getting more attention. It is pretty damning and fucking disappointing.

Also trump White House turns conservative media reception into on-the-record briefing

Around 50 attendees from the likes of Breitbart, the Washington Free Beacon, Daily Caller, Christian Broadcast Network, Catholic-focused The Eternal Word Television Network, as well conservative radio hosts like Laura Ingraham, Larry O’Connor and John Fredericks mingled with senior administration officials and the president over light snacks, fruit and candy in the White House's Roosevelt room.

Nearly the entire communications staff were in attendance in addition to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, chief of staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Stephen Bannon, senior adviser Jared Kushner, National Security Council spokesperson Michael Anton and Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland. After about 30 minutes, the president came in and, standing in the corner of the room, began to take questions from the assembled press, later turning the event on the record.

That is a Who's Who of the Conservative Swamp and its enablers.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who at one point stood next to the president calling on reporters in full briefing style, told POLITICO on Sunday that the point of the reception was "to appreciate the folks who have really covered the president fairly and covered a lot of issues ignored by mainstream media.”

One attendee in the room said that while he appreciated the president taking questions, it was clear that some of the questioners weren’t necessarily there to make news.

The press have turned into godfuckingdamn courtiers. Will the Politico story shame them or do they have no shame just like trump and his sycophants. Or is that question already answered? Looks like it.
posted by futz at 10:12 PM on April 24, 2017 [25 favorites]

Looks like he was lying: Sebastian Gorka’s Ties To Nazi-Allied Group Stretch Back Decades

Incidentally, I think I see Gorka's hand in Spicer's confused claim that "even Hitler" didn't use chemical weapons against "his own people". Gorka is a Hungarian nationalist, and the way Hungary dealt with Germany's demands for the lives of Hungarian Jews was by progressively amending the definition of "Hungarian": before the pro-Nazi coup they first excluded all Jews living in the new territories Hungary had acquired, then those that couldn't show three generations of Hungarian citizenship. The point is, Hungarians justifying the old regime claim that Hungary didn't kill and deport its own people.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:17 PM on April 24, 2017 [31 favorites]

RE: Langevin, doesn't he have a pretty convoluted stance on abortion?

He wants women to be aware of the pain experienced by their fetuses, which is really horrible for women seeking to get abortions, yet he also wants to fund embryonic stem cell research because it might cure his paralysis. I mean, it doesn't really get more "Fuck you women, got mine," than that.
posted by Ruki at 10:18 PM on April 24, 2017 [21 favorites]

15 Trumpists who did not survive the first 100 days

The first three tumultuous months of Trump’s term have seen a perhaps unprecedented number of personnel casualties. A big part of the problem is that his transition team did a lousy job of vetting. Red flags that might have been discovered by a simple Google search didn’t emerge in some cases until after nominees were named publicly.

posted by kirkaracha at 10:43 PM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

The unmistakable anatomy of a President Trump flip-flop

This is a nice little microcosm of Trump's repeated flip-flops and contortions. It goes a little something like this:

1. Amateur politician makes big statement (in this case, that China is a currency manipulator)
2. Amateur politician promises to take swift and controversial action (to label China a currency manipulator as president)
3. Crowd cheers
4. Amateur politician repeats promise over and over, to more cheers
5. Amateur politician actually becomes president
6. Amateur politician-president realizes his stance was completely impractical (given China's role in containing North Korea, among other things)
7. Amateur politician-president can't understand why people would have taken him at his word in the first place

posted by kirkaracha at 10:52 PM on April 24, 2017 [15 favorites]

He wants women to be aware of the pain experienced by their fetuses, which is really horrible for women seeking to get abortions, yet he also wants to fund embryonic stem cell research because it might cure his paralysis. I mean, it doesn't really get more "Fuck you women, got mine," than that.

The link mentions that he was against banning abortion coverage in the ACA, strongly promotes contraceptive availability, is for abortion in cases of incest, rape, or when pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. How many anti-abortion Republicans are in favor of those policies?
posted by Apocryphon at 11:10 PM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

This was an invite-only reception for the "conservative press"

I know SakuraK, that is why the article is titled White House turns conservative media reception into on-the-record briefing. I thought it was quite obvious.. When I mentioned that The press have turned into godfuckingdamn courtiers I was also taking into consideration zachlipton's comment right above mine which I was responding to.

I am not defending Politico at all but I thought they made it very clear that this was a conservative media only event and that it was fluffy.
posted by futz at 11:33 PM on April 24, 2017

I forget, is he 'Hole'?
Christie gives Trump a 'B,' says WH staff need to 'get their act together'
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:21 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron

They will release a damaging lack of evidence of a sex scandal in his emails and the French will be appalled.
posted by srboisvert at 5:06 AM on April 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

Qui Bono? Major Brexit backing Fund Manager was massively short on the British Economy.

He had one big day and then got a beat down as the collapse he was hoping for is unfolding possibly slower than he can afford.
posted by srboisvert at 5:10 AM on April 25, 2017 [11 favorites]

Ivanka's panel at the W20 in Germany seems to be going well. She's been booed or hissed at twice already.

@AlexSmithNBC
No soft-balling for Ivanka Trump at #w20 panel. Straight off she's asked if she represents the American people, her father or her business

@anniekarni
Ivanka gets booed and hissed by audience when she says her father is a"tremendous champion of supporting families."

@HallieJackson
Some in audience now hissing Ivanka as moderator presses her about @POTUS attitude toward women. #W20
posted by chris24 at 5:22 AM on April 25, 2017 [73 favorites]

> Qui Bono? Major Brexit backing Fund Manager was massively short on the British Economy.

He had one big day and then got a beat down as the collapse he was hoping for is unfolding possibly slower than he can afford.

One idea that I've had, for values of "had" equal to "stolen from Kim Stanley Robinson" is that if it looks like capitalism is about to fall, a bunch of hedge fund types might help us push it over by (basically) shorting capitalism itself.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:27 AM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

Perhaps appropriate for Ivanka's #w20 appearance, Sarah Kendzior shares with us The tale of the dictator’s daughter and her prince:

What is important to remember is that neither Ivanka nor Jared should be there in the first place. They were not elected, they are likely violating a number of laws ranging from emoluments to security clearance improprieties, they have no qualifications for their jobs, and they wield enough influence that an offhand remark can lead to a bombing and a handbag line can lead to a change in foreign policy, which is a horrifying way for an administration to function.
posted by localhuman at 5:32 AM on April 25, 2017 [63 favorites]

Der Spiegel: International Trumpquake—Tentative Stirrings of a Beijing-Berlin Axis
posted by XMLicious at 5:33 AM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

A.V. Club: Yogurt company Chobani is suing Alex Jones
posted by valkane at 5:38 AM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

In honor of Ivanka's special day,

Sarah Kendzior: The tale of the dictator’s daughter and her prince

Adult children of authoritarians are useful in three ways: first, they tend to be trustworthy confidants in regimes rife with paranoia, as corrupt authoritarian states usually are. Second, they are excellent vessels for laundering money, creating enough distance that assets stolen from the state are harder to track. Third, they tend to have a warmer public profile which offsets the brutality of the dictator by distracting the population with pictures of their glamorous lifestyle.

For nearly two years, Jared and Ivanka have been
Here’s piece in Vanity Fair on the supposedly "moderating" influence of Jared and Ivanka.
peddled by the press as a “moderating influence” on her vulgar, bigoted father. They have done nothing to merit this characterization.

Meanwhile in Berlin...
@AnnieKarni

Moderator gets to it! "The Germans are not that familiar with the concept of a first daughter. What is your role?”

Ivanka: "incremental positive change. That is my goal."

Ivanka gets booed and hissed by audience when she says her father is a"tremendous champion of supporting families."

Ivanka provokes laughs when she says she's heard the criticism "from the media."

Ivanka, here as a senior White House official, went back to her spiel that "as a daughter i can speak on a very personal level" abt Trump

Meanwhile in SteinMart.....

Business of Fashion: Amidst Backlash, Ivanka Trump Clothing Is Secretly Relabelled as Adrienne Vittadini

BoF has learned that G-III, the company that licenses Ivanka Trump ready-to-wear, has relabelled inventory without the knowledge of the brand and sold it to discount chain Stein Mart.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:39 AM on April 25, 2017 [33 favorites]

Annie Karni just published her story at Politico: Ivanka Trump gets booed, hissed at during Berlin event

BERLIN — Ivanka Trump arrived in Berlin Tuesday morning armed with facts and figures to recite at what was expected to be a high-brow international summit to discuss women entrepreneurship, alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But on her first international trip as an official representative of the United States, the first daughter was put on the spot about her father's attitudes toward women, booed and hissed at by the crowd, and grilled by the moderator about what, exactly, her role is in President Donald Trump’s administration.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:45 AM on April 25, 2017 [23 favorites]

Just my personal assessment of Ivanka, so take it with a grain of salt, but I believe her to be smarter and have a stronger character than any of the men in her family, including her husband. I also think she was raised to believe that her appearance and attractiveness to men was her most important asset and that compliance and subservience would bring her far greater rewards than challenging the men in her life. I don't expect her to be anything but a pleasant, more acceptable megaphone for her father's ideas.

I fully expect her to push Jared into a more public position once the Trump Presidency is over. He comes across to me as an empty-headed pretty boy who might have charm and money but no real strength of character or intelligence. He'll make a portrait-perfect Senator once he masters public speaking.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:03 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

The Nation: Why Was Heath Mello Thrown Under the Bus?

But in Omaha, the DNC’s response was greeted with dismay. “It was Heath’s credibility with pro-life legislators that enabled him to take mandatory ultrasounds off the table and substitute a bill that stated that women had a choice to have one and to see the image,”said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, of the ultrasound legislation. The competing bill not only required ultrasounds before abortion; it also required clinics to position the screen so women would be forced to view the fetus.

“I wish the national organizations would respect the relationship we have been nurturing, instead of just assuming we don’t know what we’re doing,” Jawed-Wessel told me afterwards. “Then they might have reframed their statement in a way that added momentum to someone we consider a strong ally.”

That last part may be hard for someone in Washington—or New York—to understand. All of the women I spoke with here were well acquainted with Mello’s personal opposition to abortion. But they also knew that while remaining true to his beliefs, and his Catholic faith, he has been a public defender of Planned Parenthood, one who has shifted his efforts from blocking abortion to helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies by supporting comprehensive sex education and access to contraception—the same path travelled by politicians from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden to Tim Kaine.

posted by indubitable at 6:05 AM on April 25, 2017 [13 favorites]

Estados Unidos moviliza submarinos nucleares hacia península coreana

(United States mobilizes nuclear submarines towards Korean peninsula)
posted by MrVisible at 6:06 AM on April 25, 2017

Did she learn what 'complicit' means yet?
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:06 AM on April 25, 2017 [27 favorites]

I believe her to be smarter and have a stronger character than any of the men in her family, including her husband.

yeah but that bar is so low earthworms can vault over it.
posted by winna at 6:12 AM on April 25, 2017 [27 favorites]

A.V. Club: Yogurt company Chobani is suing Alex Jones

About Chobani, I posted this comment on Nov 2. (Duplicated here for people who don't want to click on the 3700+ comment mega thread.):

Chobani’s CEO Gets Death Threats for Giving Jobs to Refugees
[Chobani founder and CEO] Ulukaya is a Turkish immigrant of Kurdish descent who came to the US, bought a run-down Kraft yogurt factory in a depressed upstate New York town with a loan from the Small Business Administration, and built a dream. Ten years later, he employs 2,000 people in New York and Idaho, and announced in April that he was going to give 10 percent of the company’s ownership to its employees—an act that made some employees instant millionaires. Chobani pays even low-level employees over minimum wage, and offers full-time employees health benefits, 401(k) plans, and parental leave, even for factory workers. Last year, he signed Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, promising to give away a majority of his fortune to charities
posted by Room 641-A at 6:26 AM on April 25, 2017 [40 favorites]

This is just… We don't share consensus reality with Trump voters. They are unreachable unless and until his policies affect them personally. Fuck 'em.

Salena Zito, NY Post: How Trump voters feel about his first 100 days

Trump’s supporters are unfazed that a new health care law is not in place (yet), thrilled with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, weary of the constant accusations of his ties to Russia, supportive of his strike against Syria for using chemical weapons against its people and dismayed that House Republicans and Democrats are unwilling to compromise. To them, the president remains disruptive, unconventional, defiant and willing to change his mind — appealing attributes to his supporters, but not to the press.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:37 AM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Why Was Heath Mello Thrown Under the Bus?

Yes, the real victims are the men who merely nudge women under the bus gently rather than throw them under the bus with gusto. Give me a break.

You know what -- you don't need legislation to "give women the choice of seeing an ultrasound" before an abortion -- doctors do not refuse pregnant people the option of seeing an ultrasound. It doesn't happen. It's not a thing that needs to be legislated.

And you know what else -- Tim Kaine can fuck off too with his "personally pro life" bullshit. I literally do not care what any person's personal opinion is of abortion. Why do we even ask this?? Do we go around asking people's opinions on appendectomies? JFC.

I'll throw Heath Mello under the bus every day of the week.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:42 AM on April 25, 2017 [68 favorites]

It would have been a better article if the interviewer had asked them for specifics on their support of Trump, because the excerpts quoted in the article sound very Trumplike: full of superlatives and empty of any meaning.

**WHY** do they support him? What specifically do they like? Are they mostly just really happy to have him swinging America's big nuclear dick around and threatening other countries? Or is their support mostly rooted in ignorance of what he's actually doing?

Every time I see articles supposedly about exposing the thinking and inner soul of Trump voters they wind up just being some surface blather about how much they love him. Yes, they love him. **WHY**?

melissasaurus That's basically my takeaway.

Yes, in the general support the Democrat no matter how odious. I'm fine with that.

But I don't like the demand that I have sympathy for the poor forced birth advocate who is just trying to help those wayward and helpless women make the right choice.

And I don't like the Sanders double standard. Throw women under the bus and Sanders will endorse you. Put a toe out of line on his Very Important White Dude issues and Sanders won't. If you want to be all pragmatic Sanders it has to be universal pragmatism, not just for the issues you like. But that just shows that Sanders, like so many of his followers, is a Brocalist. He doesn't really give a shit about anything but White Dude issues.

And yes, I am utterly and completely tired of hearing about anyone's "personal feelings" about abortion. I don't care. I don't want to hear it. It doesn't matter. Only one thing matters: will they vote for laws restricting or outlawing abortion? If the answer is "no, I support a woman's right to chose" then fine. I don't want to hear your personal feelings, they don't matter.
posted by sotonohito at 6:50 AM on April 25, 2017 [27 favorites]

you’re doing anything involving any sort of palace intrigue, they are crazy cooperative

Hey, remember when the press never even said the word "palace" when referring to Presidential staff or advisors? Good times, good times.
posted by corb at 6:54 AM on April 25, 2017 [19 favorites]

**WHY** do they support him? What specifically do they like? Are they mostly just really happy to have him swinging America's big nuclear dick around and threatening other countries? Or is their support mostly rooted in ignorance of what he's actually doing?

Does it matter? He's white. He's a man. He's threatens other countries. He threatens vulnerable people here. They love him because he's their id, not any policy based reason, and that's not going to change no matter what policies he fails on. All of these Trump-votes-love-Trump articles aren't breaking new ground. These people are utterly unreachable. There's only three categories of people that matter for saving the country - people who didn't vote, 'reluctant' Trump voters who switched Obama->Trump, and people who voted third party. None of the daily "Trump voters would vote for him again" stories are engaging with any of the categories of people who are persuadable.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:58 AM on April 25, 2017 [16 favorites]

It's those gold drapes, they make the joint look "palatial."
posted by valkane at 6:59 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

T.D. Strange It matters because a) it's always good to understand the enemy, if for no other reason than it makes predicting their actions easier, and b) because it may be that some of them aren't actually unreachable. I don't know if there actually exist reachable Republicans or not, but if they do exist then reaching them is a good idea.

Either way, whether or not there are reachable Republicans, understanding their motives is needful. If we understand their motives we can better tailor attack ads against Trump and other Republicans so as to urge them to stay home on election day.

Is their support of Trump rooted in their love of his warmongering and big nuclear dick image? If so then maybe we can undermine that. Is their support rooted in something else? If so then we need to know what so we can work to undermine that.

If they love him for something other than his strutting nuke 'em all talk and we attack him on his strutting nuke 'em all talk then we will have wasted ad dollars.

Before you can defeat the enemy you must understand the enemy.
posted by sotonohito at 7:04 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

Yes, the real victims are the men who merely nudge women under the bus gently rather than throw them under the bus with gusto. Give me a break.

From the same article:

In 2012, Mello voted with Planned Parenthood on two out of three bill tracked by the group—and was excused from voting on the third. After that, Mello, who had become the influential chair of the legislature’s budget committee, voted with Planned Parenthood 100 percent of the time. By 2015, the group was celebrating a “fourth straight year….without enacting any new abortion restrictions in Nebraska, thanks largely to committed women’s health advocates engaged in the legislative process.”

You know what -- you don't need legislation to "give women the choice of seeing an ultrasound" before an abortion -- doctors do not refuse pregnant people the option of seeing an ultrasound. It doesn't happen. It's not a thing that needs to be legislated.

But in Omaha, the DNC’s response was greeted with dismay. “It was Heath’s credibility with pro-life legislators that enabled him to take mandatory ultrasounds off the table and substitute a bill that stated that women had a choice to have one and to see the image,”said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, of the ultrasound legislation. The competing bill not only required ultrasounds before abortion; it also required clinics to position the screen so women would be forced to view the fetus.

posted by indubitable at 7:05 AM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

Every time I see articles supposedly about exposing the thinking and inner soul of Trump voters they wind up just being some surface blather about how much they love him. Yes, they love him. **WHY**?

I've been deep diving into this with my paleoconservative Trump voting mother, Trump voters on social media, and the endless think-pieces, polls, and analysis.

If I had to boil it all down, I'd say they support him because they think he's on their side. And they thought Obama was not, and it was scary to have someone who was not on their side have so much power over them. No matter what Trump does or doesn't do, they feel safer with him in office as long as he keeps saying the stuff they are all thinking.

What's "Their side"? In their view -- "Mainstreet America," Norman Rockwell paintings, Little House on the Prairie, white clapboard churches, Fourth of July picnics in idyllic small towns. Why can't life be like that again? Where did we go off track?

They think all these immigrants and all this globalization messed that up, and if we could just close the borders and pull out of trade agreements and etc, the manufacturing jobs would come back, the small towns would thrive again, and we wouldn't have all this crime, drugs, and poverty.

They wish for a strong father figure, a John Wayne type, to punish all the bad guys who screwed things up and put stuff back the way it was supposed to be.

So as long as Trump is out there saying "let's close the borders" etc, they will love him.

(I think when he gets humiliated and looks less like that strong father figure, though, he loses some of them... That's sort of what happened to W.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:08 AM on April 25, 2017 [35 favorites]

“It was Heath’s credibility with pro-life legislators that enabled him to take mandatory ultrasounds off the table and substitute a bill that stated that women had a choice to have one and to see the image,”said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, of the ultrasound legislation. The competing bill not only required ultrasounds before abortion; it also required clinics to position the screen so women would be forced to view the fetus.

I propose that we extract all men's semen, store it for future procreation needs, then remove their testicles. I propose that they be required to watch this procedure via a monitor.

After many years, I may be able to be convinced that perhaps men should have a choice of whether to watch the monitor.

I am pro-men. Men are unreasonable if they oppose me.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:11 AM on April 25, 2017 [36 favorites]

Planned Parenthood Nebraska Never Gave Heath Mello a 100 Percent Rating

some media outlets have claimed the candidate has a 100 percent rating from the group, that scorecard only refers to two votes from one year in the state legislature. (The Mello campaign did note that the perfect rating comes from a single year in the legislature.)

Mello is a sponsor of the final version of a 20-week abortion ban approved by the governor in 2010, and cast anti-choice votes in favor of requiring physicians to be physically present for an abortion in order to impede access to telemedicine abortion care, and a law banning insurance plans in the state from covering abortions. He was endorsed in 2010 by anti-choice group Nebraska Right to Life.
posted by winna at 7:11 AM on April 25, 2017 [17 favorites]

Wow, it's still early. I just realized I quoted that second paragraph already. I think that if you can convince your opponents to turn their bill into the equivalent of legislating that the sun rise in the east every morning, that should be chalked up as a win.
posted by indubitable at 7:12 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Gizmodo: American Media Are Getting People at Home Ready for War With North Korea

President Donald Trump continues to beat the drums of war, and the media are going along with him. Trump doesn’t have any particular incentive to bomb North Korea or advocate for regime change in the country. It’s not even clear that Trump knows the leader of North Korea’s name. But Trump is above all a man who likes to be liked. And so far, the actions that have won him the most praise have been when he dropped a bunch of bombs on Syria.

This is Iraq happening all over again, isn't it? A weak Republican president wants to prove he's a Big Man by starting a war we absolutely do not need to start. Assuming he's even completely aware of what's going on.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:31 AM on April 25, 2017 [29 favorites]

This is Iraq happening all over again, isn't it? A weak Republican president wants to prove he's a Big Man by starting a war we absolutely do not need to start. Assuming he's even completely aware of what's going on.

I mean, Iraq, it turns out, couldn't bomb us into the stone age.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:35 AM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

That Sarah Kendzior article about Ivanka is deliciously brutal.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:45 AM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

If I had to boil it all down, I'd say they support him because they think he's on their side. And they thought Obama was not, and it was scary to have someone who was not on their side have so much power over them.

If I had to boil this all down, I'd say Trump is white, Obama was black.
posted by chris24 at 7:52 AM on April 25, 2017 [55 favorites]

T.D. Strange: The State Department delete the tweet pimping Mar-a-Largo.

And while https://share.america.gov/mar-a-lago-winter-white-house/ still exists as a valid URL, but the content has been updated to read:

The intention of the article was to inform the public about where the president has been hosting world leaders. We regret any misperception and have removed the post.

mmoncur: Isn't deleting a tweet also breaking the law?

Similar question: what about public government websites?
posted by filthy light thief at 7:55 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

https://share.america.gov/mar-a-lago-winter-white-house/

It's impressive that even the URL is probably unconstitutional.
posted by diogenes at 7:58 AM on April 25, 2017 [30 favorites]

I know, right? "Nothing to see here now. Except the URL. Huh."
posted by filthy light thief at 7:59 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

futz: Trump backs away from demand for border wall money

Trump told a gathering of around 20 conservative media reporters Monday evening that he would be willing to return to the wall funding issue in September, according to two people who were in the room. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the get-together, which was not originally intended to be on the record.

Wait, he held a meeting specifically with media reporters and it was supposed to be off the record? WHY MEET? "Hey guys, I'm gonna be quiet on the wall thing for a while, so why not focus on something else for a while? Did you see me give that vet a purple heart? Report on that!"

And maybe between now and September, someone will figure out what kind of wall it will be, and make sure it doesn't break any international treaties:

Mexico Worries That A New Border Wall Will Worsen Flooding (NPR, April 25, 2017)

Mexican engineers believe construction of the border barrier may violate a 47-year-old treaty governing the shared waters of the Rio Grande. If Mexico protests, the fate of the wall could end up in an international court.

Antonio Rascón, chief Mexican engineer on the International Boundary and Water Commission, said in an interview with NPR that some border wall proposals he has seen would violate the treaty, and that Mexico would not stand for that.

"A concrete wall that blocks trans-border water movement is a total obstruction. If they plan that type of project, we will oppose it," he said in his first public comments on the border wall.

posted by filthy light thief at 8:04 AM on April 25, 2017 [9 favorites]

Wait, he held a meeting specifically with media reporters and it was supposed to be off the record? WHY MEET?

That's why there were so many of them -- the White House wanted to float it, and there's no way to pin down who leaked it out of 20 people, so no one would risk their access.
posted by Etrigan at 8:08 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

The Blues: What happened to the Missouri Democratic Party?

FYI the short answer is that they have moved from minority party to nearly non-existent party over the past 10-15 years. I don't know if the Democrats could win outright majorities in either chamber in Missouri right now, but it is well within the realm of possible for them to win, say, 10 more House seats and 2-3 more Senate seats. That would take the party out of the realm of 'completely useless' to 'minority, but a force to be reckoned with'.

The whole article is well worth a read, to see why the state party is completely useless instead of a force to be reckoned with.

Also, it's an excellent glimpse into an issue we've talked about here before--why the Democrats have such weak/non-existent support in rural areas. Folks who are actually out there working on this problem point out that a lot of it is less about specific policies and more about getting out there and doing the grass-roots gruntwork of building and maintaining personal relationships. When nobody is doing that, you end up with no support.
posted by flug at 8:08 AM on April 25, 2017 [20 favorites]

If Mexico protests, the fate of the wall could end up in an international court.

Who knew building a wall between two countries could be so complicated?

I feel like this "who knew" thing is going to be a permanent addition to the English lexicon. It so neatly summarizes the Trump era.
posted by diogenes at 8:10 AM on April 25, 2017 [15 favorites]

And then it "leaked" via the AP, which isn't exactly a "conservative" outlet. Perhaps the WH reached out to conservative reporters in mainstream companies?

Any way it fell out, it's all weird and dumb and terrible that this is how the WH works now.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:11 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

it's all weird and dumb and terrible that this is how the WH works now.

I'm still processing the fact that the White House is apparently lying to the press for lols.
posted by diogenes at 8:17 AM on April 25, 2017 [15 favorites]

LIVE: President Donald Trump Speech US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s National Days of Remembrance
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:18 AM on April 25, 2017

If I had to boil this all down, I'd say Trump is white, Obama was black.

That's the easy, pithy answer.

But Obama was elected twice - both times over white men. There are other reasons and other motivations, and it's worth our time investigating them.
posted by rocket88 at 8:19 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

diogenes: I feel like this "who knew" thing is going to be a permanent addition to the English lexicon. It so neatly summarizes the Trump era.

I feel like this image of Trump shrugging captioned

Who Knew
This* Could Be So Hard?

could be turned into the 2017 Hope poster, with the asterisk used to footnote all the things Trump has flubbed, including: tearing down Obamacare, banning Muslims, building a border wall, passing a balanced budget, reforming taxes, and generally being president of the United States of America
posted by filthy light thief at 8:20 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

CNN: White House denies House investigation request for Flynn documents: The White House declined Tuesday to provide documents related to President Donald Trump's former national security adviser that the panel investigating Michael Flynn had requested, according to a letter obtained by CNN.

White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short outlined in a letter to the House oversight committee how it would not complete the request from the panel, referring some requests to the Department of Defense, saying the office doesn't have custody of some of the other documents or simply stating "we are unable to accommodate" others.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:30 AM on April 25, 2017 [18 favorites]

But Obama was elected twice - both times over white men. There are other reasons and other motivations, and it's worth our time investigating them.

Nah.

Seriously, I just don't care anymore. Trump has 90-plus percent approval ratings today amongst people who voted for him. Their reasons and motivations aren't logical or reasoned or even particularly motivated other than "He's my guy, and loyalty is more important than literally everything else, even to someone who's shown no loyalty to me or my wishes." They're cowards, and they're a minority, and they can stay that way.

You want to investigate how to reach out to the tens of millions who didn't vote? I am down for that. Knock every door and get people energized. But don't waste a farthing, a centime, a tiyin of money or time or effort on dissecting the Trump Voter.
posted by Etrigan at 8:31 AM on April 25, 2017 [42 favorites]

CNN: White House denies House investigation request for Flynn documents

More confirmation that Flynn is nuclear strength dirty. And remember he still has moles in there.
posted by Artw at 8:32 AM on April 25, 2017 [19 favorites]

Seriously, I just don't care anymore. Trump has 90-plus percent approval ratings today amongst people who voted for him. Their reasons and motivations aren't logical or reasoned or even particularly motivated other than "He's my guy, and loyalty is more important than literally everything else, even to someone who's shown no loyalty to me or my wishes." They're cowards, and they're a minority, and they can stay that way.

90 percent? That sounds to me like ten percent of Trump voters can be reached. And I'd assume that some of the rest are experiencing Choice-supportive bias.

In the two week period before the election close to 3 percent of likely voters polled changed their minds. They were swayed by external factors.

If I were the DNC I'd be targeting the hell out of those groups.
posted by rocket88 at 8:48 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

Flug: thank you for posting the article on the decline of the Missouri Democratic party! I found it angering and thought-provoking.

In 2006, Missouri was able to elect Democrats to office - and since then, it appears that the party was just left to rot by the Democratic leadership. In other words - Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy worked. So what is wrong with current Democratic leadership? Do they care about nothing but the presidency, reliably blue states, and collecting fat consultancy paychecks?

Is there a blueprint for how to do the 50-state strategy at the grassroots? Are there any programs along the lines of sister parties, like sister cities, where established and successful local Democratic parties can mentor the struggling ones?

Voter turnout is a problem, but, as I see it, there is something very wrong with party leadership.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 8:50 AM on April 25, 2017 [20 favorites]

there is something very wrong with party leadership

I think they are happy with their relationships with rich donors and don't want to win elections that would upset the cash cow.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 8:53 AM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

90 percent? That sounds to me like ten percent of Trump voters can be reached. And I'd assume that some of the rest are experiencing Choice-supportive bias.

In the two week period before the election close to 3 percent of likely voters polled changed their minds. They were swayed by external factors.

If I were the DNC I'd be targeting the hell out of those groups.

Why go after "close to 3 percent" when more than 40 percent didn't vote?
posted by Etrigan at 8:54 AM on April 25, 2017 [18 favorites]

Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron

> They will release a damaging lack of evidence of a sex scandal in his emails and the French will be appalled.

They tried the sex scandal thing already. The candidate responded by joking that his gay hologram must have escaped. (The hologram thing is a reference to another candidate's campaign stunt giving a speech at two locations simultaneously, via hologram at the second one.)

From the article, it sounds like the phishing attempt was unsuccessful.
posted by nangar at 8:54 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

2006, Missouri was able to elect Democrats to office - and since then...

We had eight years of Barack Obama, the Black Lives Matter movement that started in Ferguson, and the continued migration of young and productive populations as opportunities in rural counties dry up.

Not everything is about the DNC leadership, FFS.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:56 AM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

I flipped to the YouTube livestream of the National Days of Remembrance speech. Like anyone who values themself, I almost always click "hide chat" but I left it open this time because... I don't know why. It's not like I didn't know what I'd see. (CW: youtube chat)

I'd just like to go home and pet my cat for the rest of the day. I'm done with people for a bit.
posted by onehalfjunco at 8:59 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

In this breaking news Washington Post article about how Flynn broke the law, this is not the name I expected to be saying this.

Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said they believe Flynn neither received permission nor fully disclosed income he earned for a speaking engagement in Russia and lobbying activities on behalf of Turkey when he applied to reinstate his security clearance, after viewing two classified memos and Flynn’s disclosure form in a private briefing Tuesday morning.

posted by Brainy at 9:05 AM on April 25, 2017 [13 favorites]

I don't know if the Democrats could win outright majorities in either chamber in Missouri right now,

As a Missourian and Democrat, LOL NO.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 9:06 AM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

this is not the name I expected to be saying this

Chaffetz is severing himself from Trump, to position himself for a run for a different office (maybe President). That's my guess. Also, Flynn is now a weak target; get back to me when Congress subpoenas any of the current WH staff as part of the investigation.
posted by suelac at 9:10 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

I believe her to be smarter and have a stronger character than any of the men in her family, including her husband. I also think she was raised to believe that her appearance and attractiveness to men was her most important asset and that compliance and subservience would bring her far greater rewards than challenging the men in her life.

Ivanka Trump is 100% complicit in supporting the racist, anti-Semitic, pussy-grabbing rhetoric and policies of those men. The patriarchy is responsible for many -- maybe even most -- of our problems but Ivanka Trump is still a woman with agency. I reject the idea that the patriarchy turned Ivanka Trump into a Nazi sympathizer.

Ivanka Trump is a Jewish woman (by choice!) with Jewish children; every moment that she is not using her immense privilege, access, and bank account to denounce her family of fascists and their cronies is a shanda. Every time someone in this administration mentions Jews or the Holocaust it elicits shock and requires multiple explanations and apologies. There is a word for Jews who sold out their fellow Jews in Holocaust Centers concentration camps for an extra piece of bread. Ivanka doesnt even need the bread.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:11 AM on April 25, 2017 [56 favorites]

To them, the president remains disruptive, unconventional, defiant and willing to change his mind.

You know who else was willing to change his mind?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:11 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Before we give too much credit to Chaffetz, let's remember that he's criticizing Flynn, not Trump...

But is too dumb to realize that if Trump et al failed to vet Flynn properly and then covered that up, they're going down too.
posted by Etrigan at 9:23 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

White House is listing accomplishments of Trump's 100 days, including boast he issued more Executive Orders* than FDR. Historian reacts.

@pashulman: Oh. My. God. This is catastrophically wrong.

Short version: Actually, WH got the number wrong for FDR (there were 99, not 9), and while Truman's number is technically correct (100 days from inauguration), he actually had 57 EOs in his first 100 days as President (after FDR's death). As for comparing number of bills passed, let's just say quantity and quality are very distinct concepts.

*Yes, Executive Orders were attacked as gross overreach and unconstitutional by Republicans whenever Obama issued one, but are now a cause for celebration when it's a GOP president.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 9:24 AM on April 25, 2017 [39 favorites]

That nonvoting 40% will not come out and vote unless the only choices are a) vote or b) have a finger snapped off at the second joint. And even then many will think hard about how many fingers they really need.
posted by delfin at 9:26 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Well my friend just announced he's running for congress in Alabama so that's something! He's running on a beer platform.
posted by bq at 9:28 AM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

I hung out with some musicians in New Orleans this weekend - two guys about my age - and they asked if my parents had voted for Trump (well, they first asked if I'd ever seen black people before, growing up in NH). I explained no, actually my mom's family is Jewish and we're a pretty liberal family, and one guy nodded, and was like, "Yeah, you know, it's a real shame about Hitler and the Holocaust. It wasn't even the Jews' fault they controlled all that money."

Then they went on to talk about how much they hate Trump and stuff, and it was just ... so surreal. Like, even people who are categorically anti-Trump are accidentally spouting anti-Semitic nonsense. And he totally thought he was being sympathetic and kind. It's a weird, weird time.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:30 AM on April 25, 2017 [51 favorites]

Here's a lighthearded oops. Ring-ring: Cellphone interrupts Supreme Court hearing, embarrassing Justice Breyer : The unmistakable sound of a cellphone ringing interrupted Tuesday morning’s argument in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, followed by a scramble on the part of Justice Stephen G. Breyer. The embarrassed-looking justice moved quickly to stop the sound, while some of his colleagues smiled and looked at the ceiling.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:31 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Chaffetz's game has never been to be a total dead-ender like Nunes. He always has some fig leaf - when presented with something that's incontrovertibly unacceptable, he'll say something.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:32 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

As for comparing number of bills passed, let's just say quantity and quality are very distinct concepts.

Also hasn't he made a big deal about there being "too many regulations," so wouldn't passing a large number of new ones run counter to his expressed position? Look, I caught Trump in an outright contradiction! That's the first time, right?
posted by contraption at 9:34 AM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

That nonvoting 40% will not come out and vote unless the only choices are a) vote or b) have a finger snapped off at the second joint. And even then many will think hard about how many fingers they really need.

I'd rather try to disprove that than try the "Surely this!" theory to peel away juuust enough Trump voters. Turnout has risen by 5 percentage points over the last four elections. It's been over 60 percent in living memory. And that's without considering the voter suppression fuckery that's been perpetrated in recent cycles.
posted by Etrigan at 9:39 AM on April 25, 2017 [18 favorites]

Matthew Yglesias from Vox would agree with you.
posted by orangutan at 9:43 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Judging by the vast number of people I have talked to at various marches and rallies over the last 100 days who have said they are newly born activists, I am holding out hope that some of that 40% can be swayed into voting.
posted by archimago at 9:44 AM on April 25, 2017 [23 favorites]

So far, there is no discussion of "Why do these people still love Trump?" that can't be answered with the Gene Wilder "You know...morons." speech from Blazing Saddles.

In retrospect, that movie was more prescient than we ever knew. Also not cynical enough about what lengths a lot of white people would go to to avoid giving credit or ceding any power to a competent black man.
posted by emjaybee at 9:50 AM on April 25, 2017 [38 favorites]

Is 45 a senile delinquent?
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:50 AM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

That nonvoting 40% will not come out and vote unless the only choices are a) vote or b) have a finger snapped off at the second joint. And even then many will think hard about how many fingers they really need.

This feels overly fatalistic, and also falls prey to the fallacy of American Exceptionalism. There are other countries that have compulsory voting. Australia manages 94% turnout for federal elections with a threat of a fine of less than $20. We are not so special that it couldn't work for us, too.
posted by tocts at 10:01 AM on April 25, 2017 [14 favorites]

Oh. My. God. This is catastrophically wrong.

In addition to undercounting FDR's executive orders by 90, they don't list the 76 laws FDR passed in his first 100 days.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:03 AM on April 25, 2017 [16 favorites]

The 'this is stupid but we did it the best' administration.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:04 AM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

The 'this is stupid but we did it the best' administration.

Also the "most = best" administration.
posted by Etrigan at 10:08 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

WaPo: President Trump just had his bluff called — again

This kind of bluffing and having it called is undoubtedly something Trump is used to in the business and real estate worlds. But in the political world, you are negotiating with the same people over and over again. And the lesson of the first two big congressional debates [Obamacare, Mexico Wall] is that when Trump says a bill must contain XYZ, he doesn't really mean it; it's just posturing. And that doesn't bode well for future Trump demands.

...

Trump has shown no such inclination to make it so people take his demands at face value. And given what's happened in the first two legislative debates, the next time he draws a line in the sand, you can bet lawmakers know how easily it can be raked over.

posted by ZeusHumms at 10:15 AM on April 25, 2017 [26 favorites]

Only 1288 days until the next presidential election now!
posted by MedicareFAQ at 10:17 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron

> They will release a damaging lack of evidence of a sex scandal in his emails and the French will be appalled.


Dude met his wife when he was 15 and she was his 40 year old teacher. But they didn't have a relationship until he was 18 (uh huh). In the US, that would be pretty disqualifying for political ambitions (although I don't know, IOKIYAR). In France? *Gallic shrug*
posted by Preserver at 10:23 AM on April 25, 2017 [9 favorites]

Dude met his wife when he was 15 and she was his 40 year old teacher.

[real] / [fake] please? ...oh, [real]. Ok then.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:26 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Is there a blueprint for how to do the 50-state strategy at the grassroots?

Show up and vote, show up and do stuff. Ultimately the MO Democratic Party is waaaaaaay more the creature of Missourians (?) than it is of any of the national organizations.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:28 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

That nonvoting 40% will not come out and vote unless the only choices are a) vote or b) have a finger snapped off at the second joint. And even then many will think hard about how many fingers they really need.

It could be a lot easier than that. In Oregon, which has automatic registration and mail-in balloting for everyone, turnout in the 2016 election was 80% of registered voters (70% of the voting-eligible population). In 2008 the turnout was 86% of registered voters (77% of the voting-eligible population).

Tell your state officials to introduce or sponsor vote-by-mail and automatic voter registration laws. Or use ballot initiatives to do the same.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:46 AM on April 25, 2017 [16 favorites]

The percentage of voters hasn't cracked 60% since the sixties, 65% since William Jennings Bryan ran.

By all means try! But I don't expect miracles.
posted by delfin at 10:48 AM on April 25, 2017

In the US, that would be pretty disqualifying for political ambitions

It should be disqualifying for the 40-year-old, although I don't know that it would be. For the 15/18 year old, I don't know why anyone would consider it a scandal about them, or disqualifying in any way. I doubt either nation's middle-aged schoolteachers would feel themselves at risk.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:54 AM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

This feels overly fatalistic, and also falls prey to the fallacy of American Exceptionalism. There are other countries that have compulsory voting. Australia manages 94% turnout for federal elections with a threat of a fine of less than $20. We are not so special that it couldn't work for us, too.

I will defer to an actual constitutional scholar on this but I just do not see how you manage to have compulsory political speech without a constitutional amendment.
posted by phearlez at 10:55 AM on April 25, 2017

Dude met his wife when he was 15 and she was his 40 year old teacher. But they didn't have a relationship until he was 18 (uh huh). In the US, that would be pretty disqualifying for political ambitions (although I don't know, IOKIYAR). In France? *Gallic shrug*

Ooh, are we doing the prim tut-tutting in this chat-room? "Just sayin'?" It would be irresponsible not to mention? Who actually gives a fuck about this? Even more to the point, what does French law have to say on the topic? Because comparing the morality of other countries to the US is a 100% losing bet.
posted by rhizome at 10:57 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Turnout was above 60% in 2008 if you count it as a percent of the voting-eligible population instead of the voting-age population. (The latter includes non-citizens and disenfranchised felons.)

Yes, fewer people vote when 10% of adults in the US are legally barred from voting. With two and a half million people behind bars, blaming low turnout on non-voters misses a huge part of the picture. And we know empirically that among people who can vote, a large majority do, if you just make it easy.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:59 AM on April 25, 2017 [13 favorites]

Phearlez, you word it so that you don't have to actually vote, just show up at the polling place.
posted by ryanrs at 10:59 AM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Ooh, are we doing the prim tut-tutting in this chat-room? "Just sayin'?" It would be irresponsible not to mention? Who actually gives a fuck about this? Even more to the point, what does French law have to say on the topic? Because comparing the morality of other countries to the US is a 100% losing bet.

No prim tut-tutting here. Making an observation related to the discussion of disclosing "sex scandals" not a value judgment. In fact, I was quite careful to word it to not express a value judgment.
posted by Preserver at 11:02 AM on April 25, 2017

Most countries don't have a major political party with "let's make it harder to vote" as an explicit strategy.
posted by theodolite at 11:02 AM on April 25, 2017 [47 favorites]

Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz now has Donald Trump's ear. This can only end badly
posted by adamvasco at 11:03 AM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

For the 15/18 year old, I don't know why anyone would consider it a scandal about them, or disqualifying in any way.

Because we are really good in US politics about guilt by association?
posted by Preserver at 11:03 AM on April 25, 2017

Impacts and Costs of the Government Shutdown (Obama White House, November 7, 2013)

As the President has said, the shutdown that occurred last month inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our economy and took a toll on families and businesses across the country. Today, OMB is releasing a report that catalogs the breadth and depth of this damage, and details the various impacts and costs of the October 2013 Federal government shutdown.

For a local perspective: 5 Big Ways Trump’s Government Shutdown Will Impact New Mexico on Day 1

1. 30,000-50,000 unemployed federal workers.
2. Closures of public lands, big hits to public recreation industry
3. 400+ Small Businesses will Lose Access to Small Biz Loans
4. Federal Benefits for Veterans, Seniors, and those with Disabilities will be Delayed and or go Entirely Unpaid
5. 8,000+ New Mexico Children Cut Off From HeadStart Programs

posted by filthy light thief at 11:04 AM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

you word it so that you don't have to actually vote, just show up at the polling place.

This is pretty blasè about the imposition of showing up and to what extent that is speech, and regardless only addresses the 1AM aspect; there's also a question of Congress' standing to compel behavior in a non-fed election. If you want to read an overview of the issues there's a Harvard Law Review piece on it which takes the "mandatory voting: yes" position.

My reaction to it, unencumbered by actual official legal training or ever having passed a single bar, is that they kind of hand-wave over the fact that it would be subject to intermediate scrutiny. When you combine that with the fact that our supremes shrugged off the voting rights act very recently I'm skeptical that they'd let stand a vote requirement.

Regardless of how it would turn out I feel 110% certain in predicting we'd see legal challenges at least as energetic as those to the Affordable Care Act.
posted by phearlez at 11:11 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Bonnie Bacarisse at the Daily Beast got a hell of a scoop: The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’. Turns out the guy behind the Red Pill subreddit, home to MRAs, pick-up artists, and rape apologists, is a New Hampshire state lawmaker.
posted by zachlipton at 11:11 AM on April 25, 2017 [64 favorites]

Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz now has Donald Trump's ear.

WHY ISN'T THIS WAR CRIMINAL IN JAIL?
posted by vibrotronica at 11:15 AM on April 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

Turns out the guy behind the Red Pill subreddit, home to MRAs, pick-up artists, and rape apologists, is a New Hampshire state lawmaker.

!

Robert Fisher is the sole member of his band, The Five Nines.

OMG "The Five Nines" is fittingly the douchiest band name ever.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:18 AM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

Briefing is currently live: right now retired mortician Wilbur Ross is answering questions about Canadian lumber, but presumably Spicer will be back at some point
posted by theodolite at 11:21 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Because we are really good in US politics about guilt by association?

well, it's fair to observe that Americans, particularly but not exclusively Republicans, don't forgive victims of sexual coercion, no matter how much they love and elect perpetrators.

but we are also really good about sexism. the U.S. is deeply unforgiving of wives, at least, who fail to leave husbands that are known to have have mistreated them, because a correct marriage is a satisfying public pantomime and it is not acceptable to be happy if the general consensus is that you should be unhappy. See: Hillary Clinton. Whether that would extend to husbands who fail to leave once-abusive or exploitative wives, I don't know. but it's not a sure thing. People might call Macron a lot of unfair things if he were American, but I bet they wouldn't call him a bad feminist role model for young boys.
posted by queenofbithynia at 11:24 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Fact-checking President Trump’s Pinocchio-laden Associated Press interview

In a wide-ranging interview with Julie Pace of the Associated Press on April 21, President Trump yet again made many false or misleading statements. Here’s a roundup of 14 claims. As is our practice, we don’t award Pinocchios in roundups.

Trump’s over-the-top, boastful AP interview, annotated

President Trump sat down with the Associated Press's Julie Pace on Friday, and what emerged was a conversation in which Trump bragged and boasted repeatedly — sometimes unprompted and using revisionist history — about what he's accomplished in his first 100 days as president. He did this all while dismissing the idea that the 100-day threshold even matters, despite hailing that same standard dozens of times late in his 2016 campaign.

posted by kirkaracha at 11:27 AM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

Yea, it's definitely a feature of French society that they don't care about sex 'scandals', the President getting divorced while in office, the leading candidate having a maybe-questionable origin story with his wife of however long. As long as it's not against French law, and he's not trying to regulate the private conduct of others, they don't seem to care, and we should learn from them.

Now if he was a closet case railing against gay marriage, or trying to tighten age of consent laws with his own relationship history potentially in question, that's placing his private life at issue. Doesn't seem to be the case.

And I'll note Republican sex scandals don't operate like Democratic ones. John Edwards is out of politics over his secret family, while diaper-dandy David Vitter was a Republican Senator in good standing until this year, and Mark Sanford was reelected to the House.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:29 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Macron doesn't really have to do anything to have a sex scandal, the far right will make one for him: Here's How Far-Right Trolls Are Spreading Hoaxes About French Presidential Candidate Emmanuel Macron
posted by gladly at 11:29 AM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

his accomplishments (sic)

I have a new favorite writer.
posted by chris24 at 11:32 AM on April 25, 2017 [23 favorites]

The one graph that explains why Trump is going to battle with Canada over milk: the big dairy states, New York excepted, are swing states.
posted by zachlipton at 11:35 AM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

I've been thinking about that AP interview a lot

Me too.

The summaries on this interview -- on a lot of his interviews -- simply don't capture the substance of them.

That's for sure. It's an impossible problem. The act of summarizing what he said forces you to make it coherent, and making it coherent is inherently misleading.
posted by diogenes at 11:37 AM on April 25, 2017 [24 favorites]

It may be that nothing short of legal ramifications for his misstatements -- a lawsuit, the threat of impeachment, testimony given under oath, etc. -- will actually make a difference. I don't know.

A somewhat different situation, legally: but this is already happening in regards to the ban on immigration from Certain Nations -- the courts have looked (at least potentially, or provisionally) at Trump's and Trump staffers' comments as valid evidence that the bans are indeed discriminatory based on religion, since direct comments to that effect were made.

Trump's words matter, all the more so now that he is President. Eventually they will catch up to him, hopefully before the country is ruined.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:38 AM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

Trump is going to speak on the USS Intrepid on May 4th, his first trip back to Manhattan since the inauguration. It's a Choose Your Own Adventure if you live in New York: protest or flee; it's going to be a mess.
posted by zachlipton at 11:38 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

OMG "The Five Nines" is fittingly the douchiest band name ever.

There was a Nazi skinhead band in London in the 80s called "The Four Skins."
posted by spitbull at 11:39 AM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

The one graph that explains why Trump is going to battle with Canada over milk: the big dairy states, New York excepted, are swing states.

This seems a more complicated - and generous in assigning him credit for having a strategy - explanation than "there was a story on Fox about it."
posted by phearlez at 11:39 AM on April 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

I'm totally on board with mandatory voting. But before you can make it a requirement, you need to make easy to comply. The nice part is that most of those things are good incremental steps that will each help boost turnout.

-Obviously, voter ID laws need to go
-It's CRAZY to me that you can't register to vote on election day, at your polling place. It's what we do here in MN and it's how it should be done everywhere.
-Election day should be the most American holiday in the history of holidays, it's stupid that we don't take it off.
-A smattering of boring, important, detail stuff that no one wants to talk about (audit trails, QA testing, information security, etc.).

If all of that stuff and the things I haven't thought of were implemented, then it probably wouldn't be a problem to make voting mandatory. Voting might also now be easy enough nation wide that making it mandatory wouldn't really boost turnout higher than it already was.

Mandatory voting is great as a lofty, bold goa but even a lot of the smaller incremental stuff is way out of reach right now. So I think it makes more sense to ask ourselves, "If we can't have that big progressive dream, what are some smaller things that have a better shot."

Then you can celebrate each of those things that gets done as step towards the big goal rather than a failure to achieve the big goal (even if you know that you'll never achieve the big one).
posted by VTX at 11:44 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Regardless of how it would turn out I feel 110% certain in predicting we'd see legal challenges at least as energetic as those to the Affordable Care Act.

You were right, it would be challenged and I feel pretty confident that the challenges would prevail. Compulsory voting seems to me to be obviously unconstitutional. I'd fully support an Amendment making voting compulsory in conjunction with making election day a national holiday and some sort of wording about wait time differentials across precincts being a civil rights issue.
posted by Justinian at 11:44 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Yeah I would have assumed the big dairy farming counties in those swing states would have already swung for Trump anyway?

Putting on my tinfoil hat, I wonder if Trump's sudden hatred of all things Canadian isn't more strongly tied to the recent announcement that we are legalizing weed as of next year? This follows from the theory that Jeff 'Pot smokers are as bad as child rapists' Sessions is the Dick Cheney mastermind-type of the Trump regime that someone put together some strong evidence for I think in the last megathread.
posted by aiglet at 11:45 AM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

making election day a national holiday

Just a reminder that the vast majority of people who already have problems making time to vote are only paid for time they're actually working, so "holiday" doesn't make much of a difference for them.
posted by Etrigan at 11:47 AM on April 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

So this is a fun, and technically geeky, problem. The Joint Committee on Taxation let Paul Ryan know that even a 10-year temporary corporate tax cut, which is what you'd pass through reconciliation with just 50 votes in the Senate, would create "nonnegligible revenue loss" outside that 10-year budget window, because corporations will repatriate funds and get credits they can carry forward during the budget window.

In other words, there's real question as to whether this thing can be passed through reconciliation, and it's unclear whether the White House even knew this.
posted by zachlipton at 11:49 AM on April 25, 2017 [23 favorites]

I think it's implicit that an election holiday would come attached to legislation mandating paid time off to vote for hourly workers.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:50 AM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

Trump's words matter, all the more so now that he is President. Eventually they will catch up to him, hopefully before the country is ruined.

His words never mattered before because Trump's English is business puffery. It doesn't bear close scrutiny; it doesn't warrant close scrutiny - it's not meant for close scrutiny. I mean, who really listens to a stereo guy's sales pitch? Or a used car salesman's? Maybe it'll catch up with him somehow, but I think we'll just end up adjusting our expectations down.
posted by klarck at 11:51 AM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

In other words, there's real question as to whether this thing can be passed through reconciliation, and it's unclear whether the White House even knew this.

This would be wonderful. Their only chance at passing any meaningful legislation was a short-term tax cut through reconciliation. Take that away, and they've got nothing.
posted by diogenes at 11:53 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Trump is going to speak on the USS Intrepid on May 4th, his first trip back to Manhattan since the inauguration. It's a Choose Your Own Adventure if you live in New York: protest or flee; it's going to be a mess.

Great. It's the final day of our state math test that every public school kid in grades 3-8 will be taking.
posted by archimago at 11:53 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think it's implicit that an election holiday would come attached to legislation mandating paid time off to vote for hourly workers.

It needs to be as explicit as possible, because it would be the only such holiday and would likely create as much pushback as the holiday itself.
posted by Etrigan at 11:58 AM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

I think it's implicit that an election holiday would come attached to legislation mandating paid time off to vote for hourly workers.
Why? That's not what happens with other national holidays. In a large number of industries, particularly if you are part-time, even if the business is closed for a national holiday that just means you don't get to work that day and there's no money coming in.

If you want to have people register to vote on election day, you need to be prepared to spend a shit ton of money hiring and training staffers who aren't retirees. Not that I have anything against retirees, but damn. For once I'd like to see a poll worker under 65 every so often.
posted by teleri025 at 12:00 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

>I think it's implicit that an election holiday would come attached to legislation mandating paid time off to vote for hourly workers.

Would love to see this but it seems very unlikely to me. What I think would work, as mbrubeck mentions above, is a national push for vote-by-mail, ideally along with automatic voter registration. A lot of ugly problems go away immediately -- indirect disenfranchisement through long wait times or intentionally hard-to-reach voting locations, intimidation at the polls, paid time off or lack thereof for hourly workers. All of that becomes a non-issue, and participation goes up naturally without having to fight constitutional challenges around compulsory voting (which again I'd love to see but I think it's very unlikely).

If you want to see greater participation and less disenfranchisement (intentional or otherwise), push your state government on vote-by-mail and automatic registration.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:01 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

The one graph that explains why Trump is going to battle with Canada over milk: the big dairy states, New York excepted, are swing states.

There is a simply explanation. Trump was in Wisconsin last week on a campaign stop and Trump only remembers the last person he talks to regarding any policy issue.
posted by JackFlash at 12:04 PM on April 25, 2017 [16 favorites]

In which Rep. Ted Lieu demonstrates his mastery of social media by posing with his adopted doggy while wearing a Trump/Putin '16 t-shirt, thus ensuring his tweet is retweeted by both dog lovers and concerned citizens for the greatest possible reach.
posted by zachlipton at 12:04 PM on April 25, 2017 [26 favorites]

Their only chance at passing any meaningful legislation was a short-term tax cut through reconciliation. Take that away, and they've got nothing.

Could McConnell pull the same parlimentarian shenanigans he did to nuke the filibuster, though? Have the parlimentarian rule, correctly, that the measure can't be passed under reconciliation, then use his majority to overrule the parlimentarian?

Of course, once again, if that tactic is viable and he uses it to pass the sweet, sweet tax cuts for his wealthy patrons, McConnell may well find Democrats use the same tactic to pass tax and spending increases in 2020.
posted by Gelatin at 12:06 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

He could -- you can have a majority overrule the parliamentarian on any point of Senate procedure that doesn't derive from a law or the Constitution. And even then, you could still go through with the vote -- it'd just get struck down in court. The problem for McConnell is that a dozen or so of his own party members are on record post-Gorsuch as wanting to preserve the legislative filibuster, and would not be happy about the party taking steps to erode it in ways that could bite them on the ass in the near future (whereas no conservative SCOTUS justice is likely to retire or die under a Democratic president for at least 20 years, even assuming the republic lasts that long).
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:10 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Chrysostom: "I think it's implicit that an election holiday would come attached to legislation mandating paid time off to vote for hourly workers."

If I'm not mistaken, if this were to pass, this would be the first and only time that the US has any legally mandated paid time-off. There are many things that Americans have gotten used to but are totally alien to much of the rest of the industrialized world, e.g.: death penalty, widespread access to handguns, crowdfunding your healthcare so you don't die, etc... Lack of mandated paid time-off is one of those. Sure, lots of people get paid time-off due to common industry practices (depending on the industry) or union contracts (less and less nowadays) or whatever. But, as far as I know, no one in the US gets paid time-off because of any legal requirement. I mean it was a whole thing to get FMLA passed and that's about unpaid time-off.
posted by mhum at 12:11 PM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

Turns out the guy behind the Red Pill subreddit, home to MRAs, pick-up artists, and rape apologists, is a New Hampshire state lawmaker

In fairness: the average size of a legislative district in New Hampshire is about 3000 people. The prerequisites for becoming a state legislator are basically wanting the job and being on good enough terms with a few of your neighbors that they're willing to vote for you. The NH House is full of fruitcakes.
posted by jackbishop at 12:13 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Could McConnell pull the same parlimentarian shenanigans he did to nuke the filibuster, though? Have the parlimentarian rule, correctly, that the measure can't be passed under reconciliation, then use his majority to overrule the parlimentarian?

Yes. The Vice President can overrule the parliamentarian and a majority vote of the Senate can then sustain that ruling. But that would basically be the end of the legislative filibuster. So far, they've been acting like they won't go there, because not every Republican Senator is stupid, and they realize the filibuster is, at its heart, a conservative tool they can use to stop just about every Democratic social program from now until forever. There's a chance that the sweet siren song of tax cuts may be too much for them though.
posted by zachlipton at 12:13 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

That Daily Beast article is GOLD.

On a forum subtitled “Contemplative Dominance for the Modern Man,” under the username FredFredrickson, Fisher complained in 2012, “I cannot be honest about my accomplishments or ambitions without ridicule. I am running for a state political position, I’m a high level exec in a franchising company, and I own two business locations in state. I found that stating it simply… nets me negativity on dates if I’m honest.”

How has nobody snapped up this prize specimen yet??
posted by orrnyereg at 12:18 PM on April 25, 2017 [11 favorites]

zachlipton: "Bonnie Bacarisse at the Daily Beast got a hell of a scoop: The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’. Turns out the guy behind the Red Pill subreddit, home to MRAs, pick-up artists, and rape apologists, is a New Hampshire state lawmaker."

Holy cow. They really got him dead-to-rights on this. Aside from the copious on-line evidence trail, there's this:

Within hours of contacting Rep. Fisher, and after delivering by email a summary of his apparent connections to The Red Pill kingpin, his two primary Reddit usernames had been wiped, and four blogs connected to him were deleted or made private. He has not returned additional requests for comment.

And the various quotes they have on him are exactly as bad as you'd expect from the founder of the Red Pill subreddit so there's no need to reproduce them here. However, there is one bit I found quite amusing:

Elsewhere, he wondered why listing his accomplishments on dates, including his status as a candidate and “high level exec,” was apparently a turnoff to women, despite it being characteristically alpha.

lol.
posted by mhum at 12:20 PM on April 25, 2017 [25 favorites]

So, apologies for the compulsory voting derail, but just to clarify where I'm coming from:

I'm not unaware that the US constitution and body of law may mean there are some unique challenges to overcome. However, what I'm more broadly speaking out against is treating the US population as if they are uniquely opposed to getting out and voting -- as if somehow we are fundamentally different from other people whose nations have achieved much better voter participation without having to go to particularly extreme lengths.

Are there legal specifics that would be particular to the US? Absolutely.

Should we write off those who currently choose not to vote* as somehow being hard-line anti-voters who would have to be dragged by a team of mules to the polling station, as opposed to just being garden-variety apathetic? Absolutely not.

* Differentiated from those whose vote is being suppressed, which is an issue that should also be attacked, but requires different tools.
posted by tocts at 12:21 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Could McConnell pull the same parlimentarian shenanigans he did to nuke the filibuster, though? Have the parlimentarian rule, correctly, that the measure can't be passed under reconciliation, then use his majority to overrule the parlimentarian?

Basically, they can lobby or change the parliamentarian to get their legislation past the "Byrd Bath." But, based on McConnell's statements this week, I don't think he's interested in doing that (at least yet). They don't really have a tax plan that's "worth" doing it yet. With Gorsuch, the benefits are immediate and obvious and they had their caucus whipped on that like 8 years ago. They don't have that with any tax plan that has been floated in recent memory.

Sidenote: Ylan Q. Mui (@ylanmui) of CNBC is a good person to follow on twitter for federal tax policy news.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:30 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

"The wall is very, very important," Trump says.

"In your first term?" asks @MajorCBS.

"Yeah, yeah. Sure. We have plenty of time."

--@stevenportnoy

Well. Oiled. Machine.
posted by zachlipton at 12:38 PM on April 25, 2017 [9 favorites]

There is a lot more incentive to go all-in on the Supreme Court than legislation; Gorsuch will be there for decades. Legislation, if you nuke the filibuster for it, can be reversed in possibly as little as 3 years from now.
posted by Justinian at 12:38 PM on April 25, 2017

The Vice President can overrule the parliamentarian and a majority vote of the Senate can then sustain that ruling. But that would basically be the end of the legislative filibuster.

I am not sure I agree with the last point. The filibuster would remain, but the tax cuts would not be subject to one due to McConnell declaring in bad faith that whatever technicality prevents it from falling under reconciliation (thus avoiding the filibuster) is a misreading of the rule or whatever hogwash term he decides to apply.

The point is, though, that it would widen the reconciliation window for budget priorities that the Republicans would not prefer.
posted by Gelatin at 12:42 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I try to limit myself to a single daily comment of the variety "Republican lawmaker says something horrible," and I already used up my slot before noon today, but I think this calls for a double feature: Sen. Mike Enzi: ‘The Guy Who Wears A Tutu To The Bar’ Is ‘Asking For It’:

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) told a group of high school and middle school students last week that it’s fine to be a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer community ― as long as you aren’t too open about it.

On Thursday, Enzi spoke to students at Greybull High School and Middle School and responded to a student who asked him what he was doing to support LGBTQ communities in Wyoming.

He said that “the guy who wears a tutu to the bar and is surprised” when he is treated different is “asking for it.”
...
Burciaga said that Enzi prefaced his comment by saying, “We always say in Wyoming you can be anything you want to be as long as you don’t push it in somebody’s face.”

posted by zachlipton at 12:42 PM on April 25, 2017 [19 favorites]

I am not sure I agree with the last point. The filibuster would remain, but the tax cuts would not be subject to one due to McConnell declaring in bad faith that whatever technicality prevents it from falling under reconciliation (thus avoiding the filibuster) is a misreading of the rule or whatever hogwash term he decides to apply.

The filibuster would remain on paper but McConnell would have crossed the proverbial Rubicon of waiving it to pass legislation with 50 votes because he really wants to. At that point, anybody who thinks it wouldn't get waived for every other GOP priority is fooling themselves.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:45 PM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

He said that “the guy who wears a tutu to the bar and is surprised” when he is treated different is “asking for it.”

It doesn't seem like the Golden Rule should be so hard to understand and put into practice.
posted by diogenes at 12:46 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

The Golden Rule doesn't work with people who think being LGBT, poor, non-white, non-Christian or female is something you're doing to them, and thus justifies retaliation.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:49 PM on April 25, 2017 [39 favorites]

The filibuster would remain on paper but McConnell would have crossed the proverbial Rubicon of waiving it to pass legislation with 50 votes because he really wants to. At that point, anybody who thinks it wouldn't get waived for every other GOP priority is fooling themselves.

Point, but I doubt the Republicans hold any higher priority than tax cuts for the rich. I can't see them letting a little thing like budget reconciliation rules or a requirement to be ostensibly revenue neutral stand in their way.
posted by Gelatin at 12:49 PM on April 25, 2017

That guy's a piece of shit and everything but I'm kind of tickled that his go-to idea of Stuff Gays Do is wearing a tutu to a bar
posted by theodolite at 12:50 PM on April 25, 2017 [42 favorites]

Because this is the darkest timeline, my first impulse is to defend this man for at least being honest about his bigotry. I mean, how refreshing is it that someone just makes a straight-up transphobic statement that you can argue with, rather than dismissing or evading or alternative-fact'ing?
posted by TypographicalError at 12:50 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

He said that “the guy who wears a tutu to the bar and is surprised” when he is treated different is “asking for it.”

This was Matthew Shepard's senator. lest anyone forget. which is why I don't think there's a way to make it funny.
posted by queenofbithynia at 12:54 PM on April 25, 2017 [77 favorites]

Elsewhere, he wondered why listing his accomplishments on dates, including his status as a candidate and “high level exec,” was apparently a turnoff to women, despite it being characteristically alpha.

"...and then I demonstrated my dominance display by urinating on the bar, the jukebox, and her bar stool and purse, and she hit me with some pepper spray and called the cops! I don't understand."

My dude, the concept of being an alpha is bullshit and just demonstrates that you're immature, self-absorbed, and have a massive inferiority complex. Please stop subjecting women to your inadequacies.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:54 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

'I don't like the word 'accomplice,'' Ivanka Trump tells TODAY in exclusive interview

Boo. Fucking. Hoo.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:56 PM on April 25, 2017 [46 favorites]

Indiana is already improving without the presence of Mike Pence: Indiana’s 2017 Legislative Session Ends With The Defeat of All Anti-LGBT Legislation
posted by melissasaurus at 12:57 PM on April 25, 2017 [46 favorites]

How does she feel about the word "complicit"?
posted by asteria at 12:58 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

"Who do you think I'm accomplice to? A 70-year-old baby with a TV news addiction? I prefer 'power behind the throne,' or maybe 'grand vizier.'" [fake]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:59 PM on April 25, 2017 [9 favorites]

'I don't like the word 'accomplice,'' Ivanka Trump tells TODAY in exclusive interview


How about "co-defendant"?
posted by rocket88 at 12:59 PM on April 25, 2017 [45 favorites]

unindicted co-conspirator!
posted by Justinian at 1:01 PM on April 25, 2017 [29 favorites]

'I don't like the word 'accomplice''

Well, admittedly, 'partner in crime' does sound sexier.
posted by valkane at 1:01 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

That's a shitty thing to say and believe even if 'being treated different' didn't go from getting looks on one end of the bigotry scale to being refused service to being beat up to being killed at the other end of the scale. But it does and that makes him an even bigger asshole. And on preview he was Matthew Sheppard's senator? That's gotta put him in the running for one of the biggest assholes in government and that's saying a lot.
posted by Green With You at 1:01 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

How about "co-defendant"?

🎶And still you call me co-defendant

Somehow you laid the blame on me🎶

reaching way back into the 90s for that one
posted by Existential Dread at 1:03 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

unindicted co-conspirator!

"Conspiracy" is the key term here. Her, and many others conspired to violate the Laws of the United States. Now all we need is some US Attorney's to write it up and file it with the Court.
posted by mikelieman at 1:03 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

Something smells fishy....Felony by Ivanka Trump.
posted by Lyme Drop at 1:12 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

I don't understand how a judge sitting on a bay in the pacific ocean can keep the president from keeping us all safe.
posted by valkane at 1:16 PM on April 25, 2017 [35 favorites]

addendum: Back in '98, Mike Enzi put his name on a statement he may or may not have ever read, suggesting that we "work together to ensure that we avoid the kind of hate and stereotyping that gave rise to this crime in the first place" and "recommit ourselves to doing everything we possibly can to ensure that such a crime never happens again."

notably, at least to me who looked it up for masochistic purposes, whoever wrote the statement for him thought it prudent to have him say that he was "saddened and angered that such a senseless act of brutality and mindless violence could happen in Wyoming. " On some passing impulse of decency, shame, or prudent realism, they did not try to put it in his mouth that he was also "surprised."
posted by queenofbithynia at 1:17 PM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

Go fuck yourself Ivanka.

Trump’s Annual Child-Care Tax Break Would Give Average American Families Less Than $20

But Trump’s child-care proposal, which Ivanka is currently trying to sell to Congress, would function more as a handout to wealthy families than as necessary support for families already struggling to afford child-care services.
posted by futz at 1:18 PM on April 25, 2017 [35 favorites]

"So called" judge in a "so called" city, is my guess.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:18 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Bloomberg: Trump’s Sanctuary Cities Order Blocked by Federal Judge

The order, or at least the bit I'm seeing, is a weird. It explicitly says that it doesn't stop the AG or DHS from enforcing existing conditions on federal grants, which are required by law, nor does it stop DHS from defining or designating sanctuary jurisdictions. "It does prohibit the Government from exercising Section 9(a) in a way that violates the Constitution."

This is really odd, and I'm trying to figure out how to make sense of that. I mean, yes, of course the government is prohibited from violating the Constitution, so it's not really clear to me what the order is doing besides reminding the government to follow the law. I'm trying to drum up a full copy of the thing.
posted by zachlipton at 1:21 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’. Turns out the guy behind the Red Pill subreddit, home to MRAs, pick-up artists, and rape apologists, is a New Hampshire state lawmaker."

The best revelation—and by "best," I mean "even less socially skilled than his fedora"—is that he wanted to put an "occupants may be videotaped" disclaimer on his bedroom door.

As of this afternoon, the story's been picked up by New York Magazine, Boston Magazine, and /r/drama, among others. His wikipedia entry has been edited. The cherry on all this is that @RobertFisherNH only has three tweets: one to announce his arrival on twitter; one to announce his appearance on reddit; and one to chastise Jason Chaffetz for using "nerd" disparagingly.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:21 PM on April 25, 2017 [9 favorites]

Now that Ivanka is being treated with the disdain she deserves I'm waiting for Spicer or the White House to start complaining that the president's family is off limits!
posted by Justinian at 1:26 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

lol if there's one thing worse than a congressman its a state legislator
posted by entropicamericana at 1:27 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Fisher's wikipedia page lists his profession as "politician, computer repairman." That's gotta be a joke, right? It doesn't mention if he lives in his mothers basement.
posted by valkane at 1:28 PM on April 25, 2017

Here is an editorial by Ivanka on Monday in the Financial Times. Archive.is link due to paywall.

Investment in women unleashes global gains

She's nothing but a lip service paying piece of shit. Oh, and Complicit.
posted by futz at 1:29 PM on April 25, 2017

Fisher's wikipedia page lists his profession as "politician, computer repairman." That's gotta be a joke, right? It doesn't mention if he lives in his mothers basement.

From the Daily Beast article:

In addition to his legislative duties, Fisher owns a local computer-repair franchise, and in his spare time, seems to have created the web’s most popular online destination for pickup artistry and men’s rights activists, The Red Pill, according an investigation by the Daily Beast.

Appears to be accurate!
posted by Existential Dread at 1:30 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fisher owns a local computer-repair franchise

That's a "small empire" if you please!
posted by orrnyereg at 1:34 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

Ok here is the court order.

What it is sounding like from a very early skim of this is that the government, at oral argument, explicitly admitted that the sanctuary cities EO was basically meaningless, that it was just an "exercise of the President's 'bully pulpit' to highlight a changed approach to immigration enforcement." The law already gives the government the power to condition certain grants on cities following certain immigration policies, but the EO says they'll take away all federal funds from sanctuary cities. Despite the clear language of the executive order to the contrary, they're now saying that they won't take away other federal funds that don't have those conditions attached.

The court is basically saying "sounds good, because you can't do that anyway." Or in the Judge's words: "Althought the Government's new interpretation of the Order is not legally plausible, in effect it appears to put the parties in general agreement regarding the Order's constitutional limitations." Basically: "you made up some BS at oral argument to try to convince me that the order doesn't say what it obviously says, but it so happens that your BS pretty much matches up with what the law allows you to do, so follow the law. So ordered."

That's a good win—it prevents most federal funding from being stripped—, but the DOJ and DHS grants that are subject to these conditions are at risk. There are also arguments that many sanctuary city policies don't even violate the grant conditions.
posted by zachlipton at 1:35 PM on April 25, 2017 [16 favorites]

Vox: Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in

I'm not surprised or even all that outraged here, I just think it's interesting how characteristic this is of the patience and discipline that Obama displayed during his time in office. Note to other would-be Democratic presidents: first you do the Presidency, then you collect all the sweet Wall Street cash.
posted by indubitable at 1:39 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

We've been trying, for several months, to obtain...General Flynn's [security clearance filings]...there is no evidence...in the reported documents, of payments from Russia [that we know were made.]"

Ok, then surely Kushner is next right? Lying is bad right? Lying on security clearance :

Kushner Omitted Meeting With Russians on Security Clearance Forms (linked previously)

This is not just bureaucratic paperwork. The form warns that “withholding, misrepresenting, or falsifying information” could result in loss of access to classified information, denial of eligibility for a sensitive job and even prosecution; knowingly falsifying or concealing material facts is a federal felony that may result in fines or up to five years imprisonment.

I guess "omitted" is vastly different from lying.
posted by futz at 1:43 PM on April 25, 2017 [15 favorites]

The White House has invited the press corps to Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.

Or, as Olivia Nuzzi puts it: Isn't this everyday?
posted by zachlipton at 1:43 PM on April 25, 2017 [14 favorites]

Vox: Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in

The most surprising thing to me about this to me about this take is that it’s coming from Matthew Yglesias.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:43 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in

This is a load of bullshit and I saw this criticism coming from a mile away.
posted by futz at 1:46 PM on April 25, 2017 [27 favorites]

Trump’s Annual Child-Care Tax Break Would Give Average American Families Less Than $20 (link)

Meanwhile, the average Upper East family would get a tax deduction of $7,329. And it would keep going up the more you make.

The median family incomes in Trump swing counties hover between $61,000 and $73,000, and annual child-care expenses average around $6,000. Under Trump’s plan, these families would get barely anything—their deductions would top out between $0 and $20. (From the GOP’s perspective, the great thing about making this a tax deduction instead of a tax credit is that families too poor to pay income taxes don’t benefit at all.) The median family income on the Upper East Side, where child-care for two young kids regularly exceeds $20,000 a year, is $295,000. These families—the Trumps’ former neighbors—would get a $7,329 tax deduction under the Trump plan. Families earning up to $500,000 could claim a tax deduction under Trump’s plan, and those wealthier people would get an even larger sum.

posted by chris24 at 1:47 PM on April 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

>> Vox: Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in

> This is a load of bullshit and I saw this criticism coming from a mile away.

Elite Liberals Need A Higher Standard

Someone in Obama’s position can’t really rely on a “hate the game, not the players” defense with respect to America’s underachieving and overcompensated elites showering many times the country’s median income on each other to deliver platitudes, because he can work to discredit the game. [...] Obama is in a position to set a new precedent for liberal elites, and he should.

Higher Standards

Sometimes I think (some) liberals get confused about legitimate complaints about "objective" media double standards - you know, Republican buckraking is FINE and Democratic buckraking is BAD - and "our" own standard, which is more along the lines of "Republicans are going to do what they do but that doesn't mean our side has to do it too." I tend not to support principled unilateral disarmament when it comes to campaign money. The designated hitter rule is dumb (shut up baseball nerds) but I don't expect a principled American League coach to make his pitchers bat. But lining your own pockets is, well, lining your own pockets. We can do better.

posted by tonycpsu at 1:51 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Oh come on. YOU GET THAT MONEY OBAMA. YOU GET IT. Don't listen to these people.
posted by Justinian at 1:55 PM on April 25, 2017 [38 favorites]

Between this and the random Chelsea-bashing on Twitter, Yglesias must be chasing the angry brocialist clicks.
posted by asteria at 1:57 PM on April 25, 2017 [11 favorites]

If anyone is wondering why the white working class or Sanders supporters occasionally seem halfway sensible, it's because the alternative is people who are amazingly super rich still hoovering up corrupt cash and getting defended for doing it.
posted by TypographicalError at 1:57 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

So this came across my Facebook feed and got me a little worked up...

From "Iowa Starting Line - Your Home for Iowa Political News":

“Rural Iowa faces challenges, many of them threatening our very survival as viable economic communities, [emphasis mine] and the Democratic Party, rather than genuinely connecting with us, dispatches urban candidates (and worse, surrogates) bubbling over with condescension and smugness,” Burns wrote earlier this month. “The only way it could be worse is if the Democrats sent tenured poetry professors or street mimes to our towns to campaign for their party’s initiatives.”

[...] “They point fingers rather than offering a hand in goodwill. The Democrats lecture and fake listen. And they can’t hide their disdain, their amusement at rural Iowa. It’s as if they are visiting the zoo"

How can we actually help these people bring their towns back to life? I mean, since factories and mines aren't coming back no matter how many trade wars we start or what walls we build, since agriculture is not getting less mechanized, is there anything we can actually do to save these communities?

I'm convinced this is the dynamic that's undermining our democracy. We've got a constitution that deliberately over-represents rural areas (and BTW, many suburban voters have connections to rural areas and are concerned over these same problems even though they don't live there any more.) As those places drain of population, those disproportionately loud voices get even more disproportionate. And they are angry, desperate voices right now. They want people who at least care what is happening to their towns.

Some MeFites have suggested basic income... And in a way these these folks are the leading edge of the "jobs will be automated out of existence" problem. But they have this cultural mindset of "do it yourself" and feel insulted when people imply they need to take charity from the government... So... a new WPA? To build infrastructure? Do you think there's a way to solve the housing crisis in San Francisco and the population drain in rural areas at the same time, by giving tech companies incentives to hire telecommuters who'll work out in the sticks?

I don't know what the solution is, but I feel like this is an urgent problem to solve. I think we should be brainstorming. Because unless we can offer real solutions that are better and more acceptable than "sacrifice the scapegoats" solutions Republicans are offering, other vulnerable populations are going to continue to suffer... As this particular vulnerable population and its allies lash out with disproportionate political might.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:00 PM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

Just because other people are repeating the same bullshit doesn't make it stink any less. It's always tiresome when a certain sort of liberal tries to "solve" income inequality by trying to shame people over the money they make for their work (and it's especially offensive when they team it with the "well, it's not real work" argument.) Combine that with the fact that it's predominantly white liberals trying to shame the first black President, and my feeling is that Yggy, Lemioux, etc. should just shut the fuck up about this.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:00 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

Seriously though, how much is a speech from a former President/Nobel Prize Winner/Grammy winner/two-time best-selling author worth?
posted by asteria at 2:00 PM on April 25, 2017 [13 favorites]

I would like a reporter to ask Trump:

"What is the federal minimum wage and how much would someone earn in a year if they were paid the federal minimum wage?"
posted by srboisvert at 2:02 PM on April 25, 2017 [32 favorites]

According to the white liberals wringing their hands over this, nothing.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:02 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

But lining your own pockets is, well, lining your own pockets.

Lining your pockets for work is as American as Apple Pie, and fuck anyone for complaining.

That said, I think a softer way of looking at this is that the current administration affords a small opportunity to reclaim the truth. In a Jack Hitt piece written just before the election happened, he contrasted Trump and Nixon’s “big lies” with the Clintons’ “small truth” - the practice of identifying the smallest unit of truth in order to avoid questions about the bigger picture. This is a good opportunity for Obama to address that bigger picture -why did he take this money? How does he feel about a system that lets him make that kind of money for so little work, and what does he think he’s obliged to do with it? It’s a chance for reconsideration. He’s an orator, and I hope he gives a good oration about it.

(Of course, the cynical part of myself also acknowledges that even if Obama were to respond to such questions in interview we’d never hear the answers. Vox is an outlet that loves garbage headlines, and a nuanced response yields no clicks.)
posted by Going To Maine at 2:04 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

More news on the Intrepid event: Trump to meet with Australian PM aboard the Intrepid during his first post-inauguration NYC visit
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:06 PM on April 25, 2017

It may be the norm, but isn't it potentially problematic that there's such a direct line from government service to being showered with money from corporations?
posted by diogenes at 2:06 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

considering it was a nearly two-hundred year tradition of not cashing in on the presidency until gerald ford started doing it, i think i'm still allowed to be upset by it; especially since we established a presidential pension not terribly long before that
posted by entropicamericana at 2:08 PM on April 25, 2017 [9 favorites]

That "two-hundred year tradition" was in large part due to the holders of that office being largely independently wealthy, which is why I don't hold it in terribly high regard. It's also worth pointing other that the pension was established because that "tradition" you laud drove Truman into penury.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:12 PM on April 25, 2017 [25 favorites]

It's hard for me to get pissed about the speaking fees after Obama's eligibility for the presidency has been exhausted. There's no obvious quid pro quo or corruption here; you can't point back to a policy that Obama enacted in order to get a $400k speaking fee after he's done in office. Hell, what's the goal for the companies paying the money? Prestige? It's not like they're gaining some special insight in how to influence policy; they do that by directly hiring from the legislator-to-lobbyist pipeline.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:12 PM on April 25, 2017 [18 favorites]

considering it was a nearly two-hundred year tradition of not cashing in on the presidency until gerald ford started doing it, i think i'm still allowed to be upset by it; especially since we established a presidential pension not terribly long before that

Man, it’s America - you can be upset about anything whether or not it makes sense.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:13 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

we sure do spend a lot of time trying to referee rich people's fights in this country, don't we?
posted by pyramid termite at 2:15 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

Do you think there's a way to solve the housing crisis in San Francisco and the population drain in rural areas at the same time, by giving tech companies incentives to hire telecommuters who'll work out in the sticks?

I agree, I've brought this particular idea up before here, and many Metafilterians responded that it is impossible. (I don't understand why; it's challenging, but I think not impossible; I'm speaking as someone who regularly does technical work with people on other continents).

Of course we'd have to add in incentives for telecoms to build out high speed internet infrastructure to rural areas, but we ought to be doing that anyhow.
posted by nat at 2:16 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

RAISE TAXES ON THE RICH SO THAT WE DON'T HAVE TO FEEL GUILTY ABOUT OBAMA'S SPEAKING FEES
posted by Existential Dread at 2:16 PM on April 25, 2017 [44 favorites]

When we've talked before about how to move some jobs back to the country, people have pointed out that it's not very culturally attractive for a lot of people (though it is for the people who live there) and that there's a risk associated with taking a job in the middle of nowhere -- you will probably have to move if you ever lose that job (but the people who live there are people who won't move.)

But are the people who already live in these towns properly trained for tech jobs? Do they have the education infrastructure to do that training. It's so complicated.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:20 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Guardian: Couple charged in shooting of [one-degree-of-separation-MeFite Joshua Dukes] at Milo Yiannopoulos event in Seattle

In charging papers, King County prosecutors say “this shooting was not an impulsive act done in a moment of fear”.

Instead, the two went to the campus event “with the intent to provoke altercations with protesters who they knew would also be at this controversial event”, wrote Mary Barbosa, senior deputy prosecuting attorney.

Barbosa added that they “created a situation designed to allow Elizabeth Hokoana to shoot the victim in the middle of an extremely crowded event under the guise of defending herself or her husband”.

Marc Hokoana messaged a friend on Facebook the day before Yiannopoulos was scheduled to talk and said he “can’t wait for tomorrow”, according to police officials. In the Facebook message, obtained by a search warrant, he wrote: “I’m going to the Milo event and if the snowflakes get out off hand I’m just going to wade through their ranks and start cracking skulls.”

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:22 PM on April 25, 2017 [22 favorites]

The questions raised by the sanctuary city court order seems like a nice extension of the questions Lawfare asked after the travel ban cases: What Happens When We Don’t Believe the President’s Oath? Because I think that's what just happened here too. Institutions like the Justice Department and the courts are elevating not taking Trump literally to the level of a cannon of legal interpretation, even when his words are in the form of a rather clear executive order. Because this is pretty much what happened:

Trump/Bannon: I want to cut off all federal funds for sanctuary cities.
Executive Order: Cut off all federal funds for sanctuary cities.
Sanctuary cities: That's illegal. The President can't do that.
DOJ: Uh, it totally doesn't mean "cut off all federal funds for sanctuary cities." We'll just cut off the federal funds that the law already says we're supposed to.
Judge: Of course it means that. It says so right there, and besides, the President and his staff all said so.
DOJ: ...
Judge: Well I'm sure it's just bluster. Let's ignore the President's ranting and you keep on with following the real laws that Congress passes instead of the fake ones the President signs.

This is how serious institutions react when they're tip-toeing around a crazy person in the White House, when there's no reason to assume any kind of good faith or deference toward the Executive because he's done everything possible to indicate that he doesn't deserve it. This is how serious institutions react when someone in charge demands something ridiculous: you pat them on the head, tell them "what a good idea," then you pretend it didn't happen. And I suspect we're going to see a lot more of this.
posted by zachlipton at 2:26 PM on April 25, 2017 [37 favorites]

Shaun King's latest: Ivanka Trump should be booed every time she claims her dad respects women and families

When I heard Ivanka say that she was opting to judge her father not by what she’s heard about him in the media, but by what she’s only seen and experienced in her own personal life, I immediately thought of children of murderers or war criminals — who’ve stuck by their dear old dads to the bitter end, because, well, “he always loved me.”

@ShaunKing: What she said today about how she judges her dad only on how he has treated her, has been said by children of dictators for centuries.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:28 PM on April 25, 2017 [54 favorites]

Cost of living is an attraction; you have looked at housing prices anywhere near SF lately?

Start an outsource-within-the-US service. Go into high schools in communities with few options, identify kids with just enough talent (too much and they'll be leaving the area), offer training via online+local support, don't require a college degree to hire (many programming jobs do not require a 4 year CS degree). Seriously it seems like some startup could get on this (and make a total farking mess of it, but that's another issue).

Also also we should keep in mind that rural areas do not consist entirely of white Trump voters. There are also black and hispanic rural communities; supporting leaders from those communities and listening to their ideas about how to improve opportunity there would be a wise start.
posted by nat at 2:32 PM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

May 8 Senate Judiciary Hearing on Russia: Sally Yates and James Clapper.

A nice end-run around the stalled Intelligence Committee process.
posted by zachlipton at 2:33 PM on April 25, 2017 [19 favorites]

Reuters has a nice breakdown on manpower of other committees in comparison to the 7 staffers assigned to the Senate Russian Investigation.

Reuters Senate gives limited resources to Russia election-meddling probe

For example there were 46 staffers on the House Benghazi investigation in 2014 and 181 on the joint House/Senate investigation into the Iran arms deal in 1987.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:34 PM on April 25, 2017 [20 favorites]

This is how serious institutions react when someone in charge demands something ridiculous: you pat them on the head, tell them "what a good idea," then you pretend it didn't happen. And I suspect we're going to see a lot more of this.

Even the Republican congress is basically ignoring Trump's shutdown demands and just proceeding with a funding bill.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:36 PM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

Vox: Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in

Bullshit. This is like Clinton's emails only worse, because he's not going to be running for anything again. In fact, I wish he got 4 million from those assholes, just so I knew the money was going to a relatively good cause.

How can we actually help these people bring their towns back to life? I mean, since factories and mines aren't coming back no matter how many trade wars we start or what walls we build, since agriculture is not getting less mechanized, is there anything we can actually do to save these communities? I'm convinced this is the dynamic that's undermining our democracy.

I'm convinced that the Citizens United decision and MoC being in the pockets of corporations and wealthy individuals is the dynamic that's undermining our democracy. Democratic politicians could totally be nicer to folks in Iowa--shit, they could be nicer to me, a white woman who grew up on food stamps, went to college, and rocketed to the middle class--and, eventually, right back down again. But I don't think the D's communication style is the Big Problem. The Big Problem (as discussed many times) is that every damn politician has to spend the vast majority of their time fundraising to stay in office so it's just more efficient to sell out to the highest bidder.

Rural communities are going to have to save themselves mostly. They already have disproportionate political power, so I wish them the best in solving their problems, which are real and heartbreaking. As are the problems of the poor and marginalised all across this nation, wherever they may happen to reside.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:37 PM on April 25, 2017 [14 favorites]

Ted Cruz introduces "EL CHAPO Act" to pay for the wall

Senator Ted Cruz wants to use assets seized from drug lords such as El Chapo, the Mexican kingpin who was recently extradited to the U.S., to pay for border security and the border wall.

Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order
posted by futz at 2:38 PM on April 25, 2017

Wonkette has a fun takedown of Kentucky Gov. Bevin and his crazy-ass Medicaid schemes.

It’s Time For Some Turning-Health-Care-Into-A-Game Theory!

God bless the free markets, I tell you what. This state is faced with what even they admit is close to epidemic level rates of HIV and hepatitis, and how many times do you have to have to fall asleep to an audio version of Atlas Shrugged before the following actual sentence isn’t dystopian as all fuck: “The cornerstone of the Kentucky HEALTH program is the introduction of a community engagement and employment initiative aimed at increasing workforce participation rates in Kentucky, which is critical to improving the health status of Kentuckians.”

THEIR BEST TACTIC FOR STOPPING A HEALTH EPIDEMIC IS JOBS AND GROWTH. Anyway, poor people of Kentucky: We hope you enjoy your new Medicaid plan, in which you can have all the fun of a prison work-release program and if you do earn enough points in side quests, you’ll get to have a root canal achievement!

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:39 PM on April 25, 2017 [19 favorites]

Senator Ted Cruz wants to use assets seized from drug lords such as El Chapo, the Mexican kingpin who was recently extradited to the U.S., to pay for border security and the border wall.

They act so tough but if Cruz was ever in front of El Chapo without the US Marshalls restraining El Chapo I'd think Cruz would piss his pants.
posted by Talez at 2:41 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Senator Ted Cruz wants to use assets seized from drug lords such as El Chapo, the Mexican kingpin who was recently extradited to the U.S., to pay for border security and the border wall.

Ah yes, forfeiture. This will never be abused to steal the assets of people suspected of but never charged with minor offenses!
posted by Existential Dread at 2:42 PM on April 25, 2017 [15 favorites]

Ah yes, forfeiture. This will never be abused to steal the assets of people suspected of but never charged with minor offenses!

What are they supposed to do? Confiscate the assets of rich white male coke dealers? Sir, you would have the government tax our job creators like that?
posted by Talez at 2:44 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

>> Senator Ted Cruz wants to use assets seized from drug lords such as El Chapo, the Mexican kingpin who was recently extradited to the U.S., to pay for border security and the border wall.

> Ah yes, forfeiture. This will never be abused to steal the assets of people suspected of but never charged with minor offenses!

Well, there's only so many Mexican drug lords, I guess, but there's tons more regular people. I guess they're planning to make it up in volume?
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:45 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Ed Fucking Rogers assures us that Trump is skillfully navigating Washington’s budget realities (WaPo).

No budget agreement is done until it’s done, but it looks like Democrats are now divided over the health-care subsidies they’ve been pushing for, and the White House has finessed its demand for funding of the border wall by agreeing to funding for border security. To the dismay of his opponents, recent events seem to show President Trump avoiding some of the pitfalls and mistakes that have plagued his predecessors. Rather than demand all or nothing on funding for the wall, the president seems to be playing rope-a-dope with his critics. It appears Trump has taken the Democrats to the 11th hour by making them think the fight over the budget would be all about the border wall. They may have taken the fake and not organized an effective assault on the budget.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:47 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

They already have disproportionate political power, so I wish them the best in solving their problems, which are real and heartbreaking. As are the problems of the poor and marginalised all across this nation, wherever they may happen to reside.

Yeah, but the issue is, the "solutions" the rural and rural-sympathizing Trump voters are pursuing with their disproportionate power are causing real and heartbreaking problems for the other poor and marginalized people across this nation.

I'm not sure that the various "take their power away from them, then" ideas already proposed in this thread are nearly as workable than the "maybe actually help them, even if you don't think they really deserve it" approach.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:48 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

ELCHAPO is like the worst backronym ever.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:50 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah the extent to which Democrats have leapt to offer more non-wall border security funding as part of a budget deal is cravenly. Trump is negotiating against himself. Why the hell are we helping?
posted by zachlipton at 2:51 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

Ed Fucking Rogers assures us that Trump is skillfully navigating Washington’s budget realities (WaPo).

This man is a fool.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:51 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Start an outsource-within-the-US service. Go into high schools in communities with few options, identify kids with just enough talent (too much and they'll be leaving the area), offer training via online+local support, don't require a college degree to hire (many programming jobs do not require a 4 year CS degree). Seriously it seems like some startup could get on this (and make a total farking mess of it, but that's another issue).

Been there, done that, got my start as a programmer in such a firm.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:56 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Ted Cruz introduces "EL CHAPO Act" to pay for the wall

I propose instead the EL GUAPO Act, which will replace the wall with a plethora of piñatas.
posted by octobersurprise at 2:58 PM on April 25, 2017 [18 favorites]

But guapo means handsome?
posted by Talez at 2:59 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ed Rogers either believes what he wrote and is, therefore, very stupid. Or he doesn't believe what he wrote and is, therefore, a damn liar who is hurting America.

Also: I support my family, you make money, they line their pockets.
posted by Justinian at 2:59 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

can't wait for the new episode of the chapo trap house podcast now
posted by entropicamericana at 2:59 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

The Trump “100 Days” website is a hilariously typical own goal.
...
He has already done lasting damage to the country and its standing in the world. But at the same time, Trump has also accomplished rather little, blundering from issue to issue in search of points to put on the board.

Trump has claimed that 100 days is an arbitrary barometer, declaring it a “ridiculous standard” and “not very meaningful.” But, while there is a certain amount of truth in this, Trump’s own words and actions betray that he cares a whole lot about the 100-day marker. In fact, the administration has been on a mad dash for the last two weeks to try to find something to get done.
...
The Trump White House unveiled its “100 Days” site on Tuesday, which asserts, “In his first 100 days, President Donald J. Trump has taken bold action to restore prosperity, keep Americans safe and secure, and hold government accountable.” The problem, however, is that the website is thin on details that back these arguments up.

posted by kirkaracha at 3:00 PM on April 25, 2017

It appears Trump has taken the Democrats to the 11th hour by making them think the fight over the budget would be all about the border wall. They may have taken the fake and not organized an effective assault on the budget.

But, is there a fight over the budget? Has anyone seen concrete numbers anywhere? It sounds to me like they're punting on almost all the terrible Trump priorities defunding, well, everything, until the 2018 budget, and the only thing Trump is getting is whatever they decide is enough "border security" dollars to hire some more agents and maybe buy some more drone sensors or something. Are there any other terrible Trump items being funded, or things that Democrats care about being zeroed out?

I'm not sure how Trump laying down is Democrats "taking the fake and not organizing".
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:01 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure that the various "take their power away from them, then" ideas already proposed in this thread are nearly as workable than the "maybe actually help them, even if you don't think they really deserve it" approach.

Hey, OnceUponATime, I actually do think we should help them. Admittedly, I think we should help everyone who needs help. I just kind of don't know how to make that happen until and unless we kick the Republicans out of power and then reform campaign finance so the Democratic party also stops depending on corporate/wealthy patrons. I know I sound like I hate Iowa and small towns but that was accidental. I grew up in a small town and my folks are from the South. Everybody deserves access to resources, income, jobs, dignity, etc. regardless of where they live. But I have zero idea how to make that happen.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:01 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

futz: "Senator Ted Cruz wants to use assets seized from drug lords such as El Chapo, the Mexican kingpin who was recently extradited to the U.S., to pay for border security and the border wall."

Hang on. My understanding is that, currently, assets seized in civil forfeiture go straight to the agency doing the seizing (i.e.: local police and sheriff's departments, DEA, etc...). Wouldn't this proposal be taking this money out of those agencies' coffers? And wouldn't that create its own pushback from those very same agencies? Interesting...
posted by mhum at 3:01 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also, that whole Kentucky-punished-the-poor health plan makes me want to go find the governor and kick him in the balls. I won't, because I don't do those things and also would end up in jail but jesus r. christ, why don't they just have everyone in state government wearing "We Hate the Poors" tees to make it completely official.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:03 PM on April 25, 2017 [11 favorites]

I'm not sure that the various "take their power away from them, then" ideas already proposed in this thread are nearly as workable than the "maybe actually help them, even if you don't think they really deserve it" approach.

How exactly do you propose that we help them though? A disproportionate amount of money flows from the blue states to the red ones already. We tried to help them get health care and they elected people sworn to destroy the government in response. We promote education and jobs programs and they elect people that try to gut both.
posted by Candleman at 3:05 PM on April 25, 2017 [11 favorites]

But guapo means handsome?

But do you know what a plethora is?
posted by peeedro at 3:06 PM on April 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

We tried to help them get health care and they elected people sworn to destroy the government in response.

That's because they don't want to be given healthcare. They want to earn it through hard work in a job that pays them a living wage to take care of their family.
posted by Talez at 3:08 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Um, maybe we could try some of these ideas to help rural areas. I mean if the Republicans let us, which seems unlikely.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:08 PM on April 25, 2017 [15 favorites]

I propose instead the EL GUAPO Act, which will replace the wall with a plethora of piñatas.

El Fracaco: Are my executive orders falling from the sky?
Lacayo: Yes, El Fracaco.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:13 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

But do you know what a plethora is?

I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:14 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

It appears Trump has taken the Democrats to the 11th hour by making them think the fight over the budget would be all about the border wall. They may have taken the fake and not organized an effective assault on the budget.

I mean, never underestimate Dem ability to fuck things up yadda yadda, but I really am *highly* suspect of any claims of high-level strategy associate with this White House. These are not plausible 12-dimensional chess guys.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:14 PM on April 25, 2017 [15 favorites]

I mean, never underestimate Dem ability to fuck things up yadda yadda, but I really am *highly* suspect of any claims of high-level strategy associate with this White House. These are not plausible 12-dimensional chess guys.

+1. I don't think it's very helpful to talk in terms of "fakes" and other chess-type moves; Trump and his administration are vicious and cruel but they're also stupid. There's no chess here. There's tic-tac-toe, if that.

I agree with those who say that Trump is out-and-out senile. I don't think he himself has any clue what he's doing. He's not capable of headfakery - he's just stupid and mean, and unfortunately is in position to do a lot of damage just by being that.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 3:21 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora.

Basically I've been waiting for Trump to call himself infamous and for Sean Spicer to clarify that he meant it in the sense that he is more than famous.
posted by peeedro at 3:22 PM on April 25, 2017 [11 favorites]

> not organized an effective assault on the budget.

What does this mean? There aren't any budget numbers to oppose, and Republicans control the Senate, Congress, and Presidency, so in principle they can pass anything[*] they can unite their own caucus behind. So... ?

([*] Aside from the tiny caveat of the Senate filibuster for non-deficit-neutral bills - but they're the party of fiscal conservatism! They'd *never* do something like that.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:22 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

U.S. military begins moving THAAD missile defense to South Korea site

North Korea stages big artillery drill as U.S. submarine docks in South
posted by futz at 3:24 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

ELECTIONS UPDATES

* MT-AL

-- First real poll on this race, from Emerson, has Gianforte up 52-37. I believe Emerson usually has a bit of a GOP lean, fwiw.

* GA-06

-- Interesting piece on how this CD has moved left. Also, check out this chart on how people voted based on length of residency.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:28 PM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

But guapo means handsome?

They're good-looking piñatas, Tilez.
posted by chris24 at 3:28 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

A plethora? Believe me, I have a lot of them. I shouldn't be telling you this, but soon we'll be releasing the numbers on my plethoras. People are saying mine are the most. Maybe they are. So very many.
posted by notyou at 3:29 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

El Fracaco: Are my executive orders falling from the sky?

Would that not be guano?
posted by yoga at 3:32 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Workers endured long hours, low pay at Chinese factory used by Ivanka Trump’s clothing-maker

Workers at a factory in China used by the company that makes clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and other brands worked nearly 60 hours a week to earn wages of little more than $62 a week, according to a factory audit released Monday.

-- Inspectors with the Fair Labor Association [...] found two dozen violations of international labor standards [...], saying in a report that workers faced daunting hours, high turnover, and pay near or below China’s minimum wage.

-- Its release also comes as the president’s daughter has sought to cast herself as both a champion of workplace issues and a defender of her father’s “buy American, hire American” agenda.

-- Workers at the G-III factory in China were required to work 57 hours a week “on a regular basis” to hit production targets, inspectors found. Though Chinese law sets the limit for overtime at 36 hours per month, workers in all of the factory’s departments exceeded that limit, working up to 82 hours of overtime a month between September 2015 and August 2016.

-- The factory’s workers made between 1,879 and 2,088 yuan a month, or roughly $255 to $283, which would be below minimum wage in some parts of China. The average manufacturing employee in urban China made twice as much money...

-- Fewer than a third of the factory’s workers were offered legally mandated coverage under China’s “social insurance” benefits, including a pension and medical, maternity, unemployment and work-related injury insurance, inspectors found. The factory also did not contribute, as legally required, to a fund designed to help workers afford housing, inspectors said.

I do not like these trump people.
posted by futz at 3:41 PM on April 25, 2017 [32 favorites]

Seriously, what is the THAAD going to do to deter DPRK? All they have to do is rain down artillery on Seoul, which the THAAD would be useless against. This system is certainly more destabilizing than it is useful; China and Russia rightly recognize it would be of more use against them than DPRK.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:46 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Yewha, despite all the fuss about missiles and nukes and all the artilery is how they are going to murder the most people.
posted by Artw at 3:49 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Ryan Lizza: How Trump Gave Up On His Border Wall

But, from a political perspective, Trump has given members of Congress another reason not to trust his word. He promised a health-care bill that would cover everyone, settled for one that would have kicked twenty-four million people off insurance, and then watched helplessly as the bill floundered. He promised a trillion-dollar infrastructure package that hasn’t materialized. And now the wall, Trump’s signature proposal on the campaign, has been shelved. This last point risks angering even Trump’s base supporters—Rush Limbaugh declared that he was “very, very troubled” by the news.

There are lots of reasons for Trump’s lack of legislative victories so far. His White House is ideologically divided, as are Republicans in Congress. Democrats have uniformly opposed his initiatives and Trump has done nothing to try to woo them, even though he will need at least some Democratic votes in the Senate to pass any meaningful measures. But the biggest problem is Trump himself. The man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” is a terrible negotiator.

posted by zachlipton at 3:49 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

Barbosa added that they “created a situation designed to allow Elizabeth Hokoana to shoot the victim in the middle of an extremely crowded event under the guise of defending herself or her husband”.

Marc Hokoana messaged a friend on Facebook the day before Yiannopoulos was scheduled to talk and said he “can’t wait for tomorrow”, according to police officials. In the Facebook message, obtained by a search warrant, he wrote: “I’m going to the Milo event and if the snowflakes get out off hand I’m just going to wade through their ranks and start cracking skulls.”

Ugh this whole goddamn thing.

I'm like 99% sure he's the one who wanted to start shit and was probably the one to pull the trigger and tell her she should take the fall because they'll never convict her. Fast forward to her going to jail for 30 years and him getting a slap on the wrist.
posted by corb at 3:52 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

Costa is reporting that Freedom Caucus leadership has told the White House they are on board with the latest ACA repeal bill which would include allowing states to opt out of covering pre-existing conditions. Sounds like they may try to ram this through before the 100 day mark and let it die in the Senate.
posted by Justinian at 3:54 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Allowing states to out out of covering pre-existing conditions polls extremely badly: 70% say it should be required for all states.
posted by zachlipton at 3:58 PM on April 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

Lots of garbage the GOP votes for polls extremely badly. They vote for it anyway.
posted by Justinian at 4:00 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Would that not be guano?
¡Si! Eso es mucho mejor.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:04 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Lots of garbage the GOP votes for polls extremely badly. They vote for it anyway.

OTOH those bad polls are what tanked the AHCA vote. If this gets the same level of pushback, it could also die an ignominious death; perhaps via defections from the moderate side rather than FC wingnuts.

Or they could bring it to a vote anyway. I dunno, these people are idiots.
posted by Existential Dread at 4:06 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

I doubt the Republican agenda takes into account what the people as a whole want. They may pay some lip service in a treacly Norman Rockwell-inflected, rah-rah-Founding-Fathers way, but when it comes right down to it, if "the people" have any progressive ideas, Republicans give them the finger: Florida Republicans Squelch Voice of the People(NYTimes)
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 4:09 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

I think the plan is to bring it to a vote so quickly it doesn't have time to be polled or get scored by the CBO. It's not like the spent years attacking Obama for rushing through a health care bill without proper debate because it only took a year or whatever.
posted by Justinian at 4:09 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think the plan is to bring it to a vote so quickly it doesn't have time to be polled or get scored by the CBO.

Yeah, but didn't they attempt that with AHCA? That was the whole strategy, I thought...the Freedom Caucus bogged it down and then everybody started dunking on it.
posted by Existential Dread at 4:12 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Obama should charge 20 million to speak on wall street and publicly give all but 400k to the causes he wishes to champion.
posted by OHenryPacey at 4:16 PM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

WaPo PowerPost: House Freedom Caucus leaders back new health-care plan.
posted by Justinian at 4:19 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

seems like calling it a "health-care plan" is begging the question
posted by murphy slaw at 4:21 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Seriously, what is the THAAD going to do to deter DPRK? All they have to do is rain down artillery on Seoul, which the THAAD would be useless against. This system is certainly more destabilizing than it is useful; China and Russia rightly recognize it would be of more use against them than DPRK.

IIRC, the current theory is that China is upset about it because they believe it will be used to spy on their missile test range out in the desert [from The Diplomat]
posted by indubitable at 4:22 PM on April 25, 2017

Existential Dread: "It's hard for me to get pissed about the speaking fees after Obama's eligibility for the presidency has been exhausted. There's no obvious quid pro quo or corruption here; you can't point back to a policy that Obama enacted in order to get a $400k speaking fee after he's done in office. Hell, what's the goal for the companies paying the money? Prestige? It's not like they're gaining some special insight in how to influence policy; they do that by directly hiring from the legislator-to-lobbyist pipeline."

The internet breathed a collective sigh of relief when Obama showed up to literally put two words together. So yeah, I think he still holds some sway, and I think that a man taking $400k from a healthcare organization should be viewed with suspicion when his name is literally synonymous with a healthcare system that promotes welfare for healthcare organization.
posted by TypographicalError at 4:26 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

The man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” is a terrible negotiator.

Hey, that's a little unfair to Tony Schwartz
posted by theodolite at 4:27 PM on April 25, 2017 [47 favorites]

WaPo PowerPost: House Freedom Caucus leaders back new health-care plan.

Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho) — all leaders of the Freedom Caucus and central figures in the latest discussions — signaled Tuesday they are ready to support a new plan, according to two White House officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. A lawmaker close to the Freedom Caucus later confirmed that those members were close to or ready to support the tweaked bill.

“There’s no definitive statement yet,” Meadows said on his way into the House chamber on Tuesday evening.

“We’ve got a meeting tomorrow night!” remarked Jordan, who refused to elaborate.

Labrador refused to comment entirely.

Soooo... anonymous WH officials say "yup, it's happening" and the actual legislators say "umm we'll get back to you".

Not convinced this is happening
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:28 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Dude met his wife when he was 15 and she was his 40 year old teacher.


OK. I am in my late forties. I know people in this exact same scenario from when I was in high school.

I just internet stalked them.

They got married. They are still married.

The varieties of human experience can be surprising.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 4:31 PM on April 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

...back to the regularly scheduled programming.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 4:32 PM on April 25, 2017

Not convinced this is happening

Not convinced they'll have the "moderate" R votes to pass it. If they've pushed it far enough right to get the Freedom Caucus, it'll be murder on Rs in competitive districts. AHCA failed publicly because of the Freedom Caucus, but there were supposedly enough moderate R defections to kill it as well. Now it's even worse for them.
posted by chris24 at 4:34 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

As an example, Rep. Coffman, who supported the AHCA round 1, now sounds "a little hesitant now." Specifically, he said: "For those of us who were supportive of the last version, we have to pause." They may have traded one set of problems for another.

They're talking about a vote next week perhaps. Could the CBO get a score out in time?
posted by zachlipton at 4:37 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think the Freedom Caucusers know that even if states are able to deregulate insurance (and that's what we're talking about here, insurance deregulation that lets insurers back to discriminating against sick people and/or not covering currently-mandated benefits), many or even most states won't allow it. Sure, some of the deep-red states or states with particularly vicious/callous leaders (Hi, Matt Bevin!) but this is in some ways an even less favorable outcome for them than the previous abjectly-failed incarnation of Repeal & Replace.

And yes, on preview, even if they were to get the Freedom Caucus on board they're leaking from the left even in the House GOP Caucus let alone the Senate.

I have, maybe, learned my lesson about overconfidence. My guess, though, is that we're going to end up with a nominal shutdown (due if nothing else to the utter incompetence of the "governing" party as they attempt to walk and chew gum simultaneously), followed by a hasty short-term CR and a clean longer-term CR, if Nancy Pelosi can stop laughing for long enough to whip her caucus.

I hope.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:40 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

They're talking about a vote next week perhaps. Could the CBO get a score out in time?

I thought the legislation was supposed to be part of the 100 DAY WINNING thingy? Isn't that, uh, this Friday?
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:43 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yeah, you wake up on Thursday and there's a TrumpHealthKare card in your mailbox with a picture of pepe on it.
posted by valkane at 4:48 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

WTO lets Mexico slap trade sanctions on U.S. in tuna dispute

Mexico can impose annual trade sanctions worth $163.23 million against the United States after winning a dispute over trade in tuna fish, a World Trade Organization arbitrator ruled on Tuesday.

Mexico's economy ministry said it planned immediate action to initiate the trade sanctions.

However, the ruling could be overturned later this year if a subsequent WTO decision finds the United States has stopped discriminating against tuna caught by its southern neighbor.
posted by futz at 4:49 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Dude met his wife when he was 15 and she was his 40 year old teacher. But they didn't have a relationship until he was 18 (uh huh). In the US, that would be pretty disqualifying for political ambitions (although I don't know, IOKIYAR). In France? *Gallic shrug*

But is he a fascist?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:50 PM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

Maybe the wall will be made of tuna.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:52 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Seriously, what is the THAAD going to do to deter DPRK? All they have to do is rain down artillery on Seoul, which the THAAD would be useless against

Depends on your goal. The artillery can't hit most of the US bases/troops in South Korea (aside from a few in the Seoul area, but the maps I've seen show the main bases outside artillery range) or Japan. Missiles can.

I suspect both Trump and the US military prioritize saving US troops over Seoul residents. I doubt either _wants_ Seoul to be destroyed, but if its going to happen they'd rather it didn't also take out US bases.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:54 PM on April 25, 2017

Maybe the wall will be made of tuna.

no, it has to be made out of walleye
posted by pyramid termite at 5:05 PM on April 25, 2017 [24 favorites]

Come on people, even if we apply American norms to a French election (and lets be clear: there are plenty of times when I'm fine with applying our norms to other cultures) Macron is the victim in this situation, not the perpetrator. So, uh, yeah.
posted by Justinian at 5:06 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Senator Ted Cruz wants to use assets seized from drug lords such as El Chapo, the Mexican kingpin who was recently extradited to the U.S., to pay for border security and the border wall.

This is not the first time Republicans have tried to fund an unpopular program with drug money.
posted by srboisvert at 5:10 PM on April 25, 2017 [18 favorites]

It's funny how Republicans, who insist all money is fungible when it comes to funding for Planned Parenthood, suddenly think that money seized from drug kingpins is some kind of magically separate sort of money. If they use the money to build a wall, then that money is not going to the Treasury. It's still adding to the deficit, just with a fancy acronym.
posted by zachlipton at 5:14 PM on April 25, 2017 [26 favorites]

no, it has to be made out of walleye

Makes sense; its champion is a largemouth ass.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:20 PM on April 25, 2017 [18 favorites]

Can I just share a context-free hot take? Chris Cillizza has been a bad pundit for a long time.

Thank you.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:32 PM on April 25, 2017 [11 favorites]

suddenly think that money seized from drug kingpins is some kind of magically separate sort of money

That's not what's going on. What's magical about it is that the whole "drug kingpin" aspect is going to fall by the wayside, and it will simply become another engine to keep asset forfeiture going against people driving across Texas with cash in their car.
posted by rhizome at 5:34 PM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

There's no such thing as a bad pundit, it's literally impossible to get fired for being wrong. Certainly not from CNN. Once you're in, you're in for life, no matter what.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:36 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Poor people houses and cars sold at auction surely can't raise enough to pay for the thing, even if they drop the level of charges and standard of proof through the floor.
posted by Artw at 5:39 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you go to the 100 Days link at the WH.Gov and click on the "5 Year Lobbying Ban and Lifetime Foreign Lobbying Ban" it takes you to a copy of the executive Order he signed which states every person he appoints has to sign an Ethics Pledge which includes a "legally-binding" promise to refrain from lobbying for 5 years. Did this ever happen? And is it legally binding?

If you click on the "Launched the Opioid Abuse Commission" it takes you to another EO signed March 29 which declares a commission will be set up with members "to be designated or appointed by the President." Aside from hearing that Jared was put in charge of this commission, I haven't heard or read anything more about it. Has it started? I find it hard to believe that Jared has had the time...what with skiing and bringing about Peace in the Middle East.

I remember reading an explanation somewhere recently that most of these EOs are inquiries into how the government works or is working and that experienced Pols like Clinton would have done all this homework 2 years before the election.

Also if you, like me, were startled to hear that Trump had signed 28 bills in his first 100 days, the WH.Gov press release has a handy reference as to what legislation was passed. Mostly it is things like 3 separate bills appointing people to the Smithsonian Board of Governors, allowing a waiver for Gen Matthias, , and re-naming a clinic in Pago Pago. More than half the bills nullify regulations passed by Obama's admin during the last 60 days under the Midnight Rules Relief Act.

Trump may have signed 28 bills, but there is very little to show for it.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:44 PM on April 25, 2017 [11 favorites]

Rather than demand all or nothing on funding for the wall, the president seems to be playing rope-a-dope with his critics.

The only thing Trump is playing rope-a-dope with is his grip on reality.
posted by diogenes at 5:53 PM on April 25, 2017

The only thing Trump is playing rope-a-dope with is his grip on reality.

I take that back. He's also playing rope-a-dope with his supporters who thought Mexico was going to pay for the wall.
posted by diogenes at 5:55 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Can I just share a context-free hot take? Chris Cillizza has been a bad pundit for a long time.

I know he is catching a lot of heat for being soft on Ivanka. But yeah, I had to stop listening to his Cillquizza Podcast which was an enjoyable trivia show just because the more I read of his views the more disgusted I became.

Senator Ted Cruz wants to use assets seized from drug lords such as El Chapo, the Mexican kingpin who was recently extradited to the U.S., to pay for border security and the border wall.

I think we ought to go with the El Chapeau act which taxes MAGA Hat wearers and makes them pay for the wall.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:55 PM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

Here's some fun with the wall. Since the wall has to be built on the U.S. side, Mexicans can cross the small bit of the border in front of the wall and have U.S. birthright babies on U. S. soil.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:55 PM on April 25, 2017 [26 favorites]

Obama should charge 20 million to speak on wall street and publicly give all but 400k to the causes he wishes to champion.

Obama should do whatever the hell he wants.
posted by srboisvert at 6:03 PM on April 25, 2017 [35 favorites]

Congressional organization denies credentials to Breitbart [Press credentials]

The Standing Committee of Correspondents voted unanimously Tuesday to table an application from Breitbart and declined to extend temporary credentials beyond May 31.

So SAD
posted by futz at 6:07 PM on April 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

According to the AP interview, Trump has promised that tomorrow is the big day for the "massive tax reform" rollout. "Bigger than any tax cut ever." So we have that to look forward to.

So what do we think? Tax Reform Wednesday, Healthcare bill Thursday, Government shut down Friday? Or none of the above?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:19 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm sticking with my prediction from last week that we get a clean CR, no tax plan and AHCA 3.0 dead as a door nail
posted by TwoWordReview at 6:25 PM on April 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

Not convinced they'll have the "moderate" R votes to pass it.
Already happening:
Robert Costa:
Trouble already: moderates Dent and Lance tonight tell @pw_cunningham that they're "no" on the revised health-care bill
posted by zabuni at 6:30 PM on April 25, 2017 [14 favorites]

Apparently repealing Obamacare could violate international law

The United Nations has contacted the Trump administration as part of an investigation into whether repealing the Affordable Care Act without an adequate substitute for the millions who would lose health coverage would be a violation of several international conventions that bind the United States. It turns out that the notion that “health care is a right” is more than just a Democratic talking point.

A confidential, five-page “urgent appeal” from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, sent to the Trump administration, cautions that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act could put the United States at odds with its international obligations. The Feb. 2 memo, which I obtained Tuesday, was sent to the State Department and expresses “serious concern” about the prospective loss of health coverage for almost 30 million people, which could violate “the right to social security of the people in the United States.”

OHCHR requested that copies of the letter be shared with majority and minority leadership in both chambers of Congress and proposed that “the wider public should be alerted to the potential implications of the above-mentioned allegations.”

Apparently that didn’t happen.
posted by futz at 6:34 PM on April 25, 2017 [39 favorites]

Don't tell Trump, he'd love to violate international law.
posted by mmoncur at 7:04 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

I mean yeah I'll be the first to say health care is a human right but... how do the the UN think this will play out?

Or maybe Trump will be convinced by the black-helicopter set that the UN will destroy us instantaneously if we don't comply? It wouldn't be the strangest political event of the last 12 months.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:13 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Slow pace of Trump nominations leaves Cabinet agencies ‘stuck’ in staffing limbo

President Trump’s Cabinet secretaries are growing exasperated at how slowly the White House is moving to fill hundreds of top-tier posts, warning that the vacancies are hobbling efforts to oversee agency operations and promote the president’s agenda, according to administration officials, lawmakers and lobbyists.

The Senate has confirmed 26 of Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and other top posts. But for 530 other vacant senior-level jobs requiring Senate confirmation, the president has advanced just 37 nominees, according to data tracked by The Washington Post and the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition. These posts include the deputy secretaries and undersecretaries, chief financial officers, ambassadors, general counsels, and heads of smaller agencies who run the government day-to-day.

That’s less than half the nominees President Barack Obama had sent to the Senate by this point in his first term.

Tracking how many key positions Trump has filled so far

Of 556 key positions requiring Senate confirmation …

No nominee: 470
Awaiting nomination: 40
Formally nominated: 23
Confirmed: 23

posted by kirkaracha at 7:24 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Don't tell Trump, he'd love to violate international law fire Nikki Haley.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:26 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

There's no obvious quid pro quo or corruption here; you can't point back to a policy that Obama enacted in order to get a $400k speaking fee after he's done in office.

Don't be naive. They had this all worked out. The deal was, he'd get some fuckin' sweet cream and all he had to do was contain the recession, save the auto industry, expand the ranks of the insured, and inspire millions.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:31 PM on April 25, 2017 [43 favorites]

all he had to do was contain the recession, save the auto industry, expand the ranks of the insured, and inspire millions.

10/10, would get suckered by this again.
posted by mrgoat at 7:36 PM on April 25, 2017 [49 favorites]

Slow pace of Trump nominations leaves Cabinet agencies ‘stuck’ in staffing limbo

On that issue, and the looming shutdown, I would like to point out that in past years when there was a question about whether a CR was going to be signed, my coworkers and I received regular updates from HQ. We were told what the process would be if there was a shutdown, who would be furloughed, who would be expected to continue working, and how we would be notified of both the shutdown and the restart.

... I have seen nothing on this issue. And the shutdown, if it happens, is in three days.

I can only assume that senior civil servants in Washington are unable to get direction from a senior executive staff that does not exist.
posted by suelac at 7:44 PM on April 25, 2017 [41 favorites]

10/10, would get suckered by this again.

Democracy in a sentence.
posted by jaduncan at 7:44 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

The United Nations has contacted the Trump administration as part of an investigation into whether repealing the Affordable Care Act without an adequate substitute for the millions who would lose health coverage would be a violation of several international conventions that bind the United States.

I would prefer the UN not play chicken with Trump, thanks.
posted by corb at 8:02 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

I can only assume that senior civil servants in Washington are unable to get direction from a senior executive staff that does not exist.

Yea, we've heard nothing yet either. In 2013 we had several agency-wide emails, and an all-hands meeting the day before when they knew it was happening. After that we'd get an agency-wide email blast saying something like, "we hope congress will come to a CR agreement..." but no hair on fire meetings after that first time, which was why I was never that worried about the next few crisises, I figured they knew there would be a last second deal. Our entire senior staff has turned over, everyone is 'acting', and there's been a lot of rank and file movement since 2013, a lot of new people will be lost without some guidance. Tomorrow should be the day if they're on top of things at all, but I guess we'll see.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:09 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

I can only assume that senior civil servants in Washington are unable to get direction from a senior executive staff that does not exist.

With so much else to latch onto, I have to remind myself on occasion to step back and recall how insanely incompetent this administration is.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 8:10 PM on April 25, 2017 [14 favorites]

Air Force to test intercontinental missile Wednesday

The Air Force will test launch a nuclear-tip capable intercontinental ballistic missile from California on Wednesday, according to a new report.

The scheduled trial of the Minuteman III comes amid rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, The Washington Examiner said Tuesday. Though an Air Force Global Strike Command spokeswoman told The Examiner the event was planned roughly a year in advance and has no link with North Korea.

Air Force Global Strike Command will oversee the test, the Examiner added, which is meant to illustrate America’s nuclear capabilities.
“These Minuteman launches are essential to verify the status of our national nuclear force and to demonstrate our national nuclear capabilities,” Col. John Moss, the 30th Space Wing Commander who will order the launch, said in a statement.

I don't feel like googling right now. Is "last February" a year ago or a month ago? And if it was a month ago why do it so soon? The part I bolded sounds exactly like a NK response and something that NK would do. Does a comment saying that “These Minuteman launches are essential to verify the status of our national nuclear force and to demonstrate our national nuclear capabilities,” accompany every test?
posted by futz at 8:42 PM on April 25, 2017

Tracking how many key positions Trump has filled so far

I’m sure other folks have been pedantic about thus but now it’s my turn! Per the chart on that page, the number of confirmed noms under this administration is low in absolute terms, terrible in relative terms, but less abysmal than some of the outcry seems to make it out to be: (I am a mild person)

1. Obama: 69
2. H.W. Bush: 50
3. Clinton: 49
4. W. Bush: 35
5. Trump: 26

However, when you consider the total number who have been both confirmed, nominated, and rejected, things get bad in absolute terms as well:

1. Obama: 190
2. Clinton: 176
3. H.W. Bush: 96
4. W. Bush: 85
5. Trump: 66

posted by Going To Maine at 8:47 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm less bothered by the Senate confirmations (or lack thereof) than by the senior staff positions. These should be filled by skilled experienced civil servants, and those positions are just being left empty.
posted by suelac at 9:05 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

I haven't seen this reported anywhere else so grain of salt.

Republicans exempt their own insurance from their latest health care proposal

You can see it on the sixth page of the amendment, although it is admittedly hard to spot. The Obamacare section that requires legislators to buy on the individual market is section 1312(d)(3)(D). And if you look at the Republican amendment, and the list of who cannot be included in this waiver? It includes Section 1312(d)(3)(D).

Here is what Vox is citing.
posted by futz at 9:07 PM on April 25, 2017 [33 favorites]

With so much else to latch onto, I have to remind myself on occasion to step back and recall how insanely incompetent this administration is.

I appreciate (Is that the right word? It doesn't feel right) the perspective of people from within the civil service, reminding us:

This is not normal.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:41 PM on April 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

I’m less bothered by the Senate confirmations (or lack thereof) than by the senior staff positions. These should be filled by skilled experienced civil servants, and those positions are just being left empty.

Honestly, I feel like the comparisons with past administrations have been rather shallow on this front, and you’d imagine that they’d be quite straightforward.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:51 PM on April 25, 2017

> Republicans exempt their own insurance from their latest health care proposal

And if you look at the Republican amendment, and the list of who cannot be included in this waiver? It includes Section 1312(d)(3)(D).

And if you look carefully, the first letter of the first word of each line of the amendment's text spells "FUCK YOU, WE GOT OURS". [fake]
posted by tonycpsu at 9:52 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Trump to propose large increase in deductions Americans can claim on their taxes

So far, aggregating a few reports, it looks like the tax plan is:

• Reduce the corporate rate to 15%. It's looking like this can't be done under reconciliation even if it's set to sunset in 10 years, because companies will accumulate credits and carry-overs that will extend the impacts beyond the 10-year budget window. There might be a repatriation holiday attached to allow companies to pay an even lower rate on repatriated money.
• Also reduce the rate for pass-throughs on S-corps to 15%: a great giveaway to doctors and dentists, among many others. The real question here is how to prevent this from being massively abused; how do you distinguish wages (higher rate) from corporate earnings (lower rate) and prevent people from just founding themselves an S-corp and having their employers pay all their salaries through it.
• Hike the standard deduction "significantly." This would do nothing for those who pay little to no taxes, but would be a real savings to many in the middle class.
• A vaguely defined child care deduction. The plan Ivanka has been hawking is a giveaway to the rich that does nothing for a huge chunk of parents.

There are also more sketchy reports about adjustments to personal tax rates, cutting the top rate and reducing the number of brackets in some unspecified way. Protip: despite Trump's complaints during the campaign, having more brackets doesn't make taxes more complicated; everyone just uses software or a table anyway.

Missing from all of this is any offsets to help pay for it, such as the border adjustment tax Trump has proposed. The Post says they plan to handwave over that:

They also said they were going to push for steep cuts in tax rates but would be willing to raise some new revenue with other changes to the tax code. The White House on Wednesday is expected to reiterate this openness to new revenue without getting into specifics of which tax changes it would seek, as that could create a fierce corporate blowback based on which exemptions could be cut.

Also missing is all the stuff Trump talked about about simplifying the tax code, because just messing with the rates is way easier than actually doing the work, and any simplification effort would create winners and losers based on who benefits from various deductions and credits. So that sounds hard, so they're just not bothering.

So what happened to all the deficit hawks, huh? What do they think about blasting a multi-trillion dollar hole in the budget? Let's ask Sen. Orrin Hatch; he thinks "our national debt poses a serious risk to America’s future" and wants a Constitutional amendment demanding balanced budgets. Surely he'll object to this madness?

"I'm not convinced that cutting taxes is necessarily going to blow a hole in the deficit," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Finance Committee.

"I actually believe it could stimulate the economy and get the economy moving," Hatch added. "Now, whether 15 percent is the right figure or not, that's a matter to be determined."

As a reminder, the biggest complaint people have about the tax system is "some corporations don't pay their fair share." This plan simply exacerbates the problem.

And they're going to announce all this tomorrow like the government isn't on the verge of a shutdown in two days.

I also like John Cassidy's take in the New Yorker: Trump's Tax Plan Looks Like a Plutocrat's Dream
posted by zachlipton at 9:55 PM on April 25, 2017 [33 favorites]

I think we need a little MAD Magazine analysis...
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:59 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

As a reminder, the biggest complaint people have about the tax system is “some corporations don't pay their fair share.”

Reminder! Wanting higher income and/or corporate taxes isn’t even socialism! It’s just a more evenly-distributed tax base.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:31 PM on April 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

There's no obvious quid pro quo or corruption here; you can't point back to a policy that Obama enacted in order to get a $400k speaking fee after he's done in office.

Don't be naive. They had this all worked out. The deal was, he'd get some fuckin' sweet cream and all he had to do was contain the recession, save the auto industry, expand the ranks of the insured, and inspire millions.
posted by Jpfed

Look I don't necessarily have any real firm opinion on the $400k or what Obama should be doing [for us] in his post-presidency, but if you look at the real long-term, history book optics, "Implemented the bail-out that saved the economy in 2008 in the way that was most advantageous for Wall Street and then after presidency grew rich on Wall Street speaking fees," yeah, it doesn't look great.

And since our Republic or at least our Democracy's in total collapse, those optics kind of sort of matter.

2,000 years from now, pseudo-Robert Graves is going to be writing pseudo-I, Claudius, and ragging on Obama for taking the cash.

(and as far as my actual opinion goes, if you don't need the Wall Street money, don't take the Wall Street money; he could do 5-10 university commencements and make the same scratch without any of the negative connotations)
posted by TheProfessor at 10:42 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Mandatory voting is a nonsense idea, firstly because you must have a right not to vote if you are unwilling to put your name to any of a set of candidates you consider venal and corrupt, and secondly because your democratic choice absolutely must remain anonymous, meaning that there is nothing to stop you attending and spoiling your papers as a deliberate act of civil disobedience.
posted by walrus at 10:45 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

None of that stuff can be passed with reconciliation. None. I realize the Republicans pulled some bullshit a while back involving using magic dynamic scoring when looking at the cost of tax cuts but when talking about things this size even cheating won't save the bills. So the only saving grace is this shit would have to sunset out just like Bush's.

Of course Bush's tax cuts blew a hole in the economy we still haven't recovered from. And these look bigger.
posted by Justinian at 10:48 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

meaning that there is nothing to stop you attending and spoiling your papers as a deliberate act of civil disobedience

Well no, there isn't, but I would bet every cent I have that the vast majority of extra votes cast under a compulsory system would be counted and not spoiled. The law wouldn't be able to make you cast a countable vote only to show up to the polls.

You can lead a voter to water but you can't make him think.
posted by Justinian at 10:50 PM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Wikipedia founder to fight fake news with new Wikitribune site

Crowdfunded online publication from Jimmy Wales will pair paid journalists with army of volunteer contributors

Although the site is launching at the beginning of the UK general election campaign, Wales said the impetus for the project came from the US.

“Someone I know convinced me to give Trump 100 days before making my mind up,” he said, “but then on day one Kellyanne Conway came out and said her ‘alternative facts’ line. That was when I really decided to move forward.”
posted by futz at 11:12 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Unfortunatly from my experience political articles that are getting a lot of attention tend to be something Wikipedia is really bad at, I can't see this going better.
posted by Artw at 11:15 PM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]

Ditto Artw.
posted by futz at 11:18 PM on April 25, 2017

Look I don't necessarily have any real firm opinion on the $400k or what Obama should be doing [for us] in his post-presidency, but if you look at the real long-term, history book optics, “Implemented the bail-out that saved the economy in 2008 in the way that was most advantageous for Wall Street and then after presidency grew rich on Wall Street speaking fees,” yeah, it doesn't look great.

Uh… color me naïve here, but why doesn’t that look great? My read of this comment is that the long-term optics will suggest that Obama was indeed in a quid-pro-quo relationship with Wall Street? But since that isn’t the case, I’m not really clear why this would eventually read as particularly grim. Like, I can see that this will ostensibly indict him as being a mainstream liberal, but he also has a long-established track record of being a mainstream liberal, so that doesn’t seem like a dramatic turn.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:34 PM on April 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Voting isn't anonymous. There are valid arguments why it should be. Many states only let you vote by ballot mailed to your legal address and tracked back to you. Other states require your ID to vote such that they know who cast which vote.

I wasn't aware that this is the case in the USA, my experience being informed by living in a country where my vote is anonymous. A system where your vote is not anonymous is open to retrospective abuse by a hypothetical fascist regime however and that is actually the best reason not to vote that I can imagine.
posted by walrus at 11:49 PM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

BBC: Meeting an organ trafficker who preys on Syrian refugees

The video clip is like a scene from a movie: a young man in a cafe lifts his shirt to show a bandage around his abdomen, with blood seeping through on his left side. He sold a kidney in Lebanon, where the ability to work is extremely restricted for refugees, to be able to pay his family's rent.
posted by XMLicious at 11:54 PM on April 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've been reading this 1990 Vanity Fair article (probably found way back in another thread and left open in a tab for ages).

Everything is there: his narcissism, cruelty, ignorance, meanness, lying (oh, the lying) and ineptness held up by a fascinated and disgusted press and banks too eager to lend him money. Trump didn't become a malicious fool, he always was one.
posted by mumimor at 12:35 AM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

My read of this comment is that the long-term optics will suggest that Obama was indeed in a quid-pro-quo relationship with Wall Street? But since that isn’t the case, I’m not really clear why this would eventually read as particularly grim.

It doesn't have to be absolute quid-pro-quo to exist and look bad - it's a reminder that the Democratic party exists to serve corporate interests above the people, which is part of why liberal voter turnout is poor (and encourages the fuck-you, smash the system nihilism of some Tea Party/Trump voters). It feeds directly into the narrative of, "But her speeches," that plagued Hilary.

There is absolutely no business value that a speech from Obama can deliver that justifies $400K, so we're left with a few reasons why a company would spend that kind of money on it.

1. Novelty, entertainment, flashing cash - big corporations certainly drop this kind of money from time to time on big name rock bands performing at their private events and the like.
2. One hand washes the other payback.

If you were one of the small time business people or home owners that lost significant amounts of money in 2008-2009 as Obama bailed out the major banks and their shareholders, how do you think him walking away with as much money as they'll make in a decade for a 90 minute speech to the parties he did help is going to feel?
posted by Candleman at 12:40 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

I lost a bunch of money in the financial meltdown and I hope Obama makes bank. Get you some, Obama.
posted by Justinian at 12:45 AM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

the Democratic party exists to serve corporate interests above the people

Rest assured, if Trump wins a second term the Democratic Party is dead.
posted by rhizome at 12:47 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

If he even makes it to election season for a second term, the hats will say "DESTROY AMERICA FOR GOOD"
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:11 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

There is absolutely no business value that a speech from Obama can deliver that justifies $400K, so we're left with a few reasons why a company would spend that kind of money on it.

Sorry, but this is BS. Larry the Cable Guy and 142 others get $200k or more for an appearance (and that's just from this one speakers' bureau). You're telling getting the former president/Nobel Prize winner/bestselling author/etc. isn't worth twice Larry the fucking Cable Guy? Or Andre Agassi?

It doesn't have to be absolute quid-pro-quo to exist and look bad - it's a reminder that the Democratic party exists to serve corporate interests above the people, which is part of why liberal voter turnout is poor (and encourages the fuck-you, smash the system nihilism of some Tea Party/Trump voters). It feeds directly into the narrative of, "But her speeches," that plagued Hilary.

Hillary was running again, Obama isn't. The Team Partiers/Trumpists are going to be "fuck the system" and hate Ds and find a reason to vote against regardless. Hillary's speeches and Obama's didn't cause them to do anything, it was just the excuse du jour. So we're left with a left/liberal distaste for making money, even from completely legitimate ways, that we will use to attack and eat our own rather than focus on battling the enemy that laughs that we do their work for them.

Michael Cohen - @speechboy71
-If someone wants to pay Barack Obama $400,000 to give a speech I can't think of a single reason why he shouldn't take it.
-If Obama's presidency showed anything it's that trying to calibrate behavior based on how u think people will criticize u is a fool's errand
-Folks will always criticize Obama, worrying about optics is how you give them the upper hand
-The entire criticism of Obama seems to be about optics. Maybe progressives should take a lesson from GOPers & stop worrying about optics
-Obama is not doing anything wrong. He's giving a speech. Nothing to apologize for.
-To be honest I think the root of the issue is that a lot of progressives who think there is something unseemly about making lots of money
-For the record, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with making lots of money ... which is of course why I work in journalism
-I mean, if you're making lots of money to strangle kittens .. that's bad. But giving a speech. Go on with your bad self
posted by chris24 at 1:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [58 favorites]

1. Novelty, entertainment, flashing cash - big corporations certainly drop this kind of money from time to time on big name rock bands performing at their private events and the like.
2. One hand washes the other payback.

"From time to time" means at most, if not all, major corporate events though; the dichotomy set up above seems designed to imply that the quid-pro-quo is the norm. A big deal public figure *is* a rock-star in that environment. And for all that one wants to call Obama Wall Street's candidate here, it seems crazy given the evident support of Wall Street for the Rs. Indeed, I'd argue that this election is proof that the hand-wringing over Clinton's speeches reflected less badly on her than it did on the electorate: the public is an ass that was pleased to give the election to the self-evidently more pro-Wall Street candidate.

That isn't to say that Obama shouldn't respond to those desires; it's surely his job to deal with the public as it is. But I guess I suspect that the lens of history will look back on the present incorporating both the realities of the policies supported by different industries, the performances the electorate claims to demand of its politicians, and the way those performances connect with the time.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:52 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Obama disappointed me many times, but I'd much rather the money be in his pocket than in the brokers'.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:04 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

And besides, who would you rather gave a talk to a bunch of bankers? And who's more likely to use the thick end of half a million dollars for something worthwhile? How many visits and talks to community leaders, youth schemes and the like do you think it will cover? They're going to get lots of Obama, and they won't be paying $400k a pop. That's coming out of the bankers' pockets.

It could be that all the speaking dosh is going into Obama's yacht, hookers and blow fund; doubtless there are people on that circuit who do enjoy the fruits of their labour in that way, and yer man hangs with Branson so will be very aware of what full-on rock star has to offer.

But I doubt it. I expect to see him as we've seen him recently, sitting on a stage surrounded by the extraordinary ordinary people, leaning forward, listening and talking, steadily taking an agenda for good forward for anyone who cares to hear.

If one speech to Wall Street pays for a hundred events like that, tell me what you propose instead.
posted by Devonian at 2:05 AM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Sorry, but this is BS.

Business value. You'll note that I explicitly stated that companies do spend that kind of money on pure entertainment, yes?

But you don't see Goldman Sachs spending $200K on Larry the Cable Guy or some person who was a semi-finalist on Season 8 of The Biggest Loser, do you?

So we're left with a left/liberal distaste for making money

I'm one of the people that routinely gets flamed on the Blue for daring to say that capitalism (mostly) works, at least compared to the alternatives. There's nothing wrong with making money, even substantial amounts of money. But there is a problem when you create a conflict of interest (or appearance of one) by using public funds to benefit a small group of private citizens and corporations and subsequently get large amounts of money from them.

Do you really think that the big movers of money don't think in terms of decades for payoffs rather than single digits of years?

I hope Obama makes bank. Get you some, Obama.

Are you certain that the lesson to future leaders should be that taking money from the taxpayers and handing it to the 1% will yield a personal fortune?

it seems crazy given the evident support of Wall Street for the Rs

Check your facts on that. Wall Street supports both sides (hedging their bets, as it were) which is exactly my point - both parties cater to elite wealth, which fuels the why-botherism on the left and the smash-the-systemism on the right, both of which work against progressive goals.

Obama disappointed me many times, but I'd much rather the money be in his pocket than in the brokers'.

Even if that money is his reward for those disappointments?

If one speech to Wall Street pays for a hundred events like that, tell me what you propose instead.

You're operating under an unproven assumption that the money's going to be funneled towards good. I hope you're right. There isn't a good alternative because of freedom of speech. But this move is absolutely tone deaf given the events of the past year or so. A better alternative would be having the $400K donated directly to a children's education program or the Southern Poverty Law Center or the like.

I expect to see him as we've seen him recently, sitting on a stage surrounded by the extraordinary ordinary people, leaning forward, listening and talking, steadily taking an agenda for good forward for anyone who cares to hear.

He pretty solidly bungled the last six months of his administration. You'll forgive me if I'm not swept away by his post-presidency so far.

Welcome to 2017, where somehow I am hoping that You Can't Tip A Buick tags in to help point out how problematic things are.
posted by Candleman at 2:41 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Sorry, but this is BS.

Business value. You'll note that I explicitly stated that companies do spend that kind of money on pure entertainment, yes?

But you don't see Goldman Sachs spending $200K on Larry the Cable Guy or some person who was a semi-finalist on Season 8 of The Biggest Loser, do you?

And I meant there is absolutely business value in spending $400,000 on Obama. Companies don't spend $200,000 on Larry the Cable Guy or some band or Obama for pure entertainment or out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because events like these help employee morale and environment, aids in attracting talent and talent retention, offers PR benefits to the company, etc. etc.

And to add some anecdata, my wife is a senior HR exec at a Fortune 500 company and one of our best friends is Chief Communications Officer at a Fortune 50 company and both think $400k for Obama is completely reasonable/a bargain for getting someone of his caliber and that doing so definitely has internal and external business value well beyond pure entertainment.
posted by chris24 at 2:55 AM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

But there is a problem when you create a conflict of interest (or appearance of one) by using public funds to benefit a small group of private citizens and corporations and subsequently get large amounts of money from them.

2016 burned any worries about appearances away from me. Either someone is doing something wrong or they're not. Worrying about what others might think of an innocent act is a fools errand as the tweetstorm I quoted said. People who are looking for a reason to hate you will find it. Why do their work for them?
posted by chris24 at 3:03 AM on April 26, 2017 [21 favorites]

I honestly don't have the time to express concern over how Obama is spending his time unless it is -helping with the fight right now-, since we have a president that is, y'know, toeing the ol' "nuclear war" line.

If things get a bit less pressing on that front, and it turns out that Obama's up to something inappropriate, I can maybe spare a thought for that when it does NOT look like things are gonna end -in fire-. Seem reasonable?

Right now, I think the party's efforts would be better spent unifying against Trump's warmongering than in the -perpetual- circular firing squad about who is and isn't a sufficiently pure liberal, untrammeled by corruption, Wall Street, and politics. /sigh
posted by Archelaus at 3:17 AM on April 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

And to add some anecdata, my wife is a senior HR exec at a Fortune 500 company...

Further anecdata, my wife says for her to hire a B-level motivational speaker to come speak to a small HR or employee team would cost $50-80k. Now you may think that's insane, but that's the market.
posted by chris24 at 3:23 AM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

Sorry, but this is BS. Larry the Cable Guy and 142 others get $200k or more for an appearance....

What, exactly, is the argument here? That Obama stands for just as little as Larry the Cable Guy?
Nobody in this conversation is upset about Obama making $400k, although he certainly doesn't need to. This intentional misrepresentation of people's points only makes it clear that you don't think there's any good refutation of their actual points.

Also, Michael Cohen claiming "He's giving a speech. Nothing to apologize for." is profoundly stupid. (As are the rest of the tweets quoted from his weird little tantrum.) Really? There's nothing a person can say that might be worthy of an apology? Republicans give speeches that should be apologized for all the time. There are a lot of things Obama could say, especially to "a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street" (his own words, delivered in a somewhat different context), that would be something to apologize for. Frankly, I would be shocked if I saw the text of this speech and DIDN'T think that it warranted an apology. We all know he's not going in there to instruct them on how to better distribute their wealth to the masses.

And I am really tired of people claiming that we should just do whatever the Republicans do. The idea is that if we use Republican tactics we will get Republican results, but the people cheering this aren't thinking it through all the way. They think "Republican results" means "lots of our people elected!" but what it actually means is "lots of contrarian asshole Republicans elected". We cannot motivate people to build long-term useful things with spite and hatred. The people you get with these tactics want the destruction of an enemy. Their tactics cannot be our tactics unless their goals are our goals, which means that yes, our optics do matter. Obama getting paid to give oratory backrubs and handjobs to the people who blew up our economy (and who, it has already been noted, the Democratic party has a strong tendency to kowtow to anyway) DOES matter, and it will influence the minds of people at voting time. People will remember that the Democratic hope and change guy went to schmooze and cheer on Wall Street the SECOND he was out the White House door. This makes every word he speaks after it mean less to some people that we're hoping to turn into regular voters. Remember them? The people who haven't always shown up, but who we need to activate to help turn the ship around because most Republican voters are literally not perceiving reality? This makes not just Obama but any Democrat promising change and the championing of American people over American financial institutions look less honest in their eyes. Hell, it would be doing that in my eyes if I didn't already know how the Democratic establishment is about Wall Street. I don't know that we can trust everybody to hold their nose and vote D through their disgust. Honestly, they shouldn't have to.
It has been brought up several times in this thread lately that the American people's biggest problem with our current tax system is that some companies cheat it. When they say "some companies" you had better be hearing "our enemies", and the companies they're thinking about are these ones. There are lots of reasons that people didn't vote in the 2016 election, and while misogyny, disenfranchisement, and not giving a shit are certainly up there, the feeling that neither candidate was really going to help them also kept a lot of people home. No sane person is going to think that the D is more in the pocket of Wall Street than the R, but the (entirely correct) perception that the D and the R are both in that pocket enough for it to be a serious problem is bad enough to do real damage. The Democrats need to be an alternative to that corruption, not merely an alternative type of that corruption. (Anyone who claims to vote for any R, especially Trump, because the Democratic candidate is too financially corrupt is of course within the "literally not perceiving reality" camp.)

Obama taking these men's money in exchange for making them feel good about themselves is an unambiguous bad thing with no upside for anyone who isn't directly involved in the deal. The idea that doing this is giving him access to money with which to do good that he otherwise wouldn't have access to is ridiculous on its face; for example, the BBC reports that they're expected to receive $65 million for their book deal (which nobody here is going to complain about, because again, nobody is upset about Obama getting paid). They don't need the money, which is actually worse because it means he's not doing it FOR the money, and everybody knows it. This is just Obama doing a shitty thing because his financial politics are shitty. We all recognize that it is odious and gross when Republicans cheer for their candidates even while those candidates are screwing them simply because they're ostensibly on the same "team", but there are some people here who don't seem to recognize that same behavior from themselves.

On preview:
2016 burned any worries about appearances away from me. Either someone is doing something wrong or they're not. Worrying about what others might think of an innocent act is a fools errand as the tweetstorm I quoted said. People who are looking for a reason to hate you will find it. Why do their work for them?

As a defense of the speech, this is completely incoherent. "Either someone is doing something wrong or they're not" doesn't work as a defense when someone is in fact doing something wrong, which is unambiguously the case here.
posted by IAmUnaware at 3:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

I have a hard time justifying to myself purity tests along economic lines. When it comes to gender/race/LGBT/disability issues, that's different. Then it's a question of throwing people under the bus.

Obama's been playing in the system for a while now, and yeah, he lives a privileged life. I can't get upset about that, really. Just like I don't spend a bunch of time stewing about how people on Wall Street get rich moving money around. Yeah, they're profiteers of the system, that means they know how to work it, so change the system.

I guess maybe I'd be upset at the profiteers, but we have an insane president now with nukes?
posted by angrycat at 4:07 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

All these lefty's complaining how much Obama is earning sound a lot like that racist uncle watching basketball complaining how players earn so much for throwing a ball through a hoop.
posted by PenDevil at 4:07 AM on April 26, 2017 [49 favorites]

Sorry, but this is BS. Larry the Cable Guy and 142 others get $200k or more for an appearance....

What, exactly, is the argument here? That Obama stands for just as little as Larry the Cable Guy?
Nobody in this conversation is upset about Obama making $400k, although he certainly doesn't need to. This intentional misrepresentation of people's points only makes it clear that you don't think there's any good refutation of their actual points.

The argument is exactly what it says, a counterpoint to the post directly above mine and quoted in my post; that the $400k has no business value and must be a quid pro quo or else a waste on entertainment. Demonstrating that it's market value helps show that there need be no quid pro quo to make the transaction equitable, and that the company isn't wasting money frivolously to do so.

And I am really tired of people claiming that we should just do whatever the Republicans do.

Where in my post did I say we should just do what Republicans do. Once again, I was responding the the post directly above me that I quoted in my post that was worried about Republican reaction to Clinton's and Obama's speeches. My fairly clear point was not that we should act like Republicans, but that we shouldn't care what Republicans think about our actions since they'll find a way to hate us regardless.

which is unambiguously the case here.

Unambiguously is a pretty strong word for your opinion, considering tens of millions and I'd wager a majority of Americans - hell Democrats - feel differently.
posted by chris24 at 4:08 AM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

$400K is more money than I, my parents and grandparents, have made our whole lives, combined. We weren't politicians, or Wall Street financiers, but so far as I can tell, we all worked just as hard as Obama and those Wall Street guys did, yet we don't have nearly as much to show for it. You can get into how society values different occupations, and all that, but even so, I just can't feel sanguine about it. Sorry.
posted by KHAAAN! at 4:08 AM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

White people continue to demand women and POC give their labor away for free. Meanwhile white dudes are getting paid. This is asinine.
posted by supercrayon at 4:18 AM on April 26, 2017 [55 favorites]

Mod note: Please drop the fighting-about-Obama's-speech derail at this point. Thank you.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:18 AM on April 26, 2017 [33 favorites]

Looks like he was lying: Sebastian Gorka’s Ties To Nazi-Allied Group Stretch Back Decades

Not only is Gorka a lying Nazi, his Phd - which he's so proud of that he makes everyone call him Dr. Gorka - seems to be a worthless sham doctorate from a suspect school.

His dissertation – Content and End-State-based Alteration in the Practice of Political Violence since the End of the Cold War: the difference between the terrorism of the Cold War and the terrorism of al Qaeda: the rise of the “transcendental terrorist” was apparently granted in 2007 by Corvinus University of Budapest. The tract is long on Islamaphobia and the unsubstantiated claims of the polemicist but short on theory, evidence or academic rigor. Corvinus is not an institution with a profile, so I looked: sadly it doesn’t even make the top 1,000 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Even Gorka’s attendance poses a mystery. When exactly was he a graduate student at the university? Did he take classes? Did he receive any training in Islam or Islamic studies? His CV notes that he left Hungary in 2004 to work for the US Defense Department in Germany and then in 2008 relocated to the US. There is no evidence that he ever returned to live and study in Budapest.

The dissertation is online and includes the ‘evaluations’ of three referees who each presented a page of generalized comments – completely at odds with the detailed substantive and methodological evaluations that I’ve seen at every Ph.D defence I’ve been on over the last twenty years.

Two of the three referees did not even have a Ph.D. One was the US Defense Attaché at the American Embassy in Budapest at the time, while the other was employed at the UK’s Defence Academy and just had a BA from Manchester University awarded in 1969. This ‘neutral’ examiner had published a book in Hungary with Gorka three years previously. While graduate students sometimes collaborate with their advisors the independent external examiners must have no nepotistic ties with the candidate. More important, a basic principle of assessing educational achievement is that your examiners have at least the degree level of the degree they are awarding. Undergraduates do not award Ph.Ds. In Gorka’s case the only examiner who lists a doctorate was György Schöpflin – an extreme right wing Hungarian Member of the European Parliament who recently advocated putting pigs heads on a fence on the Hungarian border to keep out Muslims. I have been told that Schöpflin was a family friend. Both Schöpflin and Gorka’s father fled from Budapest to London in the 1950s and both moved in exile right-wing nationalist circles.

If that is true, we are left in sum with a degree that was awarded in absence – on the basis of a dissertation without basic political science methodological underpinnings – and apparently from an examining committee of two of Gorka’s diplomat friends, with only BA degrees; along with an old family friend, Schöpflin.

posted by chris24 at 4:47 AM on April 26, 2017 [31 favorites]

Trump incorrectly targets 9th circuit for blocking order on sanctuary cities

The statement is unbelievable. Republicans violent rhetoric against the judiciary is escalating.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:02 AM on April 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

I got an email, I think because I'm on an Indivisible list, from people who are doing a postcard drive for Christine Triebsch, a Democratic candidate for a state senate seat in Georgia that was opened up when the representative resigned to run for the 6th Congressional District. If Triebsch won, it would break the Republican super majority in the Georgia Senate. The election is on May 16th. If anyone else has a bunch of postcards and postcard stamps hanging around and wants to get in on the postcard fun, the email is from [e-mail]. They give you a number to text to request a specific number of names and addresses. (I don't want to put the number here, in case there are nefarious lurkers, but I bet if you email they'll send it to you.) If that seems sketchy, I think you can also email and they'll send you addresses.

(One of the best things I did after the election was buy a box of 100 postcards and a bunch of postcard stamps. It makes doing this kind of thing really painless, plus I can always fire off an angry postcard to my dumb-fuck elected officials.)

I'm a little worried that we're losing momentum and that people are spending too much time infighting and not enough time doing direct action. So if anyone else is feeling that way, this is a pretty painless way to try to influence an important local election.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:06 AM on April 26, 2017 [30 favorites]

According to the WH the Senate briefing on the NK situation is still on for today and POTUS will "drop by." What does that even mean? Who is briefing the Senate and why can't this person go to the Senate?

If you haven't seen the Rachel Maddow compilation of clips of Trump castigating Obama for signing "too many" EO's here is a twitter link, it is worth a watch. What the hell does "sign them like butter" mean? Also when is a reporter going to ask him about his reversal on this issue?

Also I'm linking to a USA op-ed that I couldn't even finish but someone else might be interested in reading: Trump isn't making America great yet: Paul Brandus According to Brandus the things that Trump can do to make America Great are all things that Trump can't or won't ever do-- like stop lying. What's the point? He might as well say what would make America Great Again is to pretend that the election didn't happen and start all over again.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:27 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange — there is something there, but it's hard to read what. (Article more about US than you might think).
posted by mumimor at 5:52 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

The statement is unbelievable. Republicans violent rhetoric against the judiciary is escalating.

Yikes...
posted by diogenes at 6:05 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Are the Senate Democrats attending this stupid, insulting, and pointless meeting? If so, why?
posted by sotonohito at 6:19 AM on April 26, 2017

Democratic mega donor in Nevada defects to Dean Heller
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:20 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

So, last night I had a nightmare.

It was a goodnightmare. It was one in which all probable logic flew away. It was one in which the world was changed so dramatically, and unpredictablably.
Somehow, after a flurry on minor scrimishes, Kim Jong-un commits suicide, the dmz fell like the fucking Berlin wall and Trump won a godddamned Nobel.

That was not the end of our troubles but Korea was a much happier place.

I suddenly realized that because Trump is so wild, so discriminatatory, and unjust even if the wildest things happen, I will not be able to celebrate his successes because I don't want to believe they are intentional.


*this is entirely based in fantasy and is ignoring decades of public policy, history , and other such important matters .
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:28 AM on April 26, 2017

I'm sorry, but the fact that Gorka got his doctorate from Corvinus University just makes me suspect that he is in fact a vampire/lycan hybrid.
posted by valkane at 6:30 AM on April 26, 2017 [18 favorites]

Wikipedia founder to fight fake news with new Wikitribune site

What could go wrong?
posted by spitbull at 6:31 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

pretty sure the primary cause of the great filter is the rise of social media
posted by entropicamericana at 6:48 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

If you want to have people register to vote on election day, you need to be prepared to spend a shit ton of money hiring and training staffers who aren't retirees.

Just to reiterate, this is something we do here in Minnesota. We've been doing it for at least as long as I've been voting. For long time, I didn't even know things were done differently anywhere else.

It's ever slightly more complicated than the process of checking in and getting your ballot. It's super simple and super smooth. It does not cost a "shit ton" of money and it doesn't require a lot of training.

It's:
-This is the list of things a person can use to verify their address (almost every uses a driver's license but it can be a utility bill or similar I think)
-Here is what needs to get filled out on the form
-Put completed forms here then tell them to get in line to vote.

You can also mitigate that by having an option to opt-out of an otherwise automatic voter registration that comes along with getting any state issued ID.

It is not hard, it is not expensive. It's stupid that it doesn't work this everywhere already.
posted by VTX at 6:51 AM on April 26, 2017 [18 favorites]

It is not hard, it is not expensive. It's stupid that it doesn't work this everywhere already.

This discussion about making voting easier is strange to me. The problem isn't logistics, or money, or knowledge. The problem is that it's in the interest of Republicans to make voting as difficult and cumbersome as possible, so that's what they do.

On preview: Once again, the Republican Party aims to fuck things up for no good reason.

Oh, they have a reason.
posted by diogenes at 7:01 AM on April 26, 2017 [28 favorites]

TPM: This is really quite astounding. In this morning’s edition of Mike Allen’s not-Playbook from Axios he introduces what seems to be Ivanka Trump setting up something that sounds a lot like the Clinton Foundation, only in this case run from within the White House by a top presidential aide who is also the President’s daughter, who also runs her own large international company and who also has two brothers who are currently running the President/Father’s company and trying to rake in as much money as possible on the fame and power of the presidency.
posted by PenDevil at 7:13 AM on April 26, 2017 [19 favorites]

I'm just going to put this here: The President of the United States Has a Button That He Presses So a Butler Delivers Him a Coke [real]
posted by localhuman at 7:17 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm just going to put this here: The President of the United States Has a Button That He Presses So a Butler Delivers Him a Coke [real]

I mean, this is the least objectionable thing about him, perhaps. I'd have a martini button, for sure.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:19 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

I read that TPM article this morning and couldn't even muster up much outrage. I already assume the Trumps are infinitely corrupt. In a way, such blatant, visible corruption is almost reassuring. It will hopefully just be more ammunition for a Democratic House to use against them in 2018 (God willing).
posted by diogenes at 7:19 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Elderly authoritarian entertainment-world figure becomes President, calls for massive supply-side corporate tax cuts, claims revenue shortfalls won't happen and wouldn't matter anyway.

WHAT YEAR IS IT
posted by delfin at 7:20 AM on April 26, 2017 [32 favorites]

From PenDevil's link:
As is the case on many other fronts, Trump and his family ran the 2016 campaign not so much against Hillary Clinton but a looking glass Hillary Clinton which was actually what they aspired to be and do if they won.
posted by mumimor at 7:21 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm just going to put this here: The President of the United States Has a Button That He Presses So a Butler Delivers Him a Coke [real]

I mean, this is the least objectionable thing about him, perhaps. I'd have a martini button, for sure.

There is no way that Trump and his people had that installed and operational in less than 97 days, so I'm just going to assume that the button's been there for decades and there's a whole catalog that the incoming President gets to choose his Red Button Drink from.
posted by Etrigan at 7:22 AM on April 26, 2017 [22 favorites]

The President of the United States Has a Button That He Presses So a Butler Delivers Him a Coke

It's a testament to a century of brilliant marketing that this fact doesn't even make me hate Coke.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:22 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

>> The President of the United States Has a Button That He Presses So a Butler Delivers Him a Coke

> It's a testament to a century of brilliant marketing that this fact doesn't even make me hate Coke.

I dunno, for my part it makes me dislike all of the following a little more:

1. Coke
2. Presidents
3. Buttons

But my default mode of being in the world right now is basically "DO NOT WANT," so it's not hard to get me to dislike things.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:27 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

I'd have a martini button, for sure.

Fuck the button, I'd need an IV.
posted by Floydd at 7:27 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

calls for massive supply-side corporate tax cuts, claims revenue shortfalls won't happen

If only we had some previous real-world applications of this theory that we could examine for validity...
posted by diogenes at 7:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

It is not hard, it is not expensive. It's stupid that it doesn't work this everywhere already.

I'm glad it's fairly easy in Minnesota. However, I've seen poll workers in a number of different polling points in both Tennessee and Missouri who straight up don't understand what the signs mean or are actively trying to misinform people.

From your easy to understand list, I've seen people argue what a valid proof of address is. In Tennessee, I saw a woman in tears trying to vote and the poll worker kept telling her it had to be a utility bill because that proves she lived there. All she had was a bank statement because all the utilities were in her boyfriend's name.

In Missouri, where it doesn't require an id to vote, but lists a valid state or federally issued photo id with the address as one of the possible methods of proof, I had a poll worker argue with me that I needed to have my drivers license. She even went so far as to tell me that I could go home and come back after I had it because she knew I lived around the corner. Finally after ten minutes of her telling me I needed a drivers license and my voter registration card wasn't enough, I made her check with someone else to make sure she was correct. The second poll worker lived across the street from me and told the first, "We know she lives here, and she has her voter card. That's more than enough. A Driver's license is just easier because we can scan it in instead of typing in her name." So the first poll worker was going to make my process harder by requiring a DL because she didn't want to have to type my name in the system.

At an early voting spot in Missouri, I saw people turned away because they didn't have the "right" reason to vote early. According to the rules, you can only vote early if you will be incapacitated or out of town on voting day. Not having a way to get to the polling station or not having a day off don't count. Granted, I heard one poll worker tell a lady that being unable to get a ride to the polling station sounded like being incapacitated to her, but I know of other folks who were just straight up turned away because they didn't have the right reason.

Any level of bureaucracy can and frequently will be shitty when staffed by mostly volunteers, and add in complex and slightly bizarre voting laws and it makes it even more likely that someone will be misinformed and will unfairly restrict voting. Voting can, and frequently is, a challenge and not understanding the longstanding tradition of voter suppression in certain areas and of certain populations makes it far too easy to declare it a simple problem to fix. We have to want to fix and we have to be allowed to fix it.
posted by teleri025 at 7:32 AM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

Also the thread is rapidly approaching "smoke pouring from my Nexus 7" chugging levels
posted by delfin at 7:35 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

We managed to make this one last almost 10 days, guess either our outrage is simmering into depression, or there just hasn't been a lot going on that's new.
posted by sotonohito at 7:37 AM on April 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

Also the thread is rapidly approaching "smoke pouring from my Nexus 7" chugging levels

Better smoke from your Nexus 7 than your Note 7.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:40 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

We managed to make this one last almost 10 days, guess either our outrage is simmering into depression, or there just hasn't been a lot going on that's new.
posted by sotonohito at 9:37 on April 26 [5 favorites +] [!]

It's the lull before the government shutdown
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:42 AM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Maybe a new thread is in order before the tax announcement later today? (Not volunteering at all)
posted by gladly at 7:43 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

When the staffmember hears the intercom call button go 'click', but the President doesn't say anything, they humor him and bring him a coke.
posted by mikelieman at 7:57 AM on April 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

Also the thread is rapidly approaching "smoke pouring from my Nexus 7" chugging levels

it's too bad she won't live! but then again, who does?
posted by entropicamericana at 7:57 AM on April 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

it's too bad she won't live! but then again, who does?

Leaves origami unicorn in appreciation.
posted by chris24 at 8:01 AM on April 26, 2017 [21 favorites]

In Oregon, which has automatic registration and mail-in balloting for everyone, turnout in the 2016 election was 80% of registered voters (70% of the voting-eligible population). In 2008 the turnout was 86% of registered voters (77% of the voting-eligible population).

Some more details on Oregon's results.

One State Shows Just How Easy It Is To Get More Americans To Vote: It’s called automatic voter registration, and it won’t destroy democracy.

Oregon saw big hikes in voter turnout among youth and voter registration among communities of color in its first election since adopting automatic voter registration, a new report shows.

In early 2016, Oregon was the first state to implement a system in which eligible residents are automatically registered to vote when they have any significant interaction with the motor vehicles department. People have to opt out if they don’t want to register.

Following the change, Oregon saw some major gains in underrepresented communities, according to the Alliance for Youth Action’s report. Turnout among voters ages 18 to 29 increased by 20 percentage points, from 37 percent in 2012 to 57 percent in 2016. Registration among voters of color increased by 26 points, from 53 percent in 2012 to 79 percent in 2016.

posted by chris24 at 8:07 AM on April 26, 2017 [37 favorites]

I don't know if that's actually a difference in competence. It's difficult to separate from malevolence. I suppose a little bit of it incompetence being used as a tool by malevolent forces (IE: The GOP/White supremacists).

Because I don't believe that people in Missouri, Tennessee, or any of the other places you name are generally more stupid than people in Minnesota. I DO believe that in some places there is a quasi coordinated effort to suppress votes. The attitude of every poll worker I've ever been around has been one of figuring out how to get people to vote. "Everyone votes" is the goal and it shows through in their attitudes.

Maybe the concept that "everyone votes" just needs to get pounded into people's heads more.

RE: Bank statements. You don't not need a physical address to have a bank account. "Under the bridge 2 mi. north on Co Rd 5" is perfectly acceptable. The mailing address can and sometimes is different than the account address and while the mailing address must be printed on the statement, the account address does not (depends on the bank).

So I could totally have my statements delivered to your address, wait to steal one from the mail-box (the delivery timing is easy to predict) and use that to register to vote at your address. I'm not saying they were right, I'm just saying that I don't have enough facts to say definitively that they were wrong. Odds are good that both addresses were the same and both appeared on the statement but it might not be an acceptable document according to the polling place's rules for that reason. IIRC from my days as a retail banker, a bank statement is usually an acceptable 2nd form of ID (assuming the addresses match) but not a primary.
posted by VTX at 8:24 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

futz, yesterday: I guess "omitted" is vastly different from lying.

Not according to NPR, who in a summary of the Russia story yesterday afternoon reported that Jeff Sessions "failed to disclose" his meeting with the Russian ambassador during the confirmation hearing.

For values of "failed to disclose" that apparently include bringing up the subject in order to explicitly deny meeting. In other words, a deliberate lie, and one he was later forced to publicly recant. but I guess pointing that out would have made the piece seem "unbalanced" or whatever, however accurate it might have been.
posted by Gelatin at 8:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [19 favorites]

A few days late to listening to this, but It's Going Down Podcast had an interview with the person caught on camera being punched by Nathan Damigo at the Berkeley fracas. I thought their description of events, motivations, and thoughts re: white supremacists and antifa were quite good.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:28 AM on April 26, 2017

Dozens of Colleges’ Upward Bound Applications Are Denied for Failing to Dot Every I: Over the past few weeks at least 40 colleges and organizations with similar Upward Bound programs have also had their grant applications summarily rejected by the U.S. Department of Education for running afoul of rules on mandatory double-spacing rules, use of the wrong font, or other minor technical glitches.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:34 AM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

Well, now we know how they'll deny applications for public service student loan forgiveness beginning in October.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:40 AM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

With the push of a red button placed on the Resolute Desk that presidents have used for decades, a White House butler soon arrived with a Coke for the president.

There's a long joke in there somewhere about how past presidents used this awesome functionality to summon literally anything at the touch of a button, and when the current president* was asked what he wanted it to do had an imagination only large enough to ask for a Coke.
posted by achrise at 8:42 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

It was "gracious," said Mr. Chambers, who has overseen the Wittenberg program for 40 of its 50 years. "But in the end, she told me, ‘A rule is a rule.’ She told me, ‘Eddie, I too have to abide by the rules.’"

What the fuck is wrong with people?
posted by Talez at 8:42 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Not according to NPR, who in a summary of the Russia story yesterday afternoon reported that Jeff Sessions "failed to disclose" his meeting with the Russian ambassador during the confirmation hearing.

That NPR story was awful.

I got excited thinking I was gonna hear someone on the radio walk through the links between Manafort and Putin, Stone and Assange (and maybe even Cambridge Analytica and Bannon and Farage and Assange!), Kushner and Vnesheconombank, Page and that Russian spy ring, Flynn and RT and other Russian companies, Trump and Ryobovlev as well as other Putin-linked real estate buyers, etc. I heard them say they were going to summarize what we'd learned about the Russia story since inauguration day, and I was thinking "Yes, NPR, thank you, that would be very helpful. I'm losing track of all this."

Instead they were like (paraphrasing) "Well, Flynn resigned, and Sessions recused himself, and Nunes acted weird about Trump's tweets accusing Obama of spying on him. Those allegations are still being investigated. Meanwhile the important questions of HOW Russia interfered in the election and whether anyone on the Trump team was involved are still open."

I was so much at my radio I punched the off button.

First of all, we know a lot about how Russia interfered. They hacked the DNC and John Podesta and released carefully timed embarrassing information via Wikileaks. They hacked into voter registration databases in Illinois and Arizona (and attempted to hack into at least 18 others). They created a bunch of fake social media accounts designed to look like average voters in swing states and used them to a whole bunch of propaganda about how sick Clinton supposedly was, how corrupt she supposedly was, and how she might start a war, via Russian controlled media. They used twitter bots to spread the same message. They paid people to comment on newspaper sites and message boards. RT got more YouTube views during the election than CNN or any other American news source. This is all in that declassified report and in Clinton Watts' testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Pay attention, NPR!

Secondly, we've had the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee say that he's seen "non-circumstantial evidence" linking Trump's team to the Russian influence campaign. We also know that Roger stone had a back channel to Wikileaks, the Nigel Farage is a mutual friend of Trump and Assange, that Page was actually being recruited by Russian spies, that Manafort was being paid by Putin cronies, that Flynn was taking money from Russian corporations and talking with the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions, and that friendly foreign intelligence agencies reported intercepted communications between Trump's team and the Russians, according to multiple news reports.

You think any of that information might be worth sharing with your listeners, NPR? Gah. I've been defending them, but I don't think I'm going to any more.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:45 AM on April 26, 2017 [45 favorites]

Dear NPR,

If Trump voters aren't showing regret, don't belabor the point in hopes of completing the buyer's remorse trope.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:53 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

He's probably been told the red button is to nuke Pyongyang, but by the time he's finished the Coke he's forgotten that he ever pushed it.
posted by Devonian at 8:55 AM on April 26, 2017 [26 favorites]

They hacked the DNC and John Podesta and released carefully timed embarrassing information via Wikileaks.

And members of the Trump campaign had advance knowledge of the leaks and made public references to them before they happened.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:19 AM on April 26, 2017 [27 favorites]

SakuraK: Voting isn't anonymous. There are valid arguments why it should be. Many states only let you vote by ballot mailed to your legal address and tracked back to you. Other states require your ID to vote such that they know who cast which vote.

What are you talking about? Voter ID is required in some places to get a ballot, but the ID isn't marked on the ballot. And vote-by-mail, in Virginia at least, uses two envelopes to mail the ballot for counting: the outer envelope has your return address but the inner envelope contains no identifying information (that method could be compromised by unethical counters, of course, but it's anonymous by design). If your precinct track votes to the voter, you need to contact the authorities.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

They track who voted, not which candidate an individual vote was cast for.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:30 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Sanders introduces bill to raise minimum wage to $15/hr and index it thereafter. 2015 version of this bill had 5 co-sponsors. This one: 22, including Schumer.

2020 watch: Gillibrand co-sponsored both times.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:33 AM on April 26, 2017 [35 favorites]

White House readies order on withdrawing from NAFTA
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:37 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

However, this last very crucial point is sometimes elided in an effort to scare people either into voting or out of voting.

Doesn't the GOP have a record of sending out mailers in conservative areas threatening to expose voting records to neighbors? "If you vote Democratic, we'll tell your Republican neighbors so they can shun you or worse!" That sort of thing? So those threats should be toothless if how someone actually votes is not tracked, let alone available in a database. There's value in getting the word out on that. Take away one of the GOP's tools for intimidation.
posted by Servo5678 at 9:38 AM on April 26, 2017

The Atlantic has a useful discussion of the District Court's ruling in the Sanctuary Cities EO litigation: How Trump Alienated the Judiciary.

Key comments: This threat of catastrophic revenue loss is designed to force the counties to enforce federal immigration law. This is unconstitutional in no fewer than three ways. First, the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that the federal government can’t directly require states to enforce federal law. Second, the Supreme Court has also said repeatedly that the feds can’t use the threat of funding cutoffs so large that they “coerce” states into complying with conditions that would be unconstitutional if made as direct orders. And third, the court has said that only Congress can impose conditions on federal grants. The president cannot, with a stroke of his own pen, transfer this core power to himself or his appointees.
posted by suelac at 9:39 AM on April 26, 2017 [22 favorites]

Obama should charge 20 million to speak on wall street and publicly give all but 400k to the causes he wishes to champion.

Yes, publicly and verifiably. Then he should tweet Farenthold the proof.
posted by Gelatin at 9:39 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

But decimating the corporate tax rates will make Porsches trickle down to all those minimum-wagers! How greedy can they get?
posted by delfin at 9:39 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Still no guidance re: the potential shutdown in my inbox...
posted by suelac at 9:40 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

I thought the legislation was supposed to be part of the 100 DAY WINNING thingy? Isn't that, uh, this Friday?

What's baffling is that Trump is acting as if having made concrete proposals -- or somewhat concrete proposals, or at least suggestions -- counts toward the "accomplishments in the first 100 days" department. And that the media seems to simultaneously acknowledge that Trump is doing so and then go ahead and giving him the credit.

Baffling.
posted by Gelatin at 9:45 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

pretty sure the primary cause of the great filter is the rise of social media

Monsters from the Id
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:54 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Greg Sargent, WaPo: The White House just ratcheted up its threat to destroy Obamacare, a Democratic aide says

[…]Pelosi reiterated the Democratic position on the so-called “cost-sharing reductions” (CSRs), which subsidize lower out-of-pocket costs for millions of Americans. Democrats are insisting that these payments — which the administration has been making but has threatened to cease — must be included in Congress’ forthcoming spending bill to make sure that they continue. If they don’t, insurers, facing a big financial loss, would probably flee the individual markets, causing them to melt down.

But Mulvaney told Pelosi that the administration might not make its payment next month, the aide tells me. And not only that, Mulvaney “made clear that absent Congressional action, the administration would cease making payments,” the aide adds. A spokesman for Mulvaney didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:57 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

From the just-how-easy-can-voting-be department:

Yesterday in my mailbox I found the Multnomah County (Oregon) Voter's Pamphlet for our May 16 special election. All of the candidates for office along with their background and position statements, all of the ballot measures and arguments pro and con. I thought, okay cool, but I wonder where my ballot is.

Just now my phone beeped. I have both an email and an SMS message from the Multnomah County Elections Division. They say, hey your ballot for the May 16 special election has been sent, look for it in your mailbox soon!

When the ballot shows up, I'll have plenty of time to review the candidates and measures and to fill out my ballot at home. I'll put it in a ballot envelope for privacy, one that's not marked with any identifying information, and I'll put that inside the actual return envelope, which the election folks use to track that I've voted. I'll drop it into a mailbox anywhere in town whenever it's convenient and it'll cost me one stamp. If I don't have a stamp handy, I can drop it into one of the dedicated ballot boxes scattered around town (like the one at my library a few blocks away). If I end up running really late, I can take it directly to the county election offices right up to the evening on May 16 (8pm I think?).

A day or two later, I'll receive another email and/or SMS that says, hey we've received and recorded your ballot for the May 16 special election, thanks for voting!

Oregon's process is not perfect, but it's so much easier than anywhere else I've voted, and I can't imagine why every state would not want to adopt something like this. (Beyond the obvious Republican reasons for minimizing turnout, of course.)
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 10:02 AM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

Uhh, the Zombie Trumpcare 3.0 vote could be going to happen, Topher Spiro sounding the alarm.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:04 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

So what happened to all the deficit hawks, huh? What do they think about blasting a multi-trillion dollar hole in the budget? Let's ask Sen. Orrin Hatch; he thinks "our national debt poses a serious risk to America’s future" and wants a Constitutional amendment demanding balanced budgets. Surely he'll object to this madness?

"I'm not convinced that cutting taxes is necessarily going to blow a hole in the deficit," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Finance Committee.

"I actually believe it could stimulate the economy and get the economy moving," Hatch added. "Now, whether 15 percent is the right figure or not, that's a matter to be determined."

Any reporter who doesn't follow this cosdwallop with "Like in Kansas?" doesn't deserve their job.
posted by Gelatin at 10:08 AM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

Oregon's process is not perfect, but it's so much easier than anywhere else I've voted, and I can't imagine why every state would not want to adopt something like this.

Because domestic intimidation and violence exists, and I have spoken to more than a few Republican women up here where there are similar laws whose husbands had them fill out their ballots "together" this year.
posted by corb at 10:10 AM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Can someone please just link to the last time we went round and round on this in a previous thread rather than doing it all over again?
posted by phearlez at 10:13 AM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

The power of Oregon's law is in the universal registration, how does intimidation come into play? I can see that intimidation would be a real thing for any state that has mail-in voting, but that's beside the point isn't it?
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:15 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Agree - let's not go down that "what about intimidation of voters at home" road again, we've done it many times in the last year.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:15 AM on April 26, 2017

The House Freedom Caucus is formally backing Trumpcare this time around. Looks like we won't get to just watch the circular firing squad -- it'll take actual work.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:20 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm standing firm in my prediction for the outcomes for the week, but need a judgment from the referees on whether these bullet points scrawled on the back of a napkin count as a tax plan?
posted by TwoWordReview at 10:23 AM on April 26, 2017

Now would be an extremely good time to call your rep, especially if they are a Republican, and ask them to oppose Zombie Trumpcare.
posted by zachlipton at 10:25 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've been spending a lot of time worrying about the longevity of the Administrative Procedure Act, because that relatively obscure law is the thing that controls the way all executive branches of government issue rules and regulations. (For instance, that Stream Protection Rule that Trump repealed.)

The APA requires a set process for rulemaking that could affect any individual's rights or property interests. The process requires public notice, accepting comments from interested parties, establishing an administrative record to support the decision-making, and a final rule that explains the reasons justifying the rule and responds to public comments. The administrative record is the basis for the decision-making, and it's what a court looks at when someone challenges a rule. The agency gets some deference from the court, as the agency is considered to be the expert in interpreting their own establishing legislation justifying the rule, but the final decision cannot be "arbitrary and capricious", and must be supported by what's in the administrative record.

All of this seems like legal gobbledygook, but among other things, the APA is the rule that allows individuals and groups to challenge decisions at the federal level. If you want to challenge a Forest Service decision to clear-cut some old growth forest, you make a claim under the APA that the Forest Service decision either violated the APA process, or was arbitrary and capricious.

You can see how the APA is going to be vital in challenging the rollback of environmental and public health rules under the Trump administration.

So I've been worried about it. And I am right to do so, because I just discovered that in January the House passed an amendment to the APA, and it's now made it to the Senate. I haven't gotten through it all yet, but HR 5 looks like it's going to, among other things, require agencies to choose the least cost alternative when making decisions.

It will also require much more coordination with OMB than is currently required, will forbid the agency from requesting information from the public (?!), and will require a report to Congress every five years on the cost to regulated entities. And, finally, it basically eviscerates the Chevron rule, which required federal courts to respect agencies' expertise and judgment when a question was not clearly answered by Congress.

So if this thing passes, rulemaking will be a lot harder, there will be a lot more litigation from corporate interests challenging rules (like EPA's pesticide and hazardous waste management rules, the Army Corps' refusal of a permit for building in a wetland, banking regulations that impose new consumer-protection requirements), and judges will not be granting chemists, biologists, or economists any deference for their expertise.

According to the NRDC, Senators Heitcamp and Portman have co-sponsored this legislation in the Senate, but it's not coming up on Congress.gov yet.

Speaking as an environmentalist, this is very bad. Call your senators!
posted by suelac at 10:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [45 favorites]

C-SPAN: Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn brief on the new tax proposals
posted by zachlipton at 10:34 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

You think any of that information might be worth sharing with your listeners, NPR? Gah. I've been defending them, but I don't think I'm going to any more.

Join the club. I don't understand who they are trying to reach. There can't be many people craving political news and commentary one tick to the left of David Brooks.
posted by diogenes at 10:43 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I think Cohn is jizzing himself talking about repealing AMT & estate taxes.
posted by H. Roark at 10:45 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Adele M. Stan Ivanka and the 53 Percent

What Ivanka is selling is far more dangerous than it appears, wrapped as it is in pastels and good lighting. In the age of web-based video, moving images of Ivanka have a whiff of Leni Riefenstahl, if not in style, then in substance. Ivanka is as stylized as the images of Aryan beauty in Riefenstahl’s propaganda films for the Third Reich, a sort of poetry in motion with an operatic quality, tall and blonde and polished to perfection. The underlying message: This is what real feminism looks like. [...]

Among the 53 percent, many—perhaps most—voted for Trump because their racial identity and resentment was more important to them than the preservation and advancement of their own rights. How else can one explain voting for a candidate who embraced white supremacists and made a big show of forcibly removing black protesters from his campaign rallies?

It’s part and parcel of an extreme discomfort among certain segments of the white population at the changes in social order set in motion by 20th-century movements for the rights of marginalized people. Any wish to go back to the days before those changes were afoot is rooted in a notion that things were better for you, and for America, before the civil rights and immigrant rights and feminist movements cast doubt upon whether a guy who looks like your dad would continue to work for another guy who looks like him—and whether you would be made to work for somebody who doesn’t look like your dad. Because it’s all about Dad. [...]

Ivanka subjugates herself so beautifully, all in the service of the brand, and it seems to have earned her a pretty good life, at least by her own reckoning. Her emulators among the masses may come to find themselves not so lucky.

posted by tonycpsu at 10:46 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

Personal taxes:
Reduce to only 3 brackets, 10, 25, and 35, cut-offs unspecified
Double standard deduction to $24K for a married couple
Child care, details unspecified
Repeal the AMT
Top cap gains and dividend rate lowered to 20%, repealing the 3.8% Medicare surtax (which applies to couples making over $250K)
Repeal the estate tax
Repeal tax breaks "that mostly benefit high income individuals", but not homeownership and retirement deductions
posted by zachlipton at 10:46 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

There can’t be many people craving political news and commentary one tick to the left of David Brooks.

Want to bet? Let us remember that Barrack Obama loves David Brooks.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:46 AM on April 26, 2017

Corporate taxes:
"Massive tax cut for businesses and massive tax reform and simplification"
Corporate rate to 15%
Territorial system
One-time repatriation holiday at a lower rate (unspecified)
Applies to "small and medium-sized businesses," presumably he means this applies to pass-through income

Goal is to "get this done this year."

There aren't any details here, but it's hard to imagine how this isn't trillions and trillions of dollars over 10 years.

Mnuchin says that on the personal side, they'll eliminate every tax deduction other than charitable deductions and mortgage interest (no idea what happened to retirement).
posted by zachlipton at 10:49 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Repeal the AMT

IIRC, the AMT is the source of the vast majority of the taxes that Trump himself pays.
posted by amarynth at 10:51 AM on April 26, 2017 [32 favorites]

no idea what happened to retirement

I'm sure he just forgot. He said it earlier.
posted by zrail at 10:51 AM on April 26, 2017

Repeal the AMT

A gift to the rich, and no one else, of course.

Didn't the one partial Trump tax return that, ahem, someone leaked show that part of what he paid was due to the AMT?
posted by Gelatin at 10:51 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Reduce to only 3 brackets, 10, 25, and 35, cut-offs unspecified

Here's my bet for the cutoffs:

income over $1million - 10%
100k -> $1million - 25%
<100k - 35%
posted by H. Roark at 10:52 AM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

Repeal the AMT

Top cap gains and dividend rate lowered to 20%,

repealing the 3.8% Medicare surtax (which applies to couples making over $250K)

Repeal the estate tax


Ahh, that's the cheddar. These are the arch-goals of nearly every greedy one-percenter in the country.

You know, because they just want their fair share, and for the top 1%, owning 40% of the country's wealth isn't quite fair yet, somehow.

And won't someone think of their poor children who have to suffer with paltry millions when their unearned inheritance is taxed? It's just too hard for a silver-spoon scion to carry on the hereditary aristocracy of his parentage, no?
posted by darkstar at 10:53 AM on April 26, 2017 [26 favorites]

Did the goddamn TREASURY SECRETARY just say "the DEFICIT has gone from 10 to 20 trillion dollars"? Thats not the deficit. God these guys are fucking idiots.
posted by H. Roark at 10:55 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

yeah repealing the estate tax would be pretty much cement the position of a permanent aristocracy in America
posted by indubitable at 10:56 AM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

This isn't a tax plan; it's a fantasy. There are no numbers. You're not a serious person if you talk about reducing the number of tax brackets but have no clue what income levels the brackets will apply to. Nobody can look at this plan and tell how much tax they'll owe, so what's the point. They just want the credit for the good stuff without doing any of the work.

Mnuchin: "This will pay for itself with growth and with reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes." No. It fucking won't.

And yes, if there was no AMT, Trump would have paid 3.5% in 2005. They're talking about eliminating other deductions, so who knows, but yeah.
posted by zachlipton at 10:56 AM on April 26, 2017 [22 favorites]

Here's something I'm struggling with. If I live in a kleptocracy, doesn't playing by the rules make me a sucker?
posted by diogenes at 10:57 AM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

Here's something I'm struggling with. If I live in a kleptocracy, doesn't playing by the rules make me a sucker?

that depends, are you a white male?
posted by entropicamericana at 10:59 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Nobody can look at this plan and tell how much tax they'll owe, so what's the point.

Well, if you're wealthy, you can look at it and be confident that you'll pay substantially less.
posted by diogenes at 10:59 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Me, earlier, citing Orrin Hatch: "I actually believe it could stimulate the economy and get the economy moving," Hatch added. "Now, whether 15 percent is the right figure or not, that's a matter to be determined."

Not only do we have objective evidence -- hello, Kansas! -- that tax cuts don't necessarily stimulate the economy, but it's also pretty darn clear that what the rich do when they get to hoover up an ever-increasing share of the nation's wealth is buy themselves politicians to make the share even greater.

I do agree that the 90% top tax rate of the WWII era is probably a bit too confiscatory, but we should go back to the tax rates under Kennedy -- with a healthy inheritance and capital gains tax, as well. If memory serves me correctly, the obsession with "return on investment" -- the demand that every company increase in value by double digits all the time, and thus the preoccupation with downsizing and outsourcing -- went hand in velvet glove with Reagan's first capital gains tax cuts.

If capital gains from stock in excess of a million dollars was subject to a 60% tax, perhaps investors and CEOs would be encouraged to think more about the long term health of corporations as opposed to short-term gains.
posted by Gelatin at 11:00 AM on April 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

that depends, are you a white male?

Please elaborate.
posted by diogenes at 11:00 AM on April 26, 2017

These fucknuts can't even say how much of a tax cut this means for a median income family of four. The press is failing on their basic duties if they report this as a real plan instead of a joke.
posted by zachlipton at 11:01 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

yeah repealing the estate tax would be pretty much cement the position of a permanent aristocracy in America

If memory serves me correctly, that very reason is why levying estate taxes goes back to the founding of the Republic.
posted by Gelatin at 11:01 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Does anyone else think it weird that tweeting birthday wishes to Melania was Trump's like, sixth tweet of the day? Do we think he called her to wish her a happy birthday at all?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:03 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

The press is failing on their basic duties if they report this as a real plan instead of a joke.

If the press didn't fail at their basic duties, Trump wouldn't be in a position to propose this joke of a tax plan as actual law.
posted by Gelatin at 11:04 AM on April 26, 2017 [25 favorites]

If you don't have the money and (Or? Probably and.) privilege to get in the door, you don't get to kleptocrat. Play by the rules or be imprisoned/summarily executed.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:04 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think Arthur Laffer's mythical dinner napkin had more detail on it than this "plan" does.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:05 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Does anyone else think it weird that tweeting birthday wishes to Melania was Trump's like, sixth tweet of the day? Do we think he called her to wish her a happy birthday at all?

posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:03 AM on April 26 [+] [!]

Id assume that her happiest moments are when she doesn't think of, see, or hear from him at all (other than the wealth her marriage to him has brought her). Hes definitely not self-aware enough to realize it, though. Im not at all on team #freemelania but I also could see her letting his birthday call go to vm as her living her best birthday life.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:06 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

The National Association of Home Builders estimates that the duty rate against Canadian softwood lumber exports to the United States will be a loss of:

$498.3 million in wages and salaries for U.S. workers,
$350.2 million in taxes and other revenue for governments in the U.S., and
8,241 full-time U.S. jobs.
posted by futz at 11:07 AM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

Yeah, but unless those jobs are in coal mines or on farms, they don't count.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:10 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I do agree that the 90% top tax rate of the WWII era is probably a bit too confiscatory, but we should go back to the tax rates under Kennedy -- with a healthy inheritance and capital gains tax, as well.

Any top level tax rate is not confiscatory enough, because wealth is already so concentrated that working on income will barely make a dent. As far as I know, the estate tax is the only tool we have to expropriate wealth and it's been on life support for a while now.
posted by indubitable at 11:10 AM on April 26, 2017 [31 favorites]

DHS announces launch of new office for victims of illegal immigrant crime: Today, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly announced the official launch of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE). The VOICE office will assist victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens.

ICE built the VOICE office in response to the Executive Order entitled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, which directed DHS to create an office to support victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens.

“All crime is terrible, but these victims are unique – and too often ignored,” said Secretary Kelly. “They are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place – because the people who victimized them often times should not have been in the country in the first place.

The key objectives of the VOICE office are:
•Use a victim-centered approach to acknowledge and support victims and their families.
•Promote awareness of available services to crime victims.
•Build collaborative partnerships with community stakeholders assisting victims.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:11 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Um, will that new office survive the likely government shutdown they're also working on? Seems like bad timing to launch anything new...
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:14 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

. . . and I thought they had a hiring freeze in place also?

Serious-ish question about the Violent and Offensive Immigrant Criminalization and Embarrassment office - is there not a Due Process argument against it insofar as its very creation implies and demonstrates that victims of crimes committed by non-immigrants are getting worse treatment.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:17 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

The key objectives of the VOICE office are:
•Use a victim-centered approach to acknowledge and support victims and their families.
•Promote awareness of available services to crime victims.
•Build collaborative partnerships with community stakeholders assisting victims.

But only politically useful victims of political useful crimes, all other victims can fuck off.
posted by Artw at 11:17 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

"Crimes that shouldn't happen" are different from "crimes that shouldn't be illegal," though. He's saying that these murders, assaults, car crashes, etc, should not have occurred -- as opposed to the ones committed by murders who didn't overstay their visas, I guess?????
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:18 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

God my hatred for these morons knows no bounds
posted by angrycat at 11:18 AM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

I do agree that the 90% top tax rate of the WWII era is probably a bit too confiscatory

Why would you say that? The U.S. had 90% top tax rates through the 40s and 50s, 70% tax rates up until the 1980s and the economy grew faster than it has for the last 30 years. High tax rates do not slow growth.

Keep in mind that these 90% tax rates only apply to the portion of income above a certain level. So, for example, your first $1 million of income would be taxed at a lower rate, but your second million would be taxed at a higher rate. It's not exactly impoverishing the rich.

Oh, and take care using the word "confiscatory" regarding taxes. It is a tipoff that you are talking to a wingnut, which I'm sure was not your intention. Other such phrases are "fiat money" and "supply-side".
posted by JackFlash at 11:19 AM on April 26, 2017 [35 favorites]

VOICE is some real Nazi ass shit
posted by theodolite at 11:20 AM on April 26, 2017 [36 favorites]

But only politically useful victims of political useful crimes, all other victims can fuck off.

Yeah, I suspect the VOICE Wall of the Fallen isn't going to include any black trans woman sex workers.
posted by Etrigan at 11:22 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

The hiring freeze is technically lifted, but agencies are supposed to be drafting plans for their own downsizing to submit to OMB. Not kidding.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:23 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh, and take care using the word "confiscatory" regarding taxes. It is a tipoff that you are talking to a wingnut, which I'm sure was not your intention.

No, I really do mean the US should adjust its tax code to confiscate and redistribute the riches that the ultra-wealthy have stolen from the rest of the nation.

The wingnuts believe that any taxation at all is confiscatory and that any redistrubution of wealth other than its natural distribution upward, of course is a crime. These are not reasonable people, and the current joke of a tax plan that they barfed up now that they're in power proves beyond doubt that they are no longer to be listened to.
posted by Gelatin at 11:25 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Weird, I would have expected both "instituted federal hiring freeze," and "lifted federal hiring freeze" on the list of achievements in the first 100 days. . . along with "made a lit of achievements"
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Your GOP Guide To The Ontology Of Crime (White Male Edition)

Crimes that shouldn't happen = crimes due to a group we are demonising (ie, anyone not like you)
Crimes that just happen, 'cos crime = crimes you do. Honest crimes.
Not crime at all = Anything we do.

(Note: ardent support of the GOP may move you from the 'you' bracket to the 'we' bracket. Join in the fun!)
posted by Devonian at 11:27 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

>>that depends, are you a white male?
>Please elaborate.

it would appear that with a few exceptions here and there, only white male kleptocrats are allowed to break the rules and get away with it
posted by entropicamericana at 11:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

(Now that you mention it, though, the only reason I demurred on 90% is because that rate was used to pay for a war -- back when Republicans were willing to pay for wars with something other than tax cuts -- and I don't want to see the military enjoying a proportionally larger budget. That said, any government that was able to implement a 90% plan probably also wouldn't devote half the budget to the military.)
posted by Gelatin at 11:28 AM on April 26, 2017

House GOPers Scramble To Explain Why O’Care Repeal Bill Doesn’t Apply To Them

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), the leader of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, was one of very few who had an answer ready. He argued to reporters that because D.C. is not a state, it cannot apply for or receive the same waivers states can under their bill.

And

Meadows, who co-authored the provision in question, added that it was necessary to make sure it went through the right committees in Congress.

“It’s not a provision that says that we can exempt out,” he told reporters. “It was a provision that, from a fatal standpoint, would not allow us to address it because jurisdictionally on the budget reconciliation instructions, that were narrowly tailored to two different committees of jurisdiction. To fully address that would had to have gone over to another area which would have made it fatal.”

“Now, y’all are very smart, you get that,” Meadows quipped to the cluster of visibly confused reporters, and disappeared into the closed-door conference meeting.

What the fuck does any of that mean?
posted by futz at 11:32 AM on April 26, 2017 [25 favorites]

I'm not sure, but MacArthur is claiming he'll fix it so it does apply to them.
posted by zachlipton at 11:34 AM on April 26, 2017

DC is not a state... so the bill doesn't apply to anybody who lives or works in DC?
posted by Artw at 11:36 AM on April 26, 2017

I'm not sure, but MacArthur is claiming he'll fix it so it does apply to them.

I hope the political media bothers to follow up as to whether the fix actually happened in the final bill or was merely announced.
posted by Gelatin at 11:37 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), the leader of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, was one of very few who had an answer ready. He argued to reporters that because D.C. is not a state, it cannot apply for or receive the same waivers states can under their bill.

Not so fast -- members of Congressional staff may reside in DC (or may not), but members of Congress reside in the states they represent and so would be subject to any waiver unless specifically exempted.
posted by Gelatin at 11:39 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Everyone is simultaneously reporting that "White House to keep paying Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies" (with the caveat that "keep paying" is a vague phrase that doesn't say how much it will last). That's another huge cave for them in the name of avoiding a shutdown.
posted by zachlipton at 11:43 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm going to predict, right here and now, that Roy Moore will be Senator Roy Moore immediately after the election. The regressive population in Alabama seem to love him.
posted by sotonohito at 11:51 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Just when I thought politics couldn't get Moore Strange.
posted by Servo5678 at 11:53 AM on April 26, 2017 [19 favorites]

Trump's vague new tax plan includes not taxing "foreign" income for US corporations. This might sound reasonable; why should a company be taxed twice, once by a foreign nation and once by the US? In fact, foreign taxes paid are currently deductible. This new plan is essentially saying "We don't want your money; please offshore your business, and if you can shuffle some paper around to make it look like your money comes from the Cayman Islands you probably don't need to pay any taxes at all." I'm sure this is very nice for Donald Trump personally but not for 99% of Americans.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:58 AM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

What the fuck does any of that mean?

"If things ever become difficult, mumble some word salad and tell the listener that they are very smart and must surely be able to understand what you just said." - The Art of The Deal (probably)
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:00 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

"The president has released plenty of information, and I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else."

It's true that with this administration, less is more
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:01 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Huh, Trump's bizarre style of self aggrandizing speech is now spreading to his underlings. He's contagious!
posted by sotonohito at 12:07 PM on April 26, 2017

I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else

The need to claim superlatives makes me almost as mad as the constant lying. Every president in the last 40 years--since Nixon--has released his tax returns. That's longer than most Americans have been alive.
6 Times Presidential Tax Returns Made Us Go Hmmm…
posted by kirkaracha at 12:08 PM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Just give Roy Moore the seat, it's been his destiny for years to represent Klanabama.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:09 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

He's just the Secretary of the Treasury, you can't expect him to understand concepts like "less" and "more"
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:11 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Everyone is simultaneously reporting that "White House to keep paying Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies" (with the caveat that "keep paying" is a vague phrase that doesn't say how much it will last). That's another huge cave for them in the name of avoiding a shutdown.

Thinking about this a little more, I am increasingly coming around to the conclusion that the White House realized this was literally the only piece of leverage they have for anything, and since they already caved on their plan to use it as leverage to get wall funding, they were using it for nothing. This way, they get to hang the threat of pulling funding over our heads anytime they want.

It's still a stupid threat, because we're talking about payments that are legally required but not appropriated, not to mention that it's really a threat against millions of Americans' health care, but it's pretty much all they've got, and I suspect they're going to use it over and over and over again.

Democrats aren't completely stupid though, they're insisting on knowing how long the payments would continue.
posted by zachlipton at 12:11 PM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Sure. Roy Moore. Let's vote in Jim Bakker and Bryan Fischer too. It's a party! Bring Fritos.
posted by delfin at 12:13 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

MEET THE BILLIONAIRES WHO RUN TRUMP'S GOVERNMENT (Newsweek)
posted by mumimor at 12:13 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Trump Policies Snag First HIV-Positive Gay Asylum Seeker: Denis’s is no ordinary detention case. Denis is an HIV-positive gay man, a member of rights group RUSA LGBT, who has followed every rule and regulation regarding applications for political asylum. According to RUSA LGBT, “Denis has complied with all USCIS guidelines and filed for an affirmative asylum within a one-year deadline. He was awaiting his asylum interview, had a valid employment authorization and A-number, and had no criminal record.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

The need to claim superlatives makes me almost as mad as the constant lying. Every president in the last 40 years--since Nixon--has released his tax returns. That's longer than most Americans have been alive.

I was just about to voice similar ire, but then I noticed that Mnuchin said I think. Which --
particularly by the standards of the political media -- changes a provably false assertion ("has given more financial disclosure than anybody else") into an unfalsifiable statement (if Mnuching really thinks so, he is a fool or a knave, but there's little likelihood of proving that he doesn't believe it).

So the press will print the statement, the American people will, of course, not hear the qualifier, and another lie will be injected into the American discourse with barely a peep of protest from the media that broadcasts it.
posted by Gelatin at 12:15 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Huh, Trump's bizarre style of self aggrandizing speech is now spreading to his underlings. He's contagious!

This had been noted before, especially in regards to Spicer. And why not? It's worked fine for the President, and if you're being televised he's the only audience member to whom you need to play. After all, his fundamental criterion is that you get good ratings. Further, given that the public generally distrust the media, the fact that a few pundits might flip out costs you nothing and means that you gave a good show.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:22 PM on April 26, 2017

Keep in mind that these 90% tax rates only apply to the portion of income above a certain level. So, for example, your first $1 million of income would be taxed at a lower rate, but your second million would be taxed at a higher rate. It's not exactly impoverishing the rich.

Didn't the 90% tax rate only affect a handful of taxpayers? Was it a way around tax shelters and deductions?
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:22 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fuck these people.

Just fuck 'em, is all.
posted by darkstar at 12:25 PM on April 26, 2017 [26 favorites]

Also: "The president...has given more financial disclosure than anybody else" is pretty far up there in terms of Trump Administration False Statements, and is only not in the top bracket because of Trump setting such a high (low?) bar.

Huh, Trump's bizarre style of self aggrandizing speech is now spreading to his underlings. He's contagious!

I've decided to call this crew -- Spicer, Mnuchin, the lot of them -- the Trump Administration Falsehood & Fiction Exculpatory Responders. Whatever crazy shit Trump says, someone on the team will come up with an excuse or explanation for it, even if it means doubling down on the lie.

Bunch of fucking taffers, is what they are.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:35 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

If I live in a kleptocracy, doesn't playing by the rules make me a sucker?

Yep, just like me. I just had my annual review at work. We went over my goals from last year's review and I had to account for how I had met them like a jamoke. And any accomplishments I claimed had to be things I actually did.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:38 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure, but MacArthur is claiming he'll fix it so it does apply to them.

Update: Now they're claiming that the plan will still exempt Congress from the AHCA's horrors, but that they'll change that later in new legislation. This is so weird.
posted by zachlipton at 12:40 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

White House sources say Hill is likely to pass a resolution keeping the government open for one week while finishing bigger deal.

Clears the way for Zombie Trumpcare vote on Friday
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:43 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

> Now they're claiming that the plan will still exempt Congress from the AHCA's horrors, but that they'll change that later in new legislation. This is so weird.

"So weird" seems like an understatement. How are they planning to explain this? The attack ads - Congressman X voted to exempt himself from the provisions he's subjecting you to - they write themselves.

I don't understand anything that's going on any longer.
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:44 PM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Change that later in new legislation

Because they've been so successful passing legislation thus far.
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:45 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

It is somehow fitting that the only non-charity deduction that Trump's "plan" doesn't get rid of is the single worst deduction in the tax code; the mortgage interest tax deduction. It's like they said "how can we make this proposal to get rid of all non-charitable deductions even more shitty? Oh! Let's get rid of all non-charitable deductions except the worst fucking one!".
posted by Justinian at 12:45 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Can it be a kleptocracy AND a kakistocracy?
(I'm pretty sure we're witnessing the answer to this.)
posted by charred husk at 12:45 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

The attack ads - Congressman X voted to exempt himself from the provisions he's subjecting you to - they write themselves.

Yep.

@TeamPelosi
Now we know that when Trump said "insurance for everybody" under #TrumpCare, he meant insurance only for Members of Congress.
posted by chris24 at 12:45 PM on April 26, 2017 [19 favorites]

As for Trump preparing an order to leave NAFTA, am I the only one who thinks its really weird that a trade agreement takes approval by Congress to start but can be ended by the action of a single President on a whim? Really? That's all it takes?
posted by sotonohito at 12:47 PM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

Now they're claiming that the plan will still exempt Congress from the AHCA's horrors, but that they'll change that later in new legislation.

Suuuure they will.

Any competent reporter should respond: "If you don't have the votes to fix it now, how will you do so later?"

That question might even occur to a couple of incompetent reporters.

At least, I'm hoping it will.
posted by Gelatin at 12:49 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

So you thought last week's Enquirer cover all about those nasty Russian spies taking advantage of honourable Trump was bad. How about this week's cover? (Link goes to Twitter account of a sane person with a screen cap).

World War 3 is coming! -- The day & time all-out war will break loose! -- Step-by-step: How TRUMP will crush our 8 enemies! -- The coordinated campaign that will wipe out America’s enemies in one fell swoop!

I was into immanetizing the eschaton before it became cool, you know?

(Seriously, I am freaked out by the way the tabloids and Facebook fake news echo chambers are whipping up scared and stupid people. This is very ungood. )
posted by maudlin at 12:49 PM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

CNN Money claims Trump can do it all by himself: http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/06/news/economy/trump-nafta/
posted by sotonohito at 1:01 PM on April 26, 2017

More news for those who want to re-cancel (before presumably un-re-canceling) their subscriptions to the NYT, from Jeff Stein at Vox: “The NYT's new columnist defends his views on Arabs, Black Lives Matter, campus rape”
posted by Going To Maine at 1:02 PM on April 26, 2017

More news for those who want to re-cancel (before presumably un-re-canceling) their subscriptions to the NYT, from Jeff Stein at Vox: “The NYT's new columnist defends his views on Arabs, Black Lives Matter, campus rape”

Memo to the NYT's editorial board: Allowing more and more conservative drivel onto your op-ed pages will not, ever, ever, make conservatives recognize that you are not liberal.

They didn't do it when you had Judy Miller help march us into war in Iraq. They won't do it now.

That criticism was never made in good faith, so no good-faith effort to appease it will ever satisfy them. The NYT is "liberal" and "unfair" and "fake news" because it publishes facts, and facts are inconvenient to Republicans.

Please stop giving voice to nonsense in the name of "balance." If doesn't help. It only hurts.

Love,
Gelatin
posted by Gelatin at 1:08 PM on April 26, 2017 [31 favorites]

Ugh, that Vox article. So many awful quotes, but this sums up everything about him:

"My wife is German, so I know something about German energy policy."

He also knows a climate scientist, so he knows something about that too. And his sister went to college, so he knows something about campus rape. And on and on and on. I guess us people who are concerned about these issues just don't know the right people.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

When the NYT or NPR or whoever decides to publish falsely equivocating, centrist apologism garbage, we should not invent another, more virtuous press hiding under their actions any more than we should invent the hidden radical we would want to see when a politician sells us out.
posted by The Gaffer at 1:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Apparently posting on /r/theredpill is good enough for a NY Times column now.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:19 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

My apologies if this has already been posted. I'm too depressed to check.

"Additional criminal or immigration history may be available about an alien to victims or their families"

It's a parade of human miseries.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 1:21 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

So they are doing away with all Tax deductions except mortgage interest and charities? That;s going to be a massive tax hike for a lot of middle class people, i can't see that going well.
posted by Artw at 1:22 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

'Here's an anecdote about how people are not perfectly rational in the face of adversity, except I'm using to suggest that people are perfectly rational in the face of adversity, and so therefore we're not necessarily facing real adversity.' What? Views aside, that's overly simplistic, and falsely premised, reasoning.

He also just called "a guy [he] knows" a hypocrite and a liar.
posted by notyou at 1:25 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

So they are doing away with all Tax deductions except mortgage interest and charities? That;s going to be a massive tax hike for a lot of middle class people, i can't see that going well.

Presumably that would be offset by rejiggering the individual income tax brackets and doubling the standard deduction.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 1:26 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'd think Cruz would piss his pants.

+1 would pay double to see that.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 1:28 PM on April 26, 2017

He also just called "a guy [he] knows" a hypocrite and a liar.

It's always projection with movement conservatives.
posted by Gelatin at 1:30 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Will Fox 'News" ever learn? Magic 8 Ball says NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Bill O’Reilly Protégé Makes Crude On-air Remark About Ivanka Trump

In a segment about Ivanka Trump being booed while defending her father’s policies on women and families, Watters said: “It’s funny, the left says they really respect women but then when given the opportunity to respect a woman like that, they boo and hiss, so I don’t really get what’s going on here …” And then, after making a hand gesture Watters added, “But, I really like how she was speaking into that microphone.”

Oh the irony, it burns.

Twitter quickly reacted, even from inside the Murdoch media world, with John Podhoretz, editor of commentary for the New York Post, tweeting:

Congratulations, Jesse Watters, you're a disgusting pig as well as being a racist moron.

When asked for comment on Watters’s statement on The Five, a Fox News spokesman replied with a statement attributed to Watters: “During the break we were commenting on Ivanka’s voice and how it was low and steady and resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ. This was in no way a joke about anything else.” Watters tweeted a similar statement earlier today. He made no mention of Trump’s voice in his crude comment.

Jesse Watters, you are a sexist pig.
posted by futz at 1:36 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

I'm willing to call the next Republican ticket:

Moore / Strange 2020
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:38 PM on April 26, 2017

Presumably that would be offset by rejiggering the individual income tax brackets and doubling the standard deduction.

Presumably. Who the fuck knows actually because they didn't bother to include a single detail about brackets or deductions or growth rates or projections or anything with their bullet list.

Man oh man 2018 and a Dem Congress can't get here fast enough.
posted by notyou at 1:38 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Watters said: “It’s funny, the left says they really respect women but then when given the opportunity to respect a woman like that, they boo and hiss

This guy is also an idiot. There's no contradiction at all, not a bit, between respecting women and declining an opportunity to respect a woman like Ivanka Trump.
posted by Gelatin at 1:41 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Man oh man 2018 and a Dem Congress can't get here fast enough.

If the Democrats gain even one house, they will hold subpoena power. So, yeah.
posted by Gelatin at 1:43 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

That was a frustrating exercise in Just Asking Questions, rather than actually offering answers; I haven't read Stephens in other contexts, but his points in that piece hardly feel like they're worth publishing -- asked about climate change,
A guy I know just had a baby and he’s a big global warming, climate change activist. If he thinks in 20 years we’ll be heading toward unsustainable climates and there will be tens of millions of people being displaced, presumably including himself, at the most apocalyptic level, then presumably he wouldn’t be having children.

It contradicts the belief that we are heading ineluctably for an apocalyptic environmental future.

'Here's an anecdote about how people are not perfectly rational in the face of adversity, except I'm using to suggest that people are perfectly rational in the face of adversity, and so therefore we're not necessarily facing real adversity.' What? Views aside, that's overly simplistic, and falsely premised, reasoning.

It's not particularly hard to make the arguments for having kids even in the face of the apocalypse.

-It could be a hedge against the risk of the apocalypse not happening.
-A happy childhood followed by death could still be an increase in overall happiness.
-The kid could be the savior
-Somebody might survive the apocalypse
-Other countries treat refugees better than the United States so maybe they will have good life elsewhere.
-Junior could move to near the great lakes.
-People adapt. Even to an apocalypse.
-etc....

(not that I make this argument myself. For me kids would BE the apocalypse. I can barely survive my cat.)
posted by srboisvert at 2:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Something that I've been thinking about w/r/t Yeats's "Second Coming" that I read:

In the poem, there's a vortex of energy that's falling apart and the failure of social order. Then you have that monster coming to life while above it the "indignant desert birds" reel in. A second vortex is created to replace the one that fell apart.

It's something I've been thinking a lot about in terms of what is happening. There is this reeling in of truly dark shit around this man with failing mental faculties.

Sorry for the lack of cheer!
posted by angrycat at 2:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

"Do you guys want Cokes?" [presses button 100 times]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:18 PM on April 26, 2017 [38 favorites]

Tomorrow: the entire US Senate is called to the White House to admire Ivanka's new Platinum Collection, currently 30% off
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:22 PM on April 26, 2017 [40 favorites]

A guy I know just had a baby and he’s a big global warming, climate change activist. If he thinks in 20 years we’ll be heading toward unsustainable climates and there will be tens of millions of people being displaced, presumably including himself, at the most apocalyptic level, then presumably he wouldn’t be having children.

Maybe the condom broke
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:25 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

B.C. moves to ban U.S. coal transport in retaliation for softwood duties

In the wake of the U.S. imposing new penalties on Canadian softwood lumber imports, B.C. Premier Christy Clark is asking Ottawa to ban the shipment of all thermal coal — including U.S. thermal coal — through British Columbia.
posted by futz at 2:25 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

This is odd:

Near the conclusion of the president's comments, as he was saying he hopes the teachers' trip to the White House was special, one unidentified teacher began to cry, apparently tears of happiness.

"Sorry, I'm always crying," she told the president.

The President told her, "I've had some of the biggest executives in the world, who have been here many times, and I say have you been to the Oval Office? No. They walk into the Oval Office and they start crying. I say 'I promise I won't say to your various stockholders [that they cried]."

This would normally be the space where I have some stupid commentary on the link I just posted, but I'm pretty speechless here.
posted by zachlipton at 2:26 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

Maybe it was just hitting the executives that Donald Trump is actually President of the United States
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:29 PM on April 26, 2017 [26 favorites]

Or he's lying.
posted by PenDevil at 2:30 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

So are HSA contributions no longer deductible?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:33 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Roy Moore announces run for US Senate: [suspended] Alabama chief justice challenging Luther Strange

Ugh, ugh, ugh. I knew this was coming, and still: ugh, ugh ugh. What's terrible is that I'll likely have the choice of voting for the cowardly ex-Attorney General who got his senate seat through underhanded quid-pro-quo dealing or the ex-justice who was in essence fired twice for not doing his job.

What's worse is that that's not even close to the most rage-inducing political thing to happen today.
posted by sgranade at 2:33 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Didn't the 90% tax rate only affect a handful of taxpayers?

That's true with some context. Back in the 40s and 50s, the 90% rate applied to incomes above $200,000 to $400,000 but incomes more than $200,000 were extraordinarily rare at that time.

The inflation adjusted equivalent today would be in the neighborhood of $2 million to $4 million. But because of the enormous increase in income inequality, incomes in that range are no longer rare. There are over 500,000 households that now make over $1 million a year.

So yes, few people paid the top rate but that was because there were very few (inflation adjusted) qazillionaires back then. Income inequality has made qazillionaires quite common today, which means that a 90% tax rate makes even more sense.
posted by JackFlash at 2:36 PM on April 26, 2017 [18 favorites]

Watters said: “It’s funny, the left says they really respect women but then when given the opportunity to respect a woman like that, they boo and hiss, so I don’t really get what’s going on here …”

Is there a word or phrase for when someone says something they think is universally believed, but is actually just an unintentional window into the nastiness inside their souls? This is basically Watters admitting that he views showing respect to women as just a theatrical act that has no meaning. You do it because you're supposed to do it, not because you're in any way treating the woman as a human being who could be right or wrong like any other human being.

This is of a piece with the right's constant griping about "virtue signaling".
posted by tocts at 2:37 PM on April 26, 2017 [24 favorites]

This is basically Watters admitting that he views showing respect to women as just a theatrical act that has no meaning. You do it because you're supposed to do it, not because you're in any way treating the woman as a human being who could be right or wrong like any other human being.

Watters believes women are inferior beings. Logically (well, in idiot-logic), anyone who opposes him believes women are superior beings.
posted by Etrigan at 2:44 PM on April 26, 2017

- Senator @chrisvanhollen tells @jaketapper he didn't learn anything new from all-Senators North Korea briefing at White House.
posted by cjelli at 5:12 PM on April 26 [−] Favorite added! [!]

Well hopefully the Senate has learned something from this little field trip and the next time they are summoned they will think twice about going.

Washington Examiner: Exclusive interview: Trump 'absolutely' looking at breaking up 9th Circuit

President Trump said Wednesday that he has "absolutely" considered proposals that would split up the 9th Circuit, where judges have blocked two of his executive actions.

"Absolutely, I have," Trump said of considering 9th circuit breakup proposals during a far-ranging interview with the Washington Examiner at the White House on Wednesday. "There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It's outrageous."[...]

"The language could not be any clearer. I mean, the language on the ban, it reads so easy that a reasonably good student in the first grade will fully understand it. And they don't even mention the words in their rejection on the ban," Trump said of his travel ban. "And the same thing with this [sanctuary city decision]. I mean, when you have people that are being enabled to commit crime. And in San Francisco, when you look at Kate Steinle, being shot and here is the court, you know, right in that same general area. And when you look at a Kate Steinle, when you look at so many other things."

I'm guessing this is not within his Constitutional powers but what do I know-- I'm just a dumb voter...not a real live President.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:06 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

Trivial news that nonetheless makes you sigh. The WH emailed out a transcript of today's briefing and the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, was listed as Secretary of Commerce. It is so troubling that they don't seem to care about names or titles or positions or details. I shudder to think what sort of mistakes they make on official policies on a daily basis.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:15 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Wow. This is from a Fox News poll comparing questions asked at the 100 day mark:

Would you vote to re-elect?

Trump (2017)
36% Yes
55% No

Obama (2009)
52% Yes
31% No

posted by zachlipton at 3:19 PM on April 26, 2017 [36 favorites]

Suck it, Dampnut.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 3:22 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

VOX The fate of the Republican health bill is in House moderates’ hands

Republicans need 216 votes to pass the health bill — they can afford to lose 22 votes. Already a handful of other moderates have said they remain a no vote on the bill, including Reps. Barbara Comstock, Jeff Denham, and Dan Donovan.

Meanwhile, the amendment has moved at least one moderate Republican member away from a yes. With the amendment, Rep. Mike Coffman, who used to support the health bill, now says he is a “strong no.” Rep. Tom Reed too said he is less enthusiastic about the bill. He was a yes and now is “leaning yes,” adding that he has to review the legislative text.

By press time, there had yet to be a moderate member that had changed from a no to a yes. Rep. Thomas Massie, who was previously a “hell no,” said he was now just a “no.”

A good Speaker of the House will not bring this to the floor without knowing if s/he has the votes. I don't think P.Ryan fits that description. It looks like perhaps the bill will fail and the Moderate Republicans will have to assume the burden for the bill's failure-- something that again, a good Speaker would never do to his own Party members.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:22 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

WaPo White House briefs senators on ‘very grave threat’ from North Korea

Trump offered to play host to the meeting — open to all 100 senators, who arrived on a large white bus — as a courtesy after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) asked for the briefing in the wake of increased tension on the Korean Peninsula, officials said.[...]

“They’re trying to do the right thing,” said one Republican senator, but members of both parties left frustrated that they were given “very few details about what has changed.”

The briefing lacked “even straight answers on what the policy is regarding North Korea and its testing of ICBMs,” said the senator, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the meeting.

“Several senators asked specifically, ‘What is the policy?’ and the briefers gave us very, very few details,” the senator said.[...]

“There was very little, if anything new,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “I remain mystified about why the entire Senate had to be taken over to the White House rather than conducting it here.”

POTUS, Pence spoke first then turned the briefing over to Tillerson, Mattis, Coates, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:31 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

Kellyanne Conway and the White House’s 100-day alternative facts

Conway also said this last week on Fox News Channel: “It’s the first time a president has had a Supreme Court justice in the first 100 days since 1881. The significance should not be lost.”

But the significance should be lost, because it's basically nil...

A trip down history lane shows that only three presidents since 1900 have had a vacancy to fill in their first 100 days, and that all three of them faced that vacancy late in their first 100 days.

posted by kirkaracha at 3:41 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

White House briefs senators on ‘very grave threat’ from North Korea

President Trump: I feel our lives might be in danger.

McConnell: Grave danger?

President Trump: Is there another kind?
posted by kirkaracha at 3:44 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I wonder where they had that Senate briefing. I don't think there are a lot of spaces in the White House that can hold ~120 people.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:45 PM on April 26, 2017

Can we talk about the fact that they made the Senate ride to the White House in a bus that was literally duct taped together, with a light danging off it?

Somebody had a good time though:

Cruz said riding the bus was fun. "It's kind of like a school bus in junior high," he said after returning to the Capitol.

posted by zachlipton at 3:48 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

“It’s the first time a president has had a Supreme Court justice in the first 100 days since 1881. The significance should not be lost.”

Oh for fucks sake, that's because it's the first time a president has come into office with a vacancy left unfilled due to blatantly unconstitutional obstruction by Mitch fucking McConnell. I've managed to take a lot of insane claims in stride from these people because at some point you just get inured to it, but this shit strikes a new nerve. Some asshole runs roughshod over the Constitution, Trump picks up the inevitable windfall, and that constitutes an accomplishment?
posted by contraption at 3:50 PM on April 26, 2017 [69 favorites]

Chrysostom: "I wonder where they had that Senate briefing."

It was apparently in the auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (according to WaPo).
posted by mhum at 3:50 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Cruz said riding the bus was fun. "It's kind of like a school bus in junior high," he said after returning to the Capitol.

"I love being infantilized and treated as the President's gofer instead of a member of an independent branch of government! Plus, I hear we get meatloaf tonight!"
posted by contraption at 3:53 PM on April 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

Did they get cookies, too?
posted by valkane at 3:55 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Apple juice and graham crackers.
posted by contraption at 3:58 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm guessing this is not within his Constitutional powers but what do I know-- I'm just a dumb voter...not a real live President.

Luckily the inferior court's jurisdiction are determined by statute, not dictatorial decree. Yet.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:00 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Unluckily, both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans.

Luckily I believe this would be subject to filibuster.
posted by Justinian at 4:00 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Conway also said this last week on Fox News Channel: “It’s the first time a president has had a Supreme Court justice in the first 100 days since 1881. The significance should not be lost.”

Every time they mention the "accomplishment" of putting a man on the SC, the correct response is, "That seat was stolen. You stole it and there is no fucking way that is something you should be proud of."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:01 PM on April 26, 2017 [32 favorites]

A Chilling Threat of Political Violence in Portland: "Activists threatened to drag local Republicans off a parade route if they weren’t excluded from a local celebration. Organizers cancelled the entire event in response."

This is incredibly shitty.
posted by zachlipton at 4:10 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Today's moment of hope came when I was invited to a potluck for local progressives in my red, rural area. Unfortunately it's happening now and I couldn't make it, but they meet bimonthly to socialize and discuss local issues and actions. And I have a couple people offering to help me get rides to the meetings.

This isn't in the nearest small city, where the rest of the local action has been. This is in a small town where there's rarely anyone but Republicans on the ballots.
posted by threeturtles at 4:11 PM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

I totally agree with Conway that the significance of Gorsuch's appointment should not be lost. Just not at all in the way she means it.
posted by Roommate at 4:13 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

Daily Beast George Soros Took Control of 183 Groups and 12 People So Far This Year, According to Alex Jones and InfoWars

Including Chobani, Google, BuzzFeed, Daily Beast, Paul Ryan, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, ACLU, PP, and the entire country of Turkey. In all, although Forbes estimates Soros' worth at $25 Billion, Jones claims he is spending $50 Billion a year on various causes like "overthrowing Ukraine."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

I guess I'm a little unclear why Warren and Schumer weren't like WTF and standing and shouting during this fucking stupid run-up-to-war Kabuki thing
posted by angrycat at 4:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

According to VOX the whole NK Briefing "was about optics — an opportunity to make it look like Trump is taking a significant new stance on North Korea when in reality, they’re basically doing the exact same thing the Obama administration did."

“80 sets of invisible eyes rolling”: senators unimpressed by White House North Korea brief

After quoting from the Joint Statement released after the briefing

There are two notable things about this:

1. It does not mention military options once — a pretty suggestive statement that the Trump administration has ruled out any kind of military action for the foreseeable future. While the statement also said that “we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies,” that’s in line with past language from other administrations that want to maintain deterrence against North Korean provocation. It doesn’t look like any kind of military action is imminent.
2. It contains no specific policy shifts at all, and describes a broad-brush policy — “tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies” — that also could have described the Obama administration’s policy, which it called “strategic patience,” precisely.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:30 PM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

Unluckily, both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans.

Luckily I believe this would be subject to filibuster.

Unluckily, I think Republicans have the ability to overturn the filibuster.

Luckily I think Republicans with the actual knowledge to understand parliamentary procedure also understand that people would massively and overwhelmingly oppose such an obvious undermining of the independence of the judiciary.


I think
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:35 PM on April 26, 2017

zachlipton This is incredibly shitty.

I disagree strongly, this is awesome and I hope they keep it up and escalate.

Until and unless the Republican Party repudiates Trump we should be denying Republicans the opportunity to pretend that they're a real political party instead of a bunch of fucking Fascists.

NO they do not get to take part in a parade like everything is normal and we're just having normal and routine political disagreements. NO they do not get to talk at public events like everything is normal and we're just having normal and routine political disagreements.

They are threatening the very foundation of our nation, the very institutions of democracy that make peaceful coexistence possible. The absolute least we can do is shut them out of normal civic affairs wherever possible.

The only good Republican is a former Republican, and the time has **LONG** since passed when we should be shutting them out of every social event possible.

The message to any Republican, anywhere, needs to be "you can either chose to quit your Party, denounce Trump, and join us in sanity, or you can fuck off and never darken my door again".

If the choice is between letting the wimpocrats and our Vichy "allies" have a nicey nicey parade with the fucking Republicans, or shutting down a parade then the right choice is shutting down the parade.
posted by sotonohito at 4:43 PM on April 26, 2017 [36 favorites]

Unluckily, the frogurt is also cursed.
posted by delfin at 4:44 PM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Trump is making Republicans nervous about his threat to withdraw from NAFTA and now Politico is reporting that an EO is being drafted to be "unveiled" this week or next week.

Republicans tell Trump to hold up on NAFTA withdrawal

Steve Bannon is behind this so lets up wiser heads prevail because this could have a huge impact on our economy.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:49 PM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

Republicans tell Trump to hold up on NAFTA withdrawal

Y'know, I appreciate the Orange Turdblossoms attempts to stimulate Canadian journalism jobs, but I
too would like it if he would hold
up.
posted by nubs at 5:00 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

FBI Director James Comey set to testify before Senate judiciary committee

May 3rd.
posted by futz at 5:05 PM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

I was wondering today why the Republicans aren't doubling the size of the Supreme Court and packing it with young conservatives, and I think the only thing stopping them is a handful of relatively-moderate GOP senators who would get a huge backlash from their constituents and vote against it. I mean, McConnell blocked Garland, what else would be stopping him from getting a near-permanent conservative Supreme Court majority?

Oh, they'd probably need to get rid of the filibuster too, there is that...
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:09 PM on April 26, 2017

Luckily I think Republicans with the actual knowledge to understand parliamentary procedure also understand that people would massively and overwhelmingly oppose such an obvious undermining of the independence of the judiciary.

Here's the thing. I actually firmly believe the Ninth Circuit should be divided. But you know who doesn't get to do that? Someone the Ninth Circuit just ruled against.
posted by corb at 5:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I hate to say this, but I think they're pretty confident they're going to get their iron-clad majority without having to pack the court.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:17 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm confident they'll have 5 or 6 justices on the Court by 2020 who are Roberts-level conservative or righter.
posted by Justinian at 5:19 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

A Chilling Threat of Political Violence in Portland: "Activists threatened to drag local Republicans off a parade route if they weren’t excluded from a local celebration. Organizers cancelled the entire event in response."

This is incredibly shitty.
posted by zachlipton at 7:10 PM on April 26 [+] [!]

oh no, not the discourse! we can't let these CHUDs feel afraid to express their support for racist, homophobic violence.
posted by indubitable at 5:19 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

George Soros Took Control of 183 Groups and 12 People So Far This Year...
Including Chobani, Google, BuzzFeed, Daily Beast, Paul Ryan, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, ACLU, PP, and the entire country of Turkey.

they forgot Snopes. seems to be common facebook wingnut doctrine that Soros is behind it.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:23 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

The RNC is pushing the story that Rob Quist has performed at a nudist colony. 😱

Montana Democrat Rob Quist Is Regular Performer at Nudist Resort:
Quist promises to bring 'values of rural Montana' to Washington, D.C.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:25 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

they forgot Snopes

People have known for a long, long time that Supreme Leader Snopes is behind all of this
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:26 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

zachlipton This is incredibly shitty.

sotonohito I disagree strongly, this is awesome and I hope they keep it up and escalate.

You don't think that the next time this happens the MAGA folks will provide a militia escort? Or show up at the next antifa rally with weapons cocked? This is how people die.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:32 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Do we need a separate thread on the inevitable slide of yet another great republic, or should we just stick with this one? Is there precedent for a country surviving this kind of phenomenon? What forces have historically been the most successful at turning such tides? Is it really worth fighting for anymore or should we just submit already - presumably "submission" is a gradual process, so maybe we won't even notice...anyway, you guys, oh, you guys
posted by bird internet at 5:33 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

The RNC is pushing the story that Rob Quist has performed at a nudist colony. 😱

I'm pushing the story that President Trump was in a Playboy soft porn intro, and also that he is a notorious sexual predator
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:33 PM on April 26, 2017 [40 favorites]

@zachlipton that Atlantic article isn't entirely factual.

Right-Wing Group Plans "Free Speech" March In Wake Of East Portland Parade Cancellation

Republicans and left-wing protest group both disavow connections to outside groups threatening violence.

The Vancouver-based "Patriot Prayer" group led by YouTube vlogger Joey Gibson, who planned to confront Portland anti-fascists at the parade, is now staging his own "March for Free Speech" in Montavilla City Park on Northeast 80th Avenue on Saturday.

The parade cancellation has already drawn national media attention. The Atlantic, for instance, took the opportunity to condemn anti-fascist groups in broad strokes, saying leftist "activists" got the parade shut down.

But it remains unclear who exactly sent the threatening emails to parade organizers.

Direct Action Alliance organizer Jacob Bureros says his group did not send the email and feels unfairly tarred because it was mentioned in the email. While DAA did plan to surround a local Multnomah County Republican Party group marching in the parade, he says, they were not planning to drag people out of the crowd or engage in any violence.

"It was really unfortunate that this all happened," Bureros says. "Our organization never wrote any threatening letter, even though we were cited in that letter. What my organization planned to do was defend the community. We intended to create a barrier between the community and the hate group."

Bureros is referring to the small but confrontational "Bible Believers" group, which, he says, had planned to march with the Multnomah County Republicans in the parade.

Bureros says DAA was concerned about the Bible Believers because they'd harassed congregants at an immigrant church in Southeast Portland and one of them, Allen Wesley Pucket, was filmed assaulting people at the April 15 riots in Berkeley (where Gibson, the Vancouver YouTuber, also traveled to mix it up with masked leftists).

"What's wrong is we had to be the ones to stand up to it. No one else said, 'Hey, it's probably not the best idea to let this hate group march with the Republican Party and cause all this hullaballoo within this community that they were intimidating," Bureros says.

Multnomah County Republican Party chairman James Buchal says he certainly did not invite the Bible Believers to the parade.

"I don't even know who they are. I went and looked. There's somebody who got beat up at the airport and has been screaming at people that they're going to hell," Buchal says. "I can't vet 'em all. I will tell you, if any of them pulls out a swastika or starts yelling at kids from behind our banner, we're going to get rid of him pronto. What [else] are we supposed to do?"

By the way, I want to emphasize one specific little nugget here:

Bureros says DAA was concerned about the Bible Believers because they'd harassed congregants at an immigrant church in Southeast Portland and one of them, Allen Wesley Pucket, was filmed assaulting people at the April 15 riots in Berkeley (where Gibson, the Vancouver YouTuber, also traveled to mix it up with masked leftists).
posted by gucci mane at 5:33 PM on April 26, 2017 [18 favorites]

Johnny Wallflower: "The RNC is pushing the story that Rob Quist has performed at a nudist colony"

Hey, Quist is *my* territory!
posted by Chrysostom at 5:34 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I hope that Coke button is cyber-secured. A hacker could drown the President in Cokes and butlers
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:35 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Nudists are voters, too.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:35 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

sotonohito beat me to it, but yeah, zachlipton, I think the situation on the ground is more complex than the article portrays, and even if it was not, I'm inclined to agree that most Republican voices in 2017 amount to hate speech and deserve to be opposed whenever possible.

In this case: the antifa email that suggested there would be violence toward right-wing marchers was anonymous, there's no way of knowing whether it was a credible threat or even a false flag. One anti-Trump group, Direct Action Alliance, posted on Facebook about their plans to protest. They made no mention of violence and later made it clear they had nothing to do with the email or any threats of violence. This pro-Trump dickhead, who was involved in violence in January at PDX and again last week in Berkley, heard about the antifa email and came forward with a call to action for "Christian men, Patriots, and those who just love freedom" that concluded with "Rise up men! Be there this Saturday." I'm guessing it's around this point that the event organizers said 'fuck it' and cancelled.

The Atlantic article you linked is really poorly put together and plainly biased, which is surprising, their reporting and editing is usually much better than this. It links the anonymous antifa email to Direct Action Alliance with no evidence, it implies the animosity was directed toward Republicans in general and not a specific group called out by DAA, and it even spells Multnomah two different ways in the same article. The truth is not quite as cut and dried as they make it out to be.

But you know what? Fine, let's take the article entirely at face value. They say this:

Most famously, they [a 'tiny faction' and 'violent fringe' on the left, per the article] insisted that it was okay, or even righteous, to punch white supremacist Richard Spencer because he was “a Nazi.” That position impels the debate down a slippery slope.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that 'slippery slope' arguments are almost always fallacious bullshit -- I am 100% okay with the notion that it's okay, or even righteous, to punch a Nazi. I think we've been over that ground here before and I don't think I'm alone in this position. It's not as if we've been lurking on our tiny violent fringe for years just waiting for an opportunity to unleash violence and finally see this as our golden opportunity to make with the punching. It's that we see hateful rhetoric directed toward the people we love and the people most at risk in our communities, and we understand that the rhetoric itself is violence, and that it incites further violence, and that putting a stop to it whenever and however we can is the right thing to do.

on preview: I see gucci mane types faster than I do but I'll go ahead and post anyway. Also, Johnny Wallflower, we can't control what MAGA assholes do and I'm not sure how we should interpret that possibility as a reason not to oppose the things that need to be opposed.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 5:35 PM on April 26, 2017 [19 favorites]

Apologies dude, give me your Twitter handle and I'll slip you any other Quist scoops 😬
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:38 PM on April 26, 2017

we can't control what MAGA assholes do

True, but we don't need to provoke them. What makes the Atlantic story shitty is that the false-flag threat of violence shut down the parade without anyone looking into it. Anyway…
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:43 PM on April 26, 2017

You don't think that the next time this happens the MAGA folks will provide a militia escort? Or show up at the next antifa rally with weapons cocked? This is how people die.

If someone gets shot at a rally by a MAGA person, it will be a shitstorm. Has it even happened in any of our lifetimes?
posted by rhizome at 5:44 PM on April 26, 2017

If someone gets shot at a rally by a MAGA person, it will be a shitstorm. Has it even happened in any of our lifetimes?

Couple charged with assault in shooting, melee during UW speech by Milo Yiannopoulos is pretty much that.
posted by zachlipton at 5:48 PM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

Nudists are voters, too.

Right? Quist should just be all "I've met a lot of fine Democrats and Republicans at this resort, why are you trying to shame your voters for what they choose to do in their private lives?"

There's not enough "what do you say to [group you just offended] Republican voters?" when some R politician says or does something shitty, not because they'd think long and hard about it but because of the ensuing clips of them putting their feet firmly in their mouths trying to juggle their shittiness with the politician's urge to never insult their own voters.
posted by jason_steakums at 5:50 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

that Atlantic article isn't entirely factual

Gosh, an article about the left by Conor Friedersdorf contains distortions?...
posted by en forme de poire at 5:51 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

greensboro massacre, 1979 - klan vs communists
posted by pyramid termite at 5:53 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Do we use Kabuki to mean fake?

The only time I ever hear it in a political context it's used to mean a highly ritualized event that goes through certain motions without actual consequence or meaning. it's not just fake, it's a specific sort of fake. A fake we pretend is real, a fake that involves careful choreography and planning.

It isn't exactly the most culturally sensitive of terms, actual Kabuki is stylized and ritualized yes but it is at heart musical theater, not just empty and pointless ritual. But I can't say I've ever encountered someone saying "Kabuki" in a political sense when they just meant fake or lying.
posted by sotonohito at 6:00 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

the bowling greensboro massacre.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:03 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

oh no, not the discourse! we can't let these CHUDs feel afraid to express their support for racist, homophobic violence.

It certainly seems like, at most, the targets of antifascist violence find it annoying rather than frightening. For the most part they don't even find it annoying though - don't you notice that they're explicitly encouraging it? While it might prevent hate speech at some specific time and location, it seems to be pretty powerless to make it less prevalent outside these spectacular events. Nobody is worried that they're going to be jumped by the black bloc while they pass a discriminatory law or kick their gay kid out of the house. Instead, this political violence is a series of theatrical events orchestrated by the fascists, who would surely be disappointed if they had to actually listen to Ann Coulter speak. The whole idea is that they're staging an event where they can film masked anarchists lighting trash cans on fire so that they can disingenuously appeal to the principle of free speech. If nothing else it ought to give pause that the people who try to stifle hate speech are doing exactly what the assholes want them to do.
posted by vathek at 6:07 PM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Idk who Conor Friedersdorf is so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I live about 22 blocks from 82nd Ave. and my neighborhood has a lot of Muslim families in it. It's freaky that this stuff is happening so close, it's typically downtown.
posted by gucci mane at 6:08 PM on April 26, 2017

Bribe Cases, a Secret Jared Kushner Partner and Potential Conflicts President Trump’s son-in-law, a top adviser, had help building a real estate empire from a member of one of Israel’s wealthiest families.
posted by futz at 6:11 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

One of my political science professors was present at the Greensboro massacre. I remember when she talked about it, it seemed so alien, that it could happen, that the cops could let it happen. The healing process and peace so necessary.

I wonder what she's thinking now.
posted by corb at 6:11 PM on April 26, 2017

A Kushner Companies spokeswoman and several Steinmetz representatives say Raz Steinmetz, 53, was behind the deals. His uncle, and the family’s most prominent figure, is the billionaire Beny Steinmetz, who is under scrutiny by law enforcement authorities in four countries. In the United States, federal prosecutors are investigating whether representatives of his firm bribed government officials in Guinea to secure a multibillion dollar mining concession. In Israel, Mr. Steinmetz was detained in December and questioned in a bribery and money laundering investigation. In Switzerland and Guinea, prosecutors have conducted similar inquiries.

The Steinmetz partnership with Mr. Kushner underscores the mystery behind his family’s multibillion-dollar business and its potential for conflicts with his role as perhaps the second-most powerful man in the White House, behind only his father-in-law, President Trump.
posted by futz at 6:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Bribe Cases, Private Eye
posted by Going To Maine at 6:18 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

So now Chaffetz says he needs immediate surgery due to complications from a foot injury he had 12 years ago and will be out for 3-4 weeks. Still unclear whether he'll finish his term or what.

I wish him the best, but it would really be swell if he didn't vote to screw over everyone else with preexisting conditions as he heads out to have his own preexisting condition addressed.
posted by zachlipton at 6:20 PM on April 26, 2017 [27 favorites]

So now Chaffetz says he needs immediate surgery due to complications from a foot injury he had 12 years ago and will be out for 3-4 weeks. Still unclear whether he'll finish his term or what.

"I have to go now, my planet needs me."
posted by Justinian at 6:24 PM on April 26, 2017 [32 favorites]

Chaffetz says he needs immediate surgery

There has got to be a story that is about to drop on him. Plus, there are all sorts of ways to get around with an injured foot. Unless his foot is impaled in his ass I guess. I don't buy what he is selling here.
posted by futz at 6:30 PM on April 26, 2017 [24 favorites]

What's he got? Gangrene or kompromat?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:37 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Gangrene of the kompromat, of course.
posted by Archelaus at 6:42 PM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

He has to stay off his feet and out of the public eye, on strict orders from his spin doctor.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 6:45 PM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

We could call it 76 Trombones instead of Kabuki.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:51 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Oh Jeez, I've studied Kabuki with professional Kabuki actors and while that makes me little more than an interested amateur, I say with confidence that its so not musical theatre. I don't want to derail any further, but if you're eager for a lengthy discourse on all the ways its not musical theatre, send me a memail and I'll rant for a few thousand words.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:53 PM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

Boy, what a load of bullshit from Chaffetz. Four weeks is 28 days, just saying.
posted by something something at 6:54 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

So now Chaffetz says he needs immediate surgery due to complications from a foot injury he had 12 years ago and will be out for 3-4 weeks. Still unclear whether he'll finish his term or what.

That would be a super convenient excuse to avoid the press if you knew that some sort of shit was about to hit the fan!

If there is something, I bet it will be something boring having to do with hookers or embezzling funds or something.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:59 PM on April 26, 2017

Gangrene of the kompromat, of course.

The worst kind!
posted by rhizome at 7:12 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Boy, what a load of bullshit from Chaffetz. Four weeks is 28 days, just saying.

So you’re saying he’s going to become a fast zombie.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

Bilking the taxpayer provided medical coverage while he's still got it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

If Chaffetz is thinking he can duck out on the shitshow of having to pick a side between Ryan's and Trump's agendas, getting pressured to vote on terrible bills, and having a responsibility to investigate a president from his own party, and then just come back to politics when the worst has blown over... that's actually not a terrible plan. I mean it sucks that it could work out for him if that's what he's doing, but it totally could work out for him.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:19 PM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

ELECTIONS NEWS

* GA-06

-- Paul Ryan-linked PAC dumping in $3.5M more into race.

-- Trump to headline Handel fundraiser. Handel has tried to keep her distance from DJT until now.

* MT-AL

-- Planned Parenthood fronting six figures for a GOTV effort.

* Elsewhere

-- So, the CT state special last night turned out to be more interesting than expected. In super-red HD-68, the R won as expected. However, he had actually run as a Dem for the seat in 2014, so he might not be totally doctrinaire.

In HD-7, which is a 95-5 Dem district, the Rs did not put up a candidate. But, in a shock, the seat was won by a candidate from the Working Families Party. He's expecting to caucus with the Dems, though, so probably best case from a progressive perspective.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:25 PM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

Yeah, Chaffetz is doing whatever is best for Chaffetz which is totally not his job as a public servant.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:27 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Bribe Cases, a Secret Jared Kushner Partner and Potential Conflicts President Trump’s son-in-law, a top adviser, had help building a real estate empire from a member of one of Israel’s wealthiest families.

More:

The Kushner Companies appear to have carried out a public scrubbing of its Steinmetz associations. In late 2014, the Gaia name and logo disappeared from the Kushner website’s list of partners, where it had appeared since early 2013.

But the Kushners have not stopped making deals with the Steinmetz family. Around the time Gaia was dropped from the website, it invested in yet another Kushner building: a Trump-branded luxury high-rise in Jersey City. The $200 million project, known as Trump Bay Street, is at 65 Bay Street.

ALL of these people are dirty as hell. This NYT article is a welcome hit piece. I hope more of this type of reporting keeps coming out. The more he has to answer for at House or Senate Hearings the happier I will be. The roots of the mangroves intertwine below the surface of the swamp and link these traitors together. Past experience tells me we are fucked and nothing will be done about it.
posted by futz at 7:29 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Yeah, Chaffetz is doing whatever is best for Chaffetz which is totally not his job as a public servant.

But -- as I'm sure you've noticed -- very, very few of these people are public servants.
posted by uosuaq at 7:36 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Hungarian Rise And Fall Of Sebastian Gorka

Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president who focuses on counterterrorism, was denied security clearance in 2002 to serve on a committee investigating the then-Hungarian prime minister’s past as a communist secret police official during Soviet times. That denial, local security officials and politicians told BuzzFeed News, effectively ended his career as a national security expert in Hungary.

Washington’s standards may be lower than Budapest’s. Gorka has been widely criticised for his lack of qualifications and connections with fringe political groups since joining the Trump administration. In the past few months, his ties with far-right Hungarian groups his and past as an editor at Breitbart News have raised questions about both his ideological views and his judgment. But, back in Hungary in the 2000s, he wasn't seen as an extremist, but instead a self-promoter, who exaggerated claims about his past, including his work for the British intelligence services.

“Sebastian Gorka is not a Nazi or a security threat because he is some sort of secret British agent,” said a member of the Hungarian counter intelligence service, who has reviewed the files a security background check on Gorka from 2002. “Gorka is, how do you say in English — a peddler of snake oil.”

How do you go from being denied a Hungarian security clearance to being an American national security aide?
posted by zachlipton at 7:38 PM on April 26, 2017 [21 favorites]

The White House put out a statement that Trump spoke to both Trudeau and Peña Nieto and agreed "not to terminate NAFTA at this time" but to renegotiate it instead. Whether he turns around tomorrow and changes his mind is anybody's guess.
posted by zachlipton at 7:46 PM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

With this White House, I feel like "excrete" is a better term than "put out".
posted by uosuaq at 7:58 PM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

I'm just now catching clips from the Mnuchin press conference. He's a dead eyed , smug faced sociopath.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:04 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

How do you go from being denied a Hungarian security clearance to being an American national security aide?

Because nobody in this administration up to and including POTUS has been vetted by a reasonable authority or entity. Two or three weeks in, White House security was escorting out junior aides who were flagged by the FBI. Heard tell there was a kerfuffle over the National Security Advisor too.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 8:18 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

New plan: punt some more. They're going for another continuing resolution to fund the government through May 5th, so we can play this game again next week.
posted by zachlipton at 8:19 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm just now catching clips from the Mnuchin press conference. He's a dead eyed , smug faced sociopath.

Who by all rights should've been thrown in jail as one of the biggest fraudsters of the 2008 financial crisis. Instead he's Treasury Secretary. Thanks, Obama.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:23 PM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

The White House put out a statement that Trump spoke to both Trudeau and Peña Nieto and agreed "not to terminate NAFTA at this time" but to renegotiate it instead. Whether he turns around tomorrow and changes his mind is anybody's guess.

So no Obamacare repeal, no wall, swamp not drained, we aren't exactly avoiding foreign entanglements and now soft on free trade. But we are deporting a whole lot of Mexicans. No wonder his base still loves him so much. Some of them are even marching in the streets.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 8:28 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

F.C.C. Chairman Pushes Sweeping Changes to Net Neutrality Rules

The chairman, Ajit Pai, said high-speed internet service should no longer be treated like a public utility with strict rules, as it is now. The move would, in effect, largely leave the industry to police itself.

The plan is Mr. Pai’s most forceful action in his race to roll back rules that govern telecommunications, cable and broadcasting companies, which he says are harmful to business.

Oh good lord won't somebody please think of these poor oppressed multi-billion dollar companies? I can't sleep at night.

About 800 tech start-ups and investors, organized by the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and the San Francisco policy advocacy group Engine, protested the unwinding of net neutrality in a letter sent to Mr. Pai on Wednesday.

We need to fight this big time. Lets throttle all congressional IPs, especially to porn sites.
posted by futz at 8:30 PM on April 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

Somebody at the White House has a weird thing for a 39 star flag (it's appeared in other social media stuff too) despite the fact that our country has never actually had a 39 star flag (a bunch of 39 star flags got made because, at various times, people thought there were going to be 39 states and flagmakers jumped the gun).
posted by zachlipton at 8:36 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

This will come as no surprise to us, but Consumerist reports that Complaints About Student Loan Servicing Increase In Nearly Every State.

Newly released complaint data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appears to support recent claims by nearly two-dozen states that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos may be making a big mistake by rolling back protections for student loan borrowers.

The CFPB’s latest monthly snapshot shows a triple-digit year-over-year increase in complaints about student loans.

Speaking of the CFPB: 'Financial CHOICE Act 2.0’ Blasted By Retailers & Lawmakers (also Consumerist). The proposed act basically undoes what few reforms were enacted after the 2008 meltdown.

Ever since rumors began swirling that Rep. Hensarling — who personally accepted at least $7.38 million from companies regulated by the CFPB, according to Allied Progress — would reintroduce the Financial CHOICE Act, consumer advocates have spoken out about the dangers of repealing protections and regulations of the financial industry.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:50 PM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

@Bencjacobs: "White House official told me earlier today that the situation with NAFTA was "more complicated" than reported"

Add NAFTA to North Korea and overhauling the tax code on the list of things that turned out to be more complicated than expected.
posted by zachlipton at 9:09 PM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

"not to terminate NAFTA at this time"

Trump's campaign promises:

Another one bites the dust
And another one gone and another one gone
Another one bites the dust hey
Hey I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust

Also, the trump admin may end up being responsible for the greatest change in global trade ever; trade that leaves the US high and dry while the rest of the world flees to safer, less volatile arrangements. For example:

America’s $1.2 Billion Mexico Milk Trade Is Now at Risk - The biggest U.S. dairy importer is talking with New Zealand and buying more from the EU. Guess why.

In the first two months of 2017, Mexico increased its imports of skim milk powder from the European Union by 122 percent over last year, according to the EU Milk Market Observatory (as first reported by the Irish Farm Journal). Mexico has also been exploring talks with dairy powerhouse New Zealand. That country’s trade minister visited Mexico City in February to discuss a potential trade deal.

Why the moves by Mexico? In a word: Trump.
posted by futz at 9:13 PM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

Somebody at the White House has a weird thing for a 39 star flag (it's appeared in other social media stuff too) despite the fact that our country has never actually had a 39 star flag (a bunch of 39 star flags got made because, at various times, people thought there were going to be 39 states and flagmakers jumped the gun).

Trump's White House Razor prediction: it was on a clipart site that stole it from somewhere else but just stored it under 'us flag'.
posted by jaduncan at 9:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

In the first two months of 2017, Mexico increased its imports of skim milk powder from the European Union by 122 percent over last year, according to the EU Milk Market Observatory (as first reported by the Irish Farm Journal). Mexico has also been exploring talks with dairy powerhouse New Zealand. That country’s trade minister visited Mexico City in February to discuss a potential trade deal.

This needs to be plastered on every billboard from Superior to Kenosha.
posted by Talez at 9:18 PM on April 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos may be making a big mistake by rolling back protections for student loan borrowers.

it's no mistake.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:19 PM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

This needs to be plastered on every billboard from Superior to Kenosha.

His petty grudges against anyone who won't bend the knee makes him no better than a kim jong lama lama ding dong. sorry, I couldn't help myself
posted by futz at 9:28 PM on April 26, 2017

News from UC Berkeley: Ann Coulter was invited to speak April 27th (tomorrow), but there were security concerns, so (after some negotiation), campus officials tried to reschedule the event for May 2nd. Coulter said that was unacceptable because students won't be in class next week. She said she'd come tomorrow anyway and speak out in the open on Sproul Plaza. The groups that invited her (the Berkeley College Republicans, and another group I can't recall offhand) rescinded their invitations, saying they weren't sure she had the best intentions in coming (that she seemed to be trying to incite conflict). This prompted Coulter to say they'd "joined the other side." Now she's saying she might just show up on campus anyway to "see the graveyard of free speech."

Leftist groups have been saying there will be a protest tomorrow whether or not Coulter shows up. There have been calls on alt-right forums online for counter protesters. It's intensified a lot in the last 24 hours since Coulter's event was officially cancelled, and now people are saying they'll show up to "defend free speech," "unmask antifas," and "be prepared for self-defense."

Everyone on campus has gotten emails about security concerns. I'm not sure how much the people saying they're coming to "bust heads" is just posturing, but it's enough to be frankly alarming. This is more or less what I was worried about back in February, that Berkeley was going to become a literal battleground for free speech. I've been staying out of political threads, but I wanted to drop this message here just to share the general feeling of anxiety around campus right now. I guess we'll find out tomorrow what's actually going to happen. Here's hoping it turns out to be nothing major!
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 9:41 PM on April 26, 2017 [26 favorites]

Obama’s photographer celebrates Trump’s first 100 days by roasting the shit out of him

Obama’s official photographer, Pete Souza, has celebrated the ever-living shit out of this arbitrary milestone. While he initially captured attention by posting photos that contrasted the, shall we say, “alternative successes” of the Trump administration, including the decision to conduct foreign policy in the dining room of a golf club, Souza has bombarded his feed over the past few days with more than a dozen pictures of Obama within his first 100 days, all designed to draw a contrast with our current commander in chief.

posted by kirkaracha at 9:43 PM on April 26, 2017 [34 favorites]

Hey folks, the TV just told me that regardless of my political beliefs I will want to buy this important memento of the Trump era. Honestly, I'll be able to remember without it.
posted by Bella Donna at 9:46 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Virginia Hefferman, This Is What Makes My Head Spin. (in its entirety):

The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I’m not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn’t care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh. There’s nothing he would die for — not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He’s not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, “the common man,” veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn’t care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he’s not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy. He doesn’t — in a more secular key — even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel’s hand. Doesn’t even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn’t live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he’s very ugly and barely mammalian. Am I missing an obscure moral system to which he so much as nods? Also are there other people, living or dead, like him?

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:55 PM on April 26, 2017 [140 favorites]

US launches probe into aluminium imports, citing security concerns

Here we go again.

The Trump administration has launched an investigation into whether a flood of aluminium imports from China and elsewhere is compromising US national security, a step that could lead to broad import restrictions on the metal.

The commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said the investigation was similar to one announced last week for steel imports into the US, as he invoked section 232 of a national security law passed in 1962 at the height of the Cold War.

Ross said the review was prompted by the extreme competitive pressures that unfairly traded imports were placing on the US aluminium industry, causing several domestic smelters to close or halt production in recent years.

Could be a totally legit concern...
posted by futz at 9:57 PM on April 26, 2017

Ivanka Trump Parts Ways With Her Father on Syrian Refugees:

“I think there is a global humanitarian crisis that’s happening, and we have to come together and we have to solve it,” Ms. Trump told NBC when asked about the refugee crisis in Syria, which has created a nativist backlash in European countries.

Asked whether that would include admitting Syrian refugees to the United States, she replied: “That has to be part of the discussion. But that’s not going to be enough in and of itself.”

This is incredibly weaksauce stuff, pretty much the most anemic response to a refugee crisis imaginable, but the story goes on to say that various White House factions and the Breitbart crowd are not pleased. It's really just another plank in Ivanka's "see, really, I'm the good one" campaign, but it's an escalation: she's saying something, however minimal, in public herself instead of relying on anonymous sources to wage her PR campaign for her as she's been doing for the last few months.

Perhaps she watched John Oliver? I have zero faith in her and firmly believe she's as complicit as the rest of them, but I can't say I'm not curious to see where this goes.
posted by zachlipton at 10:09 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

It is somehow fitting that the only non-charity deduction that Trump's "plan" doesn't get rid of is the single worst deduction in the tax code; the mortgage interest tax deduction. It's like they said "how can we make this proposal to get rid of all non-charitable deductions even more shitty? Oh! Let's get rid of all non-charitable deductions except the worst fucking one!".

There are three tax deductions that are really important for rich people: the mortgage interest deduction (which lets them buy real estate, one of the best investment vehicles around, over time with no real loss), the charitable donations deduction (which lets them transfer their money into "charitable" trusts or make-work charities which let them funnel most of their money back to themselves), and the state income tax deduction.

Trump kept two of them, and as for the third? If you're rich, you can just declare your residence to be a no-income-tax state like Texas or Florida and take care of it that way.
posted by mightygodking at 10:09 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Trump is just the grown-up version of the prettyboy asshole villain in 80's coming of age movies. He's a rich douche.
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:46 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

Syrian Scientists Made Sarin Used in Chemical Attacks, France Claims
“The sarin present in the munitions used on 4 April was produced using the same manufacturing process as that used during the sarin attack perpetrated by the Syrian regime in Saraqib,” according to the French paper. “Moreover the presence of hexamine indicates that this manufacturing process is that developed by the Scientific Studies and Research Centre for the Syrian Regime.”
posted by scalefree at 10:54 PM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Trump is just the grown-up version of the prettyboy asshole villain in 80's coming of age movies. He's a rich douche.

I feel like some nickname involving the word "Blaine" or some other rich douche name would be appropriate. (Also just finished watching some iZombie.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:05 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Trump is like the actor who was passed over for Spader, who was smart enough to tone it down a bit.
posted by rhizome at 11:07 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

The White House's 39 star flag.
posted by scalefree at 11:20 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

It's official: Trump tweets the 39 star flag. Skip to 2:00 unless your gag reflex is less sensitive than mine.
posted by scalefree at 11:35 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's blowing my mind right now that the President of the motherfucking United States of America doesn't seem to have a solid grip on what the flag of his own goddamn country looks like.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:40 PM on April 26, 2017 [25 favorites]

Just to be clear, there never was a 39 star flag. The Dakotas entered the Union together in 1889, bringing us from 38 straight to 40.
posted by scalefree at 11:42 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I hate to ask, but are there exactly 11 strongly Democratic states that Trump might have a beef with?
posted by mmoncur at 11:43 PM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

I think we finally have our proof of living in a fictional world because there's no way - no way! that this is real.
posted by scalefree at 11:44 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Eleven Democratic states, eh?
posted by Apocryphon at 11:54 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

The thing is, it used to be that the White House had a broad commitment to accuracy. I saw someone from the Bush Administration, which obviously had great problems in that department on certain big stuff, but they were still talking about how if the White House said economic growth in some county was 4.3%, the Communications Office knew it had damn well better be right, and heads would roll if it was really 3.8%.

And I guess it turns out none of that was remotely necessary. The White House can get all sorts of things completely wrong, and as long as they keep the screw-ups coming fast enough that nobody can focus on one for very long, it doesn't matter. It used to be that the Administration would avoid making unnecessary errors because the resulting process stories detracted from their intended well-scripted message, but when the White House has no message to speak of, just warring factions fighting for attention, what does it matter?

Chris Hayes and a couple of folks were joking about Van Halen's no brown M&M rider in comparison the 39 star flag thing. These are the people who are, just, like, today, proposing to negotiate a budget deal and avert a shutdown, overhaul the tax code, overhaul the health care system, renegotiate a multilateral treaty, start trade disputes with our neighbors, do something about North Korea, empower women entrepreneurs around the world, end net neutrality, and eliminate national monuments, not to mention that they control a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons. Yet they don't know what the damn flag looks like? They don't know the difference between their own Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary?

There are plenty of policy proposals I disagree with, from the misguided to the downright evil. That's not abnormal. But we're not even in that league here. This is just bumbling incompetence. The same people who don't know how many stars belong on the flag unveiled a "tax plan" today that doesn't actually tell anyone how much tax they'll be paying. The same people who don't know the members of their own cabinet discovered at the last minute that multilateral trade deals are more complicated than they thought. And they have absolutely no shame over it. That's the part that isn't remotely normal.
posted by zachlipton at 12:09 AM on April 27, 2017 [61 favorites]

> Just to be clear, there never was a 39 star flag. The Dakotas entered the Union together in 1889, bringing us from 38 straight to 40.

Yeah, there apparently was one, sort of, but the arrangement of stars in the one on the birthday card differs significantly from the so-called "International Flag". Via 39 Star Flag -unofficial- (U.S.) ("Flags of the World"):

There never was an "official" 39 star U.S. flag. However, flag manufacturers betting on early sales misjudged in 1889 by believing the two Dakotas would be admitted as one state and the others would be delayed until after the 4th of July. Both Dakotas, Montana and Washington were made into states in November, 1889 and Idaho was admitted July 3, 1890! So any 39 star flags in existence were probably made in the fall of 1889 (see below).
[...]
"International Flag"
A thirty-nine-star United States flag with small flags of thirty-eight nations (labeled) around the border. Boleslaw and Marie-Louise d'Otrange Mastai's book _The Stars and the Stripes_ shows an example on page 162. The caption says, "The 'International Flag,' patented in 1875 with an unofficial total of thirty-nine stars in its constellation, is notable not only for its canton--which contains six vertical 'rows,' three with small stars and three with large stars--but also for its border of small flags of the nations that were to attend the United States' hundredth birthday party." The header (but there are no grommets) bears the inscription, "PATENTED DEC 28, 1875." Colorado was admitted to the Union as the thirty-eighth state in August 1876, becoming the "Centennial State," and apparently the designer of this item guessed that Dakota Territory would become a state at about the same time. In fact no more states were admitted for more than a dozen years. Evidently not all thirty-nine star flags date from around 1889!
John Ayer, 23 April 1999

posted by christopherious at 12:17 AM on April 27, 2017

I know this can be said about a lot of things, but just imagine the shitshow if the Obamas had put out a botched American flag.
posted by Rumple at 12:43 AM on April 27, 2017 [40 favorites]

"I have to go now, my planet needs me."

Chaffetz leaving Congress to spend more time with his foot.

- ClaraJeffery (Editor-in-Chief of Mother Jones.)

posted by sebastienbailard at 1:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [23 favorites]

whoa is this thirty-nine thing some outgrowth over his finding any woman over forty some sort of aged unfuckable crone?

also I'm sorry about using Kabuki in a way that was neither informed or sensitive. I guess that it might be a weird cultural appropriation thing going on that I'd never thought about before, so thank you for letting me know.
posted by angrycat at 1:51 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Meh. Simplified US flags are created when print or screen resolution limitations mean that a 50 star flag would look like white pin pricks. Now if TrumpCo comes out with some elaborate justification for 39 stars, you will know they're just f*cking with ya.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 2:38 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Hey folks, the TV just told me that regardless of my political beliefs I will want to buy this important memento of the Trump era. Honestly, I'll be able to remember without it.

I find the Red State quarter set very weird. How many people can there be that want to spend $99.00 on a set of 30 quarters from the states that Trump won? It's an odd combination of expensive (for what you get) and cheap. Not to mention that lots of collectors would be driven crazy by having an incomplete set. But maybe it could be part of a theme wall: you could frame a picture of Melania's card with the 39 star flag. I bet by the end of his time in office you would have a lot of strange memorabilia.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:31 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

I find that whole site very weird, but it seems like just the kind of tacky crap that would appeal to people who would go to a Trump rally. All bold fonts and red white and blue.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:54 AM on April 27, 2017

According to VOX the whole NK Briefing "was about optics — an opportunity to make it look like Trump is taking a significant new stance on North Korea when in reality, they’re basically doing the exact same thing the Obama administration did."

This morning NPR interviewed a Republican Senator about the briefing -- because of course they did -- and when he described the administration's plan, my mind said, "That's exactly what Obama did! It's a pity the interviewer didn't say that, but then again, of course not.
posted by Gelatin at 6:27 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

You forget just how much of the conservative media universe is at its core just a content mill to fill the space in between scam ads. Most of it. 39 quarters for $99 is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect to see, and it's why Trump choose the Republican Party in the first place. They're easily duped, primed for scams at every turn, and do not care at all about any conceivable ethical concerns.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:27 AM on April 27, 2017 [20 favorites]

It's an odd combination of expensive (for what you get) and cheap.

Matches the Trump brand.
posted by Artw at 6:30 AM on April 27, 2017 [12 favorites]

To Ms. Heffernan, I can only say, racists aren't picky about who they vote for, so long as that person is also racist. Trump meets that qualification. Racism also hollows out the soul, so his lack of any other qualifications or even likable qualities doesn't matter. In fact, it's a plus because it upsets people who aren't hollow-souled racists, and that gives his supporters a warm glow of sticking it to everybody else.

Racism and spite are enough to account for him; it's literally all he's made of. He's sort of a distilled essence of white privilege.
posted by emjaybee at 6:34 AM on April 27, 2017 [14 favorites]

Salon: Donald Trump wants to “break up” the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals because his unconstitutional executive orders keep getting struck down

Donald Trump didn't like that a court ruled against him [over and over], so his solution is to dismantle the court structure

NYMag: A Frustrated and Confused Trump Wants to Bust Up the 9th Circuit

Fresh from his tweeted attacks on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for a district court decision against his executive order seeking to punish sanctuary cities that said court of appeals — being a court of appeals — did not have a thing to do with, President Trump went out of his way in an interview with the Washington Examiner to say he wants to break up the Ninth Circuit.

That’s by no means a novel idea for a Republican; conservatives have always disliked the Ninth Circuit as “too liberal,” much as the Fifth Circuit has an unsavory reputation among liberals as being too conservative. With judicial appointments depending on who is president when vacancies occur and how confirmations are handled by the Senate, you just can’t keep the circuits balanced in any way. But Trump seems to be under the impression that if the Ninth Circuit went away, he’d stop having all these legal problems with his executive orders.

posted by ZeusHumms at 6:34 AM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

> Not to mention that lots of collectors would be driven crazy by having an incomplete set.

Who'd want a bunch of quarters that aren't from the REAL MURICA?
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:35 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also from NYMag:

If you did not know better, you might suspect the whole saga [of attacking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals] is intended to excite Trump’s hard-core base, which may otherwise become disappointed by all he has been unable to accomplish so far.

posted by ZeusHumms at 6:36 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

One of my political science professors was present at the Greensboro massacre. I remember when she talked about it, it seemed so alien, that it could happen, that the cops could let it happen.

Police were among the perpetrators of the "hard hat riots" at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The notion that they might stand by while a demonized group is attacked is, sadly, not alien to this country at all.
posted by Gelatin at 6:43 AM on April 27, 2017 [11 favorites]

4 Reasons Trump’s Tax Plan Is a Tougher Sell Than Trumpcare

We may wish for the lower corporate tax rates that other countries have adopted, but we seem unwilling to consider why such rates are viable for them but not for us. Countries with low corporate rates generally have large border-adjusted consumption taxes (value added taxes, which tax business owners on their profits), high shareholder taxes (high dividend and capital gains taxes), few opportunities to shelter investment income in pensions, retirement accounts, or by endowments, or charities, and requirements that limit pass-through businesses or impose corporate taxes broadly. In other words, these countries achieve low corporate rates only by imposing high rates on owners, both when the income is earned and when it is consumed. Our tax system is quite different. Here, the high business tax rate is the backstop that props up the individual and payroll tax systems, which jointly further a variety of economic, equity, and revenue goals.

posted by melissasaurus at 6:44 AM on April 27, 2017 [23 favorites]

Police were among the perpetrators of the "hard hat riots" at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The notion that they might stand by while a demonized group is attacked is, sadly, not alien to this country at all.

At the same time, the Greensboro massacre feels - or felt until pretty recently - like something not of the contemporary world, more of a last gasp of mid-century protest violence. That's not because racial violence ceased, god knows, but the whole "we're going to drive by and shoot up a protest, aiming to kill people, with the complicity of the cops, expecting to get away with it" was not typical of American protests between, say, the mid-eighties and fairly recently.

Even now, we're not back there - the shooter at the BLM protest two years ago was sentenced to fifteen years. He won't serve anything like all of it, of course, but he was convicted. I'd say we're trembling on the edge, though, and IMO, it's because of the increasing national awareness of the impunity with which the cops murder Black people and marginalized people generally.

I remember very clearly that as recently as the early 2000s, it was difficult to convince people that the cops shot unarmed people and killed them. It was difficult to disperse the news, first of all, and second, people didn't believe it. Now, because people believe it, we're in that same space as we are with the Trump administration - it is widely known that grotesque injustice is perpetrated by people who are supposed to be public servants and there is no recourse. This atmosphere of open corruption is destabilizing - maybe it will in the long run destabilize things enough that we can make positive changes. But it also gives racists and other fascists the idea that they too can probably get in on the killing with impunity, which IMO is a lot of why we're seeing shootings at protests now.

Honestly, every time I go to a protest that is the slightest bit contentious, I get a little nervous now. I wasn't worried at, like, the Science March, but pretty much everything else I start thinking "some right-winger with a semi-automatic could really go out in a blaze of glory here". I know that this is very, very unlikely - it's not like there were Greensboro massacres every day - but it still makes me anxious.
posted by Frowner at 7:03 AM on April 27, 2017 [21 favorites]

NYT’s ‘Impossible to Verify’ North Korea Nuke Claim Spreads Unchecked by Media

From the beginning, the Times frames any potential bombing by Trump as the product of a “stark calculus” coldly and objectively arrived at by a “growing body of expert[s].” The idea that elements within the US intelligence community may actually desire a war—or at least limited airstrikes—and thus may have an interest in presenting conflict as inevitable, is never addressed, much less accounted for.

The most spectacular claim—that North Korea is, at present, “capable of producing a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks”—is backed up entirely by an anonymous blob of “expert studies and classified intelligence reports.” To add another red flag, Sanger and Broad qualify it in the very next sentence as a figure that is “impossible to verify.” Which is another way of saying it’s an unverified claim.

[...]

But from whence did this meme come? Who, exactly, made this claim? Is there any dissent within the community of “experts” on this prediction? Is there an official document somewhere with people’s names on it who can later be held accountable if it turns out to be bogus? Once again, the essential antecedents of war are being established based on anonymous “experts” and “officials,” and hardly anyone notices, much less pushes back.

posted by indubitable at 7:04 AM on April 27, 2017 [14 favorites]

White House official told me earlier today that the situation with NAFTA was "more complicated" than reported.

Do you think there's a limit to the number of issues that Trump can encounter that turn out to be more complicated than he thought? Could he run headlong into 100 consecutive issues, and still assume that the 101st is actually really simple and everybody who ever struggled with it before was an idiot for not easily solving it? I'm guessing if he made it to age 70 without this realization that he can keep it going, but it boggles my mind.
posted by diogenes at 7:09 AM on April 27, 2017 [40 favorites]

I remember very clearly that as recently as the early 2000s, it was difficult to convince people that the cops shot unarmed people and killed them.

Should read "it was difficult to convince [mostly white] people"
posted by Frowner at 7:10 AM on April 27, 2017 [19 favorites]

@TheSimpsons: Donald Trump reviews his first 100 days in office.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:33 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Do you think there's a limit to the number of issues that Trump can encounter that turn out to be more complicated than he thought?

"All of them?" -- Brianna Keilar
posted by mikelieman at 7:36 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

GOP looks short on repeal vote. Let's keep lighting up those phones, though.

Also, from the piece: "One more vote they may lose: Jason Chaffetz. The Utah representative is off to have immediate surgery on a pre-existing condition — a 12-year-old foot injury that he says doctors are warning him is at risk of infection, and for which he'll need as much as a month of recovery time."

Well-played, Politico. Well-played.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:41 AM on April 27, 2017 [38 favorites]

Well this is the most Metafilter NYT piece I've ever read. Emotional Labor and kayfabe and Alex Jones:

Through his attorneys, Mr. [Alex] Jones countered that his antics are irrelevant to his fitness as a parent, because he is a performance artist whose public behavior is part of his fictional character.
...
Alex Jones’s audience adores him because of his artifice, not in spite of it. They admire a man who can identify their most primal feelings, validate them, and choreograph their release. To understand this, and to understand the political success of other figures like Donald Trump, it is helpful to know a term from the world of professional wrestling: “kayfabe.”
...
Although their athleticism is impressive, skilled wrestlers captivate because they do what sociologists call “emotional labor” — the professional management of other people’s feelings. Diners expect emotional labor from their servers, Hulkamaniacs demand it from their favorite performer, and a whole lot of voters desire it from their leaders.
...
Voting to repeal Obamacare again and again only to face President Obama’s veto was kayfabe. So is shouting “You lie!” during a health care speech. It is President Bush in a flight suit, it is Vladimir Putin shirtless on a horse, it is virtually everything Kim Jong-un does. Does the intended audience know that what they’re watching is literally made for TV? Sure, in the same way they know that the wrestler Kane isn’t literally a demon. The factual fabrication is necessary to elicit an emotional clarity.
...
Kayfabe isn’t merely a suspension of disbelief, it is philosophy about truth itself. It rests on the assumption that feelings are inherently more trustworthy than facts.

It sounds a lot like what Fred Clark describes in terms of political "Live Action Role Playing." I dunno, though. I still don't really get it. I've done actual LARPing (just a little). I have cosplayed as Princess Leia and even considered putting "Jedi" as my religion on forms. (I'm really coming out of the nerd closet here, aren't I?) But I can lose myself in a fictional world without ever having to pretend it is fact. I don't kayfabe. I don't think I can kayfabe. Does it take practice?
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [29 favorites]

Joshua Matz, Guardian: No one sabotages Donald Trump better than Donald Trump

After quoting similar remarks by Sean Spicer and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Judge Orrick returned to Trump: “President Trump specifically threatened to defund California, stating: ‘I’m very much opposed to sanctuary cities. They breed crime. There’s a lot of problems. If we have to we’ll defund, we give tremendous amounts of money to California … California in many ways is out of control.”

As Niko Bowie observed last week, these public comments immediately shattered Trump’s legal defense: “[He] might as well wave the white flag to San Francisco, Santa Clara, and all the other places challenging the order in court.” It’s tough to argue that nobody is really threatened by an order when your client – the president – is literally on TV threatening people.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:47 AM on April 27, 2017 [29 favorites]

Well this is the most Metafilter NYT piece I've ever read. Emotional Labor and kayfabe and Alex Jones.

It evens solves the problem of "kabuki" being off limits!
posted by diogenes at 7:49 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

It evens solves the problem of "kabuki" being off limits!

You all are still talking about kabuki? Oh noh.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:51 AM on April 27, 2017 [33 favorites]

Texas House passes papers please bill
An amendment by Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, was approved that would allow local law enforcement officers to ask people about their immigration status during an arrest or a lawful detention, like a routine traffic stop.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:53 AM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

That Texas bill story was heartbreaking to watch on Twitter; the Senate refused a change that would exempt domestic violence shelters. So many people testified so eloquently against this and it didn't matter to those shitbags.
posted by emjaybee at 7:56 AM on April 27, 2017 [35 favorites]

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, WaPo: Trump’s tax plan is built on a fairy tale

He wants tax cuts, but

Proposing trillions of dollars in tax cuts and then casually asserting that such a plan would “pay for itself with growth,” as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, is detached from empirical reality. A real tax-reform plan would include specifics on how to broaden the tax base — not leave that hard work to Congress. A responsible tax plan would not ignore the threat of increasing a national debt that is already on an unsustainable course.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:04 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

But I can lose myself in a fictional world without ever having to pretend it is fact. I don't kayfabe. I don't think I can kayfabe. Does it take practice?

You don't have to pretend it's a fact. You just have to base your actions and beliefs on your feelings instead of facts. In other words, use your feelings Obi-Wan.
posted by diogenes at 8:05 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

The timeline between trial balloon announcement of a wacky AM talk radio staple idea and the ultimate denial of it is getting so short. With this "we're terminating NAFTA" story I think there was maybe a workday long period before they started walking it back? This is another layer to the tearful mystery onion of Trump: how does the pace of unprepared failure keep building steam while still leaving the big daddy mythos alive? Sooner or later, something's gotta give.
posted by feloniousmonk at 8:05 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

Chris Hayes and a couple of folks were joking about Van Halen's no brown M&M rider in comparison the 39 star flag thing.

Which goes to show that our media, with their obsession over "narratives," is little more competent than the historically inept Trump Administration. If memory serves me correctly, that clause existed for a reason: the band had a number of technical and safety specifications in their contract, and if they showed up in the dressing room and saw the venue had ignored the brown M&Ms stipulation, it was a good indication that they may well have screwed up or ignored the band's other specs as well.

It's about exactly the kind of attention to detail discussed in zachlipton's post. And it's sadly typical of the media that they don't know the difference between competent attention to detail and an incompetent joke.
posted by Gelatin at 8:16 AM on April 27, 2017 [19 favorites]

One thing about Trump that's admirable. That fucker never stops.
posted by notyou at 8:19 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

"David, I have statisticians, and I know, like if I went to Pennsylvania, I say, 'Give me the statistics on what is going on with respect to manufacturing.' Numbers — 45, 55, 65, I have states that are so bad. New England," said the actual president of the United States of America in real life.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:21 AM on April 27, 2017 [48 favorites]

Former CIA Director James Woolsey On Trump's First 100 Days (NPR, April 26, 2017) -- As part of an examination of the president's first 100 days, David Greene speaks with former CIA Director James Woolsey about Trump's national security policy and relations with intelligence agencies.

WOOLSEY: ... The really dangerous thing is that [NK] can both orbit satellites - they've orbited several - and use nuclear weapons. And if they detonate a weapon up some miles above the earth in a satellite, they can knock out a major share of our electric grid.

Various rebuttals from this morning:

The North Korean Electromagnetic Pulse Threat, Or Lack Thereof (NPR, April 27, 2017) -- Can a nuclear weapon in space fired by North Korea knock off much of the world's electricity? Jeffrey Lewis, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, says not really.

Well, he said that, but first he laughed .. A LOT. It was GREAT. High-orbit EMPs aren't the critical danger that Woolsley and others claim.

And a more general retort to Woolsley's statement that:

Most importantly, I think is he started out with a very favorable view of working with Russia and very skeptical of working with China. And that has more or less turned around. And I think that's an appropriate change. But on the whole, I think that he is doing a rather good job in foreign affairs and foreign policy.

Trump's Foreign Policy Reversals In The First 100 Days (April 27, 2017) -- Rachel Martin talks with Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations about the Trump administration's foreign policy reversals and the continuing vacancy of many upper-level foreign policy jobs.

It's audio-only at the moment, but the transcript will go up later today. In short, Haass is of the mind that 1) Trump has no coherent plan or strategy for foreign affairs and foreign policies, and his instability and bold talk followed by more moderate actions undermines international trust in the US as an ally.

In short: fuck Woolsey as a trumpeter, and screw NPR for giving him air-time for a day without rebuttal, but good on them for AIRING SOMEONE LAUGHING AT HIM. It probably wasn't their plan to set him up to knock him down, but that's how it looks now.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:23 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

Fantastic photos (via twitter) of Donald Trump tweeting while he's supposed to be spending time with the kids from the "Take your Daughter/Son to work day" event.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:28 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Yeah, somehow that guy's autocorrect turns "catharsis" into "emotional labor."
posted by notyou at 8:28 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Wasn't the whole starting point of the term that it was not professional, not monetarily-compensated, and operating repeatedly on small scales?

That's the context in which we originally discussed it, but it's a useful concept, and once you see it, you see it in other contexts too. I think this is an interesting observation, that we want politicians (and entertainers) to manage our feelings for us, and that it is indeed similar what men also expect women to do for them: "just manage all the details without bothering me about it", "cheer me up", "make me feel good about myself".

But there's a kind of emotional labor that seems to be expected mostly of men: "make me feel safe."
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:28 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Fantastic photos (via twitter) of Donald Trump tweeting while he's supposed to be spending time with the kids from the "Take your Daughter/Son to work day" event.

This narrative is somewhat spoiled by the fact that he's holding paper and a pen (and not his phone) in the photo.
posted by diogenes at 8:34 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

Well, he said that, but first he laughed .. A LOT. It was GREAT. High-orbit EMPs aren't the critical danger that Woolsley and others claim.

Yeah, and then the piece goes on to say that "most experts believe" North Korea is working on ICBMs and this is a real threat to the US. No mention made of the extraordinary effort that would be required to miniaturize a warhead for delivery by ICBM. Not an anti-intervention piece, but totally NPR.
posted by indubitable at 8:38 AM on April 27, 2017

Wasn't the whole starting point of the term that it was not professional, not monetarily-compensated, and operating repeatedly on small scales?

No, actually, it wasn't. "Emotional labor" is a term originally defined by the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling to mean exactly what it says it means in the Times article. Hochschild distinguished unpaid "emotion work" from paid "emotional labor." The conflation of the two under the heading of "emotional labor" is the newer usage.
posted by mayhap at 8:39 AM on April 27, 2017 [30 favorites]

to expect politicians to govern us is what their actual job is, and what they're paid for. To expect actors to entertain us is what their job is, and what they're paid for

Okay, but "cheer me up" and "make me feel good about myself" are not about governing. They're completely unrelated to policy making. Yet people love politicians who can do that. And in a democracy, people should expect their politicians to bother them about details. But they often seem to prefer politicians who don't.

Think about why people said they voted for Bush -- because they'd rather have a beer with him than with Gore. Doesn't that sound like it's related to "he's better at emotional labor"? It certainly has nothing to do with his skills as a policy maker.

Think about Bill Clinton, "I feel your pain"...

How about the deep love people still feel for Reagan. Why is that? He was not great at policy making. But he was great at making people feel good about themselves -- "morning in America" and all that.

Maybe Democrats just need to find politicians who are better at making people feel good.

(Actors are an interesting separate case. There's the pay they get for acting, and then there's the premium they draw for "being a celebrity," appearing in tabloids and on talk shows and allowing people to project their hopes and dreams onto them and love them from afar... But that is a derail... Though Reagan, of course, was both, and Trump is a reality TV star.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Idk who Conor Friedersdorf is so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sorry, he's a writer for the Atlantic whose main thesis increasingly seems to be that the modern left is dangerously conformist and intolerant and doesn't adequately respect the 1st Amendment. He's written a lot critiquing the ideas of trigger warnings, regulations against hate speech, cultural appropriation, etc., to give you a general idea.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

If memory serves me correctly, that clause existed for a reason: the band had a number of technical and safety specifications in their contract, and if they showed up in the dressing room and saw the venue had ignored the brown M&Ms stipulation, it was a good indication that they may well have screwed up or ignored the band's other specs as well.

Even more to the point. If the guy advancing the show did NOT hear, "Are you fucking serious about the fucking brown fucking M&M's?" then he knew that the promoter is a fuck-up. But I repeat myself.
posted by mikelieman at 8:46 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

He's written a lot critiquing the ideas of trigger warnings,

Anecdotally, I was speaking to my wife who was writing a story about a police-based anti-sexual-assault program and it turns out a surprising number of participants had actual triggers. As in, "shuts down rational thought and engages a habitual pathway".

#1 trigger. Touching their hair.
posted by mikelieman at 8:52 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

#1 trigger. Touching their hair.

Not to abuse the edit window, point being, Trigger Warnings are a Thing FOR REASONS.
posted by mikelieman at 8:53 AM on April 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

He's written a lot critiquing the ideas of trigger warnings, regulations against hate speech, cultural appropriation, etc., to give you a general idea.

Funny how all those alleged intolerant crimes against the First Amendment, which Friedersdorf is paid to rail about from the pages of a liberal magazine, are also encroachments on white male privilege.

Feh.
posted by Gelatin at 8:58 AM on April 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

Meanwhile hows your minister of Housing and Uŕban Development getting along?
Ben Carson Is Proving to Be the Bizarre and Incompetent Secretary of Housing and Urban Development We Expected Him to Be.
No surprise there then.
posted by adamvasco at 9:02 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

I like this paragraph from a recent Josh Marshall article:

As with every new White House and administration, we see a constant effort to see who at the White House is calling the shots... What seems clear with Trump is that the exercise is likely mistaken in itself. There’s no Trump viewpoint or thinking or goal to represent. There’s no actor at the center of the machine, at least not one who remains constant enough in any aim or view to matter. So there’s no point figuring out which advisor speaks for the President or represents his thinking. Because, fundamentally, there’s no thinking to represent.
posted by diogenes at 9:13 AM on April 27, 2017 [27 favorites]

So, um, Trump's latest tweetstorm seems mostly devoted to blaming Democrats for a government shutdown, and if he feels the need to do that, it really doesn't instill confidence that there won't be a government shutdown.
posted by zachlipton at 9:21 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

That Josh Marshall passage put its finger about one of the things that's been annoying me about NPR's coverage of the Trump Administration (other than, you know, pretending Jeff Sessions didn't lie under oath and all). Their coverage, even when it's critical, seems to presume that Trump knows what he's doing and isn't flailing and making it all up as he goes.

Analysis about what his strategy could be or how it may play out presumes he has a strategy, but that presumption assumes facts not in evidence, and gives Trump way too much credit.
posted by Gelatin at 9:22 AM on April 27, 2017 [25 favorites]

Trump's latest tweetstorm seems mostly devoted to blaming Democrats for a government shutdown, and if he feels the need to do that, it really doesn't instill confidence that there won't be a government shutdown.

Meh, it's just another indication that Trump senses what a miserable failure his first 100 days have been, and that The Great Dealmaker has managed to achieve exactly none of his negotiating points in the past week, so he's giving his base more of their favorite kayfabe, yelling into the mike about Democrats. His base probably won't even notice when Congress makes a deal, but if they do, notice how Trump is priming them to disapprove of the fact that Democratic priorities will prevail over his.
posted by Gelatin at 9:26 AM on April 27, 2017

pretending Jeff Sessions didn't lie under oath and all

How does shit like this just get dropped?
posted by kirkaracha at 9:32 AM on April 27, 2017 [30 favorites]

As someone with regular bowel movements I can state with confidence that I have accomplished more in the past 100 days than has Le Grand Orange.
posted by Lyme Drop at 9:34 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

There’s no Trump viewpoint or thinking or goal to represent. There’s no actor at the center of the machine, at least not one who remains constant enough in any aim or view to matter.

The thing at the center isn't Trump himself, it's his narcissism. It's the thing that motivates him, the thing that drives his decisions. Other world leaders are starting to figure this out & how to take advantage of it. We are ruled by a man whose very existence makes him dangerously vulnerable to social engineering. Feed his bottomless hunger for praise & you can get almost anything from him in return.
posted by scalefree at 9:35 AM on April 27, 2017 [10 favorites]

Ben Carson Is Proving to Be the Bizarre and Incompetent Secretary of Housing and Urban Development We Expected Him to Be.

Ben Carson and Rick Perry basically seem to be the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this administration. They're in an evil system, carrying out its dictates, but not in way which shows any initiative, imagination, or character of their own.

It's not really clear how either of them ended up there in the first place. AFAICT the choice of Rick Perry was just to troll liberals and other people who cared about competence by choosing the one dude so out of touch with the DoE that he famously forgot it existed. Ben Carson, I assume, was chosen because Donald Trump only knows two black people.
posted by jackbishop at 9:36 AM on April 27, 2017 [29 favorites]

I'm okay with using the term emotional work for what politicians do, I guess. But it's fair to say that it's a different kind of work. The emotional-cognitive work I did when waiting tables, or canvassing, or in close relationships, all felt pretty much the same, because they were all face-to-face and one-on-one interactions where I tried to ... read the other person's mind, pretty much, while controlling my own emotional state and performing my side of the conversation. (like, making interested "I'm listening" noises and laughing at their jokes and not rolling my eyes even when I really wanted to.) Those are distinct parts of emotional labor: managing your own emotions, exercising your empathy to read other people, and managing other people's emotions.

It's rare, actually, for politicians and actors to be in one-on-one situations. They read a crowd, sometimes, but that's not quite the same thing. And their staff does research and polls in order to read the minds of their constituents, but that's not face-to-face. So the feedback loop of communication is really weird. Idunno if any of that contributes anything to the conversation, but there you go.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:37 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Dems issue shutdown threat over ObamaCare repeal vote

"If Republicans announce their intention to bring their harmful TrumpCare bill to the House Floor tomorrow or Saturday, I will oppose a one-week Continuing Resolution and will advise House Democrats to oppose it as well,” Hoyer said in an email.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:38 AM on April 27, 2017 [20 favorites]

That shouldn't be a shutdown threat. Dems are saying they won't vote for the CR in the House. It takes a majority vote to pass one in the House. Republicans have a majority. They can pass it in the House all on their own. The only reason that position counts as a shutdown threat is because Ryan can't control his caucus and constantly has to rely on Democrats to pass spending bills. He made this mess; he should clean it up.
posted by zachlipton at 9:42 AM on April 27, 2017 [31 favorites]

A few choice quotes from a Politico article published today, "The education of Donald Trump":

“I think he’s much more aware how complicated the world is,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who serves as an informal administration adviser. “This will all be more uphill than he thought it would be because I think he had the old-fashioned American idea that you run for office, you win, then people behave as though you won.”

[...]

“Making business decisions and buying buildings don’t involve heart,” he [Trump] said. “This involves heart. These are heavy decisions.”

[...]

“I kind of pooh-poohed the experience stuff when I first got here,” one White House official said of these early months. “But this shit is hard.”

[...]

“If you’re an adviser to him, your job is to help him at the margins,” said one Trump confidante. “To talk him out of doing crazy things.”

So, yeah.
posted by mhum at 9:43 AM on April 27, 2017 [23 favorites]

One more choice quote from "The education of Donald Trump," which I think fits nicely with Josh Marshall's point just upthread about how "fundamentally, there’s no thinking to represent":

But they’re learning. One key development: White House aides have figured out that it’s best not to present Trump with too many competing options when it comes to matters of policy or strategy. Instead, the way to win Trump over, they say, is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press.

“You don’t walk in with a traditional presentation, like a binder or a PowerPoint. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t consume information that way,” said one senior administration official. “You go in and tell him the pros and cons, and what the media coverage is going to be like.”

posted by zachlipton at 9:46 AM on April 27, 2017 [24 favorites]

Ben Carson and Rick Perry basically seem to be the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this administration.

I'd watch this.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:48 AM on April 27, 2017 [11 favorites]

> The only reason that position counts as a shutdown threat is because Ryan can't control his caucus and constantly has to rely on Democrats to pass spending bills. He made this mess; he should clean it up.

Sam Bee: "The Falcons would have won the Super Bowl, but they had no support from the New England Patriots."
posted by tonycpsu at 9:51 AM on April 27, 2017 [37 favorites]

Sure, but it effectively is a threat not to help Ryan avoid a shutdown? There's 30-40 Republican votes to end the federal government, full stop. Every time. Those Freedom Fuckers will not vote for any bill that spends any money on domestic spending, not one dollar. So Ryan can't fund the government without Democrats. It's at least putting conditions on Democratic support, which, good. Although I'm not sure what stops Ryan from agreeing not to hold a TrumpCare vote, getting Dem votes for a CR, and then holding the vote anyway.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:51 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

“But this shit is hard.”

Just shoot me now.
posted by chris24 at 9:53 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

“If you’re an adviser to him, your job is to help him at the margins,” said one Trump confidante. “To talk him out of doing crazy things.”

Something that I'd never really thought about until I heard someone mention it a coupla weeks back -- the Presidency is all at the margins. There are no Big Easy Things that get to the White House, because those get answered by some minor functionary way down the chain. There aren't even any Small Difficult Things, because those get answered by some senior functionary way down the chain. The only things the President does is Big Difficult Things, things that very smart people who are very knowledgeable in the very small minutiae of those issues and care about them very deeply have still not been able to do.
posted by Etrigan at 9:55 AM on April 27, 2017 [42 favorites]

"pretending Jeff Sessions didn't lie under oath and all"

How does shit like this just get dropped?

I generally don't buy into explanations about the Trump admin playing 12 dimensional chess - I'm not sure they could manage checkers - but I do think there's a concerted effort to manufacture crises to distract from particularly bad press. Sometimes those manufactured crises are worse for them than the stories they're meant to distract from, but it's worth it for the overall effect of constantly shifting the ground beneath critics and resisters.
posted by galaxy rise at 9:57 AM on April 27, 2017 [11 favorites]

The Hill:CBO won't have score on revised ObamaCare bill next week

So if they get the votes, which remains questionable (I'm nominating Billy House here for best Congressional reporter name), they'll just jump to vote on it without a score, because the CBO won't have one next week either.
posted by zachlipton at 9:57 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

White House aides have figured out that it’s best not to present Trump with too many competing options when it comes to matters of policy or strategy. Instead, the way to win Trump over, they say, is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press.

JFC! I can't decide which is more infuriating and scary. That you literally can't present the fucker with multiple options, or that his primary metric for moving forward is how something will play in the press.
posted by diogenes at 9:58 AM on April 27, 2017 [34 favorites]

It doesn't seem like great strategy for the Dems to follow Trump's tweetstorm about them wanting to shut down the government with a threat to shut down the government.
posted by diogenes at 10:02 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Just dropping back in after a 24-hour break and -- wow, we're all still here, ~2900 comments in. ... I'm kind of a noob and don't know the protocol, but I've got most of the work done for a new FPP if people are interested. Let me know?
(Edit - FYI it's kind of a "100 Days" theme - if someone has one of those in the works, let me know, I don't want to step all over it.)
posted by martin q blank at 10:03 AM on April 27, 2017 [19 favorites]

or that his primary metric for moving forward is how something will play in the press.

The seeming contradiction is that he's determined to vilify and discredit the press, an effort that's going great for him (88% of Trump voters agreed that the press is "the enemy of the American people," yet that's obviously all an act and he's obsessed with what the press says about him and how everything he does looks on cable TV.
posted by zachlipton at 10:08 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Trump Vetting Extremist Judges to Fill Record Number of Empty Seats: Judge Thapar, for example, threw out a lawsuit from the family of a diabetic inmate who died within two days of his incarceration after medical staff ignored his condition. Judge Thapar ruled that the jail was entitled to immunity, but that ruling was appealed to the 6th Circuit, which unanimously overruled him. The 6th Circuit, in reversing Thapar’s ruling, noted that—despite clear symptoms—the jail’s nurse did not order insulin, contact a physician, and knowingly left guards to care for him without medical instructions or medical supervision. The court said the nurse’s actions “were not reasonable within the bounds of standard nursing practice.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:10 AM on April 27, 2017 [21 favorites]

I've got most of the work done for a new FPP if people are interested. Let me know?

Light that candle!
posted by kirkaracha at 10:11 AM on April 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

Spicer feed
posted by fluttering hellfire at 10:12 AM on April 27, 2017

Recommended theme song: Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings "100 Days, 100 Nights"

100 days, 100 nights
To know a man's heart
100 days, 100 nights
To know a man's heart
And a little more
Before he knows his own

posted by kirkaracha at 10:13 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

Also:

I had a man
Tell me things
Made me feel
Just like a queen
And I thought
He was the one
I would hold
Oh yes I did
But one day
I looked around
That old man
Was nowhere to be found

posted by kirkaracha at 10:15 AM on April 27, 2017

It doesn't seem like great strategy for the Dems to follow Trump's tweetstorm about them wanting to shut down the government with a threat to shut down the government.

I'm glad that they're putting themselves on the line to block repeal of the ACA. They've put your consideration of "optics" above concrete actions for far too long.
posted by indubitable at 10:16 AM on April 27, 2017 [13 favorites]

There’s no Trump viewpoint or thinking or goal to represent. There’s no actor at the center of the machine, at least not one who remains constant enough in any aim or view to matter. So there’s no point figuring out which advisor speaks for the President or represents his thinking. Because, fundamentally, there’s no thinking to represent.

This is a key point and one that either hasn't been appreciated enough or is too scary for many journalists to want to admit. There is no "Trump Administration," not in any way that Americans have been accustomed to understand such a phrase. The buck stops with any of the dozens or however many different competing actors and agendas who are all struggling against each other. If nothing else, this will give political historians an opportunity to see what a truly weak Presidency looks like.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:17 AM on April 27, 2017 [15 favorites]

The Democratic response to any allegations of "shutting down" the government is obvious -- put forward a clean bill to fund the government and we'll support it unanimously. Trump shouldn't *need* Democratic votes to fund the operation of the government, but if he does need them, they're there.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:18 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Instead, the way to win Trump over, they say, is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press.

So, the Washington Post runs the country now? Good. Let's clean this shit up, shall we?

Shouldn't be hard to use a little basic operant conditioning via news articles to turn this ship of state.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 10:19 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Shouldn't be hard to use a little basic operant conditioning via news articles to turn this ship of state.

Negative feedback isn't working. To use positive feedback he'd have to do something that you could reward with praise in the press.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:23 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Like start a war.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:25 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick: "So, the Washington Post Fox News and Morning Joe runs the country now?"

Fixed that for you.
posted by mhum at 10:25 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

To use positive feedback he'd have to do something that you could reward with praise in the press.

I've got one:

He could follow through on his pre-election pledge to bring back Glass-Steagall. There's already a bill cosponsored by Warren and McCain. Easy!
posted by diogenes at 10:26 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

Donald Trump's Illegal-Alien Hotline Flooded with Calls About Space Aliens: So yeah, it would be a real shame if you dialed 1-855-48-VOICE and told them about an illegal alien who stole your cows or cut a circle into your crops. I'm definitely not encouraging that as a way to fight this horrific, state-sponsored intimidation of our immigrant community even though most of our ancestors (including Donald Trump's own grandparents) were immigrants. Nope. I would never do such a thing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:26 AM on April 27, 2017 [55 favorites]

How does shit like this just get dropped?

I generally don't buy into explanations about the Trump admin playing 12 dimensional chess - I'm not sure they could manage checkers - but I do think there's a concerted effort to manufacture crises to distract from particularly bad press.

I admit that one of the effects of the Trump Administration fail parade is that it's hard to remember all the mis-, mal-, and non-feasance, but if memory serves me correctly, "failing to disclose" was the spin Sessions put on his testimony when it was revealed that he had, in fact, met with the Russian Ambassador. Of course, as the public record shows, Sessions not only brought up during his confirmation hearings the concept of his meeting with the Russians, but he did so, unprompted, in order to deny any such thing had happened.

The NPR reporter might feel duty-bound to report Sessions' obviously phony excuse, but there's no excuse for her apparently believing it.
posted by Gelatin at 10:27 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure they could manage checkers

I'd put down real money on any randomly-selected 8-year-old vs Trump in a best-of-7 Tic-Tac-Toe competition.
posted by contraption at 10:32 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Donald Trump's Illegal-Alien Hotline Flooded with Calls About Space Aliens
I wouldn't go in that direction. Just when you call make sure you spell out M-E-L-A-N-I-A.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:33 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ben Carson and Rick Perry basically seem to be the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this administration.

"There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it. Oh well, we'll know better next time."

posted by octobersurprise at 10:36 AM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Spicer is clarifying that the current tax plan is no deductions at all for retirement savings, just mortgage interest and charitable contributions. He claims that expanding the standard deduction will help people, which isn't 100% wrong, but taking away every 401k will go over damn poorly, especially since most people now can make retirement contributions above the line, rather than needing to get a deduction for it.

His new defense on Flynn is that the Obama Administration gave him a security clearance, so they shouldn't be blamed for bad vetting.
posted by zachlipton at 10:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Actual Sean Spicer to an adult professional reporter (after he did a mock press briefing for the kids this morning): "Calm down. The kids have gone."
posted by zachlipton at 10:49 AM on April 27, 2017

> It's *somewhat* reassuring that they see Trump as a doofus and not a true provocateur with teeth.

Except it's not just Trump, it's the credibility of the United States of America. I weep.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:51 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yeah basically the only thing that will hold our world together is if other leaders understand the incompetence of Trump and work around him to keep it running/not blown up.

Fingers crossed.
posted by emjaybee at 10:51 AM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

Take away retirement savings deductions​? All those giveaways to himself and people like him? And they want to pay for it by taking away people's 401(k)s?

That's ballsy.
posted by notyou at 10:58 AM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

Update: Spicer changed his position to having to check and get back to us on 401(k) deductions.

It seems like eliminating that would have a substantial negative effect on the stock market, no?
posted by zachlipton at 11:00 AM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

taking away every 401k will go over damn poorly,
It should pretty much kill the participation in the Stock Market of all but the top 2-3%. Which may or may not bring the indexes down a little.

it's not just Trump, it's the credibility of the United States of America.
The credibility of the United States of America has been severely overrated and falsely promoted for a long time. The more I look at the current situation, the more it looks like Trump, with his lying, bad faith dealing, racism, egomania and early senility is a tragically apt representation of America's true character. The rest of the world has depended on this spoiled child of a county too much for too long.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:01 AM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

Spicer is clarifying that the current tax plan is no deductions at all for retirement savings, just mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

This is a new revelation. I just want everyone to know that Tax Twitter is not having it and it has no chance of passing. It's probably one of the worst tax ideas I've ever heard of. Even Granny-Starver Paul Ryan wants tax incentives for private retirement saving. There is no constituency for this proposal.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:03 AM on April 27, 2017 [21 favorites]

The more I look at the current situation, the more it looks like Trump, with his lying, bad faith dealing, racism, egomania and early senility is a tragically apt representation of America's true character.

Three million more people voted for Clinton than for Trump. And how many more people showed up to the Women's March than the inauguration, again?
posted by Gelatin at 11:05 AM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

Spicer just clarified the 401k comment with "come on, you guys are worried about retirement? y'all think we're really gonna live that long?" then displaying a large foamcore-backed photograph of a mushroom cloud and circling it between 15-20 times with a black magic marker while repeatedly raising his eyebrows

Needs a [real] or [fake] tag.
posted by Gelatin at 11:06 AM on April 27, 2017 [36 favorites]

It's probably one of the worst tax ideas I've ever heard of.

We tax the Mayor's hummus.
posted by Etrigan at 11:07 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Really says something that an idea that stupid could get as far as it has (the 401k stuff).
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 11:10 AM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

And they want to pay for it by taking away people's 401(k)s?

The 401(k) is a pretty lousy, regressive tax benefit. The median household can put 20% of their income into IRAs so that a 401(k) is pretty useless. It is useful only to those who have well above average incomes and the higher the income, the bigger the government benefit.

For example, a low income person gets a zero to $10 benefit for every $100 saved in a 401(k). A high income person gets a $40 benefit -- four times as much. That's a severely regressive benefit.

Better to eliminate the 401(k) system and use the $75 billion annual savings to beef up Social Security benefits. Of course, this isn't the alternative that Trump put on the table.
posted by JackFlash at 11:12 AM on April 27, 2017 [13 favorites]

Take away retirement savings deductions​? All those giveaways to himself and people like him? And they want to pay for it by taking away people's 401(k)s?

Retirement savings deductions, like all tax deductions, are a regressive subsidy that benefits high income earners the most. It is especially so because it depends on how much money you can put into savings, which is obviously going to be less for people with less disposable income. There are a lot of shitty things in the tax plan, but that's not really one of them.
posted by indubitable at 11:16 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Yes, if you are contributing to a 401k you are already one of the more fortunate Americans even if it doesn't feel like it. Not that taxing contribution to retirement funds is a good idea. But the whole 401k system is regressive garbage.

We'd be better off taxing contributions to 401(k)s than giving a mortgage interest tax deduction, but better to do neither.
posted by Justinian at 11:17 AM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

Spicer is clarifying that the current tax plan is no deductions at all for retirement savings, just mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

Oh my God. It's like they decided not just to touch the third rail, but like, douse themselves in gasoline and then lick the bare metal with their tongues while flicking a cigarette lighter.
posted by joyceanmachine at 11:17 AM on April 27, 2017 [15 favorites]

Ha, and I owe JackFlash a coke!
posted by indubitable at 11:18 AM on April 27, 2017

BuzzFeed: The House Mother and the Fraudster: "Ari Rinkus was convicted of two felonies, owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to his victims, and has a documented habit of lying. But he’s got one big thing going for him: a wife with an important job at Donald Trump’s favorite retreat. And Rinkus is playing that for all it’s worth."

So this guy is a repeatedly convicted fraudster, but his wife is the "guest reception manager" at Mar-a-Lago, known as the club's "house mother." He goes around bragging about his access to the President (he now claims he was exaggerating), apparently impersonated a Secret Service agent to get out of a traffic ticket, claims he's had dinner with the Trump kids, and tried to use this connection to solicit funds for investments, which he's not allowed to do at all under the terms of his probation, and government contracts.

It's clear this guy is a grifter, and given his shifting story, it's hard to tell if there's any truth to anything he's claimed, but that's precisely the problem. Trump is hanging out at a private club surrounded by who knows who, and it gives those people an opportunity to claim to be peddling influence whether they actually weird any influence or not.
posted by zachlipton at 11:20 AM on April 27, 2017 [13 favorites]

Spicer is clarifying that the current tax plan is no deductions at all for retirement savings, just mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

Oh my God. It's like they decided not just to touch the third rail, but like, douse themselves in gasoline and then lick the bare metal with their tongues while flicking a cigarette lighter.

It's people like me they are pouring the gasoline on.

I rent. By choice.

I completely fail to understand why the government should subsidize saving via home ownership over saving via stock ownership.

The former significantly decreases employment mobility while the latter does not.
posted by srboisvert at 11:24 AM on April 27, 2017 [23 favorites]

Maybe Rinkus is just a "performance artist."

That's the new euphemism for grifter these days, I think.
posted by darkstar at 11:25 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's people like me they are pouring the gasoline on.

Thought experiment: How do people who own their own home vote vs people who rent.
posted by Justinian at 11:26 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

"This tax reform is so simple you can file it on the back of a postcard"

"Will retirement savings be deductible?"

"I don't know"

[obviously fake but..]
posted by birdheist at 11:29 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Being a regressive incentive doesn't mean eliminating it is a good idea. Like with employer-provided insurance -- yes, the exclusion from income is a regressive benefit, and yeah, we could eliminate it if we expanded the welfare state instead -- but it is an integral part of our current economy - people rely on it, employers rely on it for compensation, there are entire industries devoted to managing and servicing these funds. You can't just eliminate it as if its any old pay-for, especially not without a long transition period and a plan for replacing that retirement income (also you almost certainly couldn't do it through reconciliation).

It really is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard, and throwing it out as a "yeah sure whatever" during a press conference is extremely irresponsible.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:29 AM on April 27, 2017 [19 favorites]

@PeterAlexander: NEW: White House clarifies: 401K retirement savings plans would not be impacted by Trump's tax proposal.

Whether it's in or out (and this says nothing about IRAs and other tax-preferred retirement plans), the fact that the White House can't get their story straight on this is highly alarming.
posted by zachlipton at 11:32 AM on April 27, 2017 [29 favorites]

> people rely on it, employers rely on it for compensation, there are entire industries devoted to managing and servicing these funds. You can't just eliminate it

"Now watch this drive!" (Ah, George W. Bush nostalgia.)

>It really is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard, and throwing it out as a "yeah sure whatever" during a press conference is extremely irresponsible.

It's not for nothing that that the Trump administration has as it's motto:
"Well. Oiled. Machine."
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:33 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

there are entire industries devoted to managing and servicing these funds.

Who are, btw, a gigantic bunch of parasites that make the health insurance industry look honest. Lots of people are employed in the essentially make work field of medical billing, that doesn't mean we're not all better off with single payer health care.

I'm not saying that whatever implementation these dipshits come up with won't be bad, but I am responding to people trashing the general idea of eliminating these deductions.
posted by indubitable at 11:34 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

> White House clarifies: 401K retirement savings plans would not be impacted by Trump's tax proposal.

So, wait, now it's mortgage interest, charitable contributions, *and* 401K deductions? What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:35 AM on April 27, 2017 [13 favorites]

Spam, spam, spam, mortgage deduction, spam.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 11:38 AM on April 27, 2017 [10 favorites]

What's next? Will they realize there's a whole industry devoted to the student loan interest deduction and that people took out loans counting on it to still be around?
posted by zachlipton at 11:38 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Every time they talk about this plan it gets a little worse.

I have altered the deal; pray I do not alter it further.
posted by Justinian at 11:38 AM on April 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

> White House clarifies: 401K retirement savings plans would not be impacted by Trump's tax proposal.

Oooh, ooh, ask them next about unreimbursed medical expenses! We'll get a comprehensive tax reform plan yet!
posted by joyceanmachine at 11:41 AM on April 27, 2017 [17 favorites]

Based on this recent light speed about face it seems like when they talk about "deductions" they're talking about below the line deductions, not above the line exemptions. Things like retirement plan contributions are above the line.

Or maybe they don't even know what a 1040 looks like and they're just winging it to get something, anything in the public's mind that says they thought about maybe fulfilling Trump's 100 day contract.

Hard to say, really.
posted by zrail at 11:44 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm not saying that whatever implementation these dipshits come up with won't be bad, but I am responding to people trashing the general idea of eliminating these deductions.

It's not just implementation. It's also -- what are you giving those people for retirement instead. I'm all for eliminating it if we just expand social security. I'm all for eliminating the health insurance exclusion if we have single payer. But you can't just eliminate these things without the replacement socialist plan.

And there's a difference between saying "well, maybe we restructure retirement income so that we can, over time, eliminate the need for tax-incentivized private retirement saving" and "yeah, we're putting that in our plan for things we want to take effect in 2018." The implementation matters.

I get that you hate everyone who has ever stepped foot in a bank, but these are real people with real jobs that support real families and buy real goods and services in the marketplace. We can't ignore the impact of these policies on employment. Just like we can't ignore the impact of single payer on health industry employment -- we have to include mitigation of employment effects in our plans.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [22 favorites]

I'm not saying that whatever implementation these dipshits come up with won't be bad, but I am responding to people trashing the general idea of eliminating these deductions.

Lot of good ideas in general that are pretty bad in particular.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:46 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

His new defense on Flynn is that the Obama Administration gave him a security clearance, so they shouldn't be blamed for bad vetting.

Obama fired him in 2014. Trump hired him specifically because Obama fired him.

Trump campaigned accusing Obama of mistreating the generals and that any general that Obama fired must be a good one.
posted by JackFlash at 11:50 AM on April 27, 2017 [23 favorites]

I get that you hate everyone who has ever stepped foot in a bank

yeaaah, I did not say that and it's bullshit that you'd characterize my reasonable arguments like this.

these are real people with real jobs that support real families and buy real goods and services in the marketplace.

so are prison guards. the answer is not, "we have to keep these around forever."
posted by indubitable at 11:51 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Based on this recent light speed about face it seems like when they talk about "deductions" they're talking about below the line deductions, not above the line exemptions. Things like retirement plan contributions are above the line.

Traditional IRAs are below the line. I assume whatever they're doing with 401(k)s (which is not at all clear at this point) will also apply to non-Roth IRA.
posted by jackbishop at 11:52 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

so are prison guards. the answer is not, "we have to keep these around forever."

I think the parallel would then be, if we decided to eliminate prisons today, the solution would not be to just close them all tomorrow and open the cell doors.
posted by chris24 at 11:54 AM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

so are prison guards. the answer is not, "we have to keep these around forever."

And "eliminate them next week" would also be precipitous.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:54 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

ICE: Our VOICE Hotline ‘Was Not Disrupted’ By Calls About Real Aliens

Looks like we've got more work to do. Here's a convenient list of other numbers to flood. We should probably do the same with Trump properties, Mar-A-Lago, etc. Make these people's jobs as miserable as possible.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:54 AM on April 27, 2017 [12 favorites]

yeaaah, I did not say that and it's bullshit that you'd characterize my reasonable arguments like this.

Well, we disagree on the proper characterization of your arguments.

so are prison guards. the answer is not, "we have to keep these around forever."

If only there were a time period between January 1, 2018 and "forever."
posted by melissasaurus at 11:55 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

Here's how I would change the tax code:

1) Eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction, the carried interest tax deduction, the angel-of-death capital gains loophole, and the employer health insurance exclusion.
2) Merge the 33% and 35% brackets. WTF is going on with that 35% bracket anyway?
3) Add two more brackets. 420k to 1m 44% 1m+ 49%

There are plenty of other tweaks but just the above would make a big difference.
posted by Justinian at 11:55 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

and the employer health insurance exclusion.

You better have single payer in place first, or EVERYBODY loses their health insurance. That deduction is the whole reason employers offer health insurance as compensation.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:57 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

Ya'll I don't think we're going to be able to implement our magic sparkle pony tax plans just yet, maybe we focus on the part where people of modest means face giant tax bills next year because one percenters want diamond trim on their golden toilets in the guest mansion.
posted by emjaybee at 11:58 AM on April 27, 2017 [16 favorites]

I feel like I've explained this to Republicans a whole bunch of times -- the reason the tax code is as complicated as it is, is that whenever Democrats want the government to distribute resources in any way to accomplish any kind of goal, the only way they can get Republicans to go along with it is if they couch it as a tax cut for somebody.
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:00 PM on April 27, 2017 [14 favorites]

And you know who actually had a good well-thought-out proposal that would limit retirement tax incentives for wealthy people without causing chaos? Hillary Fucking Clinton:

The proposal would prohibit account holders from making additional contributions to any [tax-favored] account once the sum of all account balances reaches a level adequate to finance the maximum annuity currently permitted for defined benefit plans. The account balance limit for an individual age 62 in 2015 would have been approximately $3.4 million under this rule (US Treasury 2015). [pdf]

posted by melissasaurus at 12:01 PM on April 27, 2017 [37 favorites]

Traditional IRAs are below the line.

"The line" people talk about is the bottom of page 1 of your 1040, which is adjusted gross income. Traditional IRAs, 401(k)s and health insurance deductions all occur above this line. Schedule A deductions like mortgage deduction, property tax and medical deductions and personal exemptions occur on the second page of your 1040, "below the line."

The distinction is significant because the adjusted gross income reported at the bottom of page 1 is used to determine other tax benefit limits such as Social Security taxes and Obamacare subsidies. Therefore a $1000 deduction above the line may be worth more than a $1000 deduction below the line.
posted by JackFlash at 12:03 PM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

This comment thread right now is the Overton Window in action. Trump lays down a farce of a tax plan, and here folks are wondering if there might be some saving grace to it if we can transform things we've never liked about the federal budget, but are nonetheless essential to preserving the welfare of people who are living on a razor's edge right now. 401ks are shit, and many other deductions are shit, but do any of us trust any plan that will pass Congress and be signed by Trump to be any better than the status quo? These ideas are totally unworthy of consideration because the people who will implement them cannot be trusted. Trying to find some hidden value in them is a fool's errand.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:03 PM on April 27, 2017 [51 favorites]

My magic sparkle pony tax plan would start with dramatically increasing the estate tax.
posted by sotonohito at 12:04 PM on April 27, 2017 [13 favorites]

The thing about the estate tax is that there are so many shelters and loopholes that it's mostly a way to encourage tricky estate planning among the wealthy. So you should probably start with addressing that stuff; simply increasing the marginal rate or decreasing the exemption won't make a big difference until that happens.
posted by Justinian at 12:07 PM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

I think all discussion of these tax proposals should put them in the context of Trump's own taxes. At least the NYT had in its "Winners and Losers" a whole section dedicated to how Trump's own family would be a yuuuge winner, and the NYT Editorial page weighs in with:
President Trump’s Laughable Plan to Cut His Own Taxes.
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:10 PM on April 27, 2017 [16 favorites]

Jesse Watters of Fox Announces Vacation After Ivanka Trump Comment

Jesse Watters, the Fox News host who took heat this week for making a joke about Ivanka Trump that was criticized as lewd, said on Wednesday that he would be taking a family vacation until Monday. The move came just three days after his show began airing in a new high-profile time slot.

A Fox News spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the vacation had been planned before “The Five” moved to its new time slot, or if the time off was related to the criticism Mr. Watters had received throughout much of Wednesday.
posted by futz at 12:12 PM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Yay! martin q blank has started a new thread!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:14 PM on April 27, 2017 [11 favorites]

Here's the new thread that I threatened. Hope it helps.

http://www.metafilter.com/166613/Full-of-sound-and-fury-Signifying-umm-what
posted by martin q blank at 12:14 PM on April 27, 2017 [19 favorites]

Ya'll I don't think we're going to be able to implement our magic sparkle pony tax plans just yet, maybe we focus on the part where people of modest means face giant tax bills next year because one percenters want diamond trim on their golden toilets in the guest mansion.

Is there any sourcing on this? The only semi-detailed bit I've seen is that he's planning on doubling the standard exemption, which would save a lot of people of modest means money. I mean, possibly crash the budget, who knows, but I'm not seeing a lot of up-front pain at least.
posted by corb at 12:14 PM on April 27, 2017

The proposal would prohibit account holders from making additional contributions to any [tax-favored] account once the sum of all account balances reaches a level adequate to finance the maximum annuity currently permitted for defined benefit plans.

This sort of thing would also curb the carried interest IRA deposit bullshit pulled off by the super rich like Mitt Romney whereby they put in their IRA account some amount of carried interest investment that is, in fact, a proxy for tens of millions of dollars should a deal go through. Romney pulled this BS and has an IRA value of over $100 million.
posted by darkstar at 12:39 PM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

President Trump’s Laughable Plan to Cut His Own Taxes.

Actually, the whole Trump candidacy and Presidential tenure can be seen as a cost-effective way for him to save millions in taxes and line his pockets (and those of his family) with billion$ in revenues from the most powerful insider trading platform in the country.

It's basically Presidency as portfolio management. And I'm not even exaggerating.
posted by darkstar at 1:20 PM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

Ben Carson and Rick Perry basically seem to be the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this administration.

I'd watch this.

Ben Carson: Our names shouted in a certain dawn…a message…a summons…There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it.
posted by supercrayon at 2:17 PM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

It seems like eliminating that would have a substantial negative effect on the stock market, no?

Maybe but I don't think it's likely. The top 1% controls 35%+ of the nation's wealth. There is plenty of capital out there looking for returns.
posted by VTX at 3:02 PM on April 27, 2017

Trump is just the grown-up version of the prettyboy asshole villain in 80's coming of age movies. He's a rich douche.

Way upthread, but we call that being a "Blaine." (because of James Spader and John Hughes)
posted by aspersioncast at 5:35 PM on April 27, 2017

If anyone is wondering why the white working class or Sanders supporters occasionally seem halfway sensible, it's because the alternative is people who are amazingly super rich still hoovering up corrupt cash and getting defended for doing it.

Yeah that explains why the fabled "white working class" voter was so outraged about Trump's self-dealing that he (it is always a "he" right?) voted for Jill Stein. And also why Elizabeth Warren enjoys such robust white working class support.
posted by spitbull at 6:47 PM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Way upthread, but we call that being a "Blaine." (because of James Spader and John Hughes)

Sorry but I just can't let this travesty pass without comment. First of all, it's spelled, "Blane," and it was the character played by Andrew McCarthy. Now, Spader is of course the all-time champion pronouncer of the name "Blane," but his character's name was Steff. I don't know if this changes the whole nickname thing for you, but if you really think about it, it kind of should, unless the idea is that the nickname applies to people who would pronounce the name "Blane" like Spader does. A defensible stance, I'll admit.
posted by rhizome at 7:54 PM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

Steff is pretty horrid, but those of us with unhealthy SpaderWatch issues know that his most marvelous abusive asshole bully character of all is unquestionably Dutra from The New Kids. I mean, just the hair by itself is traumatizing.

True story: in the 80s, my bf and I used to refer to shitty behavior as "getting in touch with your inner Dutra."
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:22 PM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

GIANT unintentional derail, but

unless the idea is that the nickname applies to people who would pronounce the name "Blane" like Spader does

Weren't both of them rich dickheads? I don't even really remember the film, nor did I have any idea that there might be a canonical spelling for a throwaway cardboard cutout Hughes character (jeez, did you read the screenplay or something?). I just remember Spader and McCarthy being privileged white douchebags, and since we didn't know what WASPs were, we called people like that Blaines [sic].
posted by aspersioncast at 10:45 PM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm a credits watcher and a spelling obsessive, so "Blane" always jumped out at me. "Blaine" is the most popular spelling AFAIK, and "Blane" is the only form of the name more insufferable than a person named "Blaine" in 1986. That's why it's so memorable and such a genius detail from Hughes. The reason why it makes sense to call yuppies "Bla[i]nes" is because nothing better encapsulates the type than Spader's oily delivery when addressing him.
posted by rhizome at 2:37 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

So there's a new thread here
posted by From Bklyn at 4:47 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

That's all well and good, but are they talking about Spader in the foncy-ponts new thread? I think not.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:51 AM on April 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Weren't both of them rich dickheads?

Steff was a rich (jealous) dickhead; Blane was a rich semi-well-intentioned spineless "I'm so sensitive" milksop.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:54 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I know what you're thinking...."Unplugged Emo"... Trumps Tweets

What I find MORE interesting is these things:

I saw an advertisement for an emo-song and video mashup 'Trump words from his video speeches' on a star wars related youtube video.

1) Someone paid for an advertisement. (assumed)
2) Starwars is in the top 150 tags for Metafilter and Trump is not. (found out to see if others posted the link)
3) This emo idea is being done by more than one artist. (based on some being spoken word, done to a guitar, Twitter sourced and speech sourced)

And as the past repeats:

1) Rush Limbaugh monetized 'protesting Clinton' Fox News has a monetization of 'protesting democrats' element.
2) 'protesting Bush' was monetized with songs (like Reagan, Nixon, Cater and I'm sure Obama was) media, comedians and even the "NeoCoins" effort. (NeoCoins - 1 oz .999 fine silver medallions. Old fashioned monetization one could say.)

People are making money off of 'protesting Trump' with clever t-shirts, being Saturday Night Live, bumperstickers, selling paper tubes and whiteboards for signs, and whatever else.

But what has REALLY made a profit...what has been SO clever that people are just tossing money at the entity making the 'protest statement'?
posted by rough ashlar at 4:51 AM on April 29, 2017