Trump 21: Tweeting Us Into the Apocalypse

[GrumpyGran]

On 7/24/2017 at 10:52 PM, 47of74 said:

(Shoving a $20 in the swear jar)

Goddamn, that fucking well pisses me off.  The BSA used to stand for something, but now it's just little more than a Hitler Youth organization for a fuckstick who has no business being within a goddamn mile of the Oval Office.  That fucker degraded the BSA by acting as he did at the Jamboree.  And if the BSA thinks I'm game for their popcorn anymore they might want to check the temperature in fucking hell first. 

OMG, @47of74, you said fuck. You are mad!

[GrumpyGran]

As for Sessions, don't worry about him. I'm down here in Sessionsland now(help me!) and you should see the people running for his seat. OMG! But one of them, the Mo guy, has come out and said that if Sessions gets fired, he will drop out of the race so Sessions can run for his Senate seat again. I swear the guy is a fucking jinn.

[47of74]

1 minute ago, GrumpyGran said:

As for Sessions, don't worry about him. I'm down here in Sessionsland now(help me!) and you should see the people running for his seat. OMG! But one of them, the Mo guy, has come out and said that if Sessions gets fired, he will drop out of the race so Sessions can run for his Senate seat again. I swear the guy is a fucking jinn.

I honestly think if the union had been a bit more hard ass on the south after the Civil War we would not be in the position we are now and we would have a real President now.  We would not have an orange shit gibbon who doesn't know his fucking ass from a hole in the ground in the White House. 

The union basically left the south's pre war culture and institutions intact and allowed them to pull all sorts of shit.  I'm not saying the union should have gone Morgenthau Plan, but I think the union could have been a lot firmer in dealing with the south.

[onekidanddone]

On 7/24/2017 at 10:52 PM, 47of74 said:

(Shoving a $20 in the swear jar)

I've most likely already said this on FJ (I'm old so forgive my sieve like memory), but I've changed my direct deposit from my credit union to the swear jar. Sessions can go shit himself for all I fucking care. He is no victim here. He chose to support TT. 

[candygirl200413]

So before He took office I never had to go onto twitter to see what is going on in the world. Heck, I could not turn it on until I came back from my run. Welp times have changed and before yoga this morning it was the first thing I read and I cried/felt so sick.

 

[nvmbr02]

7 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

So before He took office I never had to go onto twitter to see what is going on in the world. Heck, I could not turn it on until I came back from my run. Welp times have changed and before yoga this morning it was the first thing I read and I cried/felt so sick.

 

I feel you. I woke up this morning at about 5am (which is like 5 pm on the East Coast) and decided to go on facebook to wish my niece a happy birthday and I was shocked to see the latest tweets. I had hoped to go back to sleep for a little while after I sent a quick happy birthday message but I ended up awake a pissed off. It isn't new really, it seems like it happens quite frequently lately. I miss the days when I could go to bed and not wake up to all these horrible things happening. 

[WiseGirl]

2 hours ago, nvmbr02 said:

I am really upset about Trump's ban on transgendered .... but best case he put a group of people that are already struggling for acceptance in a bad spot. 

But, but, he said on the campaign trail he was a friend to LBGT community. You mean he's not? (please read with plenty of sarcasm).

Shit, where the hell is the swear jar? I'm going to quickly become broke. And WiseDaughter wants me to quit watching the news as I always end up yelling at the television. 

Have I mentioned it's going to be a long four years? 

[nvmbr02]

2 minutes ago, WiseGirl said:

But, but, he said on the campaign trail he was a friend to LBGT community. You mean he's not? (please read with plenty of sarcasm).

 

Yes, not only a friend to the community, but he vowed to fight for them. I don't know if he knows what the T stands for.

 

[onekidanddone]

Is today Jewish holiday or something?  Where is his precious little snowflake snowfake daughter.  You know the one who was supposed to help him do whats right?

[GreyhoundFan]

"The overwhelmingly white White House intern class photo, and why it matters"

Spoiler

President Trump posed for a photo on Monday with the White House's summer intern class. While some outlets seized on Trump rolling his eyes and shushing a reporter for asking questions about his policies, the Twitterverse erupted, pointing out the lack of racial and gender diversity in the class.

The lack of diversity of the intern class does not suggest any wrongdoing, but it does raise questions about the Republicans' ability to be inclusive. From the photos, it is clear that this year's intern class is majority white and majority men. But, women make up slightly more than half of the U.S. population. And as of 2015, 44 percent of all people ages 18-34 are minorities, according to the Brookings Institution.

... < a picture of lots of young white interns with the TT >

Republican voters are largely white and older, and the White House can only choose interns based on the applicant pool. Nevertheless, the photo serves as evidence that the next wave of Republican leaders are not representative of America's changing demographics. Without a change of course, future leaders of the GOP won't reflect the experiences of the majority of people they seek to govern.

After Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, the RNC commissioned an “autopsy” of the election. One of the main findings from the 100-page report was the Republican Party's need to engage both women and minority voters, including Hispanic voters in particular, to stay relevant. While speaking at the National Press Club in 2013 to promote the study, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus highlighted the “real urgency of connecting with minority communities.”

Preibus noted that Obama won with 80 percent of the votes of all minority groups in 2012. “The RNC cannot and WILL NOT write off any demographic, community, or region of this country,” he said.

But Trump mostly ignored the RNC's directive. He won in 2016 without a large share of the minority vote, but his failure to court new voters could cost the party support in the long run. By 2050, the United States will be a majority minority country, largely due to a growing Hispanic population.

The lack of diversity in government is not exclusive to Republicans. In June, a new report revealed that despite having the most diverse Congress in U.S. history, Democratic Senate staffers were overwhelmingly white. Additionally, Amber Phillips pointed out for The Fix that the Federal government's diversity problem stems from a pipeline problem: There aren't enough people of color in state legislatures — the most reliable conduit for national politics.

Some argue the Republican Party has a racism problem, and that Trump's campaign brought it to the surface. During his presidential campaign, he stereotyped Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, he garnered support from white nationalist figures and groups including David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan, and he made numerous inflammatory remarks about Muslims, who are largely nonwhite.

In addition to pointing out the overwhelming whiteness of Trump's intern group, some compared this year's class to the interns under Obama's tenure.

...

It isn't the first time Republicans have been called out for a largely white intern group. Last year, Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) tweeted a selfie with a group of Capitol Hill interns, unleashing a slew of jokes and puns on social media. But, James Jones, who conducted research on the diversity of Senate staffers, told The Washington Post it's no laughing matter.

“It really shows how much further we have to achieve to make sure our government reflects the diversity of our nation,” he said of lawmakers and their staff. “These are the main actors making policy. And they don’t look like America.”

I'm sure he'll claim he loves minorities, after all Ben Carson and Omarosa are his buddies and in his eyes, they probably represent every non-white citizen.

[JMarie]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

The presidunce has no idea that there is supposed to be a separation of state and religion.

 

And WTF with that camera emoji...?

What's he talking about?  He doesn't even worship God.

And this song popped into my head today

 

[onekidanddone]

14 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"The overwhelmingly white White House intern class photo, and why it matters"

I'm sure he'll claim he loves minorities, after all Ben Carson and Omarosa are his buddies and in his eyes, they probably represent every non-white citizen.

I can't see anybody with a soul wanting to be a White House intern. All that grabbing of pussy and all that. 

[onekidanddone]

@JMarie Great song choice.

Here is my tune of the day:

Quote

 

And lyrics

Quote

I started as an altar boy working at the church
Learning all my holy moves doing some research
Which led me to a cash box labelled "Children's Fund"
I'd leave the change and tuck the bills inside my cummerbund
I got a part-time job at my father's carpet store
Laying tactless stripping and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture and took it to Spokane
Auctioned off every last Naugahyde divan
I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I'm proud to be a glutton and I don't have time for sloth
I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross
[CHORUS]
I'm, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time and I don't care who gets hurt
I'm, take a look at me
I'll live to be a hundred and go down in history
Of course I went to law school and got a law degree
And counseled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen, fewer still are called
Then on to Monte Carlo play chemin de fer
I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair
I put my last few francs down on a prostitute
Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute
Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig
And headed for the airport and the midnight flight, you dig?
Fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide
Looking through the want ads sipping Foster's in the shade
I opened up an agency somewhere down the line
To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines
But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut
And whisked away their workman's comp and pauperized the lot
[CHORUS]
I bought a first class ticket on Malaysian Air
Landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear
I'm thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals
See you in the next life, wake me up for meals

 

[JMarie]

Trump thinks he can be tricky and get people fluffed up over the transgender ban, so everyone will stop talking about Russia.  But that doesn't make the Russia thing go away.  Fjers are too smart to be fooled.

[AnywhereButHere]

I think someone (it can't be Caligula himself - he doesn't have the awareness capacity) told him that bashing Sessions was losing him a chunk of his base. This transgender ban is a bone he's throwing them to keep them in line.

[47of74]

I think someone (it can't be Caligula himself - he doesn't have the awareness capacity) told him that bashing Sessions was losing him a chunk of his base. This transgender ban is a bone he's throwing them to keep them in line.

Yeah Donnie Dumbfuck's gotta hang on to the klan vote since just about everyone else hates his guts.

[nvmbr02]

15 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

I think someone (it can't be Caligula himself - he doesn't have the awareness capacity) told him that bashing Sessions was losing him a chunk of his base. This transgender ban is a bone he's throwing them to keep them in line.

I have heard this too.

Politico is also reporting that it may have been a deal TT made to secure funding for his wall.

Inside Trump’s snap decision to ban transgender troops

[GrumpyGran]

I'm I the only one who would now like for Don Henley to write a song called "White Intern"?

[Cartmann99]

6 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Yeah Donnie Dumbfuck's gotta hang on to the klan vote since just about everyone else hates his guts.

 

His approval rating is getting low enough to challenge this guy:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an excellent Dana Millbank opinion piece: "Welcome to the United States of Anarchy"

Spoiler

Welcome to the United States of Anarchy.

Health-care legislation languishes without presidential leadership. The Senate fails to pass a measure crafted by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, fails to pass an outright repeal and even fails to pass a proposal to go back to the drawing board.

Huge majorities in Congress, declining to bless President Trump’s love affair with Vladimir Putin’s regime, vote for new sanctions against Russian officials; legislation passes the Senate, 98 to 2, and the House, 419 to 3. The veto-proof rebuke to the president seizes a foreign-policy function from an unreliable commander in chief.

As the deadline looms to avoid a default on U.S. debt, Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate committee chairman, is heard on a hot mic saying she’s “worried” about the president’s stability and calling his administration’s handling of spending matters “just incredibly irresponsible.” She says she doubts Trump even knows how the budget process works.

Trump, baffling and alarming allies, goes on the attack against his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who was an outspoken supporter of Trump’s candidacy. Trump clearly wants Sessions to resign, but Sessions is ignoring him. Sessions’s former colleagues in the Senate back him over his boss — and they hope Trump isn’t crazy enough to start a crisis by firing Sessions and then special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Meanwhile, the president continues to sow chaos with perpetual distractions. He fires off a tweet Wednesday morning announcing he is banning transgender people from serving in the military. The tweet apparently catches even the Pentagon by surprise and draws rebukes from pro-military Republicans who argue that all able-bodied, patriotic Americans should be allowed to serve.

And the ship of state sails on, rudderless. This is what it might look like if there were no president at all: stuff happens, but nothing gets done. Actually, the majority in Congress has great difficulty even doing nothing.

McConnell and his team scheduled a vote on repealing Obamacare for 11:30 a.m. Wednesday — a proposal that was, by all accounts, destined for failure. But when the appointed hour came, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), sponsor of the repeal measure, requested a quorum call — a Senate procedure to stall for time.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) rose. “Mr. President, I think there was some confusion —” he began.

But Enzi objected, Wyden was forbidden to speak, and the quorum call resumed — for 43 silent minutes.

Senators arrived for the scheduled pre-lunch vote. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) went to the clerk’s table to give a thumbs up and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) went to give a thumbs down, and both were told the same thing: “We’re not voting.” Senators milled about the chamber and huddled in clusters while aides and Senate leaders came and went to resolve the impasse, an arcane dispute about points of order and procedures for amendments.

Finally, Enzi spoke: The vote would be postponed for four more hours.

The Sisyphean act, all for a proposal that was going nowhere, encapsulated the whole Dada enterprise of health-care legislation. McConnell, thwarted in his quest to round up votes for the House-passed version of Trumpcare, or for his own Trumpcare alternative, or even for a repeal of Obamacare without a replacement, decided instead to risk everything on a “motion to proceed” — a parliamentary maneuver that allows debate to begin.

McConnell won that vote Tuesday by the thinnest possible margin, a 50-50 tie, broken by Vice President Pence. But then McConnell was the proverbial dog that caught the car. Hours later, he brought up his health-care legislation, and it went down, 43 to 57, losing nine of his fellow Republicans and falling 17 votes short of what he needed.

On Wednesday came Enzi’s repeal proposal, which wouldn’t have taken effect for two years to buy lawmakers more time to draft an Obamacare replacement. After the four-hour delay, it went down, 45 to 55, with seven Republicans defecting. Senators then voted down, on party lines, a Democratic proposal to send the whole thing back to committee.

Republicans, after complaining for years that they had been jammed by Democrats on the passage of Obamacare, brought their alternative forward in a secretive, rushed, Republican-only process without hearings. Far from giving lawmakers time to “read the bill,” GOP Senate leaders had them vote to begin debate without knowing which legislation they would be debating.

Soon comes a vote on “skinny repeal,” which, if it became law, would sabotage Obamacare by eliminating individual and employer requirements to provide health insurance. But it won’t become law; it would merely become an excuse for more negotiations that would pit Senate GOP moderates against House GOP conservatives.

So it goes when a president doesn’t act like one: all fury, no function.

 

[GrumpyGran]

During a sleepless night, (because I'm in Alabama! Help!) it occurred to me that there is just so much shit all the time that you quickly forget things that have happened in the last six months that should never have happened. Like the fact that this clueless man, who thinks access to classified information proves that he is impressive, sat with the leader of a country that is not our friend, with no one else on our side listening to what he said.

And as for being here, ugh, I forgot how horrifying campaign ads can be. And believe me, these are bad. Very Badly Bad.

[apple1]

11 hours ago, JMarie said:

Trump thinks he can be tricky and get people fluffed up over the transgender ban, so everyone will stop talking about Russia.  But that doesn't make the Russia thing go away.  Fjers are too smart to be fooled.

As they used always say in church, "a big hearty AMEN" to this! This is what really scares me -- that the country is falling for the distractions while letting the worst of all go by and get worse.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump Family Values"

Spoiler

Jeff Sessions thought he was on the Trump team, but he was sadly mistaken.

For President Donald Trump, the world breaks down into three neat categories — there’s family, who are part of the charmed Trump circle by blood or marriage; there are “winners,” who have earned Trump’s regard by making lots of money (often at Goldman Sachs); and then there’s everyone else, who are adornments to be cast aside as Trump finds convenient.

Sessions is emphatically in the latter category. If the former Alabama senator wanted to be securely ensconced in Trump world, he should have had the foresight to marry Ivanka. Nothing else — not endorsing early, not lending candidate Trump staff and policy expertise, not carrying water in trying circumstances — will ever make him anything more than some guy who happens to be attorney general of the United States.

Trump’s treatment of Sessions over the past week is unprecedented in the annals of American government. Cabinet officials have been hung out to dry before. They have been frozen out. They have been forced to resign or fired. Never before has a Cabinet secretary been publicly belittled in an ongoing campaign of humiliation by the president who appointed him.

The drama hangs a lantern on Trump’s flaws, not the attorney general’s. Trump lacks gratitude, dismissing Sessions’ endorsement of him in the primaries as merely the senator’s reaction to the size of Trump’s crowds. He obviously doesn’t feel any respect for someone who, as an honorable person with a long career in public service, deserves it. He doesn’t care about propriety, which would dictate dressing down Sessions in private, not flaying him in public. And, finally, he doesn’t feel any loyalty, despite Sessions having given up a safe Senate seat to serve in his administration.

For Trump, loyalty is unilateral, not reciprocal, and it has a very particular content. It’s not loyalty to the agenda (Sessions was onboard the agenda before Trump was) or loyalty to the party (Sessions was a Republican long before the president), but loyalty to Trump, narrowly defined as his ego and his personal interests and honor.

Robert Mueller’s investigation, at the very least, punctures Trump’s ego by creating an ongoing cloud over his election victory (and perhaps creates legal jeopardy for his family members). Insofar as Trump believes that Sessions enabled this assault on his personal honor by recusing himself from the Russian investigation, the attorney general is persona non grata. He might as well have told the president that, yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and Barack Obama had a bigger inaugural crowd. Sessions is guilty of what in legal parlance is called a status offense — he’s offended Trump’s status.

As a result, he’s been getting essentially the same treatment as Low Energy Jeb and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer. The attorney general doesn’t have a disparaging nickname, but Trump is demeaning him and using the same weapons he uses against any of his targets — namely, anything at hand, whether or not it makes any sense.

Trump hits Sessions for not pursuing Clinton, when the president himself had called for letting the Clinton scandal go (Hillary had “suffered greatly,” Trump said after the election). He criticizes Sessions for not firing FBI official Andrew McCabe, even though the White House reportedly interviewed McCabe to replace James Comey permanently as FBI director. Sessions should consider himself lucky that Trump has not, as of yet, accused any of his family members of being involved in the assassination of JFK.

Of course, Trump is free to fire Sessions whenever he likes. That he is not doing it and prefers to run him down, apparently in hopes that he will quit, speaks to an unwillingness to take responsibility. He’s not a commentator from the sidelines any more. This is his government; he should either back his appointees or cashier them (or directly order them to do what he wants), not troll them on Twitter.

The episode shows the challenge that Republicans face in Trump. It is not ideological. Substantively, Trump is governing as more or less a conventional Republican. The challenge is characterological. How to work with a president who is key to advancing much of the GOP agenda without endorsing his brazen disregard for institutional and personal norms?

The Sessions imbroglio may blow over as Trump moves on to the next thing, having diminished his AG and himself for no good reason. But it offers a window into how Trump could collapse his own administration — by letting the pressure of criticism and investigation get the best of him, venting his anger uncontrollably, destroying any cohesiveness within his own government and party, and creating an ongoing sense of crisis that eventually really does spin out of control.

If this nightmare scenario becomes reality, the bizarre and small-minded campaign against Jeff Sessions will have been a sign of things to come.

I love the line about how Sessions should have had the foresight to marry Ivanka if he wanted to be really respected by Agent Orange.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an excellent op-ed from the NYT: "‘First They Came For ...’"

Spoiler

It is no longer sufficient to brand Donald Trump as abnormal, a designation that is surely applicable but that falls significantly short in registering the magnitude of the menace.

The standard nomenclature of normal politics must be abandoned. What we are witnessing is nothing less than an assault on the fundamentals of the country itself: on our legacy institutions and our sense of protocol, decency and honesty.

In any other circumstance, we might likely write this off as the trite protestations of a man trapped in a toddler’s temperament, full of meltdowns, magical thinking and make believe. But this man’s vindictiveness and mendacity are undergirded by the unequaled power of the American president, and as such he has graduated on the scale of power from toddler to budding tyrant.

This threat Trump poses — to our morals, ethics, norms and collective sense of propriety — may be without equal from a domestic source.

Everything he is doing is an assault and matters on some level.

His desecration of the Boy Scouts’ national jamboree matters. Not only did he turn his appearance before the boys into a political rally in which they booed both former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he seemed to be appealing to their basest instincts.

What exactly did Trump mean when he regaled the boys with the story of the real-estate developer William Levitt, who, as Trump put it:

“Sold his company for a tremendous amount of money. And he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. I won’t go any more than that, because you’re Boy Scouts so I’m not going to tell you what he did.”

As the boys start to make noise, Trump responds, “Should I tell you? Should I tell you?” and then proceeds to say:

“You’re Boy Scouts, but you know life. You know life.”

Is this a version of Trump’s “locker room talk,” that phrase he used to excuse his genital-grabbing comments on the “Access Hollywood” tape? This may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme, but it matters. The fact that its shelf life felt like only a few hours before the next outrage underscores the degree to which our national consciousness is being barraged by the man’s violations.

But yes, it matters too, just as Trump’s obsession with Obama and Clinton matters.

Also, his public trolling of Attorney General Jeff Sessions matters. The fact that he’s enraged at Sessions for taking the appropriate ethical step and recusing himself from the Russia investigation matters. The fact that Trump essentially told The New York Times on the record that he would not have chosen Sessions if he’d known Sessions wouldn’t have stood firm in protection of him, matters.

Trump’s continuous attacks on the media matter.

His pushing of the Republicans’ callous Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan — a plan that would strip health insurance coverage from tens of millions of Americans, and a plan that Trump has demonstrated no particular policy knowledge of — matters.

Trump’s tweet yesterday — on the 69th anniversary of President Harry Truman desegregating the armed forces, no less — that “the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military,” matters. There are thousands of trans people already serving in the military. The idea that a man with five draft deferments would dictate that people who volunteer to serve should not be allowed to is beyond outrageous — and it matters.

Trump’s pushing us closer to international military conflict matters.

And yes, the plodding Russia investigation, which to Trump is an agitation and threat, like an irremovable thorn in his flesh, matters.

This has come as a great shock and demoralizer to many Americans, not necessarily because they didn’t think Trump was capable of such depravity, but because they simply were unprepared for the daily reality of living a nightmare.

There is an enduring expectation, particularly among American liberals, that progress in this society should move inexorably toward more openness, honesty and equality. But even the historical record doesn’t support that expectation.

In reality, America regularly experiences bouts of regression, but fortunately, it is in those regressive periods that some of our greatest movements and greatest voices had found their footing.

President Andrew Jackson’s atrocious American Indian removal program gave us the powerful Cherokee memorial letters. The standoff at Standing Rock gave us what the BBC called “the largest gathering of Native Americans in more than 100 years.”

Crackdowns on gay bars gave us the Stonewall uprising. America’s inept response to the AIDS epidemic gave us Act Up and Larry Kramer. California’s Proposition 8 breathed new life into the fight for marriage equality and led to a victory in the Supreme Court.

The racial terror that followed the Emancipation Proclamation gave us the anti-lynching movement, the N.A.A.C.P., W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells and James Weldon Johnson.

Jim Crow gave us the civil rights movement, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Congressman John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer and James Baldwin.

The latest rash of extrajudicial killing of black people gave us Black Lives Matter.

The financial crisis and the government’s completely inadequate response to it gave us Occupy Wall Street and the 99 percent.

A renewed assault on women’s rights, particularly a woman’s right to choose, gave us, at least in part, the Women’s March, likely the largest march in American history.

This is not an exhaustive list, but just some notable examples.

It is a way of illustrating that the fiery crucible is where the weapons of resistance are forged; it is where the mettle of those crusading for justice, equality and progress are tested.

Unlike the examples listed above, Trump’s assault is intersectional and nearly universal. Multiple populations are being assaulted at once, across race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual identity.

So, in this moment of regression, all the targets of Trump’s ire must push back with a united front, before it is too late.

As Martin Niemöller so famously put it:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

I so agree with this piece. Everything does matter.

[GreyhoundFan]

I liked this opinion piece from E.J. Dionne: "The norms of government are collapsing before our eyes"

Spoiler

The news is being reported on split screen as if the one big story in Washington is disconnected from the other. But President Trump’s lawless threats against Attorney General Jeff Sessions have a lot in common with the Senate’s reckless approach to the health coverage of tens of millions of Americans.

On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, we are witnessing a collapse of the norms of governing, constant violations of our legitimate expectations of political leaders, and the mutation of the normal conflicts of democracy into a form of warfare that demands the opposition’s unconditional surrender.

Trump’s latest perverse miracle is that he has progressives — along with everyone else who cares about the rule of law — rooting for Sessions. The attorney general is as wrong as ever on voter suppression, civil rights enforcement and immigration. But Sessions did one very important thing: He obeyed the law.

When it was clear that he would have obvious conflicts of interest in the investigation of Russian meddling in our election and its possible links to the Trump campaign, Sessions recused himself, as he was required to do.

Trump’s attacks on Sessions for that recusal are thus a naked admission that he wants the nation’s top lawyer to act illegally if that’s what it takes to protect the president and his family. Equally inappropriate are Trump’s diktats from the Oval Office calling on Sessions to investigate Hillary Clinton and those terrible “leakers” who are more properly seen as whistleblowers against Trump’s abuses.

Our country is now as close to crossing the line from democracy to autocracy as it has been in our lifetimes. Trump’s ignorant, self-involved contempt for his duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” ought to inspire patriots of every ideological disposition to a robust and fearless defiance.

But where are the leaders of the Republican Party in the face of the dangers Trump poses? They’re trying to sneak through a health-care bill by violating every reasonable standard citizens should impose on public servants dealing with legislation that affects more than one-sixth of our economy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan have little time for worrying about the Constitution because they are busy doing Trump’s bidding on health care.

Let it be said that two Republican senators will forever deserve our gratitude for insisting that a complicated health-care law should be approached the way Obamacare — yes, Obamacare — was enacted: through lengthy hearings, robust debate and real input from the opposition party. In voting upfront to try to stop the process, Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski demonstrated a moral and political toughness that eluded other GOP colleagues who had expressed doubts about this charade but fell into line behind their leaders.

The most insidious aspect of McConnell’s strategy is that he is shooting to pass something, anything, that would continue to save Republicans from having a transparent give-and-take on measures that could ultimately strip health insurance from 20 million Americans or more. Passing even the most meager of health bills this week would move the covert coverage-demolition effort to a conference committee with the House.

The Senate’s unseemly marathon thus seems likely to end with a push for a “skinny repeal” bill that would eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s individual and employer mandates and its medical device tax. But no one should be deluded: A vote for skinny repeal is a vote for an emaciated democracy.

A wholesale defeat of what might be described as the Trump-McConnell-Ryan Unhealthy America Act of 2017 is essential for those being served by the ACA but also for our politics. It was disappointing that Sen. John McCain’s passionate plea on Tuesday for a “return to regular order” did not match his votes in this week’s early roll calls.

But McCain could yet advance the vision of the Senate he outlined in his floor speech and rebuke “the bombastic loudmouths” he condemned by casting a “no” vote at the crucial moment. Here’s hoping this war hero will ultimately choose to strike a blow against everything he said is wrong with Congress.

And when it comes to the ongoing indifference to the law in the White House, Republicans can no longer dodge their responsibility to speak out against what Trump is doing. They should also examine their own behavior. The decline of our small-r republican institutions can be stopped only if the party brandishing that adjective starts living up to the obligations its name honors.

It is telling that the TT has gotten progressives to support Sessions. I despise Sessions and think he should be hauled back before congress to answer for his obvious lies about his contact with Russia, but it is wrong for the orange menace to demean him in the ugly way he has done.