Trump 21: Tweeting Us Into the Apocalypse

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, IrishCarrie said:

I don't do bibles

OMG, love this, thank you @IrishCarrie! I do them occasionally, but this just...says so much!

And yeah, @Destiny, the problem is everyone should be their kind of "Christian". You know, the hypocritical hateful kind. 

[candygirl200413]

So I grew up and still live in a predominetly Jewish area, honestly thought this was how life was until I went to college in Virginia. One day I was volunteering with my sorority to pack lunch for a homeless shelter and it was near Christmas time and someone asked a group of us if it was okay if she could write Merry Christmas. This woman went off and was like of course! we need to take Christmas back cause today's society wants to shut us Christians down. As a liberal Christian myself I legitimately rolled my eyes at the woman.

I'm usually not one to tell someone whether they're Christian or not, but since orange fuckface got into power, I have no shame anymore. I knew many used the label of Christianity to cover up their bigoted views but it's like you won't be accepted for respecting a man who is literally satan!!!

Also not sure where to post this but funny or die did a video about the Trumpcare bill to the tune of I'm just a bill from school rock.

http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/b444

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I wish CNN would stop featuring Jeffrey Lord and Kayleigh McEnany: "CNN’s Jeffrey Lord outdoes himself in defending Trump’s CNN-beating tweet"

Spoiler

CNN’s Kayleigh McEnany, a die-hard Trump supporter, had a predictable approach to defending the president’s Sunday-morning tweet depicting something of a beat-down against CNN:

...

“It was just a joke,” said McEnany of an edited WWE video showing the president of the United States raining haymakers on a man wearing a CNN logo on his head.

Garden-variety apologism.

A more cerebral and yet utterly wacko form of apologism comes from McEnany’s fellow CNN Trumpite Jeffrey Lord, who appeared on the network Sunday evening in defense of the president. To tee up Lord’s comments, CNN host Boris Sanchez showed video of Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) saying that he didn’t believe that some of the president’s Twitter work “is setting the right example for my kids.”

So Sanchez asked Lord: Is President Trump setting a proper example for the children?

Lord was ready, and there must be no abridgment of this historic moment:

I know Lee Zeldin, I have a lot of respect for him. I just disagree with him. And I just want to say that the logic here, that this could result in violence against journalists. Let’s just flip this. Let’s just wonder. I mean, CNN, and I don’t want to pick on CNN — The Washington Post, the New York Times, the liberal media in general — gives air time to Democrats who say that the Republican health-care plan is going to kill millions of people. As a result, if you’re going to follow this logic, Congressman Steve Scalise has been shot and almost killed. Is that CNN’s fault? No, of course not. That’s ridiculous. Is that the fault of The Washington Post or the New York Times? By their logic, yes! But I would suggest no. And I think that they need to stop this and understand that the First Amendment gives everybody the right to say their piece, including presidential spokespeople, the president of the United States himself. Period.

Bolding inserted to make a point: There’s no logic whatsoever in Lord’s argument. Was he really trying to cite a fake, hypothetical argument a nexus between the the health-care debate and the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) in June at a baseball practice? We may never know.

What we do know is that Anderson Cooper — in a moment of on-air crudeness — was right. If Trump “took a dump on his desk, you’d defend it,” Cooper told Lord in May after news had surfaced that Trump had called former FBI director James B. Comey a “nut job” in a conversation with Russian officials. “I mean, he’s the president of the United States,” Lord told Cooper of Trump’s free reign to say what he wishes.

That Lord cites the First Amendment in defending Trump’s latest anti-media tweet is quite precious. Is this where we are now — saying that the same amendment that protects every last despicable Internet troll also protects the president of the United States? And: No one is claiming that he doesn’t have the constitutional right to express his views, though some have said he may well be violating Twitter’s terms of use (Twitter has cleared the president). That same First Amendment also protects the press, though apparently Trump doesn’t share the sentiment.

There’s some irony in this entire sequence: Trump has been hammering CNN for months and months, calling it “fake news” and escalating his attacks after the network one week ago announced the resignations of three employees after a screwed-up story on a Trump ally. At the same time, CNN is the very network that has done the most to hire and pay commentators such as McEnany and Lord who’ll do anything to defend the president. They churn out just the sort of sycophancy for which the president has repeatedly shown such affinity.

Perhaps he doesn’t appreciate the gesture.

In explaining last week’s resignations, CNN officials declared that the story — which related to Wall Street figure Anthony Scaramucci — didn’t meet the company’s exacting standards and procedures for internal vetting. “Our reputation is everything; that is our currency, and that’s why we have processes in place,” CNN President Jeff Zucker told colleagues after the incident. “If you don’t follow those procedures, you don’t work here, period.” If only Zucker and Co. applied such rigor to the likes of Jeffrey Lord.

Off to send another email to CNN about removing Kayleigh and Jeffrey from their payroll...

[GrumpyGran]

33 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

So I grew up and still live in a predominetly Jewish area, honestly thought this was how life was until I went to college in Virginia. One day I was volunteering with my sorority to pack lunch for a homeless shelter and it was near Christmas time and someone asked a group of us if it was okay if she could write Merry Christmas. This woman went off and was like of course! we need to take Christmas back cause today's society wants to shut us Christians down. As a liberal Christian myself I legitimately rolled my eyes at the woman.

I'm usually not one to tell someone whether they're Christian or not, but since orange fuckface got into power, I have no shame anymore. I knew many used the label of Christianity to cover up their bigoted views but it's like you won't be accepted for respecting a man who is literally satan!!!

Also not sure where to post this but funny or die did a video about the Trumpcare bill to the tune of I'm just a bill from school rock.

http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/b444

 

Yeah, these f**kers have ruined Christmas for me too. I grew up in a very conservative church, not fundie but more legalist and we were not allowed to celebrate Christmas or Easter as religious holidays. Made life in a small southern town all kinds of awkward but making it all about the baby Jesus isn't something I've ever had. If it's your thing, fine, just get the hell out of my face about how I need to greet people during the holidays and why don't I have a nativity scene in my front yard. 'Cause the HOA says no, that's why! LOL, sometimes you gotta love the HOA.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The problem with ‘But Trump’s base loves it!’"

Spoiler

To judge by the unfiltered contents of President Trump’s psyche as expressed through his Twitter feed, there is nothing he cares about more as president of the United States — not health care, not regulation, not taxes, not trade — than his ongoing battles with the news media. And whenever he says or tweets something more appalling than the last thing he said or tweeted, what ensues is a regular and repeated pattern that goes like this:

1. Trump tweets something despicable.
2. Elected Republicans say, “I don’t approve of this.”
3. White House spokespeople offer laughably pathetic defenses of his behavior.
4. Journalists and commentators point out that as vulgar and infantile as Trump is being, his base loves this stuff, and therefore it may be a clever strategy and not just a hypersensitive, insecure man-child having a tantrum.

The latest, of course, is this:

...

The problem with Step 4 of this cycle is twofold. First, by assuming his supporters are in fact a bunch of Cro-Magnon mouth-breathers who grunt in approval at any intimation of violence from their hero, it is deeply condescending. And second, it lets Trump off the hook, in effect excusing whatever he does as long as it can be hypothesized that it will be met with approval by his supporters.

From the beginning of his campaign and continuing into his presidency, Trump created conflict with the media in part as a way of riling up his most ardent fans and in part because it was sincerely felt. We know from numerous biographies and profiles that he has always been obsessed with his news coverage and consumed with slights and affronts. On the campaign trail, this had a ritualistic aspect: At rallies he would point to reporters confined to a fenced-in area and tell the crowd that journalists are the worst people in the world, a bunch of lying jackals out to get him. He once even mocked a disabled reporter who had the temerity to contradict Trump’s lie about thousands of Muslims supposedly celebrating the 9/11 attacks on rooftops in New Jersey. The crowd would boo and jeer, then toss epithets at the reporters as they walked out. It was ugly and disturbing, but while Trump openly advocated violence directed toward protesters, he never explicitly told anyone to beat up a reporter.

Posting this video is as close as he’s come, and there’s no question that there are some Trump supporters who do in fact thrill to the idea of Trump literally beating up reporters, and might even do so themselves if they got the chance. One of them actually did, and he’s now a member of Congress; his unprovoked assault on a journalist was cheered by conservative media figures (see here and here and here).

But when we say that Trump’s base loves this stuff, we should be clear about what we mean when we refer to his “base.” As Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio said:

“They like him, they believe in him, they have not to any large degree been shaken from him, and the more the media attacks him, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy on the side of the Trump supporters who fervently believe the media treat him unfairly.”

However, that may be only partially true. Trump’s approval ratings are down in the 30s, meaning there are quite a few Republicans who voted for him last year but don’t approve of him now. In one recent poll by NPR and PBS, Republicans were evenly split on whether Trump’s use of Twitter is “effective and informative” or “reckless and distracting.” A Fox News poll asking a slightly different question found that 21 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s tweeting, 59 percent said he should be more cautious about it, and 18 percent outright disapprove of it.

So if we say that “Trump’s base” likes what he does with Twitter, we have to acknowledge that the “Trump’s base” we’re referring to is a minority of Republicans. That puts the question of whether this is a clever strategy in a very different light.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t a strategy at all, only that if it is, it’s probably a foolish one. Perhaps the most revealing story about White House thinking of late was this article from Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker after Trump’s repugnant attacks on Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, in which they revealed that “to many inside the White House, as well as outside allies, what looked like a public relations debacle amounted to an abundance of ‘winning.’ ” There was a caveat, however: “Some White House advisers said they were frustrated that the Brzezinski feud … overtook the president’s fight with CNN, which seemed in their eyes to have clearer villains and heroes.”

Soak that in for a moment — they were worried that his feud with the hosts of “Morning Joe” might distract from his far more productive and important feud with CNN. We should remember that the next time anyone suggests that the Trump White House is staffed by shrewd operators who know what they’re doing.

But more importantly, if you react to the latest vile Trump tweet with “Whatever else you want to say about it, Trump’s base loves it,” you’re excusing his behavior. You’re putting it into a value-free context where the only thing that matters is whether it works. It probably doesn’t work, but even if it did, the president of the United States is sending out videos created by racist Reddit trolls that fantasize violence against the news media. That’s what’s important here, and if you don’t acknowledge that central and horrifying fact, you’re doing everyone a disservice.

Yeah, I'm not excusing his behavior, but the BTs just eat it up. Maybe that's condescending, but they do love his crap.

[GrumpyGran]

38 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"The problem with ‘But Trump’s base loves it!’"

  Reveal hidden contents

To judge by the unfiltered contents of President Trump’s psyche as expressed through his Twitter feed, there is nothing he cares about more as president of the United States — not health care, not regulation, not taxes, not trade — than his ongoing battles with the news media. And whenever he says or tweets something more appalling than the last thing he said or tweeted, what ensues is a regular and repeated pattern that goes like this:

1. Trump tweets something despicable.
2. Elected Republicans say, “I don’t approve of this.”
3. White House spokespeople offer laughably pathetic defenses of his behavior.
4. Journalists and commentators point out that as vulgar and infantile as Trump is being, his base loves this stuff, and therefore it may be a clever strategy and not just a hypersensitive, insecure man-child having a tantrum.

The latest, of course, is this:

...

The problem with Step 4 of this cycle is twofold. First, by assuming his supporters are in fact a bunch of Cro-Magnon mouth-breathers who grunt in approval at any intimation of violence from their hero, it is deeply condescending. And second, it lets Trump off the hook, in effect excusing whatever he does as long as it can be hypothesized that it will be met with approval by his supporters.

From the beginning of his campaign and continuing into his presidency, Trump created conflict with the media in part as a way of riling up his most ardent fans and in part because it was sincerely felt. We know from numerous biographies and profiles that he has always been obsessed with his news coverage and consumed with slights and affronts. On the campaign trail, this had a ritualistic aspect: At rallies he would point to reporters confined to a fenced-in area and tell the crowd that journalists are the worst people in the world, a bunch of lying jackals out to get him. He once even mocked a disabled reporter who had the temerity to contradict Trump’s lie about thousands of Muslims supposedly celebrating the 9/11 attacks on rooftops in New Jersey. The crowd would boo and jeer, then toss epithets at the reporters as they walked out. It was ugly and disturbing, but while Trump openly advocated violence directed toward protesters, he never explicitly told anyone to beat up a reporter.

Posting this video is as close as he’s come, and there’s no question that there are some Trump supporters who do in fact thrill to the idea of Trump literally beating up reporters, and might even do so themselves if they got the chance. One of them actually did, and he’s now a member of Congress; his unprovoked assault on a journalist was cheered by conservative media figures (see here and here and here).

But when we say that Trump’s base loves this stuff, we should be clear about what we mean when we refer to his “base.” As Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio said:

“They like him, they believe in him, they have not to any large degree been shaken from him, and the more the media attacks him, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy on the side of the Trump supporters who fervently believe the media treat him unfairly.”

However, that may be only partially true. Trump’s approval ratings are down in the 30s, meaning there are quite a few Republicans who voted for him last year but don’t approve of him now. In one recent poll by NPR and PBS, Republicans were evenly split on whether Trump’s use of Twitter is “effective and informative” or “reckless and distracting.” A Fox News poll asking a slightly different question found that 21 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s tweeting, 59 percent said he should be more cautious about it, and 18 percent outright disapprove of it.

So if we say that “Trump’s base” likes what he does with Twitter, we have to acknowledge that the “Trump’s base” we’re referring to is a minority of Republicans. That puts the question of whether this is a clever strategy in a very different light.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t a strategy at all, only that if it is, it’s probably a foolish one. Perhaps the most revealing story about White House thinking of late was this article from Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker after Trump’s repugnant attacks on Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, in which they revealed that “to many inside the White House, as well as outside allies, what looked like a public relations debacle amounted to an abundance of ‘winning.’ ” There was a caveat, however: “Some White House advisers said they were frustrated that the Brzezinski feud … overtook the president’s fight with CNN, which seemed in their eyes to have clearer villains and heroes.”

Soak that in for a moment — they were worried that his feud with the hosts of “Morning Joe” might distract from his far more productive and important feud with CNN. We should remember that the next time anyone suggests that the Trump White House is staffed by shrewd operators who know what they’re doing.

But more importantly, if you react to the latest vile Trump tweet with “Whatever else you want to say about it, Trump’s base loves it,” you’re excusing his behavior. You’re putting it into a value-free context where the only thing that matters is whether it works. It probably doesn’t work, but even if it did, the president of the United States is sending out videos created by racist Reddit trolls that fantasize violence against the news media. That’s what’s important here, and if you don’t acknowledge that central and horrifying fact, you’re doing everyone a disservice.

Yeah, I'm not excusing his behavior, but the BTs just eat it up. Maybe that's condescending, but they do love his crap.

Can we replace "...but his base loves it!" with "Yep, unfortunately still a few million Americans who condone childish and undignified behavior. Sad for those around them." Because I'd like more clarity in my news,too.

The way I see it, his base that remains is actually an interesting mix of two groups: those who bullied and want to keep bullying, and those who were bullied and need to get revenge, by bullying. I think most who bullied, or were a victim of it, find a way to move on, redeeming themselves or forgiving and finding self-worth that heals them. These Trump die-hards haven't accomplished this. And what better way to bully  than Twitter. No need for meaningful discourse, just hurling insults back and forth. He's the Head Bully.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why Trump wants a war on the media"

Spoiler

President Trump’s latest salvo in his anti-media campaign is a doctored video clip posted to his personal Twitter account showing him beating up a man with a CNN logo on his face.  The tweet has drawn predictable outcries: “It’s not just anti-CNN. It’s anti-freedom of the press,” said CNN political analyst and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein on Sunday. Ana Navarro, an ABC and CNN commentator, also criticized Trump’s tweet as “an incitement to violence. He is going to get someone killed in the media.”

What do we have on our hands? A budding authoritarian who is resorting to demagogic assaults to manipulate news coverage of his administration? Or are we talking about a 71-year-old president who, in terms of emotional growth process, is stuck in his adolescent years — hence his juvenile Twitter behavior.

It’s none of that.

There is a strategic calculation to Trump’s war on the press. I covered this ground in a post blog nearly six months ago [“Trump’s war on the press is a strategic calculation,” Feb 21]. It’s territory worth trodding again in light of his relentless attacks.

Trump regards the mainstream media as rivals — dangerous adversaries that stand between him and what he wants to achieve.

In the world of Trump, only his version ought to be told. White House stand-ins, such as Kellyanne Conway, believe administration-spun stories and press releases should be treated as gospel. Hence the media earns their wrath because, except for one cable network, the Fourth Estate doesn’t do Trump’s bidding.

We are, after all watchdogs, not lap dogs.

But, to Trump, we are the enemy. It follows, therefore, that we must be brought down, especially in the public’s eye.

That means denigrating and defaming the media so that, regardless of the evidence, the public summarily dismisses our reporting and analyses.

Denouncing us as the “most dishonest human beings on earth” and “scum” while repeatedly declaring “the news is fake,” aren’t off-the-cuff invectives.

These are essential weapons in his war arsenal. It’s called branding. And it worked like a charm for Trump during the election cycle.

A New York Times riveting account of Trump’s lesson on branding is worth repeating.

“You know, you have to brand people a certain way when they’re your opponents,” Trump told an outdoor rally in Boca Raton, Fla., in March 2016.

“Lyin’ Ted,” Trump said to the audience about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), spelling it out letter by letter: “L-Y-I-N-apostrophe.” “We can’t say it the right way,” he explained. “We’ve got to go — Lyin’! Lyin’ Ted.”

He held up Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as another example. “Little Marco,” he called him. Then Trump spelled out his preferred nickname for his opponent: “L-I-D-D-L-E. Liddle, Liddle, Liddle Marco.”

He branded Jeb Bush as “low energy.”

“We started off with 17 people who were up on this stage,” Trump reminded the crowd. They were all favored, he said. “’Now,’ he finished with a flourish, as the crowd roared, ‘Trump is favored.'”

“But you’ve got to brand people,” he told the crowd.

Remember the “crooked Hillary” branding iron that Trump kept applying to Hillary Clinton? It stuck.

Think about Trump’s belittling of the intelligence community’s work, and his questioning of their motives? Notice how it coincided with intelligence community reports concerning Russian interference and influence in our presidential election. That was Trump at work, branding and degrading.

That is what Trump’s disparagement of the media is all about — to take us out before the in-depth reporting on him and his administration really sinks in. Make no mistake: Whether launched by tweet or in rallies or on talk shows, Trump’s media assaults, personal attacks and harassment aren’t unplanned.

Our response should be no less deliberate.

Just do our jobs. That means providing nothing less than blanket coverage of Donald Trump. Count on the public to ferret out the facts about what is positive and responsible, and what is reckless, foul and untrustworthy, about the current White House.

Persistent, nonstop reporting may drive Trump out of his mind, but, tweets be damned: The public trust deserves no less.

I agree with this editorial. It is imperative for the media to keep reporting on the TT crap. We have to remember every day that this isn't normal.

[onekidanddone]

Good for Maryland, but Larry dear, you are looking like a one term wonder.  Shit if Mississippi can stand up to TT why cant you?

Maryland joins states that won’t give data to Trump’s election commission

ETA:  I should have put this in the Governors thread, but too late now 

Quote

Maryland will not provide data on the state’s registered voters to President Trump’s election commission, a top state elections official said Monday, joining more than two dozen other states that have partially or entirely rejected the request.

“Disclosure of some of the information encompassed by your request may be prohibited under State and/or federal law,” Linda H. Lamone, the state administrator for the State Board of Elections, wrote in a letter sent Monday to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. “Accordingly, I am denying your request.”

The commission, which is chaired by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), asked states to provide voter names, dates of birth, portions of Social Security numbers, voting histories and, if possible, party identifications as part of a broad inquiry in Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election.

The Maryland elections board sought advice from state Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) on how to respond to what elections experts called an unprecedented request. The commission also asked states for evidence of voter fraud, convictions for election-related crimes and recommendations for preventing voter intimidation — all within 16 days.

Frosh, who last month filed a lawsuit against the president alleging that payments by foreign governments to Trump’s businesses violate the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, called the commission’s request a “repugnant” maneuver to “intimidate voters and to indulge President Trump’s fantasy that he won the popular vote.”

He said two assistant attorneys general in his office determined that the request was prohibited by Maryland law.

“Repeating incessantly a false story of expansive voter fraud, and then creating a commission to fuel that narrative, does not make it any more true,” Frosh said in a statement. “There is no evidence that the integrity of the 2016 election in Maryland — or any other state — was compromised by voter fraud.”

In neighboring Virginia, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) declared Thursday that he had “no intention of honoring this request.”

“Virginia conducts fair, honest and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia,” McAuliffe said.

Trump responded to the backlash from states on Saturday, tweeting, “What are they trying to hide?”

Both Common Cause Maryland and the ACLU of Maryland had raised questions about turning over the data.

Damon Effingham, legal and policy director for Common Cause Maryland, said Maryland law allows only registered state voters to make a request to inspect voter roll information. The voter has to submit a statement that the information will not be used for commercial purposes or purposes unrelated to the electoral process.

“Secretary of State Kobach is a registered voter in Kansas,” Effingham said in a statement. “And the request . . . does not include any indication of how the data will be used, let alone the required statement of intent under Maryland law. In fact, the Commission has stated its intent to release this vast trove of data to the public, creating significant concerns with how that data will ultimately be used.”

Frosh called on Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and state elections officials to speak out against the commission’s effort and any other attempt to “intimidate voters and obtain their personal information.” Hogan so far has not done so.

A Hogan spokeswoman, Amelia Chasse, indicated last week that it was not the governor’s role to make a decision on the request.

After the state board’s decision became public Monday, Hogan spokesman Doug Mayer said the governor agreed with the decision. “As for any such request, the state Board of Elections should supply no more information than is required of them under the law,” Mayer said in an email.

Ben Jealous, one of several Democrats vying for the nomination to challenge Hogan in 2018, joined community leaders in Baltimore at a news conference Monday morning to urge Hogan to condemn what Jealous called an attack to suppress votes.

“We have others who have said, ‘Go jump in the gulf’,” said Jealous, a former head of the NAACP. “Instead, we are stuck with a governor who is painfully silent, one who tries to pawn it off.”

 

 

[Howl]

I am just shitting bricks over this voters data.  One of the reasons that Donald Trump is our president is Jared Kushner's brilliant application of demographic targeting of social media in a very fine grained way.  This database will be a treasure trove of data to be misused for just this purpose, as well as to more effectively gerrymander even more districts across the country. 

[47of74]

9 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 Yup. In my local newspaper, the folks who throw the biggest fits about political correctness are the same ones who are furious whenever someone criticizes or protests against Trump. We all know that it has nothing to do with preserving free speech for everyone, they are just mad that they can't use an assortment of slurs anymore in polite company. If Trump said that he'd come up with a plan to somehow restrict the 1st Amendment to only his supporters, they'd be totally on board with that. 

Yeah we've got those kinds of guys too who whine all day long about political correctness - whose main beef is that they can't use the N word or other various ethnic, religious, or homophobic slurs in public anymore.  These guys are the kind who thinks when a private company fires one of their fellow travelers for calling someone the N word on social media, or asks them to leave their property, and so on that it's a first amendment violation.  These are the same guys who love to bash others over the head with the Constitution when it serves their purposes then turn around and wipe their asses with it two seconds later.

[GreyhoundFan]

Politico published a good article about the whole election "integrity" commission: "What Is Kris Kobach Up To?"

Spoiler

When President Donald Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, sent a letter to every state in the country on Thursday requesting “publicly available voter roll data,” Delbert Hosemann, the Republican secretary of state from Mississippi, responded simply: “Go jump in the Gulf.”

The letter that evoked Hosemann’s colorful retort was sent under the signature of the commission’s vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of only a few public figures to embrace the president’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud—the combating of which is the commission’s ostensible mission. In addition to all publicly available data on the states’ voter rolls, it also asked for data that are rarely considered to be public election records, such as information about felony convictions and the last four digits of the voter's Social Security number.

I’ve been studying America’s election administration since 2000, and I’ve rarely seen a firestorm like this. A few states have responded to Kobach’s letter with fiery opposition, such as California Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s statement that he refused to “legitimize” its work by contributing his state’s voter file. Others, like Hosemann, have used the request to remind Washington of the states’ pre-eminent role in running elections. But most states have approached the Kobach letter as a standard public records request, supplying the data they would supply anyone else who asked—sometimes for the required $12,500 fee, as in Wisconsin.

The form of the voter list request suggests Kobach is hoping to build a national voter registration list—a massive database consisting of every voter in the United States and their voting history over the past 10 years. The letter didn’t state this as the reason, but the consensus within the election administration community is that Kobach wants to conduct a huge data-matching project, to see how many noncitizens have voted in recent elections and to see how many people have voted twice in the same election.

These assumptions are based on Kobach’s reputation for his dogged determination that double-voting and noncitizen voting be eradicated in Kansas. He also has been an indefatigable advocate of the interstate crosscheck program, a Kansas-based program that facilitates the cross-state matching of voter lists. During the presidential transition, Kobach was photographed walking into a meeting with Donald Trump with talking points under his arm that revealed plans to “stop aliens from voting.”

If Kobach’s goal was to create a super crosscheck program, he would have been disappointed, even if every state had complied. His letter requests data that are ill-suited for accurate matching. Not only are the matching methods that are likely to be employed poorly suited to producing accurate results, the Department of Homeland Security immigration dataset, which might provide some information about the presence of noncitizens on voter rolls, can’t be searched by name.

Therefore, the data requested by the commission will leave unsatisfied anyone who has a serious interest in how much double-voting or noncitizen voting there actually is in the United States. Most likely, the results of low-quality matches using the voter files that do arrive will significantly overstate the amount of double voting and voting by noncitizens. If a poor match occurs, the list maintenance programs of the states will be unfairly impugned, lowering the confidence of voters for no good reason. This is why no one I have talked to who runs elections, Democrat or Republican, is happy with Kobach’s request.

On top of concerns about the quality and use of the data, the Kobach letter raises a passel of privacy issues. How will the data base be housed and protected? Will the resulting national voter file be subject to federal FOIA requests? Will those requests be granted based on state or federal laws? Will the match lists that are produced be public documents?

And there are other important questions raised by the Pence Commission’s charge. Trump has insisted that millions of noncitizens voted in the 2016 election. Few experts agree it’s that high, but what is the real number?

Because the U.S. uses the honor system (backed up by felony sanctions) to police its citizenship requirement to vote, it’s reasonable to ask how well that honor system is working. Of course, we already have some idea of the answer to this question. The best evidence suggests that a tiny fraction of votes are cast by noncitizens.

Ohio’s recent experience is typical. In February 2017, John Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state, announced that his staff had uncovered 821 noncitizens on Ohio’s voter rolls, including 126 who had cast a ballot in at least one election. These numbers are greater than zero, but they are tiny by any standard in a state that saw 5.6 million people vote in 2016.

Still, it would be good to be able to perform high-quality matches of state voter rolls against DHS immigration databases to allow states to have the best information at their disposal to update their rolls.

A well-designed system to better understand how many noncitizens are on the voter rolls requires a system composed of three elements: precise data; methods that accurately match individuals across datasets; and safeguards that respect individual privacy.

The Kobach letter makes reference to none of this.

It’s instructive to compare the Pence Commission with the last presidential election reform group, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which was appointed almost exactly four years ago, in response to the long lines that bedeviled voters in 2012. The PCEA, also known as the Bauer-Ginsberg Commission, operated in a meticulous, bipartisan fashion. Just as important, it respected the wisdom of state and local election officials. Many of its most important findings—such as the “impending crisis” of aging voting systems—bubbled up from these officials as the PCEA went on a nationwide listening tour and solicited written and oral testimony from many sources.

Taking a page from the Bauer-Ginsberg Commission, the Pence Commission could have made much more progress toward uncovering problems related to multiple voting and noncitizen voting if it had first asked the states and localities what they thought. What procedures do they currently undertake to maintain their rolls? What evidence do they have that double voting and noncitizen voting are problems in their states? What is their experience with the programs that exist to help states address these issues, such as the interstate cross-check program and the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC)?

After hearing from the states, the Pence Commission then would be in a solid position to ask states whether they would participate in a program of cross-state matching the Commission would sponsor. Or, it might discover that the states are already on the case.

One thing I am sure the Pence Commission would hear—and is likely to hear anyway—is that many states would like better access to the data contained in the DHS immigration database called SAVE. I have heard frustration about this from both Democratic and Republican election administrators. Currently, states have access to SAVE, but the problem with the system is that it wasn’t designed to search for people by name, only by alien registration number. (This is a common problem of trying to repurpose for election administration reasons a database that was designed for another purpose.) So it’s useful only if you already know someone is a noncitizen or is naturalized. It’s useless for spotting noncitizens inadvertently showing up on voter rolls.

Kobach is a controversial figure in election administration, which is illustrated by the negative reactions from his colleagues on both sides of the aisle to his request. This negative reaction is not evidence, as Trump’s recent tweet suggests, that the states are trying to hide something. Quite the opposite. There’s a large political middle in the election administration community that recognizes the value of database matching for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of the voter registration system.

Database matching protocols can be designed so that they comply with the safeguards of the National Voter Registration Act, thus keeping the path to the ballot box clear for all eligible voters while closing the door to ineligibles. The process can be effective if good data, good protocols, and attention to privacy are accounted for from the start. The election administration community will be watching carefully to see if the Pence Commission can learn from its stumble out of the gate.

Short answer to the article title: Kobach is up to no good.

[47of74]

Yeah, this was Donnie Dumbfuck's response to the test by North Korea today.

Gee Donnie, I dunno...Do you have anything better to do with your life?  Like not being such a dipshit on the Twitters?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Our #FakeHero president is an insult to our Founders"

Spoiler

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were highly imperfect men. Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Southerners were rank hypocrites for declaring “all men are created equal” while owning men, women and children as their slaves. John Adams was sour and disputatious, and later as president would sign the Sedition Act cracking down on criticism of the government. John Hancock was accused of amassing his fortune through smuggling. Benjamin Franklin could have been described as kind of a dirty old man.

Yet they laid out a set of principles, later codified in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that transcended their flaws. At this bizarre moment in our history, it is useful to remember that the ideas and institutions of the American experiment are much more powerful and enduring than the idiosyncrasies of our leaders.

I call this moment bizarre for obvious reasons. As Thomas Paine would write in December 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

We have a president who neither understands nor respects the basic norms of American democracy. Make no mistake: Donald Trump is a true aberration. There is no figure like him in U.S. history, for which we should be thankful.

Trump’s inexperience is unique; he is the only president never to have served in government or the military. This weakness is exponentially compounded by his ignorance of both policy and process, his lack of curiosity, his inability to focus and his tremendous insecurity. He refuses to acknowledge his shortcomings, let alone come to terms with them; and he desperately craves the kind of sycophantic adulation that George Washington, a genuine hero, pointedly rejected.

Trump is a #FakeHero. He strings along his supporters with promises he has no idea how to keep. Like many a would-be strongman before him, he defines himself politically by the fights he picks; he erects straw men — faceless “elites,” cable television hosts, Muslims, Mexicans, nonexistent individuals or groups waging an imaginary “war on Christmas” — because authoritarians always need enemies. Yet his ego is a delicate hothouse flower, threatened by the slightest puff of criticism.

The Founders, mindful of their own faults, ultimately designed a system to contain a rogue president. They limited his elective term to four years, gave checking and balancing powers to the legislative and judicial branches, and designed impeachment as a last-ditch remedy. The Trump presidency compels all of us to be mindful of our constitutional duties.

The role of the citizenry — to express approval or disapproval at the ballot box — includes making sure that suffrage is not selectively and unfairly denied by restrictive voter-ID laws or partisan purges of the voter rolls. It is heartening that red states have joined blue in resisting the attempt by Trump’s trumped-up “voter fraud” commission to assemble a national list of voters. Perhaps some future administration could be trusted to make sense of our confusing patchwork of voting systems. This one can’t.

Congress must assert its powers of oversight. One reason the signers of the Declaration gathered in Philadelphia to pledge “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to the cause of independence was that they saw the mingling of royal power and British commercial interests as corrupt. We now have a president whose far-flung business empire — which he has refused to divest, and which his family still operates — presents myriad potential conflicts of interest. Trump has deepened the swamp, not drained it; and Congress has a duty to sort through the muck.

Congress must also let Trump know, in no uncertain terms, that any attempt to impede or disrupt special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian election meddling will have the gravest consequences. Trump should be told that firing Mueller would automatically be considered grounds for impeachment.

The justices of the Supreme Court, meanwhile, should study the court’s decisions in United States v. Nixon, which forced Richard Nixon to turn over his White House tapes; and Bush v. Gore, which halted the 2000 vote recount in Florida. Both were instances wherein the court, which rightly shies away from decisions that determine who occupies the presidency, felt it had no choice but to act. It is no stretch to imagine that Trump’s contempt for the Constitution will once again force the court’s hand.

The Fourth of July is no day for despair. It’s a day to remember that our system, though vulnerable to a charlatan such as Trump, is robust and resilient. Eventually he will be tossed or voted out. And the star-spangled banner yet will wave.

I'm trying to keep the last paragraph in mind on this Fourth of July.

[Gobsmacked]

16 hours ago, IrishCarrie said:

I was skimming through the Irish newspapers online today and saw a headline about Trump possibly coming to visit Ireland sometime in the next year.

Initial reaction: Rage. Full on and instant, like a red mist descending. That FUCKER thinking he's welcome here?? No way!!

Second reaction: It's probably just bullshit anyway. He's saving face because he knows he'll meet protests and ridicule if he tries to go to the UK, so he's turning his attention to Ireland instead. Although our bullshit spineless government will probably line up to kiss his arse.

Third reaction: If he comes, I'll march. I'll make a banner and dress up and wait/walk for miles, as long as it takes. Swearing it right here, right now. I don't do bibles but I'm swearing it on the bag of peanut M&Ms I'm currently eating.

And after going through the full range of emotion from fury right across to gleeful anticipation of a fun day out, I was EXHAUSTED!!

And you guys go through this every day........

 

I read about his supposed intended visit yesterday. I will march at short notice. Haven't marched since Thatcher and the miners strikes. Hopefully people all over the UK will march. 

[Howl]

@IrishCarrie and @Gobsmacked, and every Irish person: make your intentions clear.  Trump does NOT like a negative response from people.  Only adulation is allowed; adoration is not enough for this gobshite.  If he thinks he will risk being exposed to large and very irate groups of people who don't think he's wonderful,  he may not come to your country.  

[47of74]

9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Our #FakeHero president is an insult to our Founders"

  Hide contents

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were highly imperfect men. Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Southerners were rank hypocrites for declaring “all men are created equal” while owning men, women and children as their slaves. John Adams was sour and disputatious, and later as president would sign the Sedition Act cracking down on criticism of the government. John Hancock was accused of amassing his fortune through smuggling. Benjamin Franklin could have been described as kind of a dirty old man.

Yet they laid out a set of principles, later codified in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that transcended their flaws. At this bizarre moment in our history, it is useful to remember that the ideas and institutions of the American experiment are much more powerful and enduring than the idiosyncrasies of our leaders.

I call this moment bizarre for obvious reasons. As Thomas Paine would write in December 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

We have a president who neither understands nor respects the basic norms of American democracy. Make no mistake: Donald Trump is a true aberration. There is no figure like him in U.S. history, for which we should be thankful.

Trump’s inexperience is unique; he is the only president never to have served in government or the military. This weakness is exponentially compounded by his ignorance of both policy and process, his lack of curiosity, his inability to focus and his tremendous insecurity. He refuses to acknowledge his shortcomings, let alone come to terms with them; and he desperately craves the kind of sycophantic adulation that George Washington, a genuine hero, pointedly rejected.

Trump is a #FakeHero. He strings along his supporters with promises he has no idea how to keep. Like many a would-be strongman before him, he defines himself politically by the fights he picks; he erects straw men — faceless “elites,” cable television hosts, Muslims, Mexicans, nonexistent individuals or groups waging an imaginary “war on Christmas” — because authoritarians always need enemies. Yet his ego is a delicate hothouse flower, threatened by the slightest puff of criticism.

The Founders, mindful of their own faults, ultimately designed a system to contain a rogue president. They limited his elective term to four years, gave checking and balancing powers to the legislative and judicial branches, and designed impeachment as a last-ditch remedy. The Trump presidency compels all of us to be mindful of our constitutional duties.

The role of the citizenry — to express approval or disapproval at the ballot box — includes making sure that suffrage is not selectively and unfairly denied by restrictive voter-ID laws or partisan purges of the voter rolls. It is heartening that red states have joined blue in resisting the attempt by Trump’s trumped-up “voter fraud” commission to assemble a national list of voters. Perhaps some future administration could be trusted to make sense of our confusing patchwork of voting systems. This one can’t.

Congress must assert its powers of oversight. One reason the signers of the Declaration gathered in Philadelphia to pledge “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to the cause of independence was that they saw the mingling of royal power and British commercial interests as corrupt. We now have a president whose far-flung business empire — which he has refused to divest, and which his family still operates — presents myriad potential conflicts of interest. Trump has deepened the swamp, not drained it; and Congress has a duty to sort through the muck.

Congress must also let Trump know, in no uncertain terms, that any attempt to impede or disrupt special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian election meddling will have the gravest consequences. Trump should be told that firing Mueller would automatically be considered grounds for impeachment.

The justices of the Supreme Court, meanwhile, should study the court’s decisions in United States v. Nixon, which forced Richard Nixon to turn over his White House tapes; and Bush v. Gore, which halted the 2000 vote recount in Florida. Both were instances wherein the court, which rightly shies away from decisions that determine who occupies the presidency, felt it had no choice but to act. It is no stretch to imagine that Trump’s contempt for the Constitution will once again force the court’s hand.

The Fourth of July is no day for despair. It’s a day to remember that our system, though vulnerable to a charlatan such as Trump, is robust and resilient. Eventually he will be tossed or voted out. And the star-spangled banner yet will wave.

I'm trying to keep the last paragraph in mind on this Fourth of July.

The following is my personal fourth of July message to Agent Orange and every last one of his damn groupies;

Kindly go off and perform a sex act on yourself at your earliest possible convenience.

Sincerely,
Me.

[CTRLZero]

12 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Gee Donnie, I dunno...Do you have anything better to do with your life?  Like not being such a dipshit on the Twitters?

I couldn't believe the Twitter poke at North Korea by our feckless leader.  This is what passes as diplomacy now, with Trump's apologists bowing and scraping after him.  Hope it doesn't get us all irradiated. 

[GrumpyGran]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Politico published a good article about the whole election "integrity" commission: "What Is Kris Kobach Up To?"

  Reveal hidden contents

When President Donald Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, sent a letter to every state in the country on Thursday requesting “publicly available voter roll data,” Delbert Hosemann, the Republican secretary of state from Mississippi, responded simply: “Go jump in the Gulf.”

The letter that evoked Hosemann’s colorful retort was sent under the signature of the commission’s vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of only a few public figures to embrace the president’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud—the combating of which is the commission’s ostensible mission. In addition to all publicly available data on the states’ voter rolls, it also asked for data that are rarely considered to be public election records, such as information about felony convictions and the last four digits of the voter's Social Security number.

I’ve been studying America’s election administration since 2000, and I’ve rarely seen a firestorm like this. A few states have responded to Kobach’s letter with fiery opposition, such as California Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s statement that he refused to “legitimize” its work by contributing his state’s voter file. Others, like Hosemann, have used the request to remind Washington of the states’ pre-eminent role in running elections. But most states have approached the Kobach letter as a standard public records request, supplying the data they would supply anyone else who asked—sometimes for the required $12,500 fee, as in Wisconsin.

The form of the voter list request suggests Kobach is hoping to build a national voter registration list—a massive database consisting of every voter in the United States and their voting history over the past 10 years. The letter didn’t state this as the reason, but the consensus within the election administration community is that Kobach wants to conduct a huge data-matching project, to see how many noncitizens have voted in recent elections and to see how many people have voted twice in the same election.

These assumptions are based on Kobach’s reputation for his dogged determination that double-voting and noncitizen voting be eradicated in Kansas. He also has been an indefatigable advocate of the interstate crosscheck program, a Kansas-based program that facilitates the cross-state matching of voter lists. During the presidential transition, Kobach was photographed walking into a meeting with Donald Trump with talking points under his arm that revealed plans to “stop aliens from voting.”

If Kobach’s goal was to create a super crosscheck program, he would have been disappointed, even if every state had complied. His letter requests data that are ill-suited for accurate matching. Not only are the matching methods that are likely to be employed poorly suited to producing accurate results, the Department of Homeland Security immigration dataset, which might provide some information about the presence of noncitizens on voter rolls, can’t be searched by name.

Therefore, the data requested by the commission will leave unsatisfied anyone who has a serious interest in how much double-voting or noncitizen voting there actually is in the United States. Most likely, the results of low-quality matches using the voter files that do arrive will significantly overstate the amount of double voting and voting by noncitizens. If a poor match occurs, the list maintenance programs of the states will be unfairly impugned, lowering the confidence of voters for no good reason. This is why no one I have talked to who runs elections, Democrat or Republican, is happy with Kobach’s request.

On top of concerns about the quality and use of the data, the Kobach letter raises a passel of privacy issues. How will the data base be housed and protected? Will the resulting national voter file be subject to federal FOIA requests? Will those requests be granted based on state or federal laws? Will the match lists that are produced be public documents?

And there are other important questions raised by the Pence Commission’s charge. Trump has insisted that millions of noncitizens voted in the 2016 election. Few experts agree it’s that high, but what is the real number?

Because the U.S. uses the honor system (backed up by felony sanctions) to police its citizenship requirement to vote, it’s reasonable to ask how well that honor system is working. Of course, we already have some idea of the answer to this question. The best evidence suggests that a tiny fraction of votes are cast by noncitizens.

Ohio’s recent experience is typical. In February 2017, John Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state, announced that his staff had uncovered 821 noncitizens on Ohio’s voter rolls, including 126 who had cast a ballot in at least one election. These numbers are greater than zero, but they are tiny by any standard in a state that saw 5.6 million people vote in 2016.

Still, it would be good to be able to perform high-quality matches of state voter rolls against DHS immigration databases to allow states to have the best information at their disposal to update their rolls.

A well-designed system to better understand how many noncitizens are on the voter rolls requires a system composed of three elements: precise data; methods that accurately match individuals across datasets; and safeguards that respect individual privacy.

The Kobach letter makes reference to none of this.

It’s instructive to compare the Pence Commission with the last presidential election reform group, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which was appointed almost exactly four years ago, in response to the long lines that bedeviled voters in 2012. The PCEA, also known as the Bauer-Ginsberg Commission, operated in a meticulous, bipartisan fashion. Just as important, it respected the wisdom of state and local election officials. Many of its most important findings—such as the “impending crisis” of aging voting systems—bubbled up from these officials as the PCEA went on a nationwide listening tour and solicited written and oral testimony from many sources.

Taking a page from the Bauer-Ginsberg Commission, the Pence Commission could have made much more progress toward uncovering problems related to multiple voting and noncitizen voting if it had first asked the states and localities what they thought. What procedures do they currently undertake to maintain their rolls? What evidence do they have that double voting and noncitizen voting are problems in their states? What is their experience with the programs that exist to help states address these issues, such as the interstate cross-check program and the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC)?

After hearing from the states, the Pence Commission then would be in a solid position to ask states whether they would participate in a program of cross-state matching the Commission would sponsor. Or, it might discover that the states are already on the case.

One thing I am sure the Pence Commission would hear—and is likely to hear anyway—is that many states would like better access to the data contained in the DHS immigration database called SAVE. I have heard frustration about this from both Democratic and Republican election administrators. Currently, states have access to SAVE, but the problem with the system is that it wasn’t designed to search for people by name, only by alien registration number. (This is a common problem of trying to repurpose for election administration reasons a database that was designed for another purpose.) So it’s useful only if you already know someone is a noncitizen or is naturalized. It’s useless for spotting noncitizens inadvertently showing up on voter rolls.

Kobach is a controversial figure in election administration, which is illustrated by the negative reactions from his colleagues on both sides of the aisle to his request. This negative reaction is not evidence, as Trump’s recent tweet suggests, that the states are trying to hide something. Quite the opposite. There’s a large political middle in the election administration community that recognizes the value of database matching for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of the voter registration system.

Database matching protocols can be designed so that they comply with the safeguards of the National Voter Registration Act, thus keeping the path to the ballot box clear for all eligible voters while closing the door to ineligibles. The process can be effective if good data, good protocols, and attention to privacy are accounted for from the start. The election administration community will be watching carefully to see if the Pence Commission can learn from its stumble out of the gate.

Short answer to the article title: Kobach is up to no good.

So my state is "considering" the request now but has stated there will be no release of social security numbers. Party affiliation, that's the real red flag here. Making it easier to gerrymander.

I think all of the states that haven't responded yet are looking for ways to slip out of this. This will not be popular with anyone. Even the staunchest Trump supporters know that once this info is in the hands of the federal government, the cat isn't going back in the bag. And Republicans may not always be in control. They know the information could end up in the hands of Democrats.

They overreached on this one and it's another black eye for him. What is truly mind-boggling at this point is the fact that he simply cannot learn from his mistakes. He has peaked intellectually and emotionally and that happened a long time ago. A president who is incapable of learning a single thing.

[GreyhoundFan]

I thought this was an interesting opinion piece: "Patriotism in the Trump era"

Spoiler

In one of his first official acts upon taking office, President Trump designated the day of his inauguration a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.” While it’s not unusual for incoming presidents to issue symbolic proclamations, Trump’s choice of words reflected the extreme nationalism of a White House that “seriously considered” an inaugural parade with military tanks rolling down the streets of Washington, D.C. “A new national pride stirs the American soul and inspires the American heart,” he proclaimed.

As George Orwell once wrote, however, “Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.” And nearly six months into Trump’s presidency, it seems especially fitting on this Fourth of July to reflect on the meaning of patriotism and to consider how one can be patriotic during such deeply troubling times for the country.

Throughout our history, American patriotism too commonly has been associated with uniform praise for the military and uncritical support for war, along with a visceral belief in America’s “greatness” that provided the rhetorical foundation for Trump’s campaign. Especially in times of conflict — from the Spanish-American War to Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan — those who dare to dissent have frequently met with public scorn and shouts of disloyalty. Protest, too often, has been deemed unpatriotic.

But there is also a different view, which defines patriotism as working to ensure the country lives up to its highest ideals. That view inspired the Nation magazine, which has amplified dissenting voices ever since its founding by abolitionists, to publish a special issue on patriotism for its 125th anniversary in July 1991. As the dust was settling on the Persian Gulf War, dozens of progressive writers, activists, scholars and leaders shared personal reflections on the topic, many of which feel particularly relevant today.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, for example, linked patriotism to the fight against oppression. “America at its best guarantees opportunity,” he argued, “and so fighting to expand the horizons of oppressed people is an act of patriotism.” Noting that real patriotism is not always popular, especially among the elite, he wrote that “true patriots invariably disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, and are persecuted in their lifetimes even as their accomplishments are applauded after their deaths.” And he made it clear that empty displays of patriotism are no substitute for unwavering devotion to progress, saying, “We must never relinquish our sense of justice for a false sense of national pride.”

Similarly, Texas columnist Molly Ivins reminded us that there is more to patriotism than flag-waving and fireworks. “I believe that patriotism is best expressed in our works, not our parades,” she wrote. “We are the heirs of the most magnificent political legacy any people has ever been given. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . ’ It is the constant struggle to protect and enlarge that legacy, to make sure that it applies to all citizens, that patriotism lies.”

Today, that struggle has taken on a renewed sense of urgency. The ongoing efforts to weaken access to health care, gut environmental protections, roll back voting rights, restrict immigration and ban travel from Muslim-majority countries (among other policies) constitute a full-blown assault on the rights to life and liberty envisioned in the Declaration of Independence. For many Americans, the pursuit of happiness is getting harder every day.

Yet in the face of such threats, it is inspiring to see millions of people nationwide engaging in the political process, many for the first time in their lives, and making their voices heard. In the resistance to Trump, we see clearly the resilience that has enabled Americans to overcome dark chapters in our country’s past. In the growing movements demanding justice and equality for all, we see the hard work of patriotism flourishing all around us.

“In times of crisis,” the historian Eric Foner wrote after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, “the most patriotic act of all is the unyielding defense of civil liberties, the right to dissent and equality before the law for all Americans.” This is one of those times.

Definitely food for thought.

[GreyhoundFan]

"What ever happened to Trump TV?"

Spoiler

On a Wednesday night last month in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, it was just like old times for Right Side Broadcasting.

Live on YouTube, hosts Steve Lookner and Liz Willis interviewed people sporting “Make America Great Again” hats, who waited eagerly in line to watch President Trump take the stage at a jam-packed, campaign-style rally. Some of the Trump fans doubled as Right Side fans, and asked Lookner and Willis to pose for selfies in their branded polos.

Once the event started, Right Side streamed Trump's remarks in their entirety, just as it did hundreds of times during a presidential race that vaulted this Auburn, Ala., start-up from Internet obscurity to a media partnership with the Trump campaign.

The president's Facebook page featured Right Side's video feed from Cedar Rapids — and racked up 1.8 million views.

But nights like this one have been rare since Trump pulled off an upset victory in November.

After generating $1.1 million in advertising revenue and donations in 2016, Right Side entertained grand expansion plans. Founder Joe Seales told Business Insider last fall that he wanted to add news shows to his company's YouTube channel and build toward 24-hour programming.

Instead, Right Side has been forced to cut back amid steep revenue declines. A staff of 12 is down to four. Shows hosted by Mike Cernovich, Wayne Dupree, Margaret Howell and Nicholas J. Fuentes have been canceled.

Far from seeing a gusher of donations from energized Trump supporters, Seales said he has been propping up Right Side Broadcasting with money from his own pocket.

“I think a lot of them feel like the mission has been accomplished,” Seales said of the president's backers. “I think that after Trump won, people thought, 'Well, hey, our job is done.' Our donations went down significantly after the campaign. I think everybody sort of has that feeling of, 'Why are you guys still doing this? Trump won.' ”

What if Trump hadn't won? Teaming up with Right Side on webcasts before Election Day fueled speculation that the former reality TV star might launch a television channel, if the vote didn't go his way. When CNN asked campaign chief executive Stephen K. Bannon about the prospect of “Trump TV” in October, the former Breitbart News chairman smiled and said, “Trump is an entrepreneur.”

According to Seales, Right Side never discussed going into business with Trump in the event of a defeat.

“We always kept the door open,” Seales said. “Nothing was ever discussed, but if Trump ever came to us, had he lost, and said, 'Would you be interested?' we'd be foolish not to listen to him because he's a good businessman.”

Seales knew, of course, that Trump's victory meant the billionaire would be otherwise occupied. He also knew that Right Side's No. 1 source of content, rallies, would mostly disappear after Election Day.

Yet he still believed the company could thrive under a Trump presidency, perhaps not as Trump TV in any formal capacity but as an alternative to the mainstream press. Seales figured Right Side would save a lot of money on travel in a non-campaign year. He also “thought we had a good chance of getting in” to cover the White House.

“We had a number of people inside the campaign, now in the administration, who told us they would be able to help us,” Seales said. “I don't want to call anybody out, but we sort of thought we would be in the mix there. They probably had good intentions, and they probably got in and found out things are done a different way. I'm not blaming that for our lack of success. I take responsibility for that, as a business owner.”

“We have pretty much lost touch with everybody in the administration who was in the campaign,” Seales added. “We still have pretty close ties to people who are left over in the campaign that is still operating. We still work with them at each rally.”

Right Side streams White House news briefings using publicly available government footage, but on-camera question-and-answer sessions have become infrequent. The reduction “has hurt us a little bit,” Seales said.

A bigger problem, however, is that popular Right Side videos just aren't bringing in ad money like they used to. Like many YouTube-based companies, Right Side does not sell ads directly but relies on YouTube to place commercial spots on its clips. In March, YouTube adopted a narrower definition of what it calls “advertiser-friendly content.”

As a result, according to Seales, Right Side is getting more and more messages like this one from YouTube:

...

Seales also has observed — as have I — that some YouTube channels appear to pirate TV networks' video feeds of live events featuring Trump administration officials. Seales said he is unwilling to do the same, but integrity has a price.

“We can't compete with that, and these people are presenting themselves as legitimate news channels,” Seales said. “It's really tough for us to contend and play by the rules.”

After holding high hopes for a big year in 2017, Seales now is looking toward 2019, when Trump presumably will return to the campaign trail.

“It's just come to a point where it's hard to justify keeping our operations ongoing the way they have been,” Seales said. “We definitely believe that we have a purpose; it may only be during elections.”

Aw shucks, a leghumper isn't able to make money off his love of Agent Orange. Cry me a freaking river.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Plausible deniability: The drug that President Trump can’t stop abusing"

Spoiler

Plausible deniability is a politician’s best friend. It’s something politicians seek to maintain in all circumstances by giving vanilla statements that offer future wiggle room.

For President Trump, though, plausible deniability is a way of life. The ability to pretend he didn’t actually say what he seems to have just said is something Trump has weaponized and exploited. It’s something he wields against his opponents in an effort to constantly muddy the waters and rally his supporters against a common enemy.

The controversy in recent days over Trump’s tweets shows exactly what he’s doing: He is constantly trolling by saying something highly suggestive — of sexism against Mika Brzezinski or of violence against CNN — and then waits for the media and his opponents to pounce before claiming persecution.

...

Trump is actually pretty good at this. No, I don’t think the strategy is all that effective or fruitful in the grand scheme of things, but he has at least executed his chosen strategy well. Throughout the course of his presidency, he has repeatedly gone right up to the line of doing something he cannot possibly explain, while always leaving himself an out — enough plausible deniability for the people who think he’s great to go right on thinking that.

A few notable examples:

• When he talked with Lester Holt about the Russia investigation and former FBI director James B. Comey, Trump never technically said Russia was the reason he fired Comey — only that the situation was on his mind when he fired Comey. “And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,” Trump said.
• When he tweeted about White House tapes, he never suggested that he personally might have them or recorded anything; he just suggested they might exist. “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump tweeted. Six weeks later, Trump would clarify that he wasn’t talking about his own tapes, but the possibility that someone had them.
• When Trump congratulated himself for influencing Comey’s testimony with his tapes tweet, he suggested only that he got Comey to tell the truth. “But when he found out that I, you know, that there may be tapes out there, whether it’s governmental tapes or anything else, and who knows, I think his story may have changed,” Trump said. “I mean you’ll have to take a look at that, because then he has to tell what actually took place at the events.”

These things get reported as “Trump says he fired Comey because of Russia,” “Trump says he might have tapes of Comey” and “Trump says his tapes threat worked,” when in fact that’s not exactly what Trump said. It’s what he suggested, clearly, but he also gave himself plausible deniability that he wasn’t firing Comey because of Russia or that he wasn’t threatening Comey.

The Brzezinski tweet last week harked back to the Megyn Kelly controversy, in which it was pretty clear Trump was saying something about a woman that he would never say about a man. And the CNN tweet was perhaps the clearest example of this to date: Trump tweeting professional wrestling — which is the definition of fake violence — against a media outlet, and then having his surrogates complain that the media overreacted.

But Trump’s track record in each of these cases is crystal clear. If you say one thing that seems sexist, perhaps it could be misunderstood; when it’s happened over and over again, it’s pretty clear what’s going on. And in a vacuum, Trump’s tweet about CNN would seem somewhat harmless, but this is a president who has repeatedly promoted the prospect of violence at his campaign rallies and verbally attacked reporters, even at one point musing suggestively that he wouldn’t kill journalists. If he didn’t want us to think about violence, he sure has a funny way of showing it.

The big question is whether this is a productive pursuit for Trump. Is trying to get the media and his opponents to overreact helping him succeed with his agenda? Or is it just Trump being Trump, always needing to create the next bit of drama in his reality-TV presidency?

I suspect it’s much more the latter. And the problem with plausible deniability is that it gets much less plausible the more you rely upon it.

I would just love for someone to remove his twitter account at the same time he developed a severe case of laryngitis.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good NYT op-ed: "What’s the Matter With Republicans?"

Spoiler

Over the past two months the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress have proposed a budget and two health care plans that would take benefits away from core Republican constituencies, especially working-class voters. And yet over this time Donald Trump’s approval rating has remained unchanged, at 40 percent. During this period the Republicans have successfully defended a series of congressional seats.

What’s going on? Why do working-class conservatives seem to vote so often against their own economic interests?

My stab at an answer would begin in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many Trump supporters live in places that once were on the edge of the American frontier. Life on that frontier was fragile, perilous, lonely and remorseless. If a single slip could produce disaster, then discipline and self-reliance were essential. The basic pattern of life was an underlying condition of peril, warded off by an ethos of self-restraint, temperance, self-control and strictness of conscience.

Frontier towns sometimes went from boomtown to Bible Belt in a single leap. They started out lawless. People needed to impose codes of respectability to survive. Frontier religions were often ascetic, banning drinking, card-playing and dancing. And yet there was always a whiff of extreme disorder — drunkenness, violence and fraud — threatening from down below.

Today these places are no longer frontier towns, but many of them still exist on the same knife’s edge between traditionalist order and extreme dissolution.

For example, I have a friend who is an avid Trump admirer. He supports himself as a part-time bartender and a part-time home contractor, and by doing various odd jobs on the side. A good chunk of his income is off the books. He has built up a decent savings account, but he has done it on his own, hustling, scrapping his way, without any long-term security. His income can vary sharply from week to week. He doesn’t have much trust in the institutions around him. He has worked on government construction projects but sees himself, rightly, as a small-business man.

This isn’t too different from the hard, independent life on the frontier. Many people in these places tend to see their communities the way foreign policy realists see the world: as an unvarnished struggle for resources — as a tough world, a no-illusions world, a world where conflict is built into the fabric of reality.

The virtues most admired in such places, then and now, are what Shirley Robin Letwin once called the vigorous virtues: “upright, self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, independent minded, loyal to friends and robust against foes.”

The sins that can cause the most trouble are not the social sins — injustice, incivility, etc. They are the personal sins — laziness, self-indulgence, drinking, sleeping around.

Then as now, chaos is always washing up against the door. Very few people actually live up to the code of self-discipline that they preach. A single night of gambling or whatever can produce life-altering bad choices. Moreover, the forces of social disruption are visible on every street: the slackers taking advantage of the disability programs, the people popping out babies, the drug users, the spouse abusers.

Voters in these places could use some help. But these Americans, like most Americans, vote on the basis of their vision of what makes a great nation. These voters, like most voters, believe that the values of the people are the health of the nation.

In their view, government doesn’t reinforce the vigorous virtues. On the contrary, it undermines them — by fostering initiative-sucking dependency, by letting people get away with their mistakes so they can make more of them and by getting in the way of moral formation.

The only way you build up self-reliant virtues, in this view, is through struggle. Yet faraway government experts want to cushion people from the hardships that are the schools of self-reliance. Compassionate government threatens to turn people into snowflakes.

In her book “Strangers in Their Own Land,” the sociologist Arlie Hochschild quotes a woman from Louisiana complaining about the childproof lids on medicine and the mandatory seatbelt laws. “We let them throw lawn darts, smoked alongside them,” the woman says of her children. “And they survived. Now it’s like your kid needs a helmet, knee pads and elbow pads to go down the kiddy slide.”

Hochschild’s humble and important book is a meditation on why working-class conservatives vote against more government programs for themselves. She emphasizes that they perceive government as a corrupt arm used against the little guy. She argues that these voters may vote against their economic interests, but they vote for their emotional interests, for candidates who share their emotions about problems and groups.

I’d say they believe that big government support would provide short-term assistance, but that it would be a long-term poison to the values that are at the core of prosperity. You and I might disagree with that theory. But it’s a plausible theory. Anybody who wants to design policies to help the working class has to make sure they go along the grain of the vigorous virtues, not against them.

 

[AmazonGrace]

On 3.7.2017 at 9:33 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

"The problem with ‘But Trump’s base loves it!’"

  Hide contents

 

Yeah, I'm not excusing his behavior, but the BTs just eat it up. Maybe that's condescending, but they do love his crap.

I just put "but his base loves it" down to "you can con some people all of the time" 

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/03/the-economy-president-trump-loves-looks-a-lot-like-the-one-candidate-trump-hated/?utm_term=.9386ae9ba623

The economy President Trump loves looks a lot like the one candidate Trump hated

By Damian Paletta and Ana Swanson July 3 

TL;DR:

Quote

 Overall, the 362,000 jobs added from March to May are the fewest during a three-month period since mid-2012.

Spoiler

 

Despite bravado and big promises, the economy that President Trump is touting this week looks a lot like the one he lambasted as a candidate: a slow, largely steady grind that has chipped away at the damage done by the 2008-2009 recession but failed to produce the prosperity of decades past.

Now, as he approaches the six-month marker of his presidency, Trump faces several new warning signs that key areas of the economy could be losing steam, including in industries he specifically promised to revitalize.

Meanwhile, the legislative packages that Trump promised would deliver his economic boom, including a rewrite of the nation’s tax code and a massive investment in infrastructure, are nowhere to be seen, languishing in a deadlocked Congress.

“Stock Market at all time high, unemployment at lowest level in years (wages will start going up) and our base has never been stronger!” Trump posted on Twitter on Sunday night. He reiterated the message in another post Monday afternoon: “Really great numbers on jobs & the economy! Things are starting to kick in now, and we have just begun! Don’t like steel & aluminum dumping!”

Indeed, the unemployment rate has dropped from 4.8 percent to 4.3 percent under Trump’s watch, and the stock market is hitting record levels. Business and consumer confidence is high, though both have cooled recently. Companies are announcing plans to expand and add jobs, such as Samsung’s announcement last week that it would add almost 1,000 jobs over the next three years with the construction of a facility in South Carolina.

But there are troubling undercurrents. Automobile sales, the heart of the manufacturing economy, are in a months-long swoon. Both General Motors and Ford on Monday reported that their sales had slid 5 percent in June as the industry’s workers continue to be hit with layoffs. U.S. factory output fell in May, while new orders for durable goods such as furniture, electronics and appliances declined, as well. Construction of new homes fell to an eight-month low.

Overall, the 362,000 jobs added from March to May are the fewest during a three-month period since mid-2012.

“It’s difficult to say the economy is doing well overall,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel Fixed Income. “At this point, we’re still struggling to see a more robust recovery after years and years of lower growth . . . We’re still treading water and struggling to get to that 2 percent [economic growth] on a consistent basis.”

Piegza said she believes there is a sense of “pessimism fatigue . . . There’s a sense where, it’s not fantastic, but this may be as good as it gets, so let’s celebrate mediocrity,” she said.

Caught between Trump’s promises and an unyielding reality, White House officials are highlighting positive economic trends while also urging Congress to enact key parts of their agenda. Top advisers are pushing for an overhaul of the tax code that would slash rates, something the White House says would spur more hiring and investment. They are also trying to design a large-scale infrastructure plan that would rebuild roads, bridges and airports, among other things.

Visible progress on those plans, however, has been near-nonexistent, with Republicans’ summer agenda dominated by disagreements over how to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and looming budget and borrowing crises ready to command Congress’s attention in the fall. Trump has had more success slashing regulations, but that has not had a material impact on hiring and growth, several economists said.

“Optimism and jawboning really can’t significantly alter the fundamental investor realities for these companies,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Firms face difficult hiring and layoff decisions because of weak economic growth, he added.

White House officials believe that for the economy to grow as fast as Trump has promised, Congress will have to move quickly to enact his agenda, including the tax cuts and the infrastructure spending. He is also pushing for new bilateral trade agreements and a widespread reduction in regulations.

Senior administration officials said they are aware of the recent spate of mixed economic data. They are keeping a close eye on whether monthly blips become longer-term strains, several said, though they are still optimistic things are improving.

National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, in a statement to The Washington Post, outlined several positive trends in the economy, including the lower unemployment rate, and said things are improving.

“These are all good trends, but we know there is more work to do, including improving wage growth for hardworking Americans,” he said. “We believe this Administration can help drive a better job environment in this country, and that’s why we’re working every day to address burdensome regulations, reform the tax code and restore our nation’s infrastructure.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, asked Thursday about the restrained economic performance so far, said Trump’s promises will take time to materialize. “That’s not this year,” he said. “That’s not next year. It will take some time to set in.”

The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday projected that the economy would grow just 2.1 percent this year, an increase from last year but far lower than Trump’s goals. It also projected the economy would begin to slow in 2019 and 2020, growing only 1.6 percent in those years.

When he was sworn in Jan. 20, Trump promised to create 25 million jobs over 10 years and grow the economy at 4 percent per year. Advisers have since scaled that goal back to a target of 3 percent growth, a level many economists consider a long shot.

Many economists, as well as Democrats, have questioned whether Trump’s agenda will grow the economy as much as he says. His call for a major tax cut could spur more investing and hiring, as his aides have said, but critics believe it would more likely grow the federal debt and become a drag on future economic growth. The infrastructure plan, meanwhile, could temporarily add jobs but also add to the government’s debt depending on how it is financed.

[Trump’s victory changed the way Americans see reality]

Trump inherited an economy with low unemployment and low inflation, but it also had weak wage growth, rising debt levels, an aging population and a large number of people who were not participating in the labor force.

His economic agenda and budget proposals aimed to move people back into the workforce, in part by cutting food stamps and other welfare benefits, but those initiatives have not advanced in Congress.
Economists say achieving the rate of growth Trump is targeting will be difficult, given underlying changes such as the aging of the U.S. workforce and slower productivity growth.

It also remains unclear whether companies that touted plans to hire thousands of workers at the beginning of the year plan to do so. The Japanese company SoftBank promised to invest $50 billion in the United States after a meeting with Trump in January, but the status of that investment is uncertain. Three days before Trump was sworn in, Walmart said it would add 10,000 jobs this year. A spokesman said the company is on track to meet this target.

U.S. companies large and small are undergoing adjustments. On Tuesday, Memorial Hermann, a hospital and health-care company that is the largest employer in Houston, said it was cutting 350 jobs because of higher costs, falling reimbursements and “a softened local economy.”

Harley Lippman, head of an IT consulting company called Genesis10, said chief executives are still cautiously optimistic but that their patience could soon run short.

“People are willing to cut him slack for a little while, but it’s not going to last that long, and people are going to become impatient and disappointed with that administration,” Lippman said.

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Today in, "We're all doomed," 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/npr-declaration-of-independence_us_595c6525e4b0da2c7325bd50

Quote

 

National Public Radio tweeted out the Declaration of Independence on Tuesday to mark the holiday, but not everyone got what they were doing. 

Some supporters of Donald Trump didn’t recognize one of the nation’s founding documents and accused the broadcaster of inciting violence and even revolution. 

Many of those comments have since been deleted and at least one user deleted an entire Twitter account. 

But the tweets live on, some still posted online while others have been preserved in screen captures.

Here are some of those tweets and the reactions to them: 

 

 

See the link, not quoting because it also copies a lot of random shit but here's an example 

 

Confused Grandpa alert: 

 

I mean, give him a break tho.  Those of us among us who have never failed to notice a ginormous black limo standing right in front of us raise their hands... I bet not a lot of hands go up.