;)
The Commentariat -- January 15, 2018
Afternoon Update:
"Are You Effing Kidding Me?" ...
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The Comments section of Reality Chex still is not working. Don't be fooled! If you try to post a comment, you'll get a reassuring message that your comment has been submitted. But it hasn't! Instead, your comment goes into the ether, lost forevah. For a couple of work-arounds, see my suggestions in yesterday's Commentariat. I'm trying to pressure my host to get on this. You can see the influence I have. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...
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Freedom Marchers arrive in Montgomery, Alabama, a few weeks after Alabama state troopers attacked marchers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma at the start of a previously-planned march. This time, President Johnson ordered the Alabama National Guard & U.S. Army troops to protect the marchers.THIS Is How We Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Trump's USA:
Noah Weiland of the New York Times: "A Republican senator who attended a Thursday immigration meeting at the White House forcefully denied on Sunday that President Trump had used the phrase 'shithole countries' in describing Haiti and African nations, saying a Democratic senator’s account of the session was 'a gross misrepresentation.' Senator David Perdue, Republican of Georgia, said on ABC’s 'This Week' that Mr. Trump 'did not use that word,' and accused Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, of distorting what the president had said at the meeting, which included more than a half-dozen lawmakers. Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, joined Mr. Perdue later in the morning in questioning Mr. Durbin. 'I didn’t hear that word either,' he said on CBS’s 'Face the Nation.' 'And I was sitting no further away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was.'... Ben Marter, a spokesman for Mr. Durbin, immediately attacked their assertions.... The remarks by Mr. Perdue and Mr. Cotton were an escalation from a statement they released on Friday, when they said they did 'not recall the president saying these comments specifically.' They also appear to conflict with the account of Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who was at the Thursday meeting. Mr. Graham told a fellow South Carolina Republican, Senator Tim Scott, that reports in the news media of Mr. Trump’s language were 'basically accurate.'” ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: During the CBS interview, Cotton pushed his new product line "Tom's Excellent Cotton Ball Sound Mufflers." Mr. Perdue reminded "This Week" listeners that "Perdue's Chicken Wax Silencer" was available on the Home Shopping Network. Cotton said he used his own product "all the time for events where anybody from the Democrat party shows up." Perdue said his "Chick Wax Silencer" has been saving marriages for decades. "If you can't hear what she's sayin', you're not gonna get mad at 'er." ...
... The NYT story has been updated, with Thomas Kaplan as the lead reporter. The new lede & detail:
"After three days of denunciations from around the world, President Trump declared that he is 'not a racist' on Sunday, even as the uproar over his vulgar remarks on immigration overshadowed critical issues facing the capital, including efforts to protect young undocumented immigrants and avert a government shutdown. Mr. Trump also insisted that he had not made the inflammatory comments in a White House meeting on Thursday, part of a newly aggressive defense and a counterattack on Democrats by the president and his allies. But his remarks on Sunday were a departure from the White House’s initial statement last week, which did not deny the comments.... 'I’m not a racist,' Mr. Trump said on Sunday night as he arrived at Trump International Golf Club in Florida for dinner with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, who attended the meeting last week and has not spoken publicly about it. 'I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you.' His comments, while extraordinary coming from a president of the United States, echoed reassurances Mr. Trump has made several times before.” ...
... Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "With the fate of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants in the balance, relations between key GOP and Democratic lawmakers turned poisonous Sunday over disagreement about President Trump’s use of a vulgarity to describe poor countries last week during an Oval Office meeting.... The accusations prompted Democrats to blast the GOP senators for impugning a colleague’s integrity, while also slamming Trump and his remarks as unabashedly racist.... The White House did not dispute the remarks when The Washington Post first reported them Thursday. Trump offered a vague denial in a Friday tweet.... 'To impugn [Durbin’s] integrity is disgraceful,' [Sen. Chuck] Schumer [D-N.Y.] said on Twitter.... Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on 'This Week' that he had spoken to meeting participants immediately afterward — before The Post reported Trump’s use of the vulgar term. 'They said those words were used before those words went public,' Flake said." ...
... DeBonis's story also has been updated, with Anne Gearan sharing the byline. Both the NYT & WashPo accounts are worth reading.
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie. Trump's latest denial on Shitholegate is typical Trump, & it's appalling. First, he says something horrible and/or false. Then he can't quite remember what he said and/or issues a weasely half-denial. Then he flat-out denies it. In this case, his enablers changed their story, giving Trump a lifeline. A very similar pattern exhibits itself in the contemporaneous Kim Jong-un claim. First, Trump makes a false claim. Then the interviewer publishes a tape-recording, proving Trump & his enablers are wrong. Then some wingers claim he said something different from what the tape proves he did say. Then he echoes the wingers' claim, sharply denying he said what he said. ...
... ** "Shithouse" or "Shithole"? The Great Washington Debate:
... First, there's this from Benjamin Hart of New York: "National Review’s Rich Lowry got more specific on This Week, telling [George] Stephanopoulos that his sources told him Trump used the word 'shithouse,' not 'shithole' — which does not seem like a world of semantic difference." ...
... Also this tweet from Josh Dawsey Sunday at 8:54 pm ET of the Washington Post (i.e., hours before Trump issued his denial: "White House official told me tonight there is debate internally on whether Trump said 'shithole' or 'shithouse.' Perdue and Cotton seem to have heard latter, this person said, and are using to deny." Mrs. McC: So that's the "gross misrepresentation" Durbin made? -- Not "shithole" but "shithouse"? Yeah, shame on you, Dick Durbin. Time for reporters to interview Perdue & Cotton. ...
... Mrs. McC: On Thursday, so before Dick Durbin spoke on the record Friday, I heard a confederate CNN guest (I don't know who he was, but I don't think it was Lowry) make the same "distinction": "I have it on good authority," this guy said, "that the President said 'shithouse,' not 'shithole.'" Certainly Lowry's "sources" & the CNN guest's "authority" were Republicans. ...
... Annals of Journalism & "Journalism," Ctd. Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: "... the profanity used by the president to describe poor countries — 'shithole,' to be precise — still managed to [shock]. And news organizations had to grapple with whether and how prominently to use his words. But the real issue wasn’t the language at all, disgusting as it was. What mattered much more was what Trump’s words really meant, and what the responsibilities of journalists were in conveying that meaning in some sensible way. In the first hours of coverage, some rose to the challenge well.... Predictably, though, Trump’s regular media defenders were responding in two appalling ways. First, they did it by noting that countries like Haiti are indeed poor and troubled, implying that the president was therefore right to disparage them.... And second, they did it by positing that Trump’s racism will play well with his base, which somehow makes it acceptable." ...
... ** Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "On the day before Martin Luther King’s Birthday, African-American churchgoers gathered as they always do, to pray, give thanks and reflect on the state of race in America. But after a disheartening week and an even more disheartening year, black Americans interviewed on Sunday said they were struggling to comprehend what was happening in a country that so recently had an African-American president.... They said they saw America slipping into an earlier, uglier version of itself. And when Mr. Trump used crude words to describe Haiti and African countries in an immigration discussion, they said, he was voicing what many Americans were thinking, even if it was something they no longer felt comfortable saying: America prefers white people."...
...Margaret Hartmann of New York: "While forcing a shutdown over the fate of the Dreamers had once seemed like a risky strategy for Democrats, the uproar over Trump’s remark makes it easier for them to blame the situation on the unreasonable demands of a demonstrably racist president. But over the weekend,Republicans came up with a plan: 1) Insist that despite what you might have heard, Trump wouldn’t say something so racist. 2) Complain that they are at the mercy of the Democratic minority, whose members are hell-bent on shutting down the government...Despite efforts by Cotton and other Republicans to spin the situation, there’s one person who decided to end DACA, sabotaged efforts to fix it, was rebuked by the courts, and probably can’t go another week without saying something offensive – and he’s not a Democrat." --safari...
...The U.S., via KKK Donald, is playing diplomatic fire with the entire African continent. --safari
...Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "The African Union called Trump’s comments “outrageous, racist and xenophobic” and demanded a “retraction and apology.” The group also said it was 'concerned at the continuing and growing trend from the US administration towards Africa and people of African descent to denigrate the continent and people of color.' The entire communiqué was published online by Samantha Power, the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, who said it was completely unprecedented...Experts believe Trump has permanently damaged the United States standing in the world. 'I don’t think this will just blow over. I think it fundamentally poisons the relationship with numerous countries,' Peter Lewis, director of African Studies at Johns Hopkins University" --safari
Mrs. McCrabbie: I got to wondering how Fox "News" was celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day & this is the first thing that popped up on the Googles -- an essay about how liberals were "politicizing" the day. "Reporters at the White House on Thursday didn’t care to treat MLK Day with reverence, either. I found it telling that even after Dr. King’s nephew gave a powerful speech about his uncle’s legacy, not a single reporter made much of what he said. Instead, the entire event centered around President Trump’s controversial remarks about immigration." Hunt is a 24-year-old Army officer who thinks White House reporters, instead of asking questions about Trump's "shithole" remark should be having a round table about the speech by King's nephew or maybe asking Mrs. Huckleberry how Trump is like King. And that, folks, is how we celebrate Dr. King on Fox "News."
Wall Street Journal Joins "Fake News" Club. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Trump on Sunday morning ratcheted up a dispute with The Wall Street Journal, accusing the newspaper of purposely misquoting him as saying in an interview that he has a good relationship with the leader of North Korea. In two tweets from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., the president applied a familiar denigrating term — 'fake news' — to a Journal report on Thursday that said Mr. Trump had boasted during an interview: 'I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un. I have relationships with people. I think you people are surprised. Mr. Trump insisted that he had actually started his sentence with the contraction 'I’d,' not 'I,' which would change the meaning from a surprising boast of an existing relationship into a prediction that he could have a good relationship with the dictator if he wanted it. 'The Wall Street Journal stated falsely that I said to them 'I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un” (of N. Korea). Obviously I didn’t say that. I said “I’d have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” a big difference. Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters...' '...and they knew exactly what I said and meant. They just wanted a story. FAKE NEWS!'... [Sarah] Sanders wrote on Twitter that the White House had first requested a correction from The Journal on Friday morning, the day after the interview.” Includes recording. See also links to related stories in yesterday's Commentariat. ...
... Say, this might be a good place to find out what-all else Jeff Flake is doing these days:
... Kasie Hunt & Kendall Breitman of NBC News: "Sen. Jeff Flake is planning to slam ... Donald Trump's attacks on the press on the Senate floor this week in a speech that will compare the president's use of the term 'enemy of the people' to describe the media to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. 'When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn't suit him "fake news," it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press,' Flake, R-Ariz., will say, according to excerpts of the speech provided to NBC News.... '... so fraught with malice was the phrase "enemy of the people," that even (later Soviet leader) Nikita Khrushchev forbad its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin to for the purpose of "annihilating such individuals" who disagreed with the supreme leader,' Flake will say.... The speech from one of Trump's fiercest Republican critics comes as the president has promoted his 'Fake News Awards' on Twitter, saying that the awards, expected to be on Wednesday, will go to 'the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media.'"
Mike DeBonis: "Corey Lewandowski, President Trump’s former campaign manager, said in an interview broadcast Sunday that he will give testimony this week to a House committee probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Lewandowski said on WABC-AM radio in New York that he expects to appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday or Thursday to discuss the campaign. He told host Rita Crosby that he has not been contacted by Justice Department investigators — led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — who are conducting a parallel investigation."
Amy Wang of the Washington Post on how Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency sent out a false alarm of an incoming missile. "Around 8:05 a.m., the Hawaii emergency employee initiated the internal test, according to a timeline released by the state. From a drop-down menu on a computer program, he saw two options: 'Test missile alert' and 'Missile alert.' He was supposed to choose the former; as much of the world now knows, he chose the latter, an initiation of a real-life missile alert.... On Sunday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai ... seemed to cast blame on state-level officials for the error." But it's not that simple. Although an employee of Hawaii's agency made the mistake, state agencies "are a partnership of the FCC, FEMA and the wireless industry...' the state agency had standing permission through FEMA to use civil warning systems to send out the missile alert — but not to send out a subsequent false alarm alert..., [according to a spokesman for Hawaii's agency.... 'We had to double back and work with FEMA [to craft and approve the false alarm alert] and that’s what took time,' [he] said.... Trump ... issued no statements about the incident.... Past presidents have often weighed in to reassure the public at times of stress or threat." ...
... Mrs. McC: Sure, but the POTUS* was busy playing a top-secret golf game. Besides, Hawaii's voters gave Clinton more than twice as many votes in the 2016 election as they did Trump, so screw Hawaii. Trump can't remember much, but the 2016 results are encrypted in his small brain. He's not going to let a slight go unpunished. ...
... Max Fisher of the New York Times: "Nuclear experts are warning, using some of their most urgent language since President Trump took office, that Hawaii’s false alarm, in which state agencies alerted locals to a nonexistent missile attack, underscores a growing risk of unintended nuclear war with North Korea." Fisher cites Russia's 1983 downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007 to show how mistakes & bad relations between nuclear-armed foes -- in this case the Soviet Union & the U.S. -- could lead to nuclear war. "If similar misunderstandings seem implausible today, consider that an initial White House statement called Hawaii’s alert an exercise — though state officials say it was operator error. Consider that 38 minutes elapsed before emergency systems sent a second message announcing the mistake. If even Washington was misreading events, the confusion in Pyongyang must have been far greater." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I continue to think that a cruel, ignorant bully with dementia & the nuclear football is the greatest threat to national security since the Cold War. Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are bent on risking the lives of every American so they can squeeze more money out of the poor & middle class. Talk about depraved indifference...
...Juan Cole: "A false alert was sent out by the state of Hawaii on Saturday to residents’ cell phones warning of an incoming North Korean nuclear strike, as Mary Papunfuss of Huffpost explains...But here’s the thing. The US military knew all along that there was no such threat. Nobody from the Pentagon tried to reassure the public. And, President Trump was on his West Palm Beach golf course and got the notice that it was a false alarm. He just went on playing golf. Then he wrapped up the game. He never tweeted any reassurance to the people of Hawaii. He let them twist in the wind...But he is president of all the state residents, too, and he had knowledge that could have benefited his co-citizens and did nothing." --safari
Matthew Lee & Julie Pace of the AP: "The Trump administration is preparing to withhold tens of millions of dollars from the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, cutting the year’s first contribution by more than half or perhaps entirely, and making additional donations contingent on major changes to the organization, according to U.S. officials.... Donald Trump hasn’t made a final decision.... The plan to withhold some of the money is backed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis, who offered it as a compromise to demands for more drastic measures by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.... Haley wants a complete cutoff in U.S. money until the Palestinians resume peace talks with Israel that have been frozen for years.... Some officials, including Israelis, warn that it might push people closer to the militant Hamas movement, which controls Gaza." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you don't come to the table, kids, & eat your crow potpie, Daddy is going to cut off your allowance.
Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times (Jan. 13): "Iranian officials, responding to President Trump’s call to revise the nuclear agreement, said they would reject any changes to the 2015 deal, saying it was 'not renegotiable.' Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, wrote on Saturday in a message on Twitter that the nuclear agreement between Iran, the United States and other world powers was 'a solid multilateral agreement' that President Trump was 'maliciously violating.'”
Kate Hodal of the Guardian: "Women are more likely than men to survive in times of famine and epidemics, research has found. While it has long been known that women have a higher life expectancy than men in general, analysis of historical records stretching back 250 years shows that women have, for example, outlived men on slave plantations in Trinidad, during famines in Sweden and through various measles outbreaks in Iceland. Even when mortality was very high for both sexes, women still outlived men, on average, by six months to four years, according to the report (pdf) by Duke University in North Carolina." --safari
** Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: "Usually, there’s a tension between the [Interior] department’s mandates — to protect the nation’s natural resources and to manage them for commercial use. Under [Secretary Ryan] Zinke, the only question, from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, is how fast these resources can be auctioned off.... Zinke is, in many ways, a typical Trump appointee. A lack of interest in the public interest is, these days, pretty much a precondition for running a federal agency.... In the decades to come, one can hope that many of the Trump Administration’s mistakes — on tax policy, say, or trade — will be rectified. But the destruction of the country’s last unspoiled places is a loss that can never be reversed."
Awww. A Sweet News Story, for Once. Avi Selk of the Washington Post: On his first day of tweeting, a young man who goes by the Twitter name @whoisgarylee got more likes than any of Trump's tweets Sunday. Oh, and he used to have a low-level job in the Obama White House.
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Reader Comments (4)
Shithole or Shithouse? You make the call.
Does it matter? Not a bit. So if racist enablers like Sonny Perdue and Tom Cotton want to try to pretend that calling African nations "shithouses" instead of "shitholes" sounds a lot better, have at it. Great way to spend your time on Martin Luther King Day.
The fact is that, at this point in history, for an American president to protest that he did not call African and Central American countries shitholes AND that he is not a racist, are extraordinary events in and of themselves.
"I am not a crook", "We did not, repeat, did not, trade weapons or anything else for hostages", "WMD!", "I am not a racist".
The presidency, indeed, the entire country, has been so poorly served by the Republican Party for almost two generations now that the damage to both our domestic and international standing is almost incalculable. Unconstitutional, criminal activity, lying to start a war, threats of nuclear war and actual racist attacks coming directly from (nay, IN) the Oval Office.
Trump is bad but he is just the latest in a long line of reprehensible snakes who have slithered onto the national stage from the Party of Traitors. And now, even now, with undeniable evidence of a bigoted blowhole in the highest seat of power, Confederates like Cotton and Perdue are still lying to cover up the disgusting behavior of their president*. The fact that they think "shithouse" sounds better than "shithole" says a lot about them. And their party. "I didn't call you a dickhead, I called you a dick. Don't that make you feel a lot better?"
And does it matter? Shithouse or shithole? Of course not. Aside from Trump's quotidian coarsening of the public discourse (major news operations having to print "shithole" or warn parents that children may not need to hear the word, repeated straight from the open sewer that is the president*'s mouth), is the categorical proof that this guy is an unreconstructed racist creep. But don't take my word for it. Even without the word(s), he's basically saying "We don't want people from predominantly black or brown countries. We want nice, clean white people from one of the whitest nations on the planet. Oh, and while we're at it, I'm booting hundreds of thousands of black and brown people who have been living here under our protection, out of the country. Why? Because fuck them, that's why. Because Fox will love me. Because the KKK and the Nazis and the Aryan Brotherhood will love me. Because I'll feel better about myself knowing I stuck it to blacks and browns."
So let's not get too bogged down in the exact descriptors for shitty locations. We have a shitty president*. That's all you need to know. And a party of traitorous snakes supporting his shabby shittiness.
Akhilleus
Not Their President*
Juan Cole's piece (linked above) about the official responses by the Pentagon and the White House (there weren't any) clearly demonstrates that Trump does not consider himself the president of all Americans. He is the president* of states and voters that helped (along with the Russians) to shove his fat, unfit ass into office.
Hawaii needed some reassurance that a government program designed to protect them had issued a false alarm and they weren't, in fact, headed for Kingdom Come. Did they get any? Not from Trump. He was too busy playing golf. Besides, a whole lot (too many) of them Hawaiians are a shade or two (or three) too dark to suit president* Grand Dragon, and likely none of them are from Norway.
Not to mention that there are just too damn many Democrats there, so fuck 'em.
And let's get a move-on with them Norwegians! Wouldn't they like some beachfront property on Oahu? Go Whitey!
Akhilleus
One more thing about president* shithole and his backtracking, retractions, and attempts to "fix" things.
Have some balls, will ya?
For a guy who is constantly trying to prove how manly he is, I've never seen such a backtracking, ass covering weasel. At least have the courage of your convictions. You think people who are convinced of your racist bona fides will think more highly of you because you said "shithole" instead? You think they'll welcome you with open arms into the fellowship of decent human beings?
Hell no. But at least admit what you said. This constant backtracking and recanting and recasting is embarrassing. Besides, your base (and I do mean base) will love you even more for it. Now they see you as a weenie ass, insincere cur. Be.A.Man. You hate black and brown people, just come out and say it. We all know it.
Instead he drafts fellow cowards and liars like Bomb's Away Cotton and Chicken Man Perdue to help him hide.
C'mon, little donnie. We know you lied to get out of going into the service. We know you lied to weasel your way into the White House (with help from the Russians), and we know you lie every day. For once in your life, tell the fucking truth.
Actual weasels are getting ready to resign their commissions as craven weasels in protest for making them look bad.
You are never gonna be presidential, but you can try to be just little less cowardly, just for the novelty of it.
Akhilleus
Test -- just checking to see if my login works.