;)
The Commentariat -- July 6, 2019
Late Morning Update:
"They" Made Trump Hire Undocumented Workers. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs & Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "After months of silence, President Trump responded on Friday to reports that the Trump Organization has employed dozens of undocumented immigrants by saying that he doesn't know whether the organization does or not. 'I don't know because I don't run it,' Mr. Trump said when asked if he was confident that undocumented immigrants were no longer working at his golf courses. 'But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that because it seems to be, from what I understand, a way that people did business.... But we've ended -- whatever they did, we have a very strict rule that, those rules are very strict,' Mr. Trump said...." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In fairness to the slackard children of America, "The dog ate my homework" is a far more plausible excuse than "I don't run it" when in fact he did "run it" right down to picking the fabrics & colors of the uniforms of the undocumented workers he hired. Democrats should run ads, ad nauseum, in Trump country featuring Trump's former undocumented employees.
I thought Ivanka was amazing at the G-20. The foreign leaders loved her. They think she's great. -- Donald Trump, to reporters Friday
Uh, how exactly would Trump know this? Does he think other heads of state are going to say, "What is that dimwit doing here?" -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
~~~~~~~~~~
Morgan Chalfont of the Hill: "President Trump told reporters on Friday that he is considering an executive order to ensure a citizenship question is included on the U.S. census. Trump told reporters on the White House lawn that he has four or five options and is 'thinking of' the executive order. He also said his administration could begin printing the 2020 census and later include the question as part of an addendum." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In another Trumpian open-mouth-insert-foot moment:
Trump says citizenship has to be asked on the census to determine congressional districts. Actually, districts are drawn up based on total population, not the number of citizens, a practice upheld by the Supreme Court as recently as 2016. -- Peter Baker of the New York Times, in a tweet ...
... That's a new argument in this case, though not one that we haven't heard from Republicans in the past. U.S. population always has been measured by number of residents, not by number of citizens, for the purpose of apportioning Congressional seats. If seats were alloted by number of citizens, rather than number of residents, urban areas would lose big -- and that's something Republicans want. Since judges have considered Trump's statements & tweets in making their decisions (including in a Census case last week), Trump's admission that he wants to change the basis for Congressional representation should matter.
... Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "In a court filing Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department confirmed that both DOJ and the Commerce Department were still weighing 'whether the Supreme Court's decision would allow for a new decision to include the citizenship question.' The filing reiterated what the lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge George Hazel Wednesday, after the president contradicted the government's earlier assertion that it would drop efforts to include the question on next year's survey." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Ari Berman of Mother Jones: "In response, Maryland federal district court judge George Hazel said he was weighing whether to reopen a case looking at whether the administration added the question to intentionally discriminate against Hispanics, based on smoking-gun evidence, uncovered after the death of the GOP's longtime gerrymandering mastermind, Thomas Hofeller, showing that he had pushed for the question in order to draw new political districts that he said would be 'advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.'... Notably, the president has never mentioned a desire to enforce the Voting Rights Act -- the administration's principal, and now rejected, rationale for adding the question -- in his numerous tweets and public comments about the issue. In fact, on Friday morning, Trump told reporters that the 'number one' reason the question was needed was 'for Congress for districting,' which suggested that Republicans, if allowed to collect citizenship data, would use it to exclude non-citizens from counting toward voting district populations, as Hofeller had advised -- a step which would again boost representation for white Republicans." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... We Have a New Excuse, But We Don't Know What It Is. Mark Stern of Slate: "On Friday..., DOJ attorneys asked Hazel to pause discovery while they develop a different justification for the citizenship question. They argued that, by 'providing a new rationale,' they will have magically cleansed the question of any discriminatory intent.... Hazel did not agree, rejecting the DOJ's request on Friday in an order allowing discovery to move forward.... The Justice Department is not being helped by Trump, who acknowledged on Friday that the 'number one' reason for a citizenship question is 'for districting.' Presumably, Trump means that he wants to let states draw districts by counting only citizens of voting age, not all persons -- a scheme that would dramatically boost white voting power. (It has been neither permitted or prohibited by SCOTUS.) That's a troubling concession, because Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court that using citizenship data for redistricting was not the purpose of the census citizenship question. Once again, Trump is telling a very different story from the narrative carefully crafted by DOJ attorneys." ...
... David Graham of the Atlantic: "In the real world, the fact that the executive branch apparently plans to offer some new, unspecified rationale for a decision it has already made is proof it has been lying about the motives all along.... In the legal world, however, this maneuver might yet succeed.... The Trump administration seems to want to base the allotment on the citizen population instead, which would likely enhance the power of Republican-leaning states at the expense of Democratic ones heavy with noncitizens. The Census Bureau itself concluded that the question would lead to a significant undercount of the United States population. The plaintiffs argued that one motive for the question was to allow for redistricting on the basis of the citizen voting-age population. The president's solicitor general explicitly denied that, calling it a 'conspiracy theory ... nonsensical even on its own terms.' Now Trump is baldly saying it was true." ...
... Tax Axelrod of the Hill: "Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Department of Commerce over the 2020 census are asking a federal court to block the Trump administration from delaying the printing of census forms or changing them to include a citizenship question. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the motion Friday with the state of New York and other groups seeking to block the citizenship question from being added.... 'In addition to deceiving the judiciary and the public and putting the success of the 2020 Census in jeopardy, Defendants' efforts to prolong uncertainty and drag out this matter are sowing confusion and exacerbating fear among immigrant communities, and directly injuring the Plaintiffs' efforts to mobilize participation in the Census,' the ACLU wrote in its filing."
Fore! S. V. Date of the Huffington Post: "... Donald Trump began a three-day golf weekend Friday, making his 16th visit to his New Jersey golf club since entering office and pushing his total travel and security costs for his hobby to $108.1 million.... While he was a reality TV host and then as a presidential candidate, Trump frequently pounded President Barack Obama for spending too much time on the golf course. Trump often told audiences he would be too busy to take any vacations, let alone play golf. But since taking office, Trump has spent 187 days, counting Friday, on a course that he owns. (He has spent two additional days on courses in Japan at the invitation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during visits there.) That is two and a half times the number of days Obama had visited golf courses at the same point in his first term. And because Trump insists on playing at his own courses in Florida and New Jersey so much, his golf-associated costs to taxpayers are more than triple Obama's figure through the same time period. Obama played the vast majority of his rounds at military bases within a short drive of the White House."
Trump's "Somewhat Soviet" Speech. Tom Nichols of the New York Daily News: "Let's get an obvious point about President Trump's Independence Day speech out of the way right at the top. It was a bad speech.... Perhaps this was unavoidable, since it was never meant to salute America, but rather to provide the military display Trump has wanted for two years. Like any enforced celebration, it was flat and labored.... It would have been a challenging speech to deliver even for a better speaker, and Trump, who hates reading from prepared remarks, plodded through it with a strangely detached presence and a certain amount of mushy enunciation, including a weird blip* where he referred to the glorious military capture of some airports in colonial America.... Not only did it attempt to militarize our most sacred national holiday, but Trump tried to bathe himself in borrowed legitimacy from a military that was forced to march, sing and fly for him.... Mining the glories of past military battles while flanked by defense chiefs is the kind of thing Soviet leaders used to do while droning from their reviewing stand in Moscow." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... * Someone Left the Teleprompter out in the Rain. BBC News: "Explaining away the slip-up on Friday, Mr Trump also said it was hard to read the teleprompter in the rain.... 'I knew the speech very well so I was able to do it without a teleprompter but the teleprompter did go out and it was actually hard to look at anyway because there was rain all over it but despite the rain it was just a fantastic evening.'... Twitter users had some fun with the garble, using the hashtag #RevolutionaryWarAirports." Mrs. McC: This is an awfully strange excuse, inasmuch as Trump used to regularly criticize both President Obama & Hillary Clinton for using teleprompters. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
One if by Land. Two if by Sea. Three if by the Delta Shuttle from LaGuardia. ~Paul Revere -- Marco Price, in a tweet
Put ye powder hornes and buckled shoes in ye olde bins. Poultices over 3 ounces must be left with the magistrate and can be retrieved at ye postmaster's office upon return. Muskets and pipes are stryctly forbidden on board ye airecrafte. #RevolutionaryWarAirports -- Seth Cotlar, in a tweet
... Ellen Ioanes of Business Insider: "Russian state media mocked ... Donald Trump's 'Salute to America' July Fourth event, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. The hosts of Rossiya 1's '60 Minutes' program, Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva, both scoffed at the footage of tanks rolling into Washington, DC, ahead of Trump's military extravaganza.... According to Julia Davis, a writer who studies Russian disinformation tactics, Russian state news also criticized Trump's display as being 'low energy' and 'weak,' with 'rusty tanks.'... Skabayeva scoffed that the condition of US military machinery was less important to Trump than 'that the parade takes place with much fanfare.'"
Geneva Sands & Nick Valencia of CNN: "At least one other social media group with an apparent nexus to Customs and Border Protection has been discovered to contain vulgar and sexually explicit posts, according to screenshots shared by two sources familiar with the Facebook pages. The secret Facebook group, "The Real CBP Nation," which has around 1,000 members, is host to an image that mocks separating migrant families, multiple demeaning memes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and other derisive images of Asians and African Americans." Mrs. McC: Apparently a large percentage of CBP officers are social deviants, just like Trump.
Beyond the Beltway
Utah. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Morgan Smith of the AP: "Active shooter training for educators is becoming more common nationwide, and Utah is one of several states that generally allow permit holders to carry guns in public schools. Other states, including Florida and Texas, have programs that allow certain teachers to be armed if they are approved under a set of stipulations.... [Thirty-one] Utah teachers [attended] a series of trainings where police instructed them on how to respond to an active shooter. Teachers went through the shooting drill inside a warehouse set up to look like a school, then moved outside to a shooting range.... At the recent session, officers showed teachers how to disarm a gunman, where to shoot on the body, how to properly aim and unload a firearm. They also went over de-escalation techniques, self-defense and medical responses such as how to pack a wound and tie a tourniquet on a child."
Way Beyond
Sudan. Declan Walsh of the New York Times: "... this week the protest leaders and their military foes [in Sudan] ... sat down in the same room, face-to-face, and within two days hammered out a power-sharing deal to run Sudan until elections can be held in just over three years. Although the details are still being finalized, the agreement offers the people in one of Africa's largest and most strategically important countries the fragile hope of a transition to democracy after 30 years of dictatorship under former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was ousted in April."
News Ledes
Miami Herald: "A possible gas explosion at a Broward County shopping center blasted through a section of the plaza on Saturday afternoon near an LA Fitness, injuring nearly two dozen people and leading to a search-and-rescue mission for others who might be trapped. The blast happened in a strip center across from The Fountains shops along busy University Drive in Plantation. The likely ground zero was a vacant pizza restaurant undergoing renovation, but authorities on the scene have yet to confirm the site of the blast or its cause. Reports of the explosion came in about 11:30 a.m.... Authorities said 21 people were injured."
AP: "A quake with a magnitude as large as 7.1 jolted much of California, cracked buildings, set fires, broke roads and caused several injuries, authorities and residents said. The quake -- preceded by Thursday's 6.4-magnitude temblor in the Mojave Desert -- was the largest Southern California temblor in at least 20 years and was followed by a series of large and small aftershocks. It hit at 8:19 p.m. and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest in the same areas where the previous quake hit. But it was felt as far north as Sacramento, as far east as Las Vegas and as far south as Mexico."
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Reader Comments (18)
Particularly around this July 4th celebration, the idea that the census should count only citizens, for the purpose of setting voting district boundaries, should be an anathema. Taxation without representation, anyone? An ardent believer in universal suffrage (as well as "compulsory" voting, but that's another story), I believe that more people, such as permanent residents, should have the right to vote, as they do in other countries (eg, UK). But even without that right, at least people should have access to government representatives. If non citizens were all Richie Richiesons from Norway, the Cons would want them counted. Twice.
I continue to be shocked at how corrupt our legal system is. I was so naive. In the end, in the pointy-headed world of legalese, everything comes down to "interpretation" of the text. Alright.
But now that interpretation can change, for example, "shall" to mean "if you so please" it requires such a blatant disregard of the English language, words no longer hold. And once you can transform the meaning of words themselves, well, frankly, all bets are off.
And that the Supreme Court, highest court in the land, ignores smoking gun evidence of racial animus and political fuckery, because some DOJ lawyer throws up some bureaucratic obstacles to access it, is a total and utter con job on the whole idea of "justice" and getting to the "truth" to best inform decisions.
But, then again, if "justice" has been perverted to mean "side with your team" and "truth" now duals with "alternative facts", we should all expect the legal system to grow warts, cancer, and lie comatose while Confederates flog it like a dead horse while praising to Jeezus
@Safari: "shocked" at how you find our legal system's operations is how I feel but would add terrifying since that's our last bastion of sanity, isn't it? There is no other higher power.
As for the man at the helm: We can continue to make fun of this dolt who thinks Putin meant California when he spoke of the demise of Western liberalism and cited incorrectly airports in an historical context and now is spilling the beans–-unknowingly–-about the real reason for the citizen question. But, as Noam Chomsky once said,
he is a canny demagogue and manipulator, who is managing to maintain the allegiance of the adoring crowds that believe he is standing up for them against the hated elites while also ensuring that the primary Republican constituency of extreme wealth and corporate power are doing just fine, despite some complaints. And they surely are, in fact, making out like bandits with help from Trump and his associates.
And it has occurred to me when I said, re: the courts, "there is no higher power" evidently Trump thinks otherwise since he believes that his dictatorship will rule the day. He may be right.
Meanwhile Alaska is getting hotter and migrant children are freezing.
Safari,
One more piece of evidence proving that “legal” is not a synonym for “just”. “Justice” for Trump and the confederates means “we get whatever we want, no matter how absurd and clearly mendacious and unsupported our argument” and “those we consider enemies wouldn’t stand a chance of winning in a court of law if Solomon himself were sitting on the bench and we claimed it was a beautiful day as flood waters were carrying off three quarters of the townspeople.”.
Ergo the unconstitutional packing of the Supreme Court, a hopeful backup in case of a mistake in which a lower court ruling comes down against their obvious chicanery and puerile casuistry. Just the idea that John Roberts gives Trump a do-over after laughing his clearly fictitious reasoning out of court stinks to high heaven. “The jury finds you guilty of this crime based on your own testimony, but if you can make up something good, the judge will maybe buy it and you’re free to go commit that crime again.”
That might be possible if the defendant were a mental incompetent who had been tried without an army of the best paid legal talent in the country, but in this case only one of those conditions has been met.
Could the way that first Constitutionally-directed census made the kinds of distinctions among people Republicans are so fond of be one source of the R's love affair with originalism?
The implementing language for that first census categorized people this way: It caused " the number of the inhabitants within their respective districts to be taken; omitting in such enumeration Indians not taxed, and distinguishing free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, from all others; distinguishing also the sexes and colours of free persons, and the free males of sixteen years and upwards from those under that age.” (usconstitution.net)
Men, women, Indians, black, white, slave and free. Among these only the free males could vote, but for the purpose of congressional apportionment all were considered some kind of “people,” but since slaves were counted as only three-fifths of a person, in the Founder’s minds here again some people were more people than others.
Seems odd, doesn’t it? But in the minds of today’s R’s things haven’t changed all that much. They still believe that some people are more people than others.
Dictionaries define “census” variously, but all I consulted centered on the idea of counting people. Here's a typical dictionary entry.
"A census is an official survey of the population of a country that is carried out in order to find out how many people live there and to obtain details of such things as people's ages and jobs.”
But according to the R’s, the dictionaries have it wrong.
For congressional apportionment purposes, many of today’s R’s want to count only citizens. Some go so far as to say “voting citizens,” which in 2019 would generously include women, Native Americans and descendants of former slaves, but would seem to leave out children too young to vote. And since the “citizenship” question the Pretender is bent on adding to the census is obviously designed to discourage brown people from responding, the “colour” distinction the Founders made is also back in the mix.
So where are we?
We seem to have a political party that is willing to grant personhood only to those who happen to be citizens who cast ballots and who happen to be white.
What’s next? The resurrection of a property-ownership requirement to qualify as a voter and hence as a real citizen?
That would be the R’s wet dream come true.
The Pretender, though, would cut through all the census and citizenship confusion. He likes things simple.
He would get the only vote.
Most surprising finding re: Department of "Justice": Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is not the worst attorney general since John Mitchell.
Ken,
The Holy Grail of citizenship for confederates is only those who vote Republican, and never deviate (never vote independent, green, Democratic, etc.) are to be considered citizens, and only their heads will be counted in a census. Of course, this would mean that the country's official population, according to that census, would be about 38% of what it is now, but who's counting?
And that's the problem. They are. Or want to be.
Finally got a chance to answer those citizenship test questions Marie linked the other day. Pretty basic stuff. Except for Trump. I'm betting he'd do well to get half of them right. He'd probably wonder why Benjamin Franklin was not listed as the first head of the FAA or better yet, NASA. And let's not even begin to wonder at the number of Trump voters who would fail a citizenship test. Fail abysmally, especially based on their rabid support of such an extreme example of a dolt stunningly ignorant of civics, history, and American government. The article mentioned that 64% of Americans would fail the test. I'd love to see that broken down by state and party affiliation. Of course, there could be plenty of R voters who could pass the test but still vote for Trump anyway because they know but just don't care.
Probably the worst of the deplorables.
Bea,
That would make our current AG a "toolbar," wouldn't it?
Bea,
I'll try it again. "ToolBarr." My computer didn't like the double "r."
Here in the land of retired CEOs, trust fund babies, etc. where the
high school kids drive BMWs to school, I think everything would
come to a screeching halt without undocumented workers. There
are a number of golf courses, restaurants, hotels, and the like.
You couldn't hire a local worker because they don't exist,
or they're the business owners who hire the undocumented.
We get calls continually to do landscaping or maintenance, but
there are only so many hours in a day, and we quit working 7
days a week about 10 years ago. Life's too short.
Akhilleus,
Who counts? The R answer: We do, and the only ones who count are those we choose to count.
Was also thinking the very stable genius always thought that "one man, one vote" thing he heard somewhere meant him.
Apologize if these 2 pieces have already been referenced. Masha Gessen on the 7/4 speech. As always, her command of history, tone and broad vision set her apart.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-inoffensive-war-on-reality
Rebeccca Traister in The Cut writes about the pundits covering the Dem candidates. Its the best and most incisive commentary on this issue I've read. The bonus is WTF? Why is Donnie Deutsch even in the game?
https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/politics-is-changing-why-arent-the-pundits-who-cover-it.html
Thanks, Anonymous, whoever you are, especiallyh for Masha Gessen's piece.
An interesting ranking of states' economies.
https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/2019/07/06/jobs-gdp-unemployment-states-with-best-and-worst-economy/39651763/
Doesn't perfectly track red and blue, but there is notable congruence.
@Ken said: "We seem to have a political party that is willing to grant personhood only to those who happen to be citizens who cast ballots and who happen to be white."
That's true, but you also have to headcount all of the unborn fetuses because the Confederates are pushing to grant them personhood too. I suppose that personhood is banished upon birth, then restored on case-by-case basis according to voting record.
Treasury Secretary’s Fourth of July picture ridiculed as ‘Red, Blue and a whole lot of Whiteness’ / Alternet.org
For all the staging that went into this “candid” shot, Mnuchin’s roots - yet more ‘whiteness’ - were left on display just above the boulder that’s teetering betwixt her pinky and middle fingers.
A droplet of Schadenfreude to dampen the daily onslaught.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/treasury-secretarys-fourth-of-july-picture-ridiculed-as-red-blue-and-a-whole-lot-of-whiteness/
Ken
Gessen’s piece was an analysis of Trump’s speech on the 4th “Trump’s ‘Inoffensive’ War on Reality”
@Anonymous,
Yeah, I ran two items together (praise for the Gesen piece and thanks to you for citing it and an article from USA Today on a wholly other subject) without planting a turn signal between them.
Sorry.