Another Day, Another Insult

This is how Dear Leader responds to the urgent needs of Puerto Rico in the wake of hurricane Maria.

Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.

Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz answers:

Actually, I was asking for help. I wasn’t saying anything nasty about the president. I will continue to do whatever I need to do, say whatever I need to say, compliment the people I need to compliment, and call out the people that I need to call out. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about anyone. This is about lives that are being lost if things do not get done properly real quickly.

Update (October 1):  Kali Holloway says we need to expect more of the same.

[Von Clownstick's] indifference to the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico is par for the course. Racism and malice form the core of who he is; these traits are the essence of his presidency, and while his response is stunning, it’s also perfectly in line with every other action he’s taken in office. ... The more disturbing fact is that 63 million people recognized [Fuckface's] hatefulness and racism, liked what they saw enough to vote for him, and even now, continue to fervently support him.

But Allen Frances gives a warning and let's me recall a phrase attributed to Joe Hill--"don't mourn, organize!"

It's a great mistake to confuse bad behavior with mental illness. [Von Clownstick] is one of the worst people we could possibly imagine as President, but that doesn't mean he's mentally ill. When we confuse the two, it's a terrible insult to those people who really are mentally ill. They're mostly nice well-meaning people who don't do harm. He's a bad person, not well-meaning, very selfish, who does lots of harm.

It also distracts us. [Fuckface] is a terrible political problem for America -- in some ways the greatest threat to democracy that we've had since the Civil War. He is a terrible environmental threat to the whole world. ...

If we spend our time thinking about what's his diagnosis, we won't be focusing on what's more important: How do we contain this guy? We have to have Congress, we have to have the courts, the press, and most importantly we have to have the people stand up to [Dear Leader] and direct us back to national sanity.

Update (October 4):  Mayor Cruz reacts to Dear Leader's visit.

This terrible and abominable view of him throwing paper towels and throwing provisions at people, it does not embody the spirit of the American nation.

But Heather Digby Parton understands where he's coming from.

If you need something from the king, you'd better tell him how great he is and then ask very, very nicely.

Update (October 29):  There might be some payback for how Puerto Rico got treated.

The exodus of tens of thousands of voting-age Puerto Ricans to the U.S. mainland following Hurricane Maria is likely to change the political complexion of several states.

Update (November 23):  In light of plans to deport 58,000 Haitians who have been living in the U.S. since the 2010 earthquake, Heather Digby Parton imagines a holiday scene:

[Fuckface] is in Florida for Thanksgiving. At some point during his sumptuous feast, perhaps the fact that he only won the state by 1.2 percent in the last election will come up in the conversation and maybe someone will mention that next time the state will be filled with new voters whose lives were upended by hurricane Maria. He will ask how long before they can be deported back to the island, and someone will tell him that they can stay as long as they like. It might just ruin his holiday.

Update (February 12, 2018):  It's all too easy to forget about the on-going problems in Puerto Rico. And now there are efforts to privatize the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.

Update (April 10, 2018):  David Faris writes about statehood for Puerto Rico.

Update (May 30, 2018):  A Harvard University study finds that hurricane Maria was far more devastating than previously reported.

The study, which surveyed 3,299 randomly chosen households in Puerto Rico over three weeks, found that from Sept. 20 to Dec. 31, 2017, at least 4,645 people died in connection to the storm. The government’s death toll is 64.

Eight months after the storm, many Puerto Ricans are still without power or reliable access to health care ― a deadly combination for those who remain on the island, particularly in the face of the 2018 hurricane season.

Update (June 2, 2018):  Sandro Galea explains that not only was the death toll on Puerto Rico underreported, it was worse due to neglect.

Every death on the island is an indictment of years of political failure to foster health by improving conditions in the region.

Update (August 28, 2018):  Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced that the official death toll for hurricane Maria has been raised from 64 to 2975. It's now the deadliest natural disaster in the U.S. in over 100 years.

Update (September 13, 2018):  And yet the insults continue as Dear Leader denies the death toll.

This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible.

Patriot

For our government leaders who don't know otherwise, Marvin Boatright expresses what America is truly about.

As a veteran, and as an African-American, we have already and we continue to serve for God and country. But you can have a love of God and country and still be against social injustice. You don’t have to separate one from the other.

For the commander in chief to call our citizens ‘sons of a bitches’ was totally wrong and beneath the dignity of the office that he holds.

Update (September 30):  David Masciotra summarizes what got us here.

More anger is visible in reaction to players kneeling during a song than after video emerges of police officers executing innocent, black men. A large segment of whites, including the 50 percent who told pollsters that they will now boycott the NFL over the protests, demonstrate greater respect for “the flag” — a symbol of cheap cloth — than the lives of their fellow citizens with dark skin.

His prescription may seem a bit over the top.

Progressives lose at the ballot and across the culture because they consistently overestimate the intelligence and decency of the American people.

Progressives will make political gains when they stop assuming that the majority of Americans operate according to rationality and compassion.

And yet, even a Tea Party member of Congress can realize what's really going on with voters.

I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul-searching, I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron [Paul] and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas. They were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And [Fuckface von Clownstick] won best in class.

If a white Christian kneels, it's an act of faith. But black protest is treason. And white people are freaking out about it.

Flag worship is a much more recent phenomenon than having respect for the flag. And Amanda Marcotte explains how the "religious freedom" conservatives push is not the same as upholding free speech.

Lower courts have found that the battle isn't really over free expression. A wedding cake — or a flower arrangement or a photography contract — for a same-sex couple is no different, as a product, from the kind you make for an opposite-sex couple. The choice to discriminate, then, has been found to be about who the customer is, which puts such a case into the realm of discrimination law rather than free speech law.

[W]hen the president makes ugly statements against private citizens for expressing their political opinions, especially when he calls on their employers to fire them, that's a lot more serious than a cranky old racist screaming at the TV. It could be read as a threat.

Update (October 29):  One owner showed his true colors.

Houston Texans owner Bob McNair's off-the-cuff remark comparing NFL protestors to "inmates running the prison" had consequences. A majority of Texans players knelt Sunday during the national anthem, an act of unified dissent against their owner.

Update (May 23, 2018):  The NFL has adopted a policy to suppress player's freedom of speech.

The measure mandates that players who are on the field must stand for the national anthem but can remain in the locker room if they choose.

Teams could be fined by the league if their players sit or kneel, as many have done in protest of racial injustice and police brutality in recent seasons after NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s initial kneeling protest in 2016 earned nationwide attention.

Update (June 6, 2020):  It took another police killing and mass protest across the country, but Roger Goodell does admit a mistake.

We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black people.

We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black lives matter.

Unable to Govern

I think Republicans fully expected to be conducting multiple investigations into the Clinton administration by now and so the election caught them off guard. Paul Krugman says they are now trapped by their own lies on many issues.

Republicans have spent years routinely lying for the sake of political advantage. And now — not just on health care, but across the board — they are trapped by their own lies, forced into trying to enact policies they know won’t work.

[R]epealing the Affordable Care Act wasn’t the only thing Republicans promised; they also promised to replace it with something better and cheaper, doing away with all the things people don’t like about Obamacare without creating any new problems.

Yet Republicans never had any idea how to fulfill that promise ..., or indeed how to repeal the A.C.A. without taking insurance away from tens of millions. That is, they were lying about health care all along.

Update (September 30):  Taxes are up next and Conor Lynch agrees that Republicans face a dilemma.

They are incapable of governing, and much better at rejecting policies than passing them. Since January, the Republicans have failed to accomplish much of anything that they ran on in 2016, and their incompetence has fortunately surpassed even their cruelty.

The GOP thrives as the party of opposition because it is a fundamentally reactionary party. ... They want to restore the country to its former glory and make America great again, before the left ruined the country with their liberal and socialist agenda. This may be an effective message on the campaign trail, at least with certain constituencies, but it does not translate into effective governing.

The actual tax plan seems to be mainly massive cuts for the rich.  Is anyone surprised that a certain government official stands to gain as much as $750 million over ten years?

Thom Hartmann points out that the tax cut con has been going on for over 30 years. He quotes Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett:

Virtually everything Republicans say about taxes today is a lie. Tax cuts and tax rate reductions will not pay for themselves; they never have. Republicans don’t even believe they will, they are just excuses to slash spending for the poor when revenues collapse and deficits rise. There is no evidence that tax reform raises growth, although it may improve fairness and tax administration.

Update (October 8):  The big Republican donors are getting angry about not getting what they paid for.

Update (October 11):  Steve Bannon's solution to Republican incompetence is to primary all the incumbents.

Update (October 14):  Charlie May considers Bannon's plan to blow up the establishment.

It would be naive to blame the result of the 2016 election on one single thing, given how many factors and variables were involved. But it would be equally naive to ignore the fact that the narrative of anti-establishment rage and frustration was a major reason [von Clownstick] won last November, and that Washington remains poorly equipped to combat it.

The emergence of the alt-right and of figures like [Fuckface], Bannon and Richard Spencer -- and at the opposite pole, perhaps the emergence of Bernie Sanders as well -- reflected the fact that voters had become fed up with the status quo and were willing to contemplate previously unthinkable options. These phenomena were decades in the making, and they're not going away overnight either.

Update (October 29):  Sabrina Siddiqui contends the Republican civil war has just begun.

Critics like Flake, Corker and McCain subscribe to the views espoused by Republican presidents back to Ronald Reagan – a belief in limited government, moderate positions on immigration and trade – but Bannonites have waged war on “globalists” and used race and class to drive a wedge between the establishment and a rancorous base unmoored by the economic and cultural dislocation of the last 20 years.

Update (November 1):  Even state legislators have had enough.

[Texas Speaker Joe] Straus' departure is another troubling sign for the future of the Republican Party. Even being perceived as a reasonable person beholden to political realities is increasingly fatal to the reputation of a Republican politician, at least among people who vote for Republicans. The country-club Republican, who has right-wing politics but still has both feet on the ground, is a dying breed.

Update (November 24):  Bruce Bartlett is unhappy with his party.

The Republican Party needs to die. It’s already a zombie. It’s brain dead.

Update (January 20, 2018):  Perhaps the only thing Republicans care about is making sure the Democrats get blamed for the government shutdown. They sure don't have the leadership required to actually do their job.

Update (March 7, 2018):  Heather Digby Parton suggests that the legislative branch isn't really interested in governing.

There is no probe into the massive corruption and conflicts of interest in every agency of the executive branch, including the Oval Office. ... The executive branch is running wild, doing whatever the incompetent, unqualified and/or extremist agency head feels like doing, and Congress has decided it no longer needs to oversee the White House.

Leaking information to those under suspicion shows that Republicans prefer to help their friends rather than do their job.

You have to ask yourself why a member of the House Intelligence Committee, supposedly tasked with protecting and overseeing national secrets, would want to tip off Michael Cohen about information that might help him. It's all very shady.

There has never been a case of congressional corruption on quite this level before. Speaker Paul Ryan is unwilling to rock the boat, and there's no appetite among the rest of the House GOP caucus to do anything about it. The only possible answer is to toss Nunes and the rest of [Fuckface's] toadies out of the majority in November.

Update (May 14, 2018):  Parton discusses the impact of an understaffed federal government.

[T]he elimination of experts and the deliberate erasure of institutional memory in department after department is chilling. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace these people even after [Fuckface] is gone. His lasting legacy may be the destruction of the federal government as we know it.

Update (August 13, 2018):  After hearing Representative Devin Nunes speak at a secretly taped fundraiser, a lifelong Republican realizes the party's only goal is to protect Fuckface. He will now vote Democratic for President.

Update (December 25, 2018):  Heather Digby Parton notes the passing of Paul Ryan's career and she seems underwhelmed by the accomplishments.

Look for Paul Ryan to be batting those baby blues and wringing his hands on TV over debt and deficits any day now. It's a beautiful scam and it's been working for decades. If you didn't know better you'd almost think they planned it this way.

Update (January 27, 2019):  Even when Republicans are out of power, they still find a way to be dicks.

House Republicans are refusing to name members to the House Intelligence Committee and, in the process, are effectively stalling special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation into the [Fuckface]-Russia scandal.

World Hunger

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017 finds that 815 million people were undernourished worldwide in 2016.

The increase - 38 million more people than the previous year - is largely due to the proliferation of violent conflicts and climate-related shocks.

Update (October 21):  Vijay Prashad comments on Food Security report.

War certainly produces hunger, but hunger in turn produces war. The pressure on the world’s agriculture from climate-change is now an acknowledged fact. But this is not enough. The descent of agro-business firms, with the advantage of intellectual property rights behind them, has struck against small farmers with a vengeance. There are any number of reports that show that the crisis of hunger can only be solved by the encouragement of small farms, whose farmers are themselves victims of the hunger crisis (three quarters of the world’s hungry live in rural areas). Even Bill Gates has suggested that the solution to the hunger crisis—and therefore to some of the instability that has led to so many wars —is the small farmer. But how can the small farmers emerge as the saviors when they are under immense pressure from capitalist agriculture that has produced ‘efficiencies’ along the global commodity chain that advantage what they do over what the small farmer does? These capitalist agricultural firms process food beyond nutrition and are thereby responsible for the obesity crisis in the West, the mirror image of the hunger crisis in the Global South. Will there be a spotlight shone on their activities?

Update (September 8, 2018):  Prashad ties increasing inequality to hunger.

It is true that war and climate change are major factors that leave people without access to food. Starvation follows aerial bombardment and rising tides. But, it is even more important to focus on the much wider problem of inequality and poverty that make hunger a normal part of life—the constant sound in the heads of the impoverished.

Data on poverty should make any sensitive person pause. The United Nations and the World Bank keep track of poverty figures. There is always some disagreement about the methodology followed by the analysts. But, there is near consensus that half of the world’s peoples—in excess of three billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day, the benchmark for poverty. Of these people, at least 1.3 billion live on less than $1.25 a day, the standard of extreme poverty. Hunger in this part of the planet is a normal part of life. As food costs rise, notes the World Bank, hunger increases. The rise of food prices in 2010 itself pushed 44 million people into poverty. UNICEF calculates that each day 22,000 children die due to poverty—most of them from malnutrition and starvation.

Update (December 17, 2020):  Debbie Weingarten reports on alternatives to the industrial food system.

If COVID-19 was a test, the food system failed. The urgency is only growing, as increased poverty, ecological disasters and global public health crises threaten food security in lockstep with the climate crisis. Continuing the status quo is likely to endanger global food supplies, reduce crop yields, make food less nutritious and drive up prices.

Racial Wealth Divide

A report called "The Road to Zero Wealth" from the Institute for Policy Studies and Prosperity Now finds that, excluding durable goods, the median wealth for black families is $1700, for Latino families it's $2000, and for white families it's $116,800. Even white high school dropouts are wealthier on average than black and Latino college graduates.

While households of color are projected to reach majority status by 2043, if the racial wealth divide is left unaddressed, median Black household wealth is on a path to hit zero by 2053 and median Latino household wealth is projected to hit zero twenty years later. In sharp contrast, median White household wealth would climb to $137,000 by 2053.

Even earning a middle-class income does not guarantee a family middle-class economic security. White households in the middle income quintile—those earning $37,201-61,328 annually—own nearly eight times as much wealth ($86,100) as Black middle-income earners ($11,000) and ten times that of their Latino counterparts ($8,600).

Update (September 17):  A Federal Reserve report shows that the wage gap between blacks and whites is also growing.

Update (September 24):  Sophia Tesfaye reports on a PRRI survey.

White college-educated Americans are far less likely to say poverty is a critical issue — only 37 percent, compared to 47 percent of white non-college-educated Americans and a majority of Hispanic and black Americans (at 52 and 69 percent, respectively).

Chauncey DeVega concludes:

Healing the racial wealth and income divide would help America as a whole. Unfortunately, too many white Americans see the fight against racism and racial inequality as a "zero sum" game they are terrified of losing -- even if that view hurts them in the medium term, and could ultimately destroy our country.

Global Pact for the Environment

An umbrella environmental treaty is being proposed to the United Nations. According to Justice Antonio Herman Benjamin, chair of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law,

There are over 500 international treaties dealing with the environment, with varying degrees of enforcement. This proposal to the UN will bring greater coherence to international environment laws, and set out clear obligations for States and individuals to protect the environment.

From Article 1:

Everyone has the right to live in an environment that is ecologically sound and conducive to health, well-being, dignity, culture and development.

Racist in Chief

Amanda Marcotte reacts to von Clownstick's decision to end the executive order that created DACA.

[Von Clownstick] accusing Obama of overreach is always rooted in a belief Obama was never a rightful president. As with most things [Fuckface], it really goes back to racism. The only reason to believe Obama was incompetent and illegitimate is racism.

She cites Ta-Nehisi Coates in her contention that racism is the president's "prime directive".

It is often said that [von Clownstick] has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.

Coates argues that white supremacy lets him overcome any deficiencies.

To [von Clownstick], whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, [he] is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, [Fuckface] cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: [he] is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, [he] is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.” The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But [von Clownstick's] counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible.

For [Fuckface], it almost seems that the fact of Obama, the fact of a black president, insulted him personally. The insult intensified when Obama and Seth Meyers publicly humiliated him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough—[von Clownstick] has made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness.

Polls show von Clownstick winning white votes across economic class, age, and education levels.

The focus on one subsector of [his] voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work in which [Fuckface's] presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The motive is clear: escapism. To accept that the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony—even after a black president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black president—is to accept that racism remains, as it has since 1776, at the heart of this country’s political life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses, instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been the agents and beneficiaries of. Moreover, to accept that whiteness brought us [Fuckface von Clownstick] is to accept whiteness as an existential danger to the country and the world.

Those that disparage "identity politics" overlook von Clownstick's success at taking advantage of white identity.

What appeals to the white working class is ennobled. What appeals to black workers, and all others outside the tribe, is dastardly identitarianism. All politics are identity politics—except the politics of white people, the politics of the bloody heirloom.

The real problem is that Democrats aren’t the party of white people—working or otherwise. White workers are not divided by the fact of labor from other white demographics; they are divided from all other laborers by the fact of their whiteness.

Working class unity fails in the face of entrenched racism. Coates reminds us that most Republicans still view Obama as an illegitimate president and that paved the way.

It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say, “If a black man can be president, then any white man—no matter how fallen—can be president.”

Update (September 16):  Paul Street criticizes Coates' comments on "left" priorities.

The actual left analysis holds that the always capitalist Democratic Party “lost its way,” so to speak (turned further to the right), when it more completely abandoned economic and social justice (centrally including racial justice and equality), labor rights, the poor, minorities, and environmental sanity in pursuit of an ever-closer alliance with corporate America, Wall Street, and the elite professional class.

[T]he actual U.S. left and progressive program has long been and remains directed at addressing both (a) the specific discrimination and oppression faced by Black and other non-white Americans and (b) the economic/class inequality that oppresses the broad multi-racial working-class majority while it falls especially hard (thanks to racism, deeply understood) on the non-white poor. The longstanding legitimately Left progressive agenda addresses both race and class at one and the time. It does not accept Coates’ false dichotomy between class and race.

[T]he real conflict for many of us on the actual Left isn’t between identity politics and class politics. It’s between bourgeois, zero-sum, divide-and-rule identity politics and a left politics that understands racially (and gender- and ethnic- and so on) specific experience, oppression, and identity as critical in building movements of popular solidarity in the struggles against the combined, interrelated, and overlapping evils of class rule, racial oppression, imperialism, patriarchy, police-statism, and – last but not least – ecocide.

Update (September 17):  Referring to tweets and comments from Dear Leader, Ta-Nehisi Coates asks,

What would happen if Barack Obama had said that?

Update (September 26):  Steve Schmidt blasts Fuckface over the NFL debacle.

To see him try to hijack this symbol, to wrap himself in it for the purposes — pre-meditatively, purposely of dividing the country is the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in my lifetime. What [von Clownstick] is doing here is as terrible a thing, and maybe the most terrible thing, that has ever been done to this country by a President of the United States. Despicable doesn’t begin to describe it.

I saw a handsome young man on TV, an NFL player, he got a little bit jammed up when a reporter asked him a question, ‘Is he a racist?’ He didn’t want to say it. So let me say it. I want to help him out. He’s a racist.

Update (November 25):  Despite the election of their hero, today's racists don't yet have much to show for it according to Matthew Sheffield.

The "alt-right" may have no idea how to accomplish anything significant beyond triggering leftists on the internet. But the utter inability of today's Republican Party to fight it off, or even to understand what has happened to American conservatism, suggests that the ideological crisis provoked by the "alt-right's" emergence is far from over.

Update (December 1):  Will it be collusion or mental illness that brings him down? Heather Digby Parton looks at the latest evidence for a breakdown.

On Thursday morning, for some inexplicable reason, the president of the United States retweeted three videos claiming to be Muslim extremists perpetrating violence.

These anti-Muslim videos are the worst kind of hate propaganda, the kind of thing one expects to find deep in the bowels of the extremist right-wing internet.

Update (January 11, 2018):  Negotiations over immigration prompts Fuckface to ask:

Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?

Update (March 11, 2018):  It's not from Dear Leader himself, but I'm guessing Steve Bannon's comments to the National Front Party of France would please many Orange supporters.

Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.

[H]istory is on our side.

Update (June 26, 2018):  The Supreme Court upheld a version of the travel ban imposed on several countries. Leading the dissent, Justice Sotomayor maintained that

[A] reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus.

Update (June 28, 2018):  Jared Yates Sexton explains the feeble plea of Justice Kennedy's concurrence.

To the president, Kennedy presented an even more impotent appeal: You can do this, but you shouldn’t.

You will, but -- my God, I wish you wouldn’t.

Update (October 26, 2018):  By outright calling himself a "nationalist", Fuckface gets about as close as you can get to openly admitting your racism. Steve Schmidt explains the message it sends.

[They] understand exactly what he means. By the way, let's stop calling them 'white nationalists' and call them by their names, which are 'neo-Nazis' and 'Klansmen'.

[I]f you go to the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, you see celebration that they have achieved a goal. That they have been given a seat at the table. That their views are held as somewhere in the mainstream, and they are part of a coalition led by [Dear Leader].

Update (October 30, 2018):  Now he wants to eliminate birthright citizenship. Since that would violate the constitution, even Paul Ryan had to admit:

Well, you obviously cannot do that.

Update (November 5, 2018):  Rather than end the midterm campaign with a positive note, Dear Leader in his infinite stupidity decided to go with the racism.

Update (March 17, 2019):  It's not really a great defense if you chief of staff has to go on TV and say this:

The president is not a white supremacist. I’m not sure how many times we have to say that.

Update (April 8, 2019):  Stephen Miller is a genuine Nazi. Amanda Marcotte:

Miller's influence is so strong that conservative [administration] critic Max Boot has blamed him almost entirely for [Fuckface's] ever-more-radical attitudes on immigration, calling Miller a "puppet master" with "a long and odious agenda, which includes repealing birthright citizenship" and "cutting levels of legal immigration."

[Dear Leader] is obsessed with closing the border, which means closing ports of entry where people can cross legally. He has also quit even trying to hide that his views are rooted more in white nationalism and hatred of Latinos, rather than in particular concerns about the legal status of immigrants.

"Can’t take you anymore. Can’t take you. Our country is full," [He] said in a speech on Friday, demanding that refugees turn back.

Update (April 13, 2019):  Heather Digby Parton explains the strategy behind the Department of Homeland Security purge.

[H]ostility to immigrants is the glue that's holding his coalition of white voters together. Those without college educations, conservative evangelicals and the like, will stick with him. But those white college-educated types who don't care for his antics are still with him on this issue and he can't afford to lose them.

Republicans are now united around anti-immigrant racism.

[Fuckface] and Stephen Miller have no intention of trying to change [that]. They believe it's their ticket to a second term. And they are clearly willing to push the legal and constitutional envelope as far as necessary to make that happen.

Update (April 15, 2019):  Amanda Marcotte thinks a racist campaign strategy won't necessarily work this cycle.

[B]y 2018, huge numbers of people were fed up with pretending that bigots mean well. Full-throated denunciations of [Dear Leader's] racism and sexism have become normal in a way that would have shocked people in 2016. Now that politicians and journalists feel free to call out [his] racism and fear-mongering for what it is, I suspect that has blunted the impact of his demagoguery. The media's increasing willingness to admit that [Fuckface's] rhetoric almost always involves actual lying has helped, as well.

These attacks on Ilhan Omar are just the beginning of what will be a two-year blitzkrieg of lies and bigotry rained down on the country by [von Clownstick], Fox News and their allies. Democrats need to offer a blunt, unapologetic, forceful response that correctly identifies this behavior as racism and sexism, and calls out attempts to deny it as gaslighting. [Manbaby] and company are going to be hyper-racist no matter what. But a forceful pushback can make the road much tougher for them.

Update (July 15, 2019):  Heather Digby Parton argues that yet another unsurprising racist outburst is just part of the re-election strategy.

[E]ssentially, that's what the 2020 election is going to be about whether [Democrats] like it or not. [Fuckface] welcomes it because he believes that most Americans are as racist as he is and that he will be rewarded for this indecency with a second term. Expect this bigoted talk to ratchet up to levels we never imagined could be uttered in 21st-century America before this is all over. It already has.

Update (July 16, 2019):  Amanda Marcotte continues to insist this electoral strategy won't work.

[Dear Leader's] racism is wildly popular with his base ... but a large majority of Americans find it repulsive.

[His] apparently adamant belief that white nationalism will pay off in electoral terms doesn't reflect any reputable political polling. It appears instead to be an artifact of his obsession with TV and with Fox News in particular. It's a closed loop of awfulness: The more [Fuckface] pushes his racist agenda, the more the network amplifies his message, and the more he believes his bigotry is massively popular. Unless and until [this asshole] takes a decisive L in 2020, he's going to keep believing the majority of Americans are secretly on his side.

Join the Club

A USA Today investigation finds a nifty way for privileged people to gain access to power.

Dozens of lobbyists, contractors and others who make their living influencing the government pay [Fuckface von Clownstick's] companies for membership in his private golf clubs, a status that can put them in close contact with the president.

Update (November 2):  USA Today reports that many government appointees are longtime members of von Clownstick's clubs.

But never in modern history has a president awarded government posts to people who pay money to his own companies.

Update (January 17, 2018):  Jessica Corbett explains Public Citizen's spreadsheet of 64 von Clownstick patrons.

[Fuckface's] first year in office has been a "year of unprecedented conflicts of interest," according to a new report that documents how dozens of political candidates, foreign governments, interest groups, and other private entities have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at the president's properties since his inauguration.

Update (March 11, 2019):  Dear Leader connected to an influence pedaling prostitution ring? Must be Monday.

Update (March 19, 2019):  Democrats in Congress are calling for an FBI investigation of the woman who founded the massage parlors and who may be selling access to von Clownstick.

Media Breakdown

George Monbiot points out that reporting on hurricanes ignores the human contribution to the natural disaster.

To claim there is no link between climate breakdown and the severity of Hurricane Harvey is like claiming there is no link between the warm summer we have experienced and the end of the last ice age. Every aspect of our weather is affected by the fact that global temperatures rose by about 4C between the ice age and the 19th century. And every aspect of our weather is affected by the 1C of global warming caused by human activities. While no weather event can be blamed solely on human-driven warming, none is unaffected by it.

Hurricane Harvey offers a glimpse of a likely global future; a future whose average temperatures are as different from ours as ours are from those of the last ice age. It is a future in which emergency becomes the norm, and no state has the capacity to respond. It is a future in which, as a paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters notes, disasters like Houston’s occur in some cities several times a year. It is a future that, for people in countries such as Bangladesh, has already arrived, almost unremarked on by the rich world’s media. It is the act of not talking that makes this nightmare likely to materialise.

Such reporting would question "not only current environmental policy, not only current economic policy – but the entire political and economic system."

It is to expose a programme that relies on robbing the future to fuel the present, that demands perpetual growth on a finite planet. It is to challenge the very basis of capitalism; to inform us that our lives are dominated by a system that cannot be sustained – a system that is destined, if it is not replaced, to destroy everything.

Update (September 9):  Conor Lynch echos Monbiot.

[I]t goes beyond simply discussing climate change. After Harvey and Irma we also have a moral duty to talk about the economic system that has brought us to this point. That is, we can no longer talk about climate change without talking about capitalism, which has laid waste to our planet and now impedes humanity’s effort to deal with the climate crisis it engendered.

Update (September 11):  While Republicans do their best to bring us to ruin, the media breakdown itself obviates our moral responsibility.

Broadcast networks are decreasing their climate coverage at a time when the case for reporting on the issue is become more and more compelling. By ignoring this serious matter, media are failing to inform audiences about pressing impacts on human migration patterns, women, and the economy.

Update (September 14):  Eric Holthaus is blunt about climate change making storms worse.

Make no mistake: These storms weren’t natural. A warmer, more violent atmosphere — heated up by our collective desire to ignore the fact that we live on a planet where such devastation is possible — juiced Harvey and Irma’s destruction.

Update (September 16):  Wildfires have also been part of the story of climate change. Over one million acres have burned in Montana.

[W]hat we can say with certainty is this: increases in temperature in the last decades have set the stage for drier conditions and more fires.

Update (December 13):  Two studies support the contention that climate change has made storms both stronger and more likely to occur.

Also, data from an Alaskan weather station got omitted from a report because a computer system flagged the (real) temperature anomalies as too irregular.

Update (May 21, 2020):  A study published by PNAS finds that climate change is already intensifying hurricanes.

[R]esearchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin at Madison analyzed satellite data over the last 40 years and found that planetary warming during that period increased the likelihood of a tropical cyclone become a major hurricane ― Category 3 strength or higher ― by approximately 8% per decade.

DACA Blues

Jeff Sessions announced yet another short-sighted von Clownstick decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals within six months. A well-functioning Congress is now tasked with fixing the problem. It could end up being a way to get the Wall funded. How bad does it have to be when even the Chamber of Commerce blasts the decision?

The original DACA program announced in 2012 was premised on sound public policy, and unlike DAPA, it was not challenged in court. Individuals enrolled in good faith and became ingrained in our communities and the nation’s economy. To reverse course now and deport these individuals is contrary to fundamental American principles and the best interests of our country.

Update (September 6):  I like this characterization from Heather Digby Parton.

[T]he focus now moves to Congress, where members looked as if they’d been run over by a Mack truck on their first day back in session. Nobody wants to deal with this highly emotional hot potato in the middle of what was already going to be a brutal September.

And since most Republicans have previously voted against solving the problem, they expect concessions from Democrats in exchange for their support now.

“Hopefully there will be some give and take and we can accomplish something,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, suggesting Democrats could support efforts to boost border security.

But Steven Rosenfeld recalls how Republicans might end up with the most to lose.

[T]here is a strong precedent that more than suggests [von Clownstick] has crossed a line and the GOP is poised to lose Latino voters, the nation’s fastest-growing population, and that will help push the party from power. That precedent is California’s Proposition 187, a 1994 law that never took effect, but which barred visa-less immigrants from receiving state welfare benefits. The GOP-backed law energized non-whites to push the GOP into political exile in the nation's most populous state.

Update (September 10):  Eliza Newlin Carney thinks Republicans are going to pay a price for the DACA decision.

[W]ho really believes that this GOP-controlled Congress can enact a bill to save DACA by this spring? Republicans have killed or blocked immigration legislation three times in the last decade. Multiple DACA-related bills that span the ideological spectrum are back on the table, but between lawmakers’ packed legislative schedule and the internal GOP disputes that have paralyzed Congress all year, it’s hard to imagine a sudden immigration breakthrough.

If anything, the basic rift that perpetually tears Republicans apart on immigration—between nativist hardliners and pragmatic business conservatives—is now deeper than ever.

Update (September 13):  Do Democrats have another deal with von Clownstick?

Update (September 14):  Not yet.

Polls show the deal making hasn't hurt Dear Leader with his base and the fallout might not be clear for the midterm elections. Heather Digby Parton is skeptical about a DACA deal.

[T]his is an issue that is much tougher for the GOP to swallow, and one can assume it’s going to be a battle. For all the hosannas from the Beltway press about [von Clownstick's] “pivot” to the Democrats, the fact remains that the Democrats don’t control Congress. And at this point, nobody knows how much clout [Fuckface von Clownstick] still has with the Republicans.

Update (September 15):  Well, some supporters are pissed off enough to burn their hats and complain that von Clownstick is going soft on the Wall. Rick Wilson has no sympathy.

[Y]ou elected a guy who has broken every promise he's ever made to his wives, his bankers, his partners, and to you.

Update (January 9, 2018):  Amid talk that von Clownstick has upset conservatives just by mentioning "comprehensive immigration reform", a US District Judge issued an injunction against ending DACA protections.

Update (January 17, 2018):  Senator Lindsey Graham thought he could flatter Dear Leader into an immigration agreement. But a bipartisan meeting was ambushed by hardliners and Heather Digby Parton says he got played.

Like so many of [Fuckface's] close confidantes before him, Graham was stabbed in the back by the man he thought he was guiding. He was outmaneuvered by other "guides" who understand the dark impulses that drive their leader much better than Graham ever will.

Update (January 21, 2018):  The administration rescinded DACA to pressure Democrats on the wall, and then Fuckface starts cracking down harder on undocumented immigrants while rejecting bipartisan deals. Juan Mendoza has a message for him.

Seventy percent of Latinos in this country know [at least] one undocumented person, whether that’s a friend or family member. If you do not take care of the Dreamers, those Latinos are going to organize and vote all of you out of office.

Update (January 22, 2018):  Democrats supposedly have a promise from Mitch McConnell for a vote on DACA, but Heather Digby Parton questions whether Republicans really want a fix.

The Republican majority in Congress has been playing Russian roulette with the Dreamers for years now. They have blocked every single solution to the problem, and it's irrational at this point to believe they are acting in good faith.

Update (February 5, 2018):  Matthew Sheffield argues that while a DACA deal would probably disappoint Democrats, it would likely enrage Republicans.

Update (February 26, 2018):  The Supreme Court declined to hear the administration's appeal of the District Court injunction.

Update (April 1, 2018):  Today's message from Fuckface:

NO MORE DACA DEAL!

Update (April 22, 2018):  The Young Turks report on a Tennessee town upset by a local ICE raid. The town, of course, overwhelmingly voted for Fuckface and Cenk Uygur suggests that conservatives have a smaller concept of "us" than progressives. They aren't concerned about repressive policies unless it happens to someone in their circle.

Update (June 8, 2018):  Republicans are struggling to put together an immigration bill moderates and conservatives can agree on. Meanwhile, a discharge petition is close to having enough signatures to force a vote on a Democratic proposal.

Update (June 22, 2018):  Dear Leader now thinks Congress should wait until November's "Red Wave" to get anything done.

House Republicans seem to understand that no immigration bill that could pass the Senate could pass the House. That is unless the House passes a bill with nearly all Democrats and a couple of dozen Republicans. But, the two dozen Republicans who signed a discharge petition to force a vote on immigration are outnumbered by rank-and-file Republicans who don’t want to actually work with Democrats, at least not in a way that would require actual policy concessions.

Update (June 26, 2018):  Another immigration bill is likely to fail in the House.

Ultimately, it’s a win for leadership because the whole goal of this immigration exercise was to prevent the discharge petition.

Maybe we just have to wait until enough old white men lose their seats in Congress.

Update (August 7, 2018):  It looks like DACA will be facing contradictory court rulings.

Update (January 23, 2019):  The Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal of a lower court ruling that prevents the Administration from ending DACA.