“With one word,” wrote the New Yorker’s Robin Wright, Trump “has demolished his ability to be taken seriously on the global stage.”
But did he, really? Is Trump’s latest comment a showstopper — or just another scene in a long-running production that wins audiences through pugnacious behavior, profane language and all manner of provocation?
“This is par for the course,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a supporter of the president who is writing a book about Trump’s America. “Trump relies on the fact that his opponents are so nihilistic and elitist that they’ll react hysterically to something like this. And his base isn’t remotely corroded by this. Almost anything he does that is outside the establishment resonates in the end with people who say, well, at least he’s sticking it to the powerful.”
No doubt the powerful in Haiti, El Salvador and nihilist elitists across Africa feel properly stuck.
The author of “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” is still following his own advice. “Nihilistic and elitist” is a non sequitur in that statement. What relationship those terms have to moral outrage at the president’s overt racism is unclear. But clarity was never the point for Gingrich, as his famous pamphlet demonstrated. Dominating one’s opponents by smearing them as reprobates is the goal.
With three wives and one or more affairs, Gingrich knows whereof he speaks. He must feel a special kinship with the sitting president. How nice the Washington Post felt the need to give him space to vent.
[Attending the first-annual Democratic Candidates Conference outside Washington for the next couple of days. May first-timers trying to learn the ropes. They will need your support.]
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The most recent, and youngest, arrived the night of December 23 in severe critical condition, more so than the first two cubs.
This third cub, estimated to be approximately 6-8 weeks of age, arrived near death, unable to stand or walk from such severe dehydration and starvation. Zoo vets found her starvation was so advanced, her body was consuming its own muscle mass. After six days of continuous IV fluids containing essential electrolytes and minerals, and round-the-clock bottle-feedings by Zoo veterinary staff, she began walking and showing signs of life. Vet staff joyously reports she is now regularly eating solid foods, showing spunky personality, and even ‘playing’ with her enrichment.
As determined by the CDFW, these three cubs cannot be released back in to the wild once their rehabilitation is complete, they would have no chance of survival. Unfortunately, they need their mothers to be effectively taught to hunt and survive. In the wild, even when the mother is present, the survival rate of Mountain Lion cubs is slim. Mountain Lions are becoming critically endangered in the California, often struck by cars or shot when seen as a threat in encroaching urban areas and developments. Oakland Zoo partners with the conservation organizations like the Mountain Lion Foundation and the Bay Area Puma Project to try and help conserve the species in the wild.
“Mountain Lion cubs need up to two years with their mom in order to learn how to survive and thrive. Human survival training is not possible. The Bay Area Puma Project supports Oakland Zoo’s efforts to care for Pumas that cannot be released into the wild,” said Zara McDonald, Executive Director of the Bay Area Puma Project.
Oakland Zoo helped found BACAT (Bay Area Cougar Action Team) in 2013, an alliance with the Bay Area Puma Project and the Mountain Lion Foundation, to help support the CDFW save Mountain Lions caught in the human-wildlife conflict.
Yet unnamed, the newest kitten seems to be thriving in the past several days. Upon arrival, Zoo vet staff began treating her in the ICU with nine daily and overnight bottle-feedings of KMR (kitten milk replacer formula), grooming her with a soft cloth to mimic a mother’s tongue, and monitoring her progress constantly. She is now eating solid food. Her favorite stew is a combination of raw meat from Primal Pet Foods, chicken baby food, frozen mice that is warmed, and cod.
The newest rescue was found roadside in Coloma (El Dorado County) in the early morning hours of December 21st. The couple that discovered her reported she remained in the same spot for hours, and when they finally attempted to approach her, the cub attempted to drag herself away but was unable from weakness. The couple contacted Sierra Wildlife Rescue, who in turn contacted CDFW.
“We have a lot of work to do to better protect and conserve Mountain Lions in the wild, from proper education to establishing wildlife crossings and proper enclosures for pets and livestock. Oakland Zoo will continue to work in our BACAT Alliance with CA Department of Fish and Wildlife, Bay Area Puma Project, Mountain Lion Foundation to inspire our community to both understand and take action for our precious local lion,” said Amy Gotliffe, Director of Conservation at Oakland Zoo.
President Trump’s effort to bar many Muslims from entering the United States may have actually caused public opinion to shift towards Muslims in general — just not in the direction the president likely intended.
Many Americans who once supported or remained neutral on Trump’s travel ban have altered their stance, according to a new report in Political Behavior. The study, authored by political scientists Loren Collingwood, Nazita Lajevardi, and Kassra A.R. Oskooii, surveyed 423 people prior to the first iteration of the ban, which targeted all refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations.
When surveyed again a week later, many of the same respondents seemed to have changed their minds. Around 30 percent said they felt more negatively towards the legislation than they had prior to its introduction, with many of those showing the biggest shift also describing their U.S. nationality as a major component of their identity.
That’s a notable turn of events, one that indicates the Trump administration’s hardline efforts to target immigrants — especially Muslim immigrants — could be backfiring.
Around 30 – 40% of Americans are racists just like Trump.That seems pretty clear. But I still think most Americans like the idea of the America being a nation of people from all over the world. It’s put national mythos, even though we’ve always had this nativist strain and for centuries treated new immigrants like dirt until they assimilated and they did the same. But at least since the middle of the last century, pride in the American melting pot and our immigrant character has been something that kids were taught in school in the same we they’re taught that we believe in freedom and liberty. It may not be true, but it’s an ideal that people like to believe is true.
Christopher Cantwell, a white supremacist organizer who is being charged with assaulting counter-protesters in Charlottesville, praised Trump’s comments on Gab, a social network that caters to online racists.
Trump was also praised on Gab by Jared Wyand, a white nationalist who was banned from Twitter for anti-Semitic posts, endorsed Trump’s comments and added that “blacks are incapable of building thriving civil societies.”
Trump’s comments were also popular on Stormfront, a message board for white supremacists. One user said Trump was absolutely right to trash “non-white” countries.
The White House loves them right back:
>>>WH staff is celebrating, not backing off, Trump’s “sh*thole” comment saying it will play well with his base, reports @kaitlancollins— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 11, 2018
Is intentional maiming and mayhem a war crime?
by digby
Remember when Trump implied that we might have to behead some terrorists to show who’s boss? We’re getting close:
I’m sure he’s very proud:
The Pentagon’s senior enlisted service member has issued a blunt warning to Islamic State fighters, saying in new social-media posts that they could either surrender or face death in a number of forms, including being beaten to death with steel entrenching tools.
Army Command Sgt. Maj. John Wayne Troxell, the senior enlisted adviser in the Pentagon, issued the warnings on Facebook and Twitter. Senior U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, have warned Islamic State fighters for months that they must lay down their weapons or face annihilation, but Troxell’s message was unusually forceful.
“ISIS needs to understand that the Joint Force is on orders to annihilate them,” Troxell wrote on Facebook. “So, they have two options should they decide to come up against the United States, our allies and partners: surrender or die!”
Troxell added that the U.S.-led military coalition will provide militants who surrender with safety in a detainee cell, food, a cot and legal due process.
“HOWEVER, if they choose not to surrender, then we will kill them with extreme prejudice, whether that be through security force assistance, by dropping bombs on them, shooting them in the face, or beating them to death with our entrenching tools,” Troxell wrote. “Regardless, they cannot win, so they need to choose how it’s going to be.”
Very strong. Very impressive. But really, they need to start putting heads on pikes or maybe do some disemboweling if they really want to get their point across. Of course, beating someone to death with that “entrenching tool” would probably do just that.
Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for Dunford and the Joint Staff, said that Troxell’s comments emphasized the sincerity of the U.S.-led coalition’s resolve to defeat the Islamic State over the last four years. Ryder noted the count atrocities that the militants have committed against men, women and children.
“His intent was to communicate the tenacity of the warrior ethos that, even when faced with the brutal and unforgiving nature of combat, will use every resource available to fight and win,” Ryder said of Troxell.
When you have a monstrous commander in chief like Trump, probably best to rhetorically err on the side of civilized, legal behavior. People could get the wrong idea.
Yes, Trump is racist and a xenophobe. Shocking, I know. He’s the guy who tried to prove Barack Obama was an illegitimate president because he was allegedly born in a shit hole African country instead of America. His announcement speech called Mexican rapists. He wants to mass deport millions of people.This is who he is. And there’s nothing we didn’t know about this aspect of his despicable character before today so this is just par for the course.
I think after two and a half years in politics we know who and what he is. The real problem is the enablers.
Conservative commentator Jason Miller was forced to bend himself into a pretzel to defend the recent comments by President Donald Trump.
“Why are we having all these people from sh*thole countries come here?” Trump said, according to The Washington Post. What Trump was referring to were people from African countries and Haiti. Instead, Trump wants to see more people from places like Norway.
Miller began by trying to say people were putting words in the president’s mouth.
“We don’t need to put words in the president’s mouth,” host Anderson Cooper cut in to say. “The president is putting racist words in his own mouth.”
Miller maintained that Trump wasn’t making racist comments. He said that Trump was trying to solve the DREAMer problem and find a solution, “something he’s not getting credit for.”
Coopber broke in to say that clearly the strive to help DREAMers didn’t include Haitians or Africans.
Miller continued trying to promote Trump’s statements on immigration but Cooper cut in asking what any of that has to do with “sh*thole countries.”
“So there are more merit people in Norway than there are from Haiti or Africa? Africa, by the way, an enormous continent full of dozens of countries,” Cooper continued.
Miller said that the plan that was presented still have “carve-outs” of economically depressed nations that are sending people to the United States.
“Africa.” Cooper said simply. “Have you been to Africa? I mean, do you know — does the president know how many countries? I know the president likes to make up countries not actually in Africa but there are actually an incredibly developed and well-off countries in Africa. In fact, when the president was speaking to African leaders he talked about his rich friends making money in Africa.”
Miller claimed that Cooper was leaving out things from the report and that Trump named Asian countries but didn’t specifically name anyone because he doesn’t believe there should be carve-outs.
“So, he’s willing to generalize about all Asians as working hard and deserve the merit of coming here but all Africans not,” Cooper said. “How is that not race?”
That’s when Van Jones got involved. In an outright argument, Jones demanded Miller denounce Trump’s words, which Miller refused to do.
“What’s happening is you have a president who has shown his heart to the country,” Jones said. “In his heart people from African countries — people from Africa, almost a billion people live there, to him all s-hole people who live in s-hole places. That’s wrong and you should denounce it. You should, I know you very well. Why won’t you denounce that?”
He is just one of many. Right now, I’m watching Paul Ryan call president’s comments “unfortunate” talk about his Irish roots and then say that what’s important is that we celebrate immigration. He could not care less that the United States is the most despised country on earth and Americans are now considered to be the most dangerous people on the planet. He wants his fucking tax cuts.
The paid lackeys on TV want their paychecks.
All the rest of them either agree with Trump or are so stupid they don’t understand what he’s doing to this country.
Trump denied saying what he said. Senator Dick Durbin said he said it. The Republicans who were in the room are silent.
They are the problem. They are the only ones who have the power to do anything about this monster and they won’t do it. I think we have to assume they think he’s great and take it from there.
After her good night’s sleep, Sarah Huckabee will be no doubt in championship form in her daily briefing. Nothing to see here, folks.
Exclusive: Trump attacks protections for immigrants from "shithole" countries in Oval Office meeting https://t.co/R1aOB8EAGB— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 11, 2018
After breaking the story yesterday, the Washington Post reports this morning on how, because the statement came from the President of the United States, media outlets (the Post included) have shunned their usual decorum and instead are running the quote unedited:
Such a comment made by the president, especially in front of several witnesses, is newsworthy, no matter how reprehensible it may be, said Ben Zimmer, a linguist and lexicographer who writes a language column in The Wall Street Journal.
“It was incumbent on media outlets to present what he said without extradition or euphemization,” he said.
MSNBC ran it as a Breaking News banner last night.
"This is beyond unbefitting, this is beyond unpresidential…this is straight up racist…we can't sugarcoat it" pic.twitter.com/qV4VfkwiL3— Leanne Naramore (@LeanneNaramore) January 11, 2018
“This is beyond unbefitting of the presidency, which it is. This is beyond not presidential, this is beyond ‘oh, the big tent Republican party dream has died,’” Daily Beast’s editor-in-chief John Avalon told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “This is straight up racist.”
And so unfair. So unfair that the media reports exactly what the president says.
[Attending the first-annual Democratic Candidates Conference outside Washington for the next couple of days. May first-timers trying to learn the ropes. They will need your support.]
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It seems all the suspicious salts out there may have happened upon a measurable phenomenon. A study published last year with the cheeky title “Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: The Relationship Between Profanity and Honesty,” notes, “the consistent findings across the studies suggest that the positive relation between profanity and honesty is robust, and that relationship found at the individual level indeed translates to the society level.” It’s true, some research shows that people who swear may be likely to violate other social norms, god bless ‘em, but they are also less likely to lie during police interrogations.
After reviewing the literature, the researchers, led by Maastricht University Psychologist Gilad Feldman, describe the results of their own experiments. They asked 276 people to report on their swearing habits (or not) in detail. Those people then took a psychological test that measured their levels of honesty. Next, the team analyzed 70,000 social media interactions, and reported that “profanity and honesty were found to be significantly and positively correlated, indicating that those who used more profanity were more honest in their Facebook status updates.” They did not say whether high levels of honesty on Facebook is desirable.
Finally, Feldman and his colleagues widened their scope to 48 U.S. states, and were able to correlate social media data with measures of government accountability. States with higher levels of swearing had a higher integrity score according to a 2012 index published by the Center for Public Integrity. (Believe or not, New Jersey had some of the highest scores.) All three of their studies yielded similar results. “At both the individual and society level,” they conclude, “we found that a higher rate of profanity use was associated with more honesty.” This does not mean, as Ephrat Livni writes at Quartz, that “people who curse like sailors” won’t “commit serious ethical crimes—but they won’t pretend all’s well online.”
As to the question of whether swearing betrays a lack of education and an impoverished vocabulary, we might turn to linguist, psychologist, and neuroscientist Steven Pinker, who has made a learned defense of foul language, in drily humorous talks, books, and essays. “When used judiciously,” he writes in a 2008 Harvard Brain article, “swearing can be hilarious, poignant, and uncannily descriptive.” His is an argument that relies not only on data but on philosophical reflection and literary appreciation. “It’s a fact of life that people swear,” he says, and so, it’s a fact of art. Shakespeare invented dozens of swears and was never afraid to work blue. Perhaps that’s why we find his representations of humanity so perennially honest.
Former Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio resurfaced false claims on Wednesday that former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a “forgery” and said Congress should pass a law requiring such documents to be examined.
“I’m going to tell you again that that document is a forgery document,” Arpaio told WABC’s Rita Cosby.”And nobody will touch it.”
“I wanted to get it to Congress so they can pass some type of law – regulation – that when somebody runs for president you ought to check their background, so this won’t happen again,” he added. “But I can’t get anybody – anybody – to even look at it.”
Arpaio announced on Tuesday that he will seek the Republican nomination in Arizona’s 2018 Senate race. He told Cosby on Wednesday that he would raise the issue of Obama’s birth certificate in Congress.
He’s a Trump guy through and through.
And look here:
Former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio is in a statistical tie with Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) in the Republican Senate primary in Arizona, according to a new poll.
The ABC15/OHPI poll shows 85-year-old Arpaio, who on Tuesday announced his plans to run for the Senate seat, has 29 percent support in the race.
McSally, 51, who is also expected to jump into the race soon but has not made a formal announcement, has 31 percent support, according to the poll.
Former state Sen. Kelli Ward, 48, has 25 percent support in the poll.
The poll was conducted Tuesday among 504 likely Republican voters. Its margin of error is 4.36 percentage points.
Ward is as nutty as Arpaio and McSally is no prize. This should be quite a race.
The CW seems to be that the seat must be won by a Republican but Clinton only lost the state by 3.5 points. This could be a pick-up, especially if they end up nominating Arpaio or Ward.
Bannon arrogantly strutting around in that stupid camo jacket down in Alabama was proof positive that he’d lost the thread. He thought that all that Trump love was for him.
It wasn’t.
The President clearly has “won” among Republicans – beating back the criticisms of his former chief strategist Steve Bannon. Bannon, who was fired last August, was quoted in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury as attacking the President’s ability to serve, as well as several members of the President’s family. Even after Bannon was fired, Republicans were divided when they judged Bannon. Now, they have definitely turned negative.
The public as a whole never liked Bannon. Throughout 2017, about twice as many held an unfavorable view of Bannon as had a positive one.
By more than five to one, Republicans now approve of Bannon’s firing. As for his remarks to Michael Wolff, Republicans clearly don’t find Bannon credible. Just 8% of Republicans think Bannon is honest and trustworthy (as do 8% of Democrats). And Republicans overwhelmingly say it is Trump who is the more honest and trustworthy person.
Most Democrats and independents don’t choose either the President or his former strategist when asked this question, perhaps not all that surprising. Only 5% of Democrats and 27% of independents regard President Trump as honest, compared to two-thirds of Republicans who say this.
Clearly most Republicans are as delusional as Trump. There is no way to square that with reality.
And there’s no way to square this with common sense:
Two in three Republicans have consistently said in Economist/YouGov Polls they want the President to run for re-election in 2020. This week 66% of Republicans say that. And most Republicans also don’t want to see him challenged in the GOP primaries either. One in four would like some other Republicans to challenge the President, and that group of Republicans is much more likely to worry that a 2020 nominee Trump would lose the general election.
Overall, nearly as many Republicans think the President is likely to lose in 2020 as he is to win. A majority of the public overall believe he will lose.
I know we’re supposed to say that we all live in out own bubbles as if there is no reality. But there is. And the majority of Republicans are not in it.
