Month: October 2018

Trump approval rises?

by digby

I guess that’s technically true. But look at what it rises to:

His approval rating has been at about 40% since he was inaugurated. I suspect that won’t change unless the economy goes south and dislodges some of the selfish, rich, assholes who know he’s a dangerous imbecile but don’t care as long as their portfolios remain fat. That would probably peel off five or six points. Maybe a few more. But the rest are superfans. They may stick with him forever.

In the meantime:

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Going full Trumpistan
by Tom Sullivan

Being persecuted “for Jesus” is a way to win brownie points not only with the Big Guy, but with fellow members of your church. Living near Bob Jones University decades ago, one noticed how conservative southern Christians at once both dominated local culture and politics and yet felt beset on all sides by the powers of darkness. Screaming at passersby they were going to hell was a sign of piety. Receiving scorn for behaving like a jerk bestowed bragging rights the way a lefty might recount for years the time at that protest he was shoved by a cop. “HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!” is core to the brand.

Globalization has reduced the Christian right’s political and cultural dominance. That simply makes them feel even more persecuted for their righteousness. So too with conservatism as a broader social movement.

Ryan Cooper writes that besides being an effective distraction from Republicans padding the pockets of the wealthy, going “all-in on culture war, bigotry, enraged nationalism, and bug-eyed conspiracy theories” keeps their base from noticing they have “nothing concrete whatsoever to offer most of their voters.” Serving up red meat gets the job done:

Now, this tactic should not be underestimated. For instance, in terms of uniting the Republican base, the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has proved successful precisely because of his multiple sexual assault allegations and his snarling partisan testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Infuriating liberals by nominating a beer-swilling Republican hack operative and accused sexual predator allows conservatives to experience their very favorite thing: marinating in victimhood.

Nothing unites conservatives better like whipping themselves into a red froth of rage over perceived liberal persecution — and there’s no better way to do it than standing proudly behind a genuinely horrible person. “I didn’t like Nixon until Watergate,” as conservative writer Stan Evans once said. Even Bret Stephens, the New York Times’ hand-picked Never Trump conservative, went full MAGA over Kavanaugh.

Faced with a looming blue wave, Republicans led by Donald Trump have created a liberal “mob” as this season’s oppressor.

Jonathan Chait believes (as I do) that confronting high-ranking Republicans in restaurants is not effective political action. Nor is spot violence by “a tiny handful of revolutionary cosplayers” among antifa. But the angry mobs of Trump’s imagination provide the conservative base a handy persecutor du jour and a motivating distraction from its own darker tendencies:

Susan Glasser, a seasoned and politically centrist reporter, observed six recent Trump rallies. She notes the cult of personality theme at the events, which feature “the kinds of tributes I have heard in places like Uzbekistan, but never before in America.” And while she allows that Trump is hardly new in making hyperbolic charges that his center-left opponents will usher in socialism, the fear of chaos he marshalls behind such warnings is novel: “Where Trump differs starkly is in his insistence — made at an increasingly high pitch as the week went on — that Democrats not only want to legislate their way to socialism but that they are an actual clear and present danger to Americans.”

The method on display is familiar if you study any historical episode of democratic backsliding. One party, either from the far left or the far right, sets out to attack and weaken democratic norms. The small-d democrats resist, trying to maintain democratic norms. But they’re fighting at a disadvantage against a ruthless foe that does not observe their limits, and at least some of the opposition undertakes a more drastic action. Any offense becomes a pretext for the authoritarians, who exaggerate the threat of violence and chaos by their enemies to justify the antidemocratic measures they were planning all along.

The strength of democratic institutions and Trump’s ineptness as an autocrat have prevented America from going full Trumpistan. So far.

Glasser writes that ignoring the amped-up victimization Trump is selling misses how dangerous it really is:

It’s the hate, and the sense of actual menace that the President is trying to convey to his supporters. Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Trump and Trump alone stands between his audiences and disaster.

Our votes stand between democratic republic and Trumpistan.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Saturday Night at the Movies

Don’t look down: Free Solo (***½)

By Dennis Hartley

In my 2011 review of the film Drive, I wrote:

If there is one thing I’ve learned from the movies, it’s that a man…a real man…has gotta adhere to a Code. Preferably a “warrior” code of some sort. […] Steve McQueen…there was a guy who specialized in playing characters who lived by a code; he also brought a sense of Zen cool to the screen. There were others, like Jean-Paul Belmondo, Lee Marvin, Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood.

It seemed inevitable that at some point in E. Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary Free Solo, it would be revealed that its “star”, free-soloist climber Alex Honnold, lives by such a code.

“For [my girlfriend] the point of life is like, happiness,” the soft-spoken, seemingly unflappable Honnold confides at one juncture, “To be with people that make you feel fulfilled; to have a good time. For me, it’s all about performance. Anybody can be happy and cozy. […] Nobody achieves anything great because they are happy and cozy. It’s about being a warrior. It doesn’t matter about the cause, necessarily. This is your path and you will pursue it with excellence. You face your fear, because your goal demands it. That is the goddamned warrior spirit. I think the free-soloing mentality is pretty close to warrior culture; where you give something 100% focus, because your life depends on it.”

I’m taking his word for it. When it comes to heights…I get a nosebleed from thick socks.

It’s not that the Spock-like Honnold never experiences fear; he just processes it differently from most humans. Literally. In one scene, a bemused Honnold gets a brain MRI. The results? “You have no activation in your amygdala,” the neurologist marvels, “Things that are typically stimulating for the rest of us just aren’t doing it for you.” Hmm.

Honnold (now 33) dropped out of UC Berkeley at 19, scrapping his original plan to study engineering so he could free-climb full time. He’s become a rock star in the climbing world over the years, striving to outdo himself with each ascent. In June of 2017 Honnold went for his ultimate personal best by aiming to be the first person to do a free solo ascent of the 3,200-foot face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Vasarhelyi re-teamed with her husband, photographer/mountaineer Jimmy Chin (the couple co-directed the 2014 film Meru) to document Honnold’s meticulous preparation and the attempt itself.

The deliberate pacing of the film’s first two thirds, which gives only fitful peeks what makes the taciturn, borderline hermetic Honnold tick, belies the genuine excitement of the final third, which rewards the viewer’s patience in spades. There are glimpses at his personal life with his devoted girlfriend, who seems to have resigned herself to accepting his eccentricities as par for the course. Well, you know what they say- “whatever works”.

You may already know whether Honnold achieved his goal; I had no clue before watching the film (I haven’t gone out of my way to follow the world of free climbing). I also purposely did not Google his name beforehand, because I figured it would ratchet up the suspense. Boy, did it ever-especially in the film’s climactic climbing sequence, which was the most harrowing, white-knuckled, yet ultimately exhilarating and life-affirming 20 minutes I’ve experienced at the movies in ages (I had a lot of activation in my amygdala).

The photography is stunning (as you would expect from a National Geographic film…they do have a rep to uphold), and the editing in that final sequence is Oscar-worthy. I watched my preview copy on a 40-inch flat screen; but I easily visualize this film as a spectacular big-screen experience. Granted, it will likely end up airing on Nat Geo Channel (with 153 commercials) but go see it at a theater if you get the opportunity.

Previous posts with related themes:

North Face
Man on Wire

More reviews at Den of Cinema
On Facebook
On Twitter

–Dennis Hartley

For the Proud Boys at the Metropolitan Republican Club 

by tristero

Right wing extremists in New York last night.

And here they are, 80 years ago, packed into Madison Square Garden. Be sure to watch the entire movie and see them beat up a protestor.

Someone wrote me recently and scolded me for being panicked. He’s absolutely correct. I am quite panicked.

If you’re not, at the very least, highly alarmed, at what’s going on… then you simply don’t know 20th Century American and European history. This is not normal.

America has always needed a celebrity businessman indebted to Middle Eastern despots

by digby

Trump claims that he won’t impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia because that would mean they’d cancel the brilliant 100+ arms sales he personally negotiated and that wouldn’t be fair to Americans.

First things first. The arms deal,which was mostly negotiated by the Obama administration has only resulted in about 14 billion dollars in contracts. Trump loves to brag and maybe this really is the only reason he’s been fluffing the Saudis non-stop since he became president. But I doubt it

From TPM:

He’s booked hotel rooms and meeting spaces to them, sold an entire floor in one of his buildings to them and, in desperate moments in his career, gotten a billionaire from the country to buy his yacht and New York’s Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park.

President Donald Trump’s ties to Saudi Arabia run long and deep, and he’s often boasted about his business ties with the kingdom.

“I love the Saudis,” Trump said when announcing his presidential run at Trump Tower in 2015. “Many are in this building.”

Now those ties are under scrutiny as the president faces calls for a tougher response to the kingdom’s government following the disappearance, and possible killing, of one of its biggest critics, journalist and activist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The Saudis are funneling money to him,” said former federal ethics chief Walter Shaub, who is advising a watchdog group suing Trump for foreign government ties to his business. That undermines “confidence that he’s going to do the right thing when it comes to Khashoggi.”

Trump paid his first foreign visit as president to Saudi Arabia last year, praised its new young ruler and boasted of striking a deal to sell $110 billion of U.S. weapons to the kingdom.

But those close ties are in peril as pressure mounts from Congress for the president to find out whether Khashoggi was killed and dismembered after entering a Saudi consulate in Turkey, as Turkish officials have said without proof.

Trump said Friday that he will soon speak with Saudi Arabia’s king about Khashoggi’s disappearance. But he also has said he doesn’t want to scuttle a lucrative arms deal with the kingdom and noted that Khashoggi, a U.S. resident, is not a citizen. For its part, Saudi Arabia has called allegations it killed Khashoggi “baseless.”

The president’s links to Saudi billionaires and princes go back years, and appear to have only deepened.

In 1991, as Trump was teetering on personal bankruptcy and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million, a third less than what he reportedly paid for it.

Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel.

In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the United Nations in New York for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Shortly after he announced his run for president, Trump began laying the groundwork for possible new business in the kingdom. He registered eight companies with names tied to the country, such as “THC Jeddah Hotel Advisor LLC” and “DT Jeddah Technical Services,” according to a 2016 financial disclosure report to the federal government. Jeddah is a major city in the country.

“Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd at an Alabama rally on Aug. 21, 2015, the same day he created four of the entities. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”

The president’s company, the Trump Organization, said shortly after his 2016 election that it had shut down those Saudi companies. The president later pledged to pursue no new foreign deals while in office.

In a statement this week, the company said it has explored business opportunities in many countries but that it does “not have any plans for expansion into Saudi Arabia.”

Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.

A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging and catering at his Washington hotel near the Oval Office through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to the president that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.

The Saudi government was also a prime customer at the Trump International Hotel in New York early this year, according to a Washington Post report.

The newspaper cited an internal letter from the hotel’s general manager, who wrote that a “last-minute” visit in March by a group from Saudi Arabia accompanying Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had boosted room rentals at the hotel by 13 percent for the first three months of the year, after two years of decline.

Saudi Arabia has also helped on one of Trump’s key policy promises, and helped the president’s friends along the way.

Last year, the kingdom announced plans to invest $20 billion in a private U.S.-focused infrastructure fund managed by Blackstone Group, an investment firm led by CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Blackstone stock rose on the news. Earlier this year, Trump unveiled a $200 billion federal plan to fix the nation’s airports, roads, highways and ports, tapping private companies for help and selling off some government owned infrastructure.

Schwarzman, who celebrated his 70th birthday at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, accompanied Trump on his visit to Saudi Arabia.

I will never in a million years be able to fully grasp how it is that a president with this kind of exposure to foreign influence, who has not divested his business even today, who refuses to be transparent about his taxes and on and on and on can get away with all this.

But hey, maybe he’ll succeed finally in locking up Hillary Clinton to send a message about corruption and everything will be fine.

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Trump neglect in Trump country

by digby

PANAMA CITY, Florida—Hurricane Michael’s sudden transformation into a storm that is unprecedented for the Florida Panhandle haunts everyone who lived through it. “It was raw power,” says Panama City resident Walter McAlster, “you felt you were in it, not outside and didn’t know if you would live through it. You knew that everything was going to change the landscape forever.”

And it did, in the span of three hours.

The destruction is everywhere, at every corner for as far as the eye can see. Mexico Beach, where the hurricane’s eyewall slammed into Florida with 140 mph winds, is flattened. Panama City, gem of the Emerald Coast, looks like a bomb had been dropped on it. Is now a desolate landscape of countless toppled power poles, transformers, electical lines, severed trees, and metal roofings, twisted and tangled into a sea of debris covering every road. Nearly all homes, businesses, stores, banks, schools are severely damaged or destroyed, skeletal remains with blown out windows or crushed facades. To residents, it is unrecognizable.

There is so much rubble that the official death toll of 14 is expected to rise as search-and-rescue teams inspect thousands of buildings, looking for the the missing. On Friday, a team from the Miami Fire Department found a body in a Mexico Beach home.
[…]
Since the storm, there’s been no electricity and no water in Panama City. Emergency disaster relief was yet to be seen in strength as of Saturday morning and residents are growing more frustrated and desperate by the day.

Chantell Goolspy sat in her car making phone calls to get help. Goolspy and many of her neighbors live in a public housing area in downtown Panama City that was badly devastated.

“We’re in need of food, water, anything, we’re not getting any help. The whole street needs help,” Goolspy told the Red Cross. “FEMA referred me to you. That person told me to call 211.”

Down the street, Barbara Sanders stood outside her daughter’s unit where she had come to stay during the hurricane.

“We’re not getting any help,” she said. “We need food. It’s just crazy.”

Sanders said not a single relief agency had come by to check on them. Only the police had come and it was to tell everyone to leave. “They told us there’s nothing they can do and it’s gonna take a long time to rebuild,” Sanders said.

Just then a pick-up truck arrived with water. It was the first help this neighborhood had received and it turned out to be two brothers, Chris and Brendon Hill, from Louisiana who had decided to come and help residents here.

In neighboring Panama City Beach, city manager Mario Gisbert wasn’t going to wait for federal emergency assistance. Volunteers from Florida and other states, brought water, set up a food kitchen for police, and prepared 1,500 meals for locals. A local church is preparing to distribute meals at 15 stations in Panama City.

“The American people are helping us,” Gisbert said. “FEMA will eventually come into the game and get the accolades in six months.”

Federal, state, and local officials were hunkered down at the Emergency Operations Center set up at Gulf Coast State College in Lynne Haven, trying to get urgently needed food and water to residents. The EOC denied The Daily Beast’s request to speak with the EOC chief, Mark Bowen, and city officials. Spokesperson Catie Feenie said the focus was on “coordinating some patrols who are in life-saving mode” for the 60,000 residents that had not evacuated before the hurricane, like Goolspy and Sanders.

Trump’s going to rallies and hanging with Kanye and truly does not seem to give a shit.

Mexico Beach and Panama City are in Bay county, which gave Trump 71% of the vote in 2016. Maybe if they didn’t name their towns after shithole countries he might want to help. They should call them Trump Beach and Trump City and maybe he’ll start to care.

But hey, I’m sure that he’ll take time out of his busy rally and tweeting schedule to come down and hand out some paper towels. And all his superfans will show up, thrilled just to be in his presence. He’ll say there’s never been a relief effort as strong, nice and great and they’ll all believe him.

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About that angry mob…

by digby

Think Progress reports:

The Proud Boys took Manhattan Friday night, attending a lecture by their founder, Gavin McInnes, at the Metropolitan Republican Club of New York City.

Following the event, the white nationalist group took to the streets, brutally beating and kicking several individuals while shouting “faggot” and “cocksucker,” reportedly because one of them stole one of their MAGA hats. Fox News responded by only reporting on anti-fascist vandalism that had taken place at the venue, while continuing to portray Democrats as the real angry mobs.

McInnes’ lecture was about Otoya Yamaguchi, who himself was a member of an extremist right-wing group in Japan. In 1960, Yamaguchi stabbed Japan Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma to death, and he has been celebrated as a hero of extreme nationalist groups.

McInnes claimed on Instagram that he would actually be “re-enacting this inspiring moment” at the event. That the Proud Boys were hyped to engage in violence of their own afterward appears to be no coincidence.

Twitter user and photojournalist Shay Horse followed the Proud Boys after they left the event and documented a group of about 30 Proud Boys “pummeling a guy on the ground screaming, ‘Are you brave now faggot?!’” He later noticed from his own photographs that several fights were playing out simultaneously. He also showed the Proud Boys proudly flashing white power hand symbols afterward.

Christopher Wright, who describes himself as a “conservative in NY” who has walked away from “the Democrat Plantation,” was among the Proud Boys who attended the event and was present for the beatings. His Facebook live video shows perhaps the closet view of the attacks, as well as how hyped the Proud Boys were after they walked away.

In his video, in which he claims members of Antifa attempted to jump them, the Proud Boys can be heard calling the victims “faggot” and “cocksucker.” The group also chanted, “I like beer!”, referring to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony when he denied sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford. One individual can be heard boasting, “I kicked him right in the fucking head!” and “Dude, I had one of their fucking heads and was just smashing it in the pavement!” Another replies, “Whoo, yeah!”

“Once again, you see who the enemy is,” Wright says of the victims who were far outnumbered as they were brutally beat and kicked. “That’s the enemy of the country back there. That’s the enemy of the state. That’s fascism back there, and you saw where it ended up: on the ground! Where they belong, like the bunch of little punks they are.”

Fox News’ coverage of the event, however, did not in any way highlight the Proud Boys’ gang violence. Instead, it focused exclusively on the Antifa vandalism that targeted the Metropolitan Republican Club in advance of McInnes’ lecture, framing the anti-fascist group as responsible for instigating violence.

As ThinkProgress has reported, the Proud Boys have a penchant for violence at their events, seeming to even delight in initiating it. McInnes himself has told his followers that “fighting solves everything.”

Several people have pointed out that the police appeared to protect the Proud Boys in these altercations. Indeed, Rebecca Kavanaugh, senior staff attorney for The Legal Aid Society, confirmed on Twitter that three arrests were made, but all three were anti-racist protesters — none of them members of the Proud Boys.

As Huffington Post National Reporter Christopher Mathias pointed out, U.S. media would describe the Proud Boys’ behavior as a fascist gang in any other country, but somehow their extremism continues to be downplayed.

Despite claims by the Proud Boys that they are not a racist organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies them as a hate group and has documented their affinity for white nationalism and association with other racist groups, including their participation in the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally.

If you’re wondering why there are men of color in the group, this article delves into that weird phenomenon.

David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, says, “The ranks of people of color who show up to these right-wing events are totally dominated by males.” He says the alt-right targets white males between the ages of 15 and 30 with a message of male resentment, which ends up attracting black, Latino, and Asian men as well.

Neiwert says many young men of color in the far-right grew up on conservative traditions common in minority communities. Their journey to the far-right has been enabled by the ease of recruitment in the internet age and the endorsement of extremism by Trump.

Entry points to the far-right include male-dominated video-game culture, the anti-feminist gamergate, troll havens on 4chan and 8chan, and the conspiracism that flourishes on websites like Infowars. Libertarianism is another gateway.

“A lot of these young guys,” Neiwert says, “especially from the software world, who are being sucked into white nationalism, start out being worked up about Ayn Rand in high school.”

Andrew Zhao, 25, a software engineer, says his parents, physicists who emigrated from mainland China, “are Trump fans.” He found out about the Seattle rally from Reddit and Facebook and said, “We need more patriotism. A lot of liberals don’t like America.”

Daniel HoSang says some people of color are drawn to the far-right because they “identify with the military, with nationalism, with patriotism, with conservatism.”

Wearing a Proud Boys hat, David Nopal, 23, came to the Seattle rally alone, like others. Nopal, whose parents crossed illegally from Mexico, said, “I’m very patriotic. The U.S. isn’t perfect, but we are a hell of a lot better than other countries.”

Sanchez comes from a military family. “They all love America. It’s a big part of the reason I’m a patriot.”

Similarly, Tarrio attributes his anti-socialist politics to his grandfather’s experience in Cuba under Fidel Castro.

They proudly identify as “American” without modifiers. In their America they’ve never experienced racism. They eagerly talk politics, but evidence of their America is scant beyond the internet. Institutional racism has been ended by affirmative action, “black privilege,” and equal protection under the law. Any remaining black inequality is caused by social welfare and liberal policies. In any case, it was Democrats who started the Klan.

People of color within the far-right play a role that “excuses white racism and bears witness to the failure of people of color,” HoSang says, adding that they make “white supremacy a more durable force.”

HoSang said the far-right is trying to broaden its appeal from a whites-only movement in a multiracial America, so it is “laying claim to the ideas of anti-racism, racial uplift, and civil-rights progress.”

HoSang says, “It’s hard for people to wrap their head around how Dr. King and civil-rights language are being used to legitimate positions approaching fascism and violence to restore hierarchy and order. But they are.”

What it says to me is that “White nationalism” is, at its core, male rage. The racism is a primary feature, but not the tie that binds.

.*And yes there are women who are part of these groups. Many women serve the patriarchy happily.They are dumb.

A Wingnut Star Is Born

by digby

Melania Trump sat down with ABC last night for her first solo on-air interview since President Trump’s inauguration. There, she revealed that her “I don’t really care, do u?” jacket was actually meant to send a message to the “left wing media.”

The First Lady shocked many last June when she wore the boldly printed jacket as she visited a Texas holding center where undocumented children were temporarily placed after being separated from their parents.

Many interpreted the jacket as insensitive considering the outrage over her husband’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies.

Initially, the First Lady’s spokespeople said there was no message behind the jacket, but Melania revealed to ABC’s Tom Llamas, during an hour special “Being Melania- The First Lady” that aired Friday, that it was a direct message to her left-wing critics.

Melania Trump tells @TomLlamasABC she wore the ‘I really don’t care’ jacket “for the people and for the left-wing media who are criticizing me. And I want to show them that I don’t care.” #MelaniaTrump https://t.co/EqEyfZkJvZ pic.twitter.com/2EWeCKB0de— ABC News (@ABC) October 13, 2018

“I often asking myself if I would not wear that jacket if I will have so much media coverage,” she said. “It’s obvious I did not wear that jacket for the children. I wore that jacket to go on the plane and off the plane and it was for the people and for the left-wing media who are criticizing me and I want to show them I do not care.”

Asked if she was intentionally sending a message, Melania said, “Yes, it was kind of a message.”

She said she purposely put the jacket back on when boarding the plane after seeing how “obsessed and upset” the media got over it.

“I said ‘you know what? that’s what I’m talking about,’” she said. “I would prefer that they would focus on what I do and on my initiatives than what I wear.”

She’s the real thing, a Trumpie to the core.

I’m pretty sure she’s being honest about wearing that jacket. It’s just that she and her staff are so mind-crushingly stupid that they didn’t realize that wearing it to a detention center where her husband’s government was holding children who had been forcibly removed from their parents would send a different message.

That’s Trumpism. Owning the libs is truly their only motivation in life and it crowds out even the slightest bit of common sense. Not that they have much to begin with.

Also, let me just say that Melania generally has fabulous clothes and look fabulous in them. She’s a former model. It makes sense. It’s really the only thing worth talking about when it comes to her. “Be best” and “don’t be a bully” are not serious initiatives.

However, her stylist often puts her in clothes that veer dangerously close to costumes when she’s traveling and they don’t understand what “message” those costumes are sending. She should realize that even if it didn’t veer dangerously close to a tribute to colonialism, dressing up like an extra in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” is going to get her some criticism. She should stop dressing like she’s doing an editorial shoot for Marie Claire and just wear her beautiful normal clothes.

The hurricane

by digby

This video of Michael coming ashore in Mexico Beach Florida is unbelievable

Trump defends holding his political rally in Erie last night despite Hurricane Michael.

"You know, when they get there that early and, you know, that area obviously is not affected at all by it… it would have been really unfair to the people." pic.twitter.com/fjTfXqdCDv— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 11, 2018

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The trappings of democracy
by Tom Sullivan

When states pass voting restrictions, the burden of providing additional proof of one’s identity at the polls falls disproportionately on women. Political analysis typically highlights the attack on the franchise of minorities, students, and seniors. Missing the targeting of women is perhaps a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

One prominent woman facing personal impact from Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s repeated efforts to quash phantom voter fraud in his state is Stacey Abrams. She would be the first black woman elected governor in the United States if she can defeat her Republican opponent in her race for Georgia governor, Brian Kemp.

That may depend, writes Michelle Goldberg, on whether Kemp allows Abrams’s supporters vote. (No, that’s not a joke.) Four years ago, Kemp warned
Republican colleagues Abrams’s New Georgia Project was “registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.” Can’t have that, now, can we?

The Associated Press reports Kemp has cancelled “over 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012. Nearly 670,000 registrations were cancelled in 2017 alone.” Another 53,000 registrations are on hold in his office with his and Abrams’s contest looming.

Goldberg continues:

In part, this is because of an “exact match” voter verification program that Georgia’s Republican-controlled government enacted last year, which flags registrations that have even minor discrepancies with official records, like a dropped hyphen in a last name. The A.P. reported that almost 70 percent of the registrations that are now on hold are for African-American voters. (Kemp has blamed sloppy work by the New Georgia Project for the holds. His office told The A.P. that voters whose registrations are in limbo can cast provisional ballots.)

Kemp’s apparent attempt to rig the Georgia election shows in microcosm how democracy in America is failing. Part of the reason this country is sliding into minority rule is structural — the Senate and the Electoral College both give disproportionate power to white rural voters. But the right is also gaming the system to try to stop changing demographics from changing the country’s balance of political power.

On Thursday, a coalition of civil rights groups sued the secretary of state, demanding cancellation of Kemp’s “exact match” program. They allege the law serves no legitimate purpose and illegally targets minority voters.

Instead of debating Republican talking points on the merits of implementing ID laws and other so-called voting integrity measures, the press is finally labeling them for what they are: bald-faced efforts to rig elections. Making that easier, in their brazenness Republican officials themselves (Kemp excluded) have all but dropped any pretense they are anything else.

Asserting Kemp’s “exact match” registration system violates the federal ban on racial discrimination, voting rights groups filed another lawsuit against Kemp in 2016. The Georgia legislature responded in 2017 by codifying parts of the system in state law. North Carolina voters recognize the approach. A version of North Carolina’s voter ID law overturned by a federal court for targeting “African Americans with almost surgical precision” is on the ballot November 6 as a constitutional amendment.

If they cannot win democratically, Republicans “will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy,” David Frum wrote in the Atlantic. But they will hold onto the trappings of democracy so long as they lend them a modicum of public legitimacy. Until like boasting about principles and morality, they no longer care about keeping up pretenses.

The past few weeks on Capitol Hellmouth have demonstrated the old, white men in power around the country have no intention of sharing it with anyone of any race or gender not their own. What the targets of voter suppression — women, in particular — ought to know is the only way to correct this injustice is by taking it from them at the ballot box while they still can. Vote November 6 if you cannot do it sooner.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.