Month: August 2019

Donald Trump’s philosophy of life: grievance and revenge

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

In the wake of the mass shootings In El Paso and Dayton over the past weekend, the news media has responded slightly differently than the usual ritualistic wall-to-wall coverage. Because the El Paso killer provided an online screed explaining his white supremacist beliefs and murderous intentions toward Latinx people in the U.S., there has been a greater willingness to use plain language to talk about the president’s demagogic rhetoric and racist worldview.

There have been exceptions, of course, most glaringly by the New York Times which made an egregious mistake with a headline that implied Trump was seriously changing his ways based upon his dry canned speech on Monday which looked like a hostage video. And presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who hails from El Paso, responded with raw incredulity when asked by the press if the president is a racist, making it clear that the time for such questions is long past.

He is. Of course he is. The only question now is whether, after watching his despicable behavior as president, enough people in the country agree with him to re-elect him for another four years.

This all came about within a few weeks in which the outlines of the Trump re-election campaign came into full view, with attacks on four progressive women, two of whom are Muslim, one a Latina, and one African American. By homing in on those four women, known as The Squad, he checked off all the wingnut boxes. He followed that up with a verbal assault on African American Congressman Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and then took aim at his district, the city of Baltimore. This all happened within the context of a three year, non-stop rhetorical offensive against immigrants of all stripes.

The only thing surprising about the mass killing at the border last weekend is the fact that it didn’t happen sooner. Experts predict there will be more. The white nationalist movement is real and it is growing.

But there have been many mass shootings in America over the past few years and not all of them are politically or ideologically motivated. In fact, most are not. Yet almost all of them have something else in common with Donald Trump: a massive sense of grievance at what they perceive as unfair treatment. The attackers feel entitled to attention, loyalty and reward and what motivates many of these people to take violent action is a desire for vengeance against those who fail to give it to them.

Donald Trump has never used physical violence but he shares that thought process. I’ve never seen a grown adult whine and complain about “unfairness” as much as the President of the United States does. To hear him tell it, the media, neutral investigators, his political opposition, world leaders, random celebrities and members of the public are all arrayed against him and he has no choice but to reflexively unleash a fusillade of enraged insults and tirades, threatening to sic the authorities on them, sue them, jail them or otherwise make them pay for saying things he does not like.

This is not new. His guiding philosophy of life isn’t “make the deal” it is “get even.” As far back as 1992 he told talk show host Charlie Rose:

Trump: Some of the people who have been the most loyal to me are the people I didn’t think would be. The people are the most disloyal to me are the people, I think I would have treated them differently. I would have wiped the floor with the guys that weren’t loyal, which I will now do, which is great. I love getting even with people.

Charlie Rose: Hold up. You love getting even with people?

Trump: Oh absolutely. You don’t believe in the eye for an eye? Yeah you do, I know you well enough, I think you do.

Back in October of 2015, I wrote a piece for Salon about Trump’s revenge fantasies in which he would regale his crowds with stories of his macho prowess with a gun:

He said, “I have a license to carry in New York, can you believe that? Somebody attacks me, they’re gonna be shocked,” at which point he mimes a quick draw 

As the crowd applauds and cheers, he goes on to say “somebody attacks me, oh they’re gonna be shocked. Can you imagine? Somebody says, oh there’s Trump, he’s easy pickins…” And then he pantomimes the quick draw again.

He then led the crowd in the chant “Death Wish,” the 1970s revenge fantasy film starring Charles Bronson.

The historian Rick Perlstein has theorized that Trump’s place in the conservative movement is as an Avenging Angel, come to clean up the streets and purify our decadent cities of all the vermin and trash that polluted them. And NBC’s Benjy Sarlin observed just before the election that Trump’s worldview could be summed up in on simple phrase: “The world is a violent place, and it demands a violent response.”

Sarlin quoted Trump telling Fox News, “what happens is they hit me and I hit them back harder and, usually in all cases, they do it first. But they hit me and I hit them back harder and they disappear. That’s what we want to lead the country.”

I’m not suggesting that Trump is inspiring mass shootings with his guiding philosophy of grievance and revenge. But perhaps it’s not a coincidence that a recent study found that there was a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes in counties that hosted a Trump rally in 2016 over similar counties where Trump did not appear. Donald Trump is someone who shares the immature, entitled worldview that also motivates many of these violent men and he reiterates it every day on social media and television.

As we have seen far too often, this psychology is lethal when it’s held by someone under emotional stress with easy access to guns. It’s terrifying to contemplate what the most powerful man in the world with the same set of beliefs might do if he comes to believe that a foreign country has crossed him.

Medicare for All works “like a tax cut”
by Tom Sullivan

Stephanie Kelton, senior economic adviser to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

The weekend’s mass shootings and Congress’ summer recess have shifted national focus away from stories that were headline news days before. (That’s not to allege a conspiracy, just an observation.) As a reminder, what about the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking and what his pal Donald Trump is hiding in his taxes? Whatever happened to those?

This item related to Medicare for All also flashed across the Internet Monday and quickly disappeared under the body count.

Prof. Stephanie Kelton teaches public policy and economics at Stony Brook University. Kelton is the face of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and was chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee in 2015 and in 2016. She advises Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, as she did in 2016.

In an appearance on Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power” to discuss Medicare for All, Kelton addressed the standard question from pundits accustomed to thinking about the U.S. budget the way people think of their household’s: How do we pay for it? Her answer is not tight enough for a stump speech or debate, yet, but worth noting nonetheless:

The thing is with Medicare for All is that … now we’re going to end up using fewer national resources to deliver healthcare for everyone. So if you think about it, it actually works like a tax cut for 95% of the American people because you’re going to end up spending, on average, about $3,000 a year less than you’re spending today. That’s $3,000 that stays in your pocket. It has the same economic effect as if someone cut your taxes and left you with $3,000 more a year. So Medicare for All really does work like a tax cut.

The question for Kelton is how do we transition from making health care payments as we do today to a more efficient system where we make smaller ones?

As Yves Smith wrote last year:

Spending even one more second discussing how we will pay for Medicare for All (or any program that benefits the powerless) is a supreme and cosmic waste of time. In fact, the entire “pay for” question is a sham and a scam, and a trap and a trick. It is cruel and unfair to the millions and millions of Americans that are suffering from ailments, stress, red tape, and bankruptcy.

Answering a tangential MMT question, Kelton explains that, as the issuer of currency, when it “borrows” the U.S Treasury is taking back money its budget spent into the economy. “Households borrow money they don’t have,” Kelton explains. “The federal government borrows back money that it deposits through its budget deficits.” The government doesn’t get money from the economy. It injects money into the economy first. It takes money out through taxes to control inflation and aggregate demand.

Grasping that is a bit like grokking the Theory of Relativity. But it is also a chance for Democrats to break out of the Lucy-and-football cycle of Republicans spending wildly for tax cuts and defense without a care for exploding deficits, then loudly rending their garments over costs and deficits when Democrats want to strengthen safety net programs. In his April MMT explainer, Vox’s Dylan Matthews wrote MMT “could be Democrats’ way of saying, ‘We don’t want to be suckers anymore.’”

Pundits are conditioned by decades of the right’s austerity promotion to view social programs through the lens of first cost rather than net cost or even net savings. Kelton’s explaining Medicare for All as a kind of tax cut could help Democrats begin breaking out of that trap.

Who’s pushing The Great Replacement?

by digby

I don’t think enough has yet been written about Fox News’ responsibility for the El Paso terrorist’s “worldview.” Sure, a lot of it has been pushed by the extreme right fringe. But really, it’s pretty mainstream and the one’s who’ve been most responsible for maintreaming it are big stars on Fox News:

Media Matters collected the evidence:

Fox News figures have repeatedly warned of an immigrant “invasion”

The shooter who killed 20 people and injured dozens in El Paso, TX, over the weekend first posted online a document outlining the white nationalist “great replacement” theory to which he subscribed. Fox News has long mainstreamed this theory’s rhetoric.

In a 2,300-word screed posted online, the El Paso gunman appeared to draw inspiration from previous terror attacks, including an attack on Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, which he cited. The perpetrators in these attacks were motived by the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory that white people are being systematically “replaced” by people of color through mass immigration, possibly orchestrated by a globalist group that seeks to rule the world. Anti-Semites often hold people of Jewish faith responsible for this percieved globalist takeover — during a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, the protestors infamously changed “Jews will not replace us,” referencing the theory. On Fox, the responsible group is typically the Democratic Party.

The gunman in El Paso described immigrants as “invaders” flooding into the United States, which is rhetoric that both President Donald Trump and Fox News personalities frequently employ. Fox hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who both have a history of pushing white nationalism and bigotry on cable airwaves, blatantly push the theory that white Americans are being replaced through immigration to the benefit of Democrats. Variations of the white supremacist “great replacement” theory have also appeared on other Fox programs.
Here is a noncomprehensive list of Fox News media figures pushing the “great replacement” theory that inspired the El Paso shooter:

On her Fox show, Laura Ingraham fearmongered that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever increasing number of chain migrants.”

Ingraham fearmongered on her podcast that Democrats support “replacing the current American population” with “new immigrants.”

Ingraham warned that undocumented immigrants are coming to “replace kind of the old America with a new America.” She added that this would be an “electoral lock forever” for Democrats.

Fox host Pete Hegseth said Trump has reached an agreement with Mexico to “stop the invasion — it is an invasion — of illegal immigrants.”

Discussing uncodumented immigrants, Ingraham claimed that “this is an invasion of the country.” Telling her listeners that “they want to tell you you can’t say that anymore,” she doubled down on claiming that “they are invading the country.”

On her podcast, Ingraham claimed Congress wants to change America “demographically” by “bring[ing] so many new people into the country that don’t have an affinity for our country.” She added that these are changes “that nobody voted for.”

Fox contributor Lawrence Jones defended putting migrants seeking asylum in camps on the border because they’re “invading the U.S. border.”

On Fox & Friends, Jones said that the, unlike Jews in Nazi Germany, migrants in America are “invading the U.S. border,” justifying the treatment of migrants in camps at the border.

Ingraham and her guest Pat Buchanan warned that immigration will change “the whole character and composition of the nation.” Buchanan added that “we’re becoming a different country without consulting the American people, who never voted for any of this. … You’re talking about the destiny of a country.”

Ingraham again warned that “the Democrats want to replace many of you.”

Ingraham complained that immigrants create “huge assimilation problems, especially with those coming from very different cultures.” She added that “we’re dealing with a total breakdown in the values of this country that I grew up in, and it’s just disgusting.”

Speaking to Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Ingraham said his state is “completely overrun by this illegal invasion” and “calling it anything but an invasion at this point is just not being honest with people.”

On his Fox show, Tucker Carlson fearmongered about immigrants replacing an aging American population. He asserted that he isn’t “against the immigrants” but rather “for the Americans” because “nobody cares about them. It’s like, shut up, you’re dying, we’re gonna replace you.”

Carlson fearmongered that “Latin American countries are changing election outcomes here by forcing demographic change on this country.”

Carlson said that the U.S. “was a better country than it is now in a lot of ways” back when it was “more cohesive.”

On his show, Carlson ominously warned that immigration will “change this country completely and forever.” He complained that asking questions about our immigration goals spurs an “endless drone of self-righteous children barking about racism.”

Fox contributor Mike Huckabee referred to the migrants seeking asylum as “the invasion — and that’s what it is,” claiming migrants are “running over the border.”

Fox contributor and Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren called for people to be “upset and outraged” over a caravan of asylum-seekers because it is an “invasion by foreigners.”

Carlson warned that Democrats want “demographic replacement,” with a “flood of illegals” to create “a flood of voters for them.”

Carlson claimed he doesn’t “even know what ‘white nationalist’ means” before saying that “if you have a country full of 335 million people who don’t share common values, why does that country not break apart?” He complained that “the left” never “thinks about [this], even as it encourages massive immigration into the country.”

Carlson fearmongered that Democrats “are the party of foreign voters now” and “foreign citizens will be electing our political leaders.”

Carlson said that “our leaders are radically and permanently changing our country, wholly on the basis of their faith that diversity is, in fact, our strength.”

Carlson characterized protests advocating for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, as “a literal horde of illegal immigrants storm[ing] Capitol Hill.”

Fox host and Trump ally Sean Hannity fearmongered about immigration while his guest, then-Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), warned that Democrats “want to replace us with this massive flow.”

Carlson claimed immigration leads to wage declines and cited a study that he said says it causes a reduction in “the attractiveness of men as potential spouses thus reducing fertility and especially marriage rates.”

Carlson pushed the conspiracy theory that Democrats are encouraging noncitizens to vote to win elections.

Carlson ranted about the “invasion” of refugees who are “profoundly chang[ing] the demographics” of Europe “in ways that pretty much nobody who was born there ever asked for.”

Carlson expressed concerns about threats of white “genocide,” which is a common white supremacist trope.

On The Ingraham Angle, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza warned that Democrats “have a special interest in the illegals” because they want to “transform the demographics of America.”

Carlson said that “in case you’re trying to follow the reasoning at home, by asking Mexico to stop encouraging an illegal invasion of our country, we are ‘jeopardizing our relationship with Mexico,’” quoting Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke.

Carlson guest retired Col. Douglas MacGregor warned that Democrats are trying to replace whites with “the Latinos, the Mexicans” to “transform the United States.”

Carlson said a rise in white nationalism isn’t surprising because “when you change a society as old as a European society, or even one as old as ours, completely through immigration in a short period of time … some people won’t like it.”

While discussing the fifth migrant child to die after being taken into U.S. custody, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade characterized migrants seeking asylum as a “flat-out invasion.”

Fox Business host Stuart Varney said that he’s “going to call it an invasion, like it or not.”

During an interview with Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX), Varney said that he “simply cannot imagine that middle America, that American voters, accept this invasion.”

Carlson guest Mark Steyn, who is also scheduled to appear on his show on August 5, said that “white supremacists are American citizens. The illegal immigrants are people who shouldn’t be here.”
A guest on Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs Tonight said of immigration: “We’ve seen this in Europe, we’re seeing it here, and they are attempting to replace us.”

Fox & Friends guest and current CNN commentator Steve Cortes warned that “illegal immigrants are burglars, are thieves who are there to harm your security and steal your prosperity.”

I suspect that if you read portions of the racist screed to Fox News viewers without telling them that the words were from the El Paso terrorist, many would nod in agreement thinking this is a perfectly normal thing to believe. In their world it’s mainstream.

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We know he incites the white terrorists. But that’s not all…

by digby

There is deep concern among natsec officials/experts that Trump not only incites the far right with his words and policies, but impedes the government's ability to respond. https://t.co/PNcTL8zPXX— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) August 6, 2019

Of course he does.

We know how he responds if anyone in law enforcement or Intelligence produces evidence or conclusions that he finds personally threatening. He threatens them back and the result is that the agencies are treading very, very carefully around this, far beyond their usual tolerance for right-wing threats compared to Islamic terror or left-wing movements.

Obviously, this is a fine line. People are free to espouse noxious ideology in America. Just look at the Republican officials in congress. And we should always be cautious about asking the government to monitor Americans’ speech and ideology. But this white supremacist movement is gaining steam and it’s killing people. And it looks more and more that they are styling themselves as Trump’s foot soldiers — and he sees it that way too. Certainly, it’s obvious after all this time that any dull recitation of words condemning racism, xenophobia and white supremacism is completely meaningless.

We know who he is. He’s shown that he is willing to do whatever it takes to protect himself from legal exposure or political danger by his open and deliberate obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation. He’s appointed lackeys and henchmen to important positions as his Praetorian Guard. His government has starved the agencies of the money they need to fully investigate and take action about white supremacy.

Members of the government charged with national defense can see what’s happening. And they are, of course, thinking twice about how far to take any investigation that Trump will furiously charge is “partisan” if he feels threatened.

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“Shock value”

by digby

They’re all “just kidding.” Until they kill someone:

Parker Mustian, a 16-year-old former student at Cardinal Newman high school in Columbia, South Carolina was arrested by local law enforcement officers last month after he appeared in a pair of racist “public service announcements” that were circulated among students at his school.

Mustian is further alleged to have threatened to “shoot up” the Catholic school following his forced withdrawal from the institution last month.

“Howdy, I’m Parker Mustian and I hate black people,” the teen begins in the first clip. “They’re the worst. They’re stinky and they just suck. They’re just bad people.”

Mustian proceeds to fire a weapon at what he claims are “a box of Jordans – the favorite pair of shoes for a black man.”

“I’m going to show you what I think of a black man,” Mustian says, unloading his weapon at the box of shoes.

“F*ck all n*ggers,” he says after firing.

A second video is even more graphic, with Mustian firing two weapons into the same shoe box.

“It seems that our n*gger hasn’t quite learned his lesson yet,” Mustian said. “It seems like he needs twenty-five rounds to the dome.”

Other videos and text messages allegedly sent by Mustian have yet to be published, but are reportedly in possession of law enforcement.

Mustian is the grandson of Richard Quinn, the prominent South Carolina political strategist whose empire recently collapsed as part of a multi-year corruption probe. That probe is ongoing. In fact, Quinn was arrested earlier this year and charged with eleven counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice in connection with the investigation.

Mustian is the son of prominent Columbia, S.C. attorney Ben Mustian, Quinn’s son-in-law.

The graphic videos were posted on social media over the weekend by Annabelle Robertson, a former Democratic candidate for South Carolina’s second congressional district. Robertson’s daughter is friends with several students who attend Cardinal Newman, and her “peer group” was reportedly sharing the threatening clips.

“This video landed on my daughter’s phone last night,” Robertson tweeted.

The videos were filmed back in May, according to reporter Sammy Fretwell of The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper.

Sources close to Mustian’s family tell us the young man is not a hateful person by nature, but was part of a group of boys who made videos purely for “shock value.”

“The idea was to see who could be the most outlandishly, ridiculously offensive,” the source told us. “They weren’t being serious.”

Recall that the Dayton’s shooter’s “Porngrind” band members insist they aren’t being serious when they sing about humiliating, killing and dismembering women. They say it’s all in good fun.

Or how about this guy:

“To be quite honest? I like to be offensive. It’s fun.”

This is a problem in our culture. I like non-conformity as much as the next guy, but this isn’t that. It’s gross intimidation and bullying that very easily crosses over into violence.

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Don’t go, please don’t go. You always make things worse.

by digby

Trump has no capacity for empathy so his presence after national tragedies is always fraught with tension. But he is particularly unwelcome in a place in which a white supremacist shot down the very people he demonizes on a daily basis, evoking his own language to do it.

In fact, it’s insulting that he would insist on doing it:

President Trump is preparing to visit El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday, appearances that will not be universally welcome as the two cities grieve from weekend mass shootings that left 31 dead and many others injured and rattled.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway confirmed Trump’s plans while speaking to reporters Tuesday, saying he “has wanted to go there since he learned of these tragedies.”

Conway suggested that Trump’s itinerary would be similar to other visits in the wake of mass shootings or natural disasters.

“He’s goes, trying to help heal communities, meeting with those who are injured, those loved ones who have survived the innocents who have lost their lives so senselessly and tragically,” she said. “He meets with local law enforcement, federal law enforcement. He meets with medical professionals. He thanks first responders.”

Several past and present Democratic officials urged Trump not to visit El Paso, a city of about 683,000 with a largely Latino population, in the aftermath of Saturday’s anti-immigrant attack at a Walmart Supercenter that left 22 dead.

Officials are still investigating but believe the alleged gunman posted a manifesto that echoed Trump’s harsh rhetoric on immigrants, notably describing his attack as “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

“This president, who helped create the hatred that made Saturday’s tragedy possible, should not come to El Paso,” former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) tweeted late Monday afternoon. “We do not need more division. We need to heal. He has no place here.”

The words of O’Rourke, a presidential candidate, echoed those earlier in the day of Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.), whose district includes the El Paso Walmart targeted in the massacre.

During a television appearance Monday, she urged the president and his team “to consider the fact that his words and his actions have played a role in this.”

“From my perspective, he is not welcome here,” Escobar said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “He should not come here while we are in mourning.”

El Paso Mayor Dee Margo (R) said at a Monday news conference that Trump will visit his city on Wednesday. He said he would welcome Trump in an official capacity and ask him “to support our efforts with any and all federal resources that are available.”

But Margo also cautioned Trump against invoking his previous rhetoric to talk about the border city.

“I will continue to challenge any harmful and inaccurate statements made about El Paso,” Margo said. “We will not allow anyone to portray El Paso in a way that is not consistent with our history and values.”

Adolpho Telles, chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party, said during a television interview Wednesday that he welcomes Trump’s visit.

“Clearly it is going to help with people healing, and this is a time of healing,” Telles said on CNN.

He accused Democrats of “making this a political event for their benefit.”

White House officials say Trump is also planning to visit Dayton, where another gunman killed nine people early Sunday.

Asked during a CNN interview Tuesday morning if he wants Trump to visit his home state, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) noted that he represents a different area but said that Trump “would not be welcome in my hometown.”

And, by the way, he shouldn’t go to Dayton either. He’s only doing this for political purposes — to give the wingnuts something they can use to say he “cares.” But everyone knows he doesn’t.

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Trump is relying on 100% his “gut” to wage his trade war

by digby

President Trump is increasingly acting based on his own intuition and analysis and not the advice of aides in the increasingly fraught trade war with China, five people briefed on the actions said, shattering a more cautious process that had yielded few positive results so far.

The Treasury Department’s formal announcement that it had labeled China a “currency manipulator” came six hours after President Trump did it himself, on social media, the latest example of how Trump is determining his own next steps. The people describing the White House process spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

They said White House officials were now expecting a long, drawn-out battle with Chinese leaders, even though Trump is acutely tuned in to stock market fluctuations. But Trump is convinced that the Chinese economy is suffering more than the U.S. economy from the conflict. And he has felt validated that his hardball threats in other circumstances, including a recent tangle with Mexico over border security, seemed to get at least some results, even if they scared investors in the short term, said the people familiar with the matter.

This has left aides, many of whom have preferred for the president to be more patient, to scramble to complete directives issued by Trump. Stocks have been plunging as Trump and China have escalated the trade conflict.

U.S. Treasury labels China ‘currency manipulator’ as trade war escalates

Global stocks extended already substantial losses on Aug. 5, after Washington tagged China a “currency manipulator,” shaking fragile investor sentiment in a rap (Reuters)

The practical implications of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s move to label China a “currency manipulator” were limited. It begins a process of discussions between himself and the International Monetary Fund about ways to address China’s behavior. But it represented the most concrete Trump administration broadside in a day that had previously been marked by twin attacks from Beijing.

First, China’s currency weakened against the U.S. dollar, something White House officials suspected was directed by the government. And second, Chinese officials sent signals that they would not be ramping up purchases of U.S. agriculture products, as Trump had long promised they would.

Both steps made clear that Chinese leaders did not plan to make quick concessions to the White House following Trump’s surprise announcement last week that he would be imposing a 10 percent tariff on $300 billion in imports from China, something that even several of his advisers had warned against.

With the world’s two largest economies in an escalating trade battle, global stock markets have fallen sharply in the past three trading sessions, erasing trillions of dollars in value and damaging one of Trump’s favorite barometer’s of his presidency’s success.

Here’s one of his top adviser’s analysis:

“We’re learning that maybe China has a higher pain threshold than we thought here,” said Stephen Moore, who was an economic adviser to Trump during the 2016 election and remains close to the White House. “They don’t seem to care that this is having extreme negative effects on their economy. It’s kind of a mutually assured destruction game right now.”

Honestly, you could drag some drunk guy out of a bar in downtown DC, put him in the oval office and his “gut” would probably be more astute than Trump and his cronies.

Or maybe just have a magic 8 Ball instead of a president.

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The stupidest solution of all

by digby

John Amato at Crooks and Liars caught Hannity with a real doozy:

On Monday evening’s edition of Fox News’ Hannity, Trump’s BFF proposed that the almost 100,000 public schools in America be surrounded by ex-military and law enforcement officials as a way to protect them from mass shootings.

The bizarre and insane has become the practical and normal under the Trump administration.

Wacko Florida Secretary of State Pam Bondi seemed more furious at Democrats who said they didn’t want your thoughts and prayers instead of the actual killers. “That sunk to a new low for our country,” she said.

Hannity jumped back in, “Let’s stop school shootings,” he said. “Let’s stop mall shootings we’ll start there.”

He continued, “I’d like to see the perimeter of every school and mall secured by retired police, which you are, by retired Secret Service, which you are – military.”

“I want guys to donate 15 hours. I think we can cover every school every hour every day. Add a metal detector. Have one armed guard on every floor on every school,” Hannity said, serious as a drum.

(It’s not a one-armed man like Bob from Twin Peaks.)

The payment for these volunteers would be they’d get to pay no federal or state income taxes. It’s as if Hannity believes ex-law enforcement and military make just as much money as he does (reportedly $2.4 million A MONTH) even after their retirement.

Hannity continued, “Inside every hall in every mall. Now that gives us an instant response that we normally wouldn’t have.”

Hannity is so full of himself he didn’t realize that the mass murderer from Dayton was killed within 30 seconds of his rampage, (an incredible response time) and still he was able to kill nine people, but I digress.

The always idiotic Dan Bongino said a president (from any party) has the right to be protected so why not everybody else.

As farcical as his words are, Hannity is proposing a paramilitary police state throughout the United States. Can you imagine if President Obama proposed the same thing? Hannity and his ilk would be screaming Obama had started Marshall law against conservatives.

That’s fine, as far as it goes. But this is really about personal responsibility. All citizens should be required to wear body armor and helmets when they are in public. And maybe we need to think bigger.

People are out here exercising their freedom to kill in massive numbers and if you aren’t responsible enough to protect yourself from their freedom exercising, maybe you should just stay home.

It’s not complicated.

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Failing the test
by Tom Sullivan

The changing face of America. Image: National Geographic, October 2013.

The acting president read a statement from a teleprompter on Monday condemning the weekend mass shootings in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH. Clearly, he was coerced to make it. Clearly, he did not write it:

In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.

Donald Trump did not say he personally condemned those sentiments and racist ideology, only that “the nation” should. He blamed the Internet and video games for the body count rather than the racism, bigotry, and white supremacy he cited moments earlier (and that the alleged El Paso shooter cited for his actions). Trump blamed mental illness for the slaughter and would not address the ready availability of weapons in the U.S. and its gun culture. As if to punctuate his own disconnect from victims, Trump managed in the end to misidentify the affected Ohio city as Toledo.

His leadership in crisis was tested. He failed.

Hours later on MSNBC, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor from the Department of African American Studies at Princeton, spoke forcefully of America’s legacy of racism, a racism underlying its whole history. Donald Trump has simply made racism more visible and, by a president’s endorsement, more acceptable for his followers to express openly. Glaude’s powerful statement is worth transcribing in full:

America is not unique in its sins, as a country. We are not unique in our evils. Where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them and the legends and myths we tell about our inherent goodness to hide and cover and conceal so that we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence.

See, the thing is when the Tea Party was happening people were saying — pundits [were] — “Oh, it’s just about economic populism. It’s not about race.” But people knew … social scientists were already writing that what was driving the Tea Party were anxieties about demographic shifts, that the country was changing, that they were seeing these racially ambiguous babies on Cheerios commercials, that the country wasn’t quite feeling like it was a white nation anymore.

And people were screaming from the top of their lungs, this is not just simple economic populism. This is the ugly underbelly of the country.

See the thing is is this: there are communities that have had to bear the brunt of America confronting — white Americans — confronting the danger of their innocence. And it happens every generation. So somehow, we have to, kind of, “Oh, my God! Is this who we are?” And just again, here is another generation of babies. Think about it, a two year-old had his bones broken by two parents trying to shield him from being killed. A woman who has been married to this man for as long as I’ve been on the planet, almost, lost her husband. For what?!

And so, what we know is that the country’s been playing politics for a long time on this hatred. We know this. So, it’s easy for us to place it all on Donald Trump’s shoulders. It’s easy for us to place Pittsburgh on his shoulders. It’s easy for me to place Charlottesville on his shoulders. It’s easy for us to place El Paso on his shoulders. THIS IS US! And if we’re going to get past this, we can’t blame it on him. He’s a manifestation of the ugliness that’s in us.

I’ve had the privilege of growing up in a tradition that didn’t believe in the myths and legends because we had to bear the brunt of them. Either we’re going to change or we’re going to do this again … and again … and babies are going to have to grow up without mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, friends, while we’re trying to convince white folk to finally leave behind a history that will maybe, maybe — or embrace a history — that might set them free from being white. Finally!

Incredibly powerful, must-watch moment.

Thank you, @esglaude.pic.twitter.com/rT5CIGJU9O— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 6, 2019

A caller to an NPR show Monday explained the mass shooting phenomenon as an outgrowth of young men from privileged backgrounds expressing anger at a society that no longer accords them the status they believe is theirs by right. The caller paraphrased a familiar quote: “When you’re accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.”

Americans give regular and proud lip-service to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. So long as living up to those ideals doesn’t alter the status quo and white people’s place at the apex of the social ladder, we celebrate freedom of speech and religion. But, as it is said, freedom of speech limited to speech that does not offend anyone is meaningless. Easy to claim until that proposition is tested.

Freedom of religion, too. American Christians do not assert the United States is “a Christian country” as a fact of history or population studies so much as a statement of whose faith stands atop the social ladder. The claim is more akin to the high school football boosterism found on bumper stickers: This Is Jesus Country. So long as other “lesser” faiths know their places, proclaiming freedom of religion shows how enlightened we are. Easy to claim, until a Buddhist monk asks to give the opening prayer at the Friday night football game.

Time special issue, Nov. 18, 1993.

And so it is with race. “All men are created equal” might be on all our currency if Americans really believed it. We don’t. We are all for equality in theory so long as it is not equality in fact. White people don’t really believe in “created equal” and spend generations measuring cranium size and other taxonometric characteristics among races to prove to nonwhites inferior. They don’t malign nonwhites as monkeys or liken them to an invasion of disease-bearing vermin.

Now our Americanness is tested. So is our melting-pot myth. Neighbors white Americans once easily tolerated when their numbers were small, their communities out of sight, their languages unheard, and their demands for equal treatment dismissible are no longer satisfied with second-class status — whether they are of a different race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin. Rather than seeing an opportunity to broaden the promises and ideals expressed in America’s founding documents, many white Americans sense their privilege threatened. The changing face of America feels like oppression. Challenged to live up to America’s ideals, some of us are failing the test. A few of us are turning to violence.

Update: Fixed transcription error in last paragraph of Glaude statement.

What fresh hell is this?

I’m not going to post the gross misogynist “art” that these deranged freaks use as album covers. You can see it here but be advised that you may regret not being able to unsee it. I have no words.

Whatever this killer was, he was first and foremost, a murderous, misogynist, psychopath. If he had “politics” they don’t track with anything I’m familiar with.

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