CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.
I was trying to read an article at Think Progress, but kept getting stuck staring at the photo. Yes, Melania Trump is obviously supposed to be the focus, but that’s not where my eye landed. Instead, all I could see was the face of the woman who got assigned or otherwise stuck with Trump. She looks incredibly uncomfortable, and embarrassed. The way Trump is hunched over is terribly creepy, too.
Via Think Progress.
CREDIT: AP Photo/David Goldman.
Think Progress has the breakdown on the three people short-listed for nomination to the supreme court, as well as the other five on the list. It’s not exactly a list of enlightened people. Given that Trump can’t manage to resurrect Scalia, he’s trying to get as close as he can. Just a bit here, click on over to read the whole nauseating list.
Neil Gorsuch. He authored a book arguing against legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia, and he sided with religious employers seeking to limit their employees’ rights to birth control coverage in the lower court decision in Hobby Lobby. Gorsuch also emerged as one of the judiciary’s leading spokespeople for an effort to hobble the Obama administration’s ability to promulgate progressive labor and environmental regulations. In the waning years of Obama’s presidency, Federalist Society events grew increasingly fixated on limiting federal agencies’ authority to take regulatory action of any kind. Often, they focused their ire on the Supreme Court’s venerable Chevron doctrine, which holds that courts should generally defer to agencies when the law authorizing a regulation is ambiguous, and typically should only strike down such regulation if the law clearly does not permit the agency’s action to move forward.
William Pryor. Pryor attacked Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court’s landmark criminal justice decision in Miranda v. Arizona as “the worst examples of judicial activism,” and he also described Roe as “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.” As Alabama’s attorney general, he filed a brief in the Supreme Court arguing that “States should remain free to protect the moral standards of their communities through legislation that prohibits homosexual sodomy” (the Supreme Court disagreed in Lawrence v. Texas). … Similarly, Pryor penned a majority opinion suggesting that lawyers who wish to challenge voter ID laws, a common method of voter suppression, must clear potentially insurmountable hurdles in order to do so. And he called for employers’ rights to ignore laws they object to on religious grounds to be expanded even beyond the bounds established by the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision.
Thomas Hardiman. Judge Thomas Hardiman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is one of the more ideologically enigmatic names on Trump’s list — although Hardiman has spoken at several events hosted by the conservative Federalist Society. … Hardiman also wrote a dissent in B.H. v. Easton Area School District holding that the First Amendment permits school officials to ban breast cancer awareness bracelets reading “I ♥ boobies! (KEEP A BREAST).” Though nine of his colleagues disagreed, Hardiman argued that these bracelets fell within an exception to the First Amendment’s free speech protections for student speech that is “lewd, vulgar, indecent, or plainly offensive.”
All the profiles at Think Progress.
Well, it didn’t take long for Trump to destroy what little healthcare this country has, and millions of people are going to find themselves uninsured, and yes, that will be a death sentence for too many people. One person is too many. Yesterday, I was reading about the possible scrubbing of websites, the disappearing of crucial information, and replacing it with fake data, in order to make killing healthcare look like a reasonable thing to do.
Today, I’m reading about medicare. Well, what’s left of it. Medicaid will no longer be a federal program, it’s been converted to a block grant program, putting states in charge of administration. This is not good news.
Even then, we knew what a promise from Donald Trump is worth. Which is why it should come as no surprise that the Trump administration is now planning to strip health coverage from millions of low-income households.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway confirmed on Sunday that Trump’s proposed Obamacare replacement would convert Medicaid into a block grant program. This would take its administration out of the hands of the federal government and put states in charge, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Further details are, presumably, forthcoming. But in the meantime, there’s plenty of research out there on prior Medicaid block grant proposals. When the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzed a 2014 block grant plan crafted by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) (then the chair of the House Budget Committee), it found that would result in a 26 percent cut to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by 2024. It’s difficult to figure out exactly how many people would lose coverage as a result, but here’s a rough guess from the CBPP report:
The Urban Institute similarly estimated that the 2012 block grant proposal would lead states to drop between 14.3 million and 20.5 million people from Medicaid by the tenth year. (That would be in addition to the 13 million people who would lose their new coverage or no longer gain coverage in the future due to repeal of the Medicaid expansion, with the number rising as high as 17 million if all states take up the expansion.)
At a minimum, block granting Medicaid will cost millions of vulnerable Americans their health insurance. Some of those people will die preventable deaths as a result.
The Trump administration is just a few days old. It has a nearly empty cabinet and a scant policy agenda. Its health care plan is mostly a giant blank. But President Trump, through one of his top surrogates, has made one thing clear: His promise to defend the coverage that low-income Americans currently have was a bald-faced lie.
Think Progress has the full story.
Dr. Richard Carrier is suing us for reporting on his well-known allegations of misconduct. These allegations were widely reported on throughout the community, including by third-parties critical and sympathetic to him who are not themselves defendants.
This lawsuit has all the hallmarks of a SLAPP suit — a lawsuit filed to stifle legitimate criticism and commentary. The named defendants are Skepticon, The Orbit, and Freethought Blogs – as well as individuals Lauren Lane, the lead organizer of Skepticon; Stephanie Zvan, a blogger for The Orbit; PZ Myers, a blogger for Freethought Blogs; and Amy Frank-Skiba, who publicly posted her first-hand allegations against Carrier.
We need your help to keep our voices alive. All the defendants are represented by the same attorney, First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza. Randazza is providing his services at a significant discount, but we are not asking him to work for free. Plus, there are thousands of dollars in “costs” for the case that don’t include legal bills, and there is no way to discount those. In order to continue fighting this lawsuit, we, the defendants of this case, have put together this campaign to raise money to defray our costs, some of which is outstanding. Donations will be used only for this case. In the event that the funds raised exceed our legal bills, they will be donated to Planned Parenthood .
If you can help to defray these costs, please do. No amount is insignificant. If you’re unable to donate, please help to amplify the signal. Our thanks.
Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Arachnids, natch. From rq, click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
Giliell found herself climbing the scaffolding of the new house, and took some photos. Click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Eurasian Blackbird, from Charly. My first thought was “oh, cool, a black Robin!” No matter what they are called, beautiful dinosaurs of the True Thrush family. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved.
Some of the older people will recognize that title. From Bored Panda, some grand signs from the marches against Trump.
Three of the half-dozen octogenarian protesters who set up shop near the senior citizens’ residence where they live in downtown Washington, D.C., during Saturday’s Women’s March. CREDIT: Alan Pyke/ThinkProgress.
Nasty, Brave Women came out all over the world to march, and even those who were unable to march found a way.
…These women would love to be joining the march. But they had a hard enough time convincing their landlords to let them go even as far as this spot in Thomas Circle. They are in their 80s and 90s, veterans of many cycles of American political harmony and social discord. The management at their building were terrified these seniors might get hurt even walking three hundred feet to the circle.
That concern wasn’t going to stop 83-year-old Harriet Fulbright from demonstrating her dissent against Trumpism.
“Damnit, I feel strongly about making our views and feelings known,” Fulbright said. “I’m here because I’m very worried.”
Like her fellow senior sign-wavers, Fulbright remembers the mass upheaval of the Vietnam era and the paranoia which government surveillance and sabotage of dissenters inspired.
Something about today’s moment is scarier than the demagogues before, both losers like Barry Goldwater and winners like Richard Nixon.
“This is new. Nixon was not my favorite,” Fulbright said, with a wry grin, “but I’m more worried now.”
Mamie Chesslin, 83, nodded along with that comparison from her wheeled scooter. As a former Department of Justice attorney who spent her career enforcing environmental laws, Chesslin knows better than most just how much federal agencies influence the future — for brighter or dimmer.
“I honestly wonder how we’re going to survive it,” Chesslin said. “He’s pathological in a way we haven’t seen before. The world doesn’t stop because of Donald Trump, but nobody told him that.”
Ms. Chesslin is right on the money. She puts that sharp mind right on the big, huge problem: Trump thinks he can do anything he wants, and he’s surrounded himself with people who tell him that’s right. He’s also surrounded by people who have enough power to try and make that a reality.
“I’ve been astonished and delighted by the reactions from younger people today,” said Tina Hobson, 87, who helped rally the group to defy the well-intentioned concerns of the residence staff. “Instead of an intense, anxious day, it’s been a lot of fun.”
[…]
“When you get to this age you remember what life was like before Roe vs. Wade. You can tell the stories,” she said.
“None of us thought we’d be doing this again.”
At a mere 59 years of age, and the unwanted product of pre-Roe life, I never thought we’d be doing this again, either. Yet here we are. Stay strong, stand up, shout out. Resist.
Via Think Progress.
Trump claimed this photo showed him writing his inaugural speech. The Wall Street Journal reports his contributions were minimal at best. CREDIT: Twitter.
Let’s get this ridiculous idea that Trump wrote his own speech out of the way first. As to the photo he tweeted, supposedly of him busy writing, it was already torn apart prior to the speech. It’s rather obvious the pad of paper is blank; Trump isn’t know for using Sharpie markers, and he’s sitting at the reception concierge desk at Mar-A-Lago. Trump must really think that every person on the planet is an idiot. He doesn’t even make an effort, for fuck’s sake. The WSJ has also concluded that he had little to do with the speech. Not a difficult conclusion, the man can barely speak, who on earth would think he could put a comprehensive speech together?
The inaugural speech was noted to be dark and ominous (perhaps he wanted to continue in the whole dark Batman mode, given his theft of lines from Bane), painting The States as being in dire straits. That much serves Trump’s purpose, as those lies help to paint himself as an ersatz savior. There’s another reason for the speech’s tone though, and it’s a discomfiting one: it was authored by white nationalists.
“Much of the speech was written by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, two of Mr. Trump’s top advisers,” the Journal reports, citing a White House official.
Politico reports that Miller, senior White House adviser for policy, wrote most of the prepared speeches Trump delivered last year, including his keynote address at the Republican National Convention. That speech, like the inaugural address, painted a dire picture of an America besieged by threats within and without, with Trump presenting himself as the only hope for salvation.
[…]
During his inaugural address, Trump said “America First” is the “new vision [that] will govern the land.” The phrase “America First” was popularized by a 1940s isolationist, anti-Semitic group that opposed America’s entry into World War II. Bannon’s ex-wife accused him of anti-Semitism.
[…]
Bannon praised the speech while speaking to the Wall Street Journal.
“I don’t think we’ve had a speech like that since Andrew Jackson came to the White House,” he said. “It’s got a deep, deep root of patriotism.”
Bannon added that the speech was “an unvarnished declaration of the basic principles of [Trump’s] populist and nationalist movement.”
Ah, citing Indian Killer Jackson. That’s a bad sign. White supremacist nazis adore Jackson. Obviously, Bannon is not concerned about being open about the nationalist administration now in power. It’s not a good thing he’s feeling so comfortable about this. People should be woke; they should be very concerned; they should be scared; and they should be resisting. I expect history will simply repeat itself once more, and most people won’t wake up until it’s too late.
Full story at Think Progress.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks in the press briefing room at the White House, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017 in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.
During his first appearance before the press as President Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer attacked the media for accurately reporting that Trump’s inauguration was attended by a relatively small crowd. […] In the latest sign that the Trump administration plans to wage war on reality, Spicer refused to accept that attendance for Trump’s inauguration was smaller than for President Obama’s in 2009.
“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period,” Spicer said. “Both in person and around the globe.”
He blamed “floor coverings [that] were used to protect the grass on the mall” for making it look like there was lots of empty space. In fact, there was just lots of empty space.
“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” Spicer said of the reporting.
It’s official – reality is shameful and wrong, oh my yes! I’m starting to think we’d be better off with Nixon’s head in a jar.
Neither Trump nor Spicer said a word about the fact that earlier Saturday, about 500,000 people were marching in the streets of D.C. in response to Trump’s inauguration, or about twice as many as turned out for Trump’s ceremony the day before .
I like reality. Reality is good. This slice of reality is excellent! It is shameful Pendejo Trump refuses to face it. As Spicer was close to a full tantrum over this, Stepford Kellyanne came to the rescue, with alternative facts:
During an interview on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked Conway why Spicer felt the need to berate the press over the weekend for accurately reporting that Trump’s crowd sizes were dwarfed by the attendance at President Barack Obama’s 2008 inauguration.
“Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck,” Conway scoffed. “They’re saying it’s a falsehood and our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that.”
I don’t think the people who prefer facts, truth, and reality are the ones being dramatic. Melodramatic is a good descriptor of Pendejo Trump, and his supporting soap opera.
“Wait a minute,” Todd interrupted. “Alternative facts! Four of the five facts that he uttered were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts, they’re falsehoods.”
Conway tried to deflect, but the host pressed on: “You sent the press secretary out there to utter a falsehood on the smallest, pettiest thing. And I don’t understand why you did it.”
“I don’t think you can prove those numbers one way or the other,” the Trump aide opined. “You can laugh at me all you want. You are, and I think it’s actually symbolic of the way we’re treated by the press. I’ll just ignore it. I’m bigger than that. I’m a kind and gracious person.”
Actually, you can estimate those numbers very well, and Pendejo Trump knows that all too well, which is why he shut down the people who do those estimates every year. This isn’t about proof or absolute numbers. It is very much about just how thin and tender Pendejo Trump’s skin is, and it doesn’t bode well.
Additionally, Spicer tried to claim that floor coverings and magnometers were to blame for the poor turn out:
“This was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the [National] Mall,” Spicer said. “That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual. This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.”
This is not true, either, and so easily refuted. It was the U.S. Secret Service who put paid to the magnometer story, but I guess they are all liars too, you betcha!
Via Think Progress and Raw Story. Also see #AlternativeFacts.
Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. … The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened” – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs. – George Orwell, 1943.
