About Face, Forward March

On gay rights, at least, under a Biden admionistration:

As vice president in 2012, Joe Biden endeared himself to many LGBTQ Americans by endorsing same-sex marriage even before his boss, President Barack Obama.

Now, as president-elect, Biden is making sweeping promises to LGBTQ activists, proposing to carry out virtually every major proposal on their wish lists. Among them: Lifting the Trump administration’s near-total ban on military service for transgender people, barring federal contractors from anti-LGBTQ job discrimination, and creating high-level LGBTQ-rights positions at the State Department, the National Security Council and other federal agencies.

Basically, he'll do everything possible to reverse Trump's policies, which of corse came straight from Pence/Jeffress/Perkins/Graham, etc. There's a lot he can do unilaterally, like reversing the ban on transgender military service, since those thingsd were done by executive order. The article goes into some detail on ways and means and is worth reading.

(Via Joe.My.God.)

Of course, good "Christians" like Franklin Graham are sounding the warning:

LGBTQ activists within the Democratic Party are pushing their godless, secular agenda with a potential Biden Administration. If you don’t conform to their ideology, agree with their sinful beliefs, teach what they say is right, they want to close you down.

They will pressure and bully politicians to get their way. It is extremely dangerous if they are permitted to proceed unchecked.

It's called "projection", ladies and gentlemen -- substitute "evangelical 'Christians'" for "LGBTQ activists" and you have the right's strategy of the past several decades.

Today's Must-Read: Are We Great Yet?

I fan across this article by Robin Wright late yesterday. It's rather sobering. Wright starts off with a history of the Statue of Liberty -- not what you may have learned in school. Farther along, this struck me:

On the eve of America’s anniversary—our two hundred and forty-fourth—much of the world believes that the country is racist, battered and bruised. “Europe has long been suspicious—even jealous—of the way America has been able to pursue national wealth and power despite its deep social inequities,” Robin Niblett, the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, in London, told me. “When you take the Acela and pass through the poorest areas of Baltimore, you can’t believe you’re looking at part of the United States. There’s always been this sense of an underlying flaw in the U.S. system that it was getting away with—that somehow America was keeping just one step ahead of the grim reaper.”

The flaw, he said, is reflected in the American obsession with the stock market as the barometer of national health—economically, politically, socially. The reaction to Floyd’s murder exposed the deep injustices in the American economic model, as well as in the police and judicial systems, Niblett said. Europeans, he added, are no longer so envious.

The Trump Administration’s ineptitude in handling the covid-19 crisis, as well as the President’s disdain for longstanding allies and international treaties, have compounded the damage to America’s image. A second poll, released last week by the European Council on Foreign Relations, reported that public perceptions of the United States are increasingly negative in virtually all of the European nations surveyed. In France, the country that backed the American Revolution and later donated the Statue of Liberty, forty-six per cent of the people polled said that their opinion of the U.S. has “worsened a lot.” The proportion of respondents who still view America as a key ally is “vanishingly small”—as low as six per cent in Italy.

As I was reading this I kept hearing echoes of Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again". It occurred to me that greatness is not a quality one assumes for oneself -- it is a quality that is recognized by others. In that context, Trump and his enablers have taken what was once America's greatness and flushed it down the toilet. It will take a massive, sustained effort to regain that -- if we can.

Read the whole thing. Wright also notes the role of capitalism in the current state of affairs, which is itself an eye-opener.

Via Digby.

Scapegoating

With Trump, it's always someone else's fault. Especially if it's an international organization:

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he is halting funding for the World Health Organization pending a review of its response to the initial coronavirus outbreak after the organization criticized his restrictions on travel from China.

Trump accused the WHO of "severely mismanaging and covering up" the coronavirus crisis, specifically the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China. He took particular issue with the agency's criticism of his order to temporarily deny entry to the U.S. by most foreign nationals who had recently been in China. The order was issued Jan. 31, when China was the center of the pandemic.

"With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have deep concerns about whether America's generosity has been put to the best use possible," Trump said. "The reality is that the WHO failed to adequately obtain and share information in a timely and transparent fashion.

"It could have been contained at its source," he added.

That last statement is, at the least, debatable. There's no telling how many asymptomatic carriers had left the region for other parts of the world when the scope of the problem was discovered.

This is telling:

"Well, we're going to be dealing with countries," Trump said, adding that he's going to "channel" that money to places that need it.

Hmm -- let's see -- Russia? Turkey? North Korea? Saudi Arabia? Or just anyplace that has a Trump hotel or resort?

In addition to reflecting Trump's pettiness and vindictiveness, it's also indicative of his willingness to dismantle the world order -- Trump has no use for international agreements that do not reflect his vision of America's interests (read that as "Trump's interests"). The idea of "cooperation" of completely foreign to him. (And, or course, one has to wonder how much of his disdain for the international community is dictated by his allegiance to -- or fear of -- Russia. After all, Trump has alienated our allies, weakened the Western alliances as well as our major international treaties, all of which is to Russia's benefit.)

And withholding funding for the World Health Organization in the middle of a major pandemic -- well, that's sort of par for the course for Trump, who never thinks about consequences for anyone but himself.

Via Joe.My.God.

Trump's Foreign Policy: Throw Your Allies Under the Bus

>And suck up to dictators. This is a disaster:

President Trump had another of his infamous calls with foreign heads of state on Sunday. In speaking with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump agreed to withdraw U.S. troops from the Syrian border clearing the way for a Turkish offensive into northern Syria.

The White House Sunday evening re-declared victory over ISIS and announced U.S. troops will withdraw from the border area. The executive press office issued the following statement:

“The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate,‘ will no longer be in the immediate area,” the White House said.

The withdrawal leaves the United States' Kurdish allies in northern Syria vulnerable to attack by Turkish forces.

Erdogan has been wanting to eradicate the Kurds for a long time. Trump has now given him a green light.

Even Lindsay Graham thinks this is a step too far:

Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump loyalist on most issues, told Fox News the move represented “a big win for Iran and Assad [and] a big win for Isis”.

He vowed that Congress would pass a resolution reversing the decision. “Isis is not defeated. This is the biggest lie being told by this administration,” Graham said.

And Trump's favorite program on Fox is letting him have it:

Some of the angriest criticism yet has come from the unlikely source of Fox & Friends. A visibly furious Kilmeade argued with his co-hosts, called Trump’s decision “disastrous,” and questioned why any ally of the U.S. would now place any level of trust in the Trump administration.

Kilmeade said: “We defeated the caliphate, the caliphate is destroyed, we wouldn't have done that without the Kurds who did all of our fighting... The reason why our casualties were so low is because the Kurds did all the fighting. Now we’re saying, ‘OK Turks, go wipe them out or force them out.’ What kind of message is that to the next ally who wants to side with us?”

And all it took was a phone call from a dictator.

Antidote, Pride Edition

This story has, as they say, gone viral.

This Oklahoma man is showing that ‘not all country boys are bigots’ with the Pride flag on his pickup truck pic.twitter.com/E56tscNkfU

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 24, 2019

I don't think I need to add anything.

I Didn't See That Coming

I don't think of the Field Museum of Natural History as a supporter of gay rights. I don't think of it as being anti-gay, just non-political. However, I think I mentioned that the member stickers you get when you check in are printed in a rainbow instead of the usual dark blue for this month. I also noticed, on my last trip, that they're flying a rainbow flag on the north side of the building. And it so happens that they're taking their show to Boys' Town, with a special event at Sidetracks, one of the more popular bars on the strip, hosted by the Museum's LGBTQ affinity group, Outfielders.

Who knew?

Today's Must-Read: The G7 Debacle

There's a lot of commentary on how Trump's behavior at the G7 summit shows his ignorance of the mechanisms of international trade. Take this, via Digby:

From the Economist:

On trade, at one point it seemed as though Mr Trump was in search of some sort of grand bargain, as he called for the end of all subsidies, tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. But this was more an indication of how poorly Mr Trump understands the global trading system than a serious summons to the negotiating table. Even so, combing through the joint communiqué, signs of genuine co-operation were to be found, including a commitment to agree on new rules regarding “market-distorting subsidies” and state-owned enterprises.

Of course, Trump repudiated the communiqué, but then, he'd never intended to support it anyway -- it smacks too much of cooperation with other countries. o (I'm not the only one who thinks so -- Rachel Maddow has the same take.) He's not stupid. He's not as smart as he claims, by any stretch. I wouldn't call him intelligent -- that implies the ability to learn from new evidence, and in that regard he displays the same characteristics as his more ardent worshippers: he, and they, reject anything that doesn't support what they "know" to be true. (It's no coincidence that he has such strong support among evangelicals.)

It is perhaps more surprising that Mr Trump still faces people who think he can be persuaded by facts. The Cirque du Soleil performers who entertained the G7 leaders on Friday evening were not the only ones tying themselves in knots. At the meeting, Mr Trump’s counterparts brought binders of figures to the session devoted to trade in an attempt to persuade him that his belief that the rest of the world was unfair to America was mistaken. Tellingly, the desk in front of Mr Trump was bare. He later told reporters the others had been smiling at him as if they could not believe they had got away with using America as a “piggy bank” for so long. “The gig is up,” he said.

Read the whole thing -- it's a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what was going on.

Digby has another piece that ties into this directly, in which she underscores what I just said about Trump's lack of good faith going in:

If you wanted a president who would tell his friends to go pound sand, then Donald Trump fulfilled your every wish. He went to Quebec for the G7 summit meeting with the intention of putting American allies in their place. They were to understand who was in charge and who makes the rules: The Trump States of America. On the White House lawn prior to taking off in Marine One for the Canadian summit he made it clear:

We’re going to deal with the unfair trade practices. If you look at what Canada, Mexico, the European Union, all of them have been doing to us for many, many decades, we have to change it. And they understand it’s going to happen . . . European Union treats us very unfairly. Canada, very unfairly. Mexico, very unfairly.

(If you don't understand why this is nonsense, read this from Paul Krugman, who won his Nobel Prize for his work on international trade.)

Then this got published, and Trump lost it:

I've already mentioned the attacks on Trudeau by Kudlow and Navarro. Digby offers more on Kudlow's performance:

Kudlow, who should know better but seemed somewhat "under the weather," didn't recognize the total absurdity of such pearl-clutching in light of the thuggish threats his boss has been issuing for months. But somewhere in the middle of his bleary tantrum he opened a new front, indicating to Jake Tapper that the G7 countries had been expected to kowtow to Trump and allow him to dominate their industry and trade, as a way to impress North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with Trump's manly superiority. He portrayed their unwillingness to sacrifice their own voters to make Trump look like a Real Man as a betrayal of world peace.

Kim may have led a cloistered life, but he's not that dumb. He has already shown that he largely has Trump's number, and what he didn't know before, Chinese President Xi Jinping has surely shared with him in their meetings leading up to this summit. All Trump has done is degrade the alliances between the U.S. and its closest allies for reasons that only he knows.

The reason is that the whole G7 performance was meant to show Kim Jong-Un that Trump is the alpha male, so he'd better watch his step and give Trump what he wants.

We've already seen that Kim can play Trump like a fiddle. I'm half expecting the Singapore summit to end up with a declaration of war.

Read both pieces -- the details are fascinating.

Seen From the Bus

There are still remnants of Pride around -- the rainbow flag is still flying on the Parade route and in the neighborhood in general, and a lot of businesses still have them up. One gesture of support that needs to be acknowledged:

This place is down on Clark at Wrightwood, and serves one of the two best cheeseburgers in town.

Given the resounding silence of the Trump White House on Pride Month ("Great Outdoors Month"? What, "Shoot an endangered species near you"?), I thought this was worthy of note:

Huge Fat Loser
June 25 at 6:45am

I'll be out there working at Pridefest today wearing this shirt under my uniform for a lot of reasons.
For my step brother.
For my priest.
For my aunts who died before they could be legally married.
For my cousin.
For all of the cops I have worked with over the years, including one of the best partner's I've ever shared a sector car with.
For my classmate in High School who's parents made him sleep in a tent in his yard.
For the man who cried on my shoulder about losing his partner on 9/11.
For every call I went to where someone got kicked out of their house or who's family just didn't understand.
For anyone who's had to hide who they are.
I've got your back.
Love is Love.
#loveislove #pride #pride🌈 #prideparade #nypd #igotyou #freehugs

He's a cop in New York.

Via Joe.My.God.

Today's Must-Read

Starts to look like Trump's America will be part of the new USSR:

Josh Marshall, who has been on fire during this primary season, IMO, has a must-read piece up at TPM on the ties between Trump and Putin. An excerpt that summarizes the case for closer scrutiny:

To put this all into perspective, if Vladimir Putin were simply the CEO of a major American corporation and there was this much money flowing in Trump’s direction, combined with this much solicitousness of Putin’s policy agenda, it would set off alarm bells galore. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. And yet Putin is not the CEO of an American corporation. He’s the autocrat who rules a foreign state, with an increasingly hostile posture towards the United States and a substantial stockpile of nuclear weapons. The stakes involved in finding out ‘what’s going on’ as Trump might put it are quite a bit higher.
There is something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence for a financial relationship between Trump and Putin or a non-tacit alliance between the two men. Even if you draw no adverse conclusions, Trump’s financial empire is heavily leveraged and has a deep reliance on capital infusions from oligarchs and other sources of wealth aligned with Putin. That’s simply not something that can be waved off or ignored. 

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to. To quote a source.

Read both.

I think the Notorious RBG had it right: New Zealand starts to look better and better. (Anybody remember the movie On the Beach?)

Compare and Contrast

From Right Wing Watch:

Today on “The 700 Club,” televangelist Pat Robertson reacted to the massacre at an Orlando gay club by making the absurd claim that liberal LGBT rights advocates have aligned themselves with radical Islamists and are now reaping what they have sowed.

Robertson said that liberals are facing a “dilemma” because they love both LGBT equality and Islamic extremism, and that it is better for conservatives like himself not to get involved but to instead just watch the two groups kill each other.

“The left is having a dilemma of major proportions and I think for those of us who disagree with some of their policies, the best thing to do is to sit on the sidelines and let them kill themselves,” he said.

I used to make excuses for Pat Robertson on the grounds of senility. I can't any more -- the man has really become nothing more than distilled poison that comes out every time he opens his mouth. And, like all "Christians," facts have no bearing. There's more at the link, if you can stand it.

Oh, and this is rich:

Ri-i-i-ght.

The antidote:

Like you, I am sickened by the news that a terrorist killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in Orlando. in the most deadly shooting in American history. Naturally, we each ask ourselves, what can you possibly say in the face of horror? But then sadly you realize you know what to say because it’s been said too many times before.

You have a pretty good idea what most people are going to say. You know a president, whoever it is, will be saying. You know what both sides of the political aisle will say. You know what gun manufacturers will say. Even me, with a silly show like this, you have some idea of what I will say. Because even I have talked about this when it’s happened before.

It’s as if there is a national script that we have learned. And I think by accepting the script we tacitly accept that the script will end the same way every time, with nothing changing. Except for the loved ones of the families and the victims for whom nothing will ever be the same.

It’s easy, it’s almost tempting to be paralyzed by such a monstrously hateful act, to despair and say, well, that’s the way the world is now.

Well I don’t know what to do, but I do know that despair is a victory for hate. Hate wants us to be too weak to change anything.

Now these people in Orlando were apparently targeted because of who they love. And there have been outpourings of love throughout the country and around the world. Love in response to hate.

Love does not despair. Love makes us strong. Love gives us the courage to act. Love gives us hope that change is possible. Love allows us to change the script.

So love your country, love your family, love the families of the victims and the people of Orlando, but let’s remember that love is a verb, and to love means to do something.

(Via Box Turtle Bulletin)

Thinking back, I'm reminded of many times that I've heard some of the most dogged anti-gay "Christian" activists insist that their slanders, their distortions, their calls to change something that can't be changed, their insistence that we don't really exist are all born of love. It occurs to me that when your idea of love starts with judgment and ends with condemnation, you've missed the point.

Colbert gets it.