Thought For the Day

Given our present regime's yearning for autocracy, this is worth pondering:

⚡️ https://t.co/fXgEzPrrQf

— Paul Rieckhoff (@PaulRieckhoff) March 19, 2020

Something du Jour

I really don't know how to describe this, but it's worth repeating:

Thanks to commenter Boreal at Joe.My.God.

Today's Must-Read: Transactional Ideologies

Interesting piece by Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo that articulates a few points I've thought about but haven't really solidified. It starts off with an OpEd by Michelle Goldberg:

"A longing for validation is underrated as a political motivator," explains Michelle Goldberg, exploring the seamy side of political social climbing.

Exhibit A is the "tawdry, shallow memoir" of a Jewish former employee of the Christian right:

It’s not exactly a secret that politics is full of amoral careerists lusting — literally or figuratively — for access to power. Still, if you’re interested in politics because of values and ideas, it can be easier to understand people who have foul ideologies than those who don’t have ideologies at all. Steve Bannon, a quasi-fascist with delusions of grandeur, makes more sense to me than Anthony Scaramucci, a political cipher who likes to be on TV. I don’t think I’m alone. Consider all the energy spent trying to figure out Ivanka Trump’s true beliefs, when she’s shown that what she believes most is that she’s entitled to power and prestige.

(As regards Ivanka Trump's entitlement, see this. It's because she's special.)

The whole idea of political affiliation as a means of validation is more than apt: as more people than I have noted, Trump's GOP is no longer a political party -- it's become a cult, with membership proving you're one of "us". It also explains why appeals to reality don't work with Trump supporters -- reality is what their leader says it is.

What struck me most was this part:

His/their relationship with the law and the Constitution is also transactional, and more about social power and status than principle.

Immigration opponents’ insistence migrants seek asylum the “right” way (at an American embassy or consulate, they insist wrongly) echoes T-party howls from a 2012 recount a Democrat here won by 18 votes. T-partiers objected to counting votes of college students, even though Symm v. United States settled that question in 1979.

GOP activists argued students’ votes shouldn’t count because the students didn’t really live at their school addresses. The Board of Elections chair read them the statute aloud from the code book. They were unfazed. The law should be what they wanted it to be. What the law actually said didn’t matter.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services states (emphasis mine): “To obtain asylum ... you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.”

Immigration opponents do not care what the law actually says. The law is supposed to be what they feel it should be. The law carries weight only so long as it serves them.

That last short paragraphs sums up Trump's attitude toward the law -- the law should be what he wants it to be.

Sadly, the same applies to reality. If you don't believe me, ponder this:

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway claimed Tuesday that President Donald Trump's warnings of violent migrants making their way toward the U.S. were vindicated over the weekend by clashes at the Mexican border, even though no U.S. law enforcement officers were seriously injured amid efforts to block crowds of migrants attempting to cross the border into California.

"Everything that was predicted by the president and Secretary Nielsen and homeland security and others has come true," Conway told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday. "There are violent elements in this caravan. The mainstream media only wants you to see the children, the families. They're not telling you that most of the caravan are males traveling by themselves."

It occurs to me that Conway's role all along, both during the campaign and in the administration, has been to rewrite reality -- "alternative facts".

At any rate, read Sullivan's piece in toto -- it's very interesting.

It's All About Priorities

Buried in an article about the dismay of White House staffers over the way things are, I found this little tidbit from Politico particularly illuminating:

And in the meantime, the White House is caught up in the congressional fight over funding the government, saving the DACA program and funding the Children's Health Insurance Program — issues that some in the West Wing and many of Trump’s outside advisers view as distracting from the crucial task of preparing for the midterm elections and charting a 2018 agenda.

(Emphasis added.)

Did anyone really think the Republicans were interested in governing?

(And please note that I refrained from making any comments about "snowflakes".)

Via Balloon Juice.

Executive Orders Aren't Foolproof

Even if the fool is the one issuing them.

Remember that executive order declaring that, after consultation with his generals (I guess that would be "General" Tony Perkins and "General" Mike Pence, since Trump didn't discuss it with anyone at the Pentagon), no more trans soldiers?

Well, as so often happens with Trump's exercises in absolutism, it got shot down by the courts:

A federal judge in Washington, DC, on Monday suspended key parts of President Trump's policy to ban transgender troops from serving in the military — a policy slated to take effect fully in March 2018 — dealing a sharp rebuke to an administration that claimed transgender service members hamper the military’s strength and that Trump held supreme power to enact the ban.

US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a 76-page decision granting a preliminary injunction that Trump’s justifications for the policy “do not seem to be supported by any facts,” noting “it appears that the rights of a class of individuals were summarily and abruptly revoked for reasons contrary to the only then-available studies.”

Kollar-Kotelly notes that transgender people “suffer severe persecution and discrimination,” saying the government must therefore supply an exceedingly persuasive justification for actions that target them — known as intermediate scrutiny. Having failed to meet that bar, she adds, six transgender people suing to overturn the ban are likely to prevail on constitutional grounds.

“The Court is convinced that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in this lawsuit under the Fifth Amendment,” Kollar-Kotelly said.

The judge really scorched the administration. Here's the full order.

Needless to say, "General" Tony Perkins is beside himself at yet another example of "judicial activism":

“This is where judicial activism is leading us. The courts have moved beyond legislating on the invented rights of abortion and same-sex marriage to clearly usurping the constitutional authority of the executive branch. The president has the primary task of protecting Americans but we see the courts weakening his immigration policies designed to protect America from threats and now telling the commander-in-chief how to run the military.” – Hate group leader Tony Perkins, via tear-stained press release.

I just had to include Joe's comment about the "tear-stained" release.

Today's Must-Read: Thoughts on Labor Day

From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

Workers are the Rodney Dangerfields of this economic terror the financial empire has constructed. An afterthought. Collateral damage. A necessary evil to the sainted "job creators." As in the last Gilded Age, as Twain put it, "Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite--but they all worship money." Those without it should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more. Sadly there is no new Twain to properly satirize this new Gilded Age. Save, perhaps, for the president who personifies it.

It is Labor Day weekend. Not that America celebrates labor, mind you. And not everyone gets to celebrate. But both those who do and do not have organized labor to thank for their holiday pay.

He goes into the history of the labor movement, which is something we all need to remember, as Trump and the GOP keep trying to convince us that labor unions are so 1930s.

Point of information: My dad worked with the teacher's union in his school district when I was a kid -- he may even have been one of the organizers: my memory's not to clear on it. (I was what? Maybe eight years old?)

Yes, I come from a line of leftists.

You've Probably Noticed

That posting has been rather light and sporadic lately. Real life is demanding a great deal of my time.

And the news, focused as it is on The Hairpiece, is -- well, I'm fed up.

Today's Must-Read: A Twofer

There. I'm being very up front about it this time.

Two posts in my morning reading started building links between themselves. (Well, OK, I did it, but it's just the way my mind works: it's right-brain thinking, in which your mind makes connections that are not obvious to rational -- i.e., left-brain -- thinking. It's the way an artist thinks.)

At any rate, the first is Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo on the "Deep State," President Bannon's chief bugaboo:

The deep state is the latest "fifth column" narrative of betrayal from within. Conservative radio host Mark Levin alleges Obama and the Democrats have “squirreled their appointees into the bureaucracy” to engage in a "silent coup" against Trump. But for the Trump administration the narrative functions rather neatly as a preemptive explanation for his administration's own failures. Andrew Sullivan sees Trump's unsupported accusations of wiretapping against President Obama and attacks against the press as "designed to erode the very notion of an empirical reality, independent of his own ideology and power." Peter Beinart believes that deep state rumors are a diversion that will allow Trump to dismiss as partisan hackery any findings by the Justice Department that his administration has ties to the Russian government.

(Emphasis added.)

The portion I emphasized ties in very neatly to this article by David Roberts at Vox, via Digby, which, in spite of the headline is not about climate change denial:

Indeed, the climate fight has long since moved past the stage when it was about the facts.

Allow me an analogy. Imagine you’re playing a basketball game. A member of the other team travels. The referee calls the travel, but the opposing player just shrugs and says, “I don’t care.” He refuses to surrender the ball and just keeps going. Then his team starts putting extra players on the court, fouling at will, and pelting your team with refuse. The referee continues calling violations, but the other team simply disregards him. They start appealing to their own referees, friends of theirs in the stands. “Bob says there was no foul.”

At that point, the dispute is no longer about what happened in this play or that play. The facts are not at issue. The dispute is over the authority of the referee. The question is whether both teams will honor the referee’s calls, and if not, how the game can be played at all and what “winning” means under the circumstances.

If it’s not obvious, the referee in this analogy is science.

Roberts does us the favor of extending that analogy:

But in a sense, climate denial is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

Trumpism is just the flowering of a process that has been underway for a couple of generations, and which we're seeing in all sorts of contexts -- climate change denial, "fake news," "alternative facts," "Christians" rejecting the authority of the law, the press' "both sides do it" mantra, and on and on. Ascribing it to emerging fascism is almost too trite -- it's the erosion of the very foundations of civilization.

And we can thank "conservatism" when it all comes tumbling down.

Footnote: This is a prime example of the tactics conservatives use:

Aiming to erode public trust in the Congressional Budget Office ahead of its report this week expected to show that the GOP's Obamacare repeal bill will cause millions of people to lose their health insurance, Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials are rewriting the history of the CBO's analysis of the Affordable Care Act.

"They were way, way off last time in every aspect of how they scored and projected Obamacare," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. "If you look at the number of people they projected would be on Obamacare, they were off by millions.

"

Today's Must-Read: The Slide Toward Autocracy: A Checklist

Via Digby, this list from Amy Siskind of "Trump atrocities" of the week.

Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you'll remember. Here's my list for week 9[.]

Digby just shows this week's list, but has links to the previous eight.

I found this one possibly the most worrisome:

35. Human Rights Watch issued it's annual report of threats to human rights around the world. For the first time in 27 years, the US is listed as a top threat because of the rise of Trump.

Here's Human Rights Watch's article on the 2017 World Report. Just one salient section:

Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that a new generation of authoritarian populists seeks to overturn the concept of human rights protections, treating rights not as an essential check on official power but as an impediment to the majority will.

“The rise of populism poses a profound threat to human rights,” Roth said. “Trump and various politicians in Europe seek power through appeals to racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and nativism. They all claim that the public accepts violations of human rights as supposedly necessary to secure jobs, avoid cultural change, or prevent terrorist attacks. In fact, disregard for human rights offers the likeliest route to tyranny.”

Roth cited Trump’s presidential campaign in the US as a vivid illustration of the politics of intolerance. He said that Trump responded to those discontented with their economic situation and an increasingly multicultural society with rhetoric that rejected basic principles of dignity and equality. His campaign floated proposals that would harm millions of people, including plans to engage in massive deportations of immigrants, to curtail women’s rights and media freedoms, and to use torture. Unless Trump repudiates these proposals, his administration risks committing massive rights violations in the US and shirking a longstanding, bipartisan belief, however imperfectly applied, in a rights-based foreign policy agenda.

I'm wondering again whether New Zealand is far enough away.

2016: Parting Thoughts

Thanks to Balloon Juice.

Today's Must-Read: Useful Idiots

Paul Krugman (and why has this man never been appointed to a high-level government position? We need someone like him.) lays it out:

On Wednesday an editorial in The Times described Donald Trump as a “useful idiot” serving Russian interests. That may not be exactly right. After all, useful idiots are supposed to be unaware of how they’re being used, but Mr. Trump probably knows very well how much he owes to Vladimir Putin. Remember, he once openly appealed to the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Still, the general picture of a president-elect who owes his position in part to intervention by a foreign power, and shows every sign of being prepared to use U.S. policy to reward that power, is accurate.

But let’s be honest: Mr. Trump is by no means the only useful idiot in this story. As recent reporting by The Times makes clear, bad guys couldn’t have hacked the U.S. election without a lot of help, both from U.S. politicians and from the news media.

Let me explain what I mean by saying that bad guys hacked the election. I’m not talking about some kind of wild conspiracy theory. I’m talking about the obvious effect of two factors on voting: the steady drumbeat of Russia-contrived leaks about Democrats, and only Democrats, and the dramatic, totally unjustified last-minute intervention by the F.B.I., which appears to have become a highly partisan institution, with distinct alt-right sympathies.

He goes on from there, and no one gets away unscathed. Read it.

Footnote: The President's final press conference makes a nice coda.

Today's Must-Read, Part Two: Congratulations

Via Digby again, this is pretty much how I feel right now:

It goes on:

This is by the cartoonist David Horsey:

I’m sure thousands of bottles of Budweiser will be raised tonight in those white, working-class neighborhoods of the upper Midwest that put Donald Trump over the top in the electoral college. You folks should enjoy your moment and don’t trouble yourselves with the thought that plenty of celebratory champagne is being poured in corporate board rooms, country clubs and in the spacious mansions of hedge fund managers.

Thanks to your votes, Mr. and Mrs. White Working Class, all those rich people will soon get a massive tax cut and relief from the environmental regulations that have kept them from polluting your air and water and from the financial oversight that has restrained them from milking every last penny from their employees and the victims of their big-money schemes.

Yes, congratulations. At the same moment you elected a billionaire who claimed he would drain the special interest “swamp” in Washington, you kept in power insiders such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the biggest snakes in the swamp, plus all the other Republicans in Congress who have fought to keep the mighty flow of corporate dollars streaming in.

You think you have struck a blow against the “elites” on the coasts who look down on “real Americans” in the heartland. You say you have been forgotten or misunderstood by the powers that be. That may be true. But I must say that those of you who act as if you are the only ones in the country who work hard, care for your families and love your country are pretty damn elitist, as well.

I look around at my friends and neighbors here on the West Coast and I see lots of patriotic people who put in long hours of labor to put food on the table and put their kids through school.

There is Keith, a guy with whom I recently got acquainted when we discovered our common affinity for good drinks, good ribs and good jazz. Keith is a muscular black man who would likely be subject to unfair and unfriendly scrutiny from the local sheriff if he showed up in a small Midwestern town, but forget the stereotype. Keith had a career in the Marines before taking a job managing security for Hollywood celebrities. In his free time, he works to help the homeless in downtown Los Angeles.

There is the Korean family that runs the laundry down the street from my apartment who never seem to take a vacation or even a day off. There are the Latino men I see laboring every day in the Southern California heat cutting lawns and repairing houses. There are the men of every race I pass by on my way to work who are hauling steel, handling jackhammers, driving trucks and raising girders as they build new subway lines and raise up towering skyscrapers.

And there are my colleagues in the newsroom, both the seasoned veterans of the news business and the charged-up millennials. There’s nothing elite about them, unless being able to spell and use proper grammar are now elite attributes. The men and women around me are working harder than ever for wages that are not rising in an industry threatened by rapid change. Sound familiar?

Most of us here do not live in Beverly Hills. We live in more modest places such as Pasadena, East Los Angeles, Inglewood and Long Beach. Of course, the working class here is a lot more brown than where you might live. They sweat just as hard, though, and put in long hours just like you — maybe longer, and maybe for less money. But you have not done them a favor by electing a guy who threatens to start a trade war based on an illusion. The illusion is that if America cuts itself off from the global market, all those manufacturing jobs your fathers once had will come flooding back. It won’t happen. The robots have taken over the assembly lines. But what a disruption in trade would do is shut down the West Coast ports and, according to expert estimates, kill more than 600,000 working-class jobs in California.

I know you didn’t think about that sort of effect when you cast your protest vote to Make America Great Again, but what exactly were you thinking? Whenever one of you was interviewed by a TV reporter all I heard was you parroting the vague generalities being spouted by your candidate: America doesn’t win anymore; we need a wall to keep out immigrants; political correctness sucks.

Trump’s careless ignorance could make him the world’s most dangerous man[.]

I didn’t hear any of you say you were happy with the longer droughts, bigger storms and more vicious wildfires that are devastating farms, ranches and rural communities. But your new president has promised to rip up the international treaty that might mitigate some of the extreme weather caused by climate change.

I didn’t hear any of you say you were tired of the peace and order created by the NATO alliance and would rather have a cozier relationship with the Russians. But you just elected a man who has denigrated NATO and has warm and fuzzy feelings about Vladimir Putin.

I did hear plenty of you say you hated big government, but is that because you are someone who got fined by the EPA because your industrial plant was poisoning a river? Or because you are a rancher who doesn’t want to pay grazing fees when you exploit publicly owned land? Or because you are a farmer who doesn’t want to admit that government price supports are what keep your business viable?

Does your hatred of government mean you voted for more pollution? With your vote, were you demanding that big banks be set free to run the economy into the ground? Were you eager for less consumer protection? Did you insist that more of the tax burden be put on average Americans and less of it on the super-rich? I hope those are the things you wanted because that is what you will get from a Republican Congress and a Republican president.

Do I sound angry? That is because I am. I’m mad because your misguided hissy fit is messing with the country I love. I am as much a patriot as you are. I choke up when I visit the Lincoln Memorial or the graves of the Kennedys. I love the flag and do not cringe from the Pledge of Allegiance. When I ride a horse across open country, I feel a link with all my ancestors — the first of whom arrived on the Maryland shore in the 1640s. Those family members who came before me slowly made their way West, generation after generation, until they finally found a home within sight of the Pacific. I am about as “real” an American as you can get.

But I am fed up with those of you who think there is only one way to be American. Some of the truest Americans I have met are among those whose ancestors came here in slave ships. Some of the Americans who give me the most hope are the children of parents who slipped across the border in search of a better life; young dreamers working hard for an education and a chance to contribute to our society. Some of the Americans I admire the most are like my friend Jack who left the narrow-mindedness of his home state and came West to Los Angeles, where he met and married the man he loved. America is great because it has room for all these people and more.

If, ultimately, the real reason you voted for Trump was because he promised to start shutting doors that have been opened for people who do not fit a narrow definition of American, you should understand you are in for a fight. It’s now my turn to say it: I want my country back.

I wish I could think that those who voted for a neo-fascist adolescent for president were in for a rude awakening and might see the light, but at this stage, he'll just blame someone else for shafting them and they'll buy it, lock, stock and barrel.

Reflections: Dada Writ Large

I may do this as an occasional department, titled "Reflections." Mostly just expansions on thoughts that occur to me relevant-- or tangential -- to something else.

So, "Dada Write Large"? I think there's a strong element of Dada in where we are right now, not only as country, but as a world.

Dada was designed to be ghost-like and short-lived. An intransigent and inconsequential mockery of the vain conceit that cultural monuments stood for something immortal, something ever-lasting. Self-immolation was written into Dada's very DNA, its main aesthetic tenant its brevity and self-destructiveness. There are no world-renowned Dadaists on the scale of a Hemingway, or a Shostakovich, or a Picasso, and no Dadaist produced a particularly large body of work-- not least because so many of the good ones killed themselves as the ultimate expression in Dadaist performance art. If you've never even heard of the movement, you're hardly to be blamed-- the Dadaists were simply there one day-- like a wisp of smoke swirling briefly, illuminated by a moonbeam-- and the next were gone. Rarely do artistic movements fulfill their stated intentions so completely-- Dada was a fully-realized, soulless expression of Dionysian excess. A howl of existential despair. And a casualty of war.

Expand that beyond the bounds of "art" (a boundary that I think is artificial and ultimately destructive -- art is about life; when it stops being about life, it loses its value). We've just elected the American id as president, and the world is reeling. (No, it's not just us in a state of shock, although most world leaders are offering at least pro forma congratulations -- albeit with some gentle -- or not so gentle reminders of what our shared values actually are. But if you look at where the most effusive congratulations are coming from -- Golden Dawn, the right-wing exremists in Greece; Marine le Pen, the leader of the neo-Nazi rightists in France; the right-wing extremist premier of Hungary -- you get a very different take on the world's reaction.)

But, back to the Dada aspects of this: The foundation, the part that was stressed by my art history teachers, was a sort of over-riding nihilism. Ironically enough, the last thing on the minds of those who elected Trump was destroying the social order -- just the opposite: they feel that the social order is under attack and they're trying to get back to the "real America" -- the one they grew up with. They're not wired to accept change very easily, but, sadly for them, life is change. That applies to cultures no less than organisms. So there's a new social order that doesn't match their expectations. In trying to get back to the safe, comfortable place they remember, they've taken a step toward destroying what is without any hope of replacing it with what was.

This is instructive:

One thing was certain though -- the Dadaists weren't in the game as mere dilettantes, or hobbyists. Their outrage was real, a genuine reaction to the horrors of the war. And shock and awe (to borrow a modern-day locution) seem to have been their modus operandi. None of the Dada art that survives can be called aesthetically pleasing in any usual sense-- to be displeasing was, after all, the whole idea.

There you have the Trump campaign. Wonder how that's going to translate into the Trump presidency.

Fasten your seatbelts -- it's going to be a bumpy ride.

We're All Fox News Now

I was going to write on the coverage of the latest Clinton "scandal" by the New York Times, but Paul Waldman has done a very thorough job:

Whenever some new piece of information emerges about Hillary Clinton or people close to her, we’re told that it “raises questions” of some kind, which means it’s being shoehorned into a larger narrative that says something fundamental about her: That she’s tainted by scandal, or corrupt, or just sinister in ways people can never quite put their finger on.

Yet somehow, stories about Donald Trump that don’t have to do with the latest appalling thing that came out of his mouth don’t “raise questions” in the same way. They’re here and then they’re gone, obliterated by his own behavior without going deep into question-raising territory.

The "newspaper of record" has had a kind of tarnished reputation since the days of Judith Miller and the lead-up to Bush II's invasion of Iraq. The real problem is, since the major news outlets have become so unreliable, if you really want to know what's going on, you have to hit a lot of sources, and most people won't.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Via Digby, who sums it up nicely:

The papers have done a good job reporting on many of Trump's business dealings over the years. But since there isn't any left wing Judicial Watch or Citizens United spoon-feeding them new new drips of information on a daily basis, they report it out and that's the end of it.

They are being manipulated by the character assassins and they know it. But they don't care. They seem to convince themselves that at some point one of these scandals will add up to a big scoop (Monica!) and until then they'll keep the scandal mongers happy by publishing their hit jobs. The way they drool and grunt over every little nugget the right wingers throw in front of them, however, is embarrassing. (Some of them should stay off twitter.)

Here We Go Again

You may have heard that Matt Bomer was cast as a transgender woman in the film Anything.

As you can imagine, the trans community -- or at least, a vocal segment of it -- is up in arms. On social media, of course, because that way you don't actually have to think about what you're saying. This is one of the least hostile tweets:

Jamie Clayton Verified account ‏@MsJamieClayton

Jamie Clayton Retweeted Trans Hollywood

I really hope you both choose to do some actual good for the trans community one day. @MRodOfficial @MattBomer

Trans Hollywood @transhollywood

Making movies with transgender protagonists is not, on its own, progress. https://medium.com/@emilymaxima/making-movies-with-transgender-protagonists-is-not-on-its-own-progress-70ffe27c3086#.rbi203eop …

• Retweets 652
• Likes 803
• 

5:19 PM - 29 Aug 2016

652 retweets 803 likes

Bomer blocked her on Twitter, temporarily (apparently, he has now unblocked her). I would too -- this is the kind of condescending crap he doesn't need to put up with. Bomer, as a matter of fact, has been a strong supporter of trans rights, which makes Clayton's tweet even more offensive.

The idea that trans characters must be played by trans actors is, on its face, ludicrous. These are actors. They make their living pretending to be someone else and if they make us believe they are that other person, we consider them good actors. As for what considerations go into casting a role, I've been there: you're looking for the actor who is a fit for the character. You're not thinking of the actor's real-life sexual orientation or gender identity -- those are irrelevant; you're looking for the actor who is capable of moving into this character and making the character real. When I was in college I was routinely cast as old men; I was skinny, had an angular face that would take age makeup well, and I could move the way an old man moves. I was nineteen or twenty. Hollywood has the added burden of name recognition: they have to have something to draw the audience, and casting a high-profile actor is one of those somethings.

But back to the core complaint: visibility of trans people. The fact that the film is being made at all, or that other films with trans characters have been made and been successful, seems to elude this group. They're not registering on what this actually means. I realize that at this stage of the game, when the trans community is coming under attack from the "Christian" right (now that gays and lesbians are pretty much mainstream), they want real trans people to be more visible. But this set of circumstances shows us that we're dealing with a two-pronged issue: resistance and inertia.

When I was a kid -- and I knew from a very early age that I liked boys -- there's wasn't even such a thing as a "gay man." There were only "queers," who were shady, diseased, and dangerous, and universally despised. You never saw gay characters on TV and seldom in films, and when you did, they fit the stereotype: sick, pathetic, and just barely people. I was hungry enough for any representation of people like me that even that was a plus: at least we existed. It took fifty years, but that's changed a lot. And it was the same process: overcoming first inertia, and then overcoming resistance.

And I have to say, these representations of trans characters are a lot more sympathetic than the early representations of gay characters in film. I can't stress how important that is: it means that the inertia of the status quo -- the stereotypes -- is already a thing of the past. So in that regard, Trans Hollywood's tweet is flat out wrong.

So, however much you may hate it, changing people's perceptions of marginalized groups takes time. It means you have to overcome the inertia of the status quo and the resistance of those who need someone to hate to justify their own existence. Having a very public snit because it's not happening the way you think it should doesn't help -- in fact, it's as likely to damage your cause as anything else, because you've shown yourself to be immature and not ready for prime time.

When we have trans actors and actresses playing cis characters in major motion pictures, then we're there.

Today's Must Read: It's Not All Christians

This:

John Pavlovitz . . . is an 18-year local church ministry veteran.

He is currently the pastor of a house church community called North Wake House Church, and also a volunteer at North Raleigh Community Church.

He is married to wife, Jennifer, and has two young children, Noah and Selah. He’s also a keen blogger, and a blog that he posted last week – entitled ‘If I Have Gay Children: Four Promises From A Christian Pastor/Parent’ has gone viral and prompted thousands of comments.

The reason? Because he believes he would treat his LGBTI children with exactly the same love and support as if they were straight, and would pray that they weren’t the victims of ignorance or hatred.

You can read his original blog post at the link. Do it.

Today's Must Read: It's the Economy, So Let's Lie About It

It was made clear to me some while ago that the economy does better under Democratic administrations. There are a number of reasons for this, the major one in my mind being that Democrats understand how our economy works, while Republicans understand how they think it should work. (That seems to be the prevailing right-wing mindset -- see "natural law" as an example.) There's an interesting post at Mahablog about a fairly recent study that lays out very clearly the Democratic vs. Republican record on the economy since World War II:

Last year some Princeton economists came out with a study that showed a rather startling gap between Dem and GOP administrations in how the economy performed, going back to World War II.

“The U.S. economy not only grows faster, according to real GDP and other measures, during Democratic versus Republican presidencies, it also produces more jobs, lowers the unemployment rate, generates higher corporate profits and investment, and turns in higher stock market returns. Indeed, it outperforms under almost all standard macroeconomic metrics.”

Strangely enough (hah!) the story somehow got mostly ignored in the "liberal" press. Not completely, but the spin from those who did note it is breathtaking:

But the two articles I found about this, one by Chris Matthews (the one linked above) and the other by Robert Samuelson, both go to great lengths to not give Dems credit for being better on the economy. Samuelson is particularly brilliant —

If Republican presidents were saddled with most recessions, their growth and job creation records would naturally be worse. And that’s what the Blinder-Watson study shows. Since the late 1940s, the economy has spent about 12 years in recession. But 10 of those 12 years occurred under Republican presidents; only two occurred under Democrats. On average, the economy spent slightly more than a year in recession for each Republican term and only three months for each Democratic term.

If only Republicans hadn’t been saddled with those damn recessions!

Talk about flipping reality on its head. . . .

Isn't the President Supposed to Conduct Foreign Policy?

I'm sure you've heard about this little effort by a group of Republican senators (well, a majority of Republican senators) to hamstring negotiations with Iran:

Bloomberg News reports on an open letter signed by 47 Republicans warning Iran that whatever they negotiate with President Obama can be undone in two years by the next President, who they presume will side with them.

Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber's entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.

“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

(Emphasis added.)

It seems that Iran's foreign minister knows a bit more about it than our Republican senators do:

Zarif expressed astonishment that some members of US Congress find it appropriate to write to leaders of another country against their own President and administration. He pointed out that from reading the open letter, it seems that the authors not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy.

Foreign Minister Zarif added that "I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.

The Iranian Foreign Minister added that "change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Irans peaceful nuclear program." He continued "I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with the stroke of a pen, as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law.

The president had a pointed response:

So did Vice President Biden, who was rather more thorough.

The author of this letter has been explicit that he is seeking to take any action that will end President Obama’s diplomatic negotiations with Iran. But to what end? If talks collapse because of Congressional intervention, the United States will be blamed, leaving us with the worst of all worlds. Iran’s nuclear program, currently frozen, would race forward again. We would lack the international unity necessary just to enforce existing sanctions, let alone put in place new ones. Without diplomacy or increased pressure, the need to resort to military force becomes much more likely—at a time when our forces are already engaged in the fight against ISIL.

[...]

This letter, in the guise of a constitutional lesson, ignores two centuries of precedent and threatens to undermine the ability of any future American President, whether Democrat or Republican, to negotiate with other nations on behalf of the United States. Honorable people can disagree over policy. But this is no way to make America safer or stronger.

[...]

In thirty-six years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which Senators wrote directly to advise another country—much less a longtime foreign adversary— that the President does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them. This letter sends a highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that that our Commander-in-Chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments—a message that is as false as it is dangerous.

The decision to undercut our President and circumvent our constitutional system offends me as a matter of principle. As a matter of policy, the letter and its authors have also offered no viable alternative to the diplomatic resolution with Iran that their letter seeks to undermine.

One thing, I think, that Biden's response and those of other Democrats miss: the Republicans want a war. That's their first response to anything: "Bomb, bomb, bomb -- Bomb, bomb Iran." The fact that they're so bad at it doesn't faze them in the least.

Even the Daily News doesn't think much of the Republicans' effort:

"Confusion" in Florida

Florida has managed to make a circus of the legalization of same-sex marriage, thanks to AG Pam Bondi and the law firm of Greenberg Traurig, which, as counsel for the clerks' and comptrollers' association, initially issued an opinion advising clerks against issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Come the New Year, and Judge Robert Hinkle issued a clarification of his initial ruling at the request of the Washington County clerk.

The preliminary injunction now in effect thus does not require the Clerk to issue licenses to other applicants. But as set out in the order that announced issuance of the preliminary injunction, the Constitution requires the Clerk to issue such licenses. As in any other instance involving parties not now before the court, the Clerk’s obligation to follow the law arises from sources other than the preliminary injunction.

(Emphasis added.)

AG Bondi is bowing to the inevitable, in her own mealy-mouthed way:

"This office has sought to minimize confusion and uncertainty, and we are glad the Court has provided additional guidance. My office will not stand in the way as clerks of court determine how to proceed."

Lest you're inclined to take this at face value, let me point out that Bondi's office was one of the main contributors to the "confusion."

Greenberg Traurig has done a 180 on this one:

“Judge Hinkle’s order states that any clerk refusing to issue a license could be subject to civil damages and liability for the plaintiffs’ fees and costs,” Bass said. “Greenberg Traurig has advised the Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers that clerks should follow the judge’s ruling for all marriage-license applications or face the consequences identified by Judge Hinkle.”

And the clerks are falling into line, with one office (Palm Beach, of course) opening at 10:30 pm on Monday, January 5th, to take applications:

So as of the wee hours of Tuesday morning, same-sex marriage in Florida is a done deal -- unless the 11th Circuit, where the case is on appeal, overturns Hinkle's decision. I'm making no guesses there: the pros are clear-cut and formidable; the antis are specious, at best, but this is the circuit that ducked the Florida same-sex adoption suit a couple of years ago, finding that the legislature should be the ones to decide. If the panel does reverse Hinkle, that's just another circuit split headed for the Supreme Court. A new wrinkle, which I just discovered: The Florida Solicitor General has informed the 11th Circuit that the defendants will not submit a reply brief in the case. Sounds like throwing in the towel to me, and boosts the chances of a favorable ruling.

The best reactions come from none other than Liberty Counsel and Florida Family Policy Council. From John Stemberger, head of FFPC:

Judge Hinkle's ruling is being widely misinterpreted. It clearly says that only the clerk Washington County is required to issue a marriage license and only to the two persons in that case. Judge Hinkle has no jurisdiction outside of the Northern District of Florida to bind any clerk outside of North Florida. Clerks outside of North Florida are required to obey the current law and are still subject to all the penalties of a first-degree misdemeanor for violating it.

Stemberger obviously has a problem with reading comprehension. The day's first Through the Looking Glass Award goes to him.

And from Liberty Counsel:

In a highly anticipated ruling to clarify an August preliminary injunction in the federal case Brenner v. Scott, the district judge agreed with Liberty Counsel that the injunction does not require Florida clerks of court outside Washington County to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on January 6. Indeed, the new order clarifies that the injunction is limited to the plaintiffs in the case, expressly holding, “The preliminary injunction now in effect thus does not require the [Washington County] Clerk to issue licenses to other applicants.”

Well, Liberty Counsel are not really lawyers, they're propagandists, and propagandists edit reality for a living. Yes, the injunction itself does not require clerks to issue marriage licenses statewide; the part that their statement left out is the part I bolded in the above quote from the ruling: the Constitution requires it. Second Through the Looking Glass Award of the day goes to them.

I can hardly wait to hear how Brian Brown configures this "victory."

Nobody's Listening

That's a song title, and I can't remember whose song it is, but it perfectly describes the ruling class -- including those who exist in their little bubble in D.C. -- every time the 99% try to make themselves heard -- if they don't just have us pepper sprayed, or worse.

Via Crooks and Liars, this from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-All of Us):

The American people must make a fundamental decision. Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all? Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy? These are the most important questions of our time, and how we answer them will determine the future of our country.

The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been pretty. Today, we have more wealth and income inequality than any major country on earth. We have one of the highest childhood poverty rates and we are the only country in the industrialized world which does not guarantee health care for all. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing.

Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent.

Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median woman worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago.

And, unlike right-wing Randian policy wonks (are you listening, Paul "I've got mine" Ryan?), Sanders actually lays out a plan. Click through to read it -- I suspect that, like me, you're going to find it too commonsensical to need voicing, but then, this is Washington we're dealing with.

I wish Sanders would throw his hat in the ring for 2016 -- might serve to push Hillary to the left.

And check out his website -- it's sort of inspiring.