The death toll is up to 50. This is now the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Joe.My.God. has a series of posts this morning with updates. Ditto Towleroad. Ditto Box Turtle Bulletin.
There's no point in my making any comments right now.
However, a note on how times have changed: RawStory, which is really more mainstream in terms of gay issues, has extensive coverage of the shooting, and a few articles on some of the other "mainstream" reactions.
Advocates for clergy sex abuse victims in Pennsylvania are claiming that lobbying and intimidation tactics by the Roman Catholic Church will result in lawmakers either diluting or defeating a bill that would let victims sue for crimes that occurred decades ago, Philly.com reports Saturday.
They've gotten heavy-handed about it, too.
“A lot of the members would tell you responses have been nothing short of threats to claims of betraying their faith,” Rep. Nick Miccarelli, a Republican and Catholic, told the publication. . . .
Rep. Martina White, a first-term Republican, supported the bill in the House — and the Church retaliated. She was told she would no longer be welcome at some events in her district.
“When you think of the Catholic Church, you think of acceptance and forgiveness and a community that’s available to you,” White, who attended Catholic school as a child, told Philly.com while choking back tears. “Being disinvited, you feel cut off.”
I really can't think of words to describe my reaction to this. Given, that the Church hierarchy is, on the whole, tremendously self-centered, and given that the first priority of any institution is to protect its prerogatives, this goes beyond blatant. We've seen its like before --in Boston, when Massachusetts legalized recognition of same-sex marriage, and in Illinois, when suddenly Catholic Charities, which was originally structured to allow it to accept state money without violating the First Amendment, became a "religious organization."
This is choice:
Philly.com reports that while victims and advocates support the measure, the Catholic Church has been vocally opposed. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput called it “unfair” and financially destructive to dioceses and harmful to church members who played to role in the abuse cases.
Maybe if the Church hadn't spent so much money opposing same-sex marriage, and equal civil rights for gays and lesbians in general, it wouldn't be feeling the crunch.
Rachel Maddow interviews Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Digby has a transcript here. Key point, about a Trump presidency:
I look at those things and I think about what’s at stake. It’s literally people’s lives. It’s our economy. It is the very fabric of our democracy. For me, that’s the heart of what the Democratic Party stands for. That is what we fight for. That’s why we’re in this fight. That’s why we’ve got to win.
And there's video:
And again from Digby, more on Trump. This says it all, I think:
In three interviews with The Times since late April, Mr. Trump acknowledged in general terms that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He did not recall details about some issues, but did not question The Times’s findings. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
(Emphasis added.)
We've seen it again and again, but this is it: It's all about him. Screw everyone else.
“In his role as President, I think we should pray for Barack Obama. But I think we need to be very specific about how we pray,” Perdue told the audience at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C. “We should pray like Psalm 109:8 says, that says, ‘let his days be few.’”
After waiting a beat, Perdue said, “And let another have his office,’” drawing laughter from the audience.
I guess that's the sort of thing "Christians" find funny.
However, when you look at the rest of that verse:
As observers on Twitter quickly pointed out, the full Biblical passage is significantly more ominous.
“May his days be few; may another take his office,” the cited section reads.
“May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow! May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!” the next section continues.
Do I really need to say anything?
Oh, there's this:
Perdue spokeswoman Caroline Vanvick said in a statement to Bloomberg that the Georgia senator "in no way wishes harm towards our president."
This is a series that I've been thinking about for a while. I'm not sure why. It's really meant to be a survey of life on earth, how it originated and how it developed, but I felt like I should start at the beginning.
The most widely accepted theory of the origins of the universe at this point is the Big Bang Theory: there was a point of very high density and very high temperature which developed an instability and exploded, creating the universe, about 13.8 billion years ago. It wasn't really the universe as we know it at that point, because it was very, very hot, but eventually it cooled enough to allow the formation of things like subatomic particles. Then gravity and the other major forces took over, and we have, first, atoms, then stars. Our sun was one of those stars. Here's what seems to be a pretty accurate exposition of the theory, at Wikipedia. And as you can see from this video, it wasn't really all that straightforward.
In Einstein's formulation, the laws of physics actually break before the singularity is reached. But scientists extrapolate backward as if the physics equations still hold, said Robert Brandenberger, a theoretical cosmologist at McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved in the study.
"So when we say that the universe begins with a big bang, we really have no right to say that," Brandenberger told Live Science.
There are other problems brewing in physics — namely, that the two most dominant theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, can't be reconciled.
Quantum mechanics says that the behavior of tiny subatomic particles is fundamentally uncertain. This is at odds with Einstein's general relativity, which is deterministic, meaning that once all the natural laws are known, the future is completely predetermined by the past, Das said.
And neither theory explains what dark matter, an invisible form of matter that exerts a gravitational pull on ordinary matter but cannot be detected by most telescopes, is made of.
I sort of like this idea -- considering that most of the world's religious traditions assume that the earth and the universe are cyclic, with no beginning and no end . . . well, food for thought, at the very least.
At any rate, starting about 13.5 billion years ago, we have stars. The sun was one of those stars, formed about 4.5-5 billion years ago in a cloud of molecules -- mostly hydrogen, with a little helium and some heavier elements thrown in for fun. Some of those molecules began to attract each other -- gravity again -- and as the group got bigger, the pull became stronger, pulling in more molecules until, finally, we had ignition. At the core of the sun the pressure and temperature are so intense that we have, in effect, a really, really big fusion reactor.
Now, there was still a lot of dust and gas around the sun, mostly forming a big disc, which contained not only hydrogen and helium, but also heavier elements -- remember, other fusion reactors -- stars -- had been burning merrily along for 8 or 9 billion years, and some had exploded after converting the lighter elements into heavier elements -- carbon, oxygen, iron, nickel, all the way up to uranium: the building blocks of planets.
The creation of the earth was undoubtedly a lot more spectacular than the creation of the sun -- lots of crashing and explosions as actual rocks collided and stuck together.
Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson with a description of the process:
Pretty neat, huh?
So, now we have a sun and a planet -- a whole solar system, actually (well, OK, a whole universe, but for this we're keeping it local) -- so where do we go from here? Well, life, of course. After all, that's what we're most interested in. But we need to wait about a billion years, for things to calm down a little bit, so that's for next time.
Digby has a transcript of Elizabeth Warren's speech to the American Constitution Society -- the one where she ripped Donald Trump a new one. Here's the beginning:
Four simple words are engraved above the doors to the Supreme Court: Equal Justice Under Law. That’s supposed to be the basic promise of our legal system: that our laws are just, and that everyone—everyone—will be held equally accountable if they break those laws.
We haven’t always fulfilled that promise—but it is the absolute standard to which we hold ourselves even when we fall short.
A vital part of that struggle is the fight for a truly professional, independent, and impartial judiciary. A place governed not by politics, not by money, not by power—but by those four simple words: equal justice under law.
I talked pretty bluntly about how we are losing the fight over whether our courts will remain a neutral forum, faithfully interpreting the law and dispensing fair and impartial justice, or whether rich and powerful interests will completely capture our judicial branch.
I talked about how year after year, for more than thirty years, powerful interests have worked to rewrite the law and tilt the courts to favor billionaires and giant corporations. Cases that protected giant businesses from accountability. Cases that made it harder for individuals to get into court. Cases that gutted longstanding laws protecting consumers from being cheated. And cases likeCitizens United, which unleashed an avalanche of billionaire SuperPAC dollars and secret corporate money in a mad dash to tilt the rest of the government in favor of the wealthy.
Today, I’m here to update that warning. Because what we’ve seen over the past three years—accelerating over the past three months, and even the past three weeks—is alarming. Powerful interests are now launching a full-scale assault on the integrity of the federal judiciary and its judges.
And there's video:
I've said before that the radical right hates the idea of an independent judiciary. They've called for terms limits and retention ballots for federal judges, and I'm sure that's just the beginning. As Warren quite rightly notes farther on in her remarks, the Republicans' refusal to expedite judicial nominations is more than just Obama hate: they don't really want the courts to be functional. At least, not until they can stack them with more Antonin Scalias, or worse. (Yes, there are worse, believe it or not. How about Roy Moore?)
As for calls for Hillary Clinton to select Warren as her running mate, I think that would be a big mistake. Digby pretty much has it:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren should stay right where she is in the Senate. She would have less of a platform as the Vice President. Yes, VP candidates are often given the attack-dog roll, but Warren needs no loftier position for doing that. Warren's speech to the American Constitution Society’s national convention takes your breath away.
And in the Senate, Warren can actually do something besides make speeches.
This post by Digby sort of crystallized something that's been in the back of my head for a while:
The pundits and the reporters all seemed to notice at the same time that Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination. And it seemed to dawn on them that it was an important moment worth noting. After all, it had never happened before. Ever.
It's been all over the blogosphere, and I'm getting real sick of seeing "HISTORIC!!1!" all over the place.
And a small correction to Digby: It's never happened before here. Just off the top of my head, and in no particular order, I can think of a number of countries that have had female heads of state or heads of government: Iceland, the UK, Ireland, Germany, India, Sri Lanka, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Pakistan, the Philippines, Australia. . . .
I'm sure there are more.
Is this American exceptionalism in overdrive? Or just blinkered vision?
Speaker Ryan on Wednesday behind closed doors told Republican House members he will restrict the amendment process, effectively thwarting one of the few avenues Democrats have to advance their legislation, given the vast majority of the House is Republican, and bipartisanship is rare in today's toxic environment.
Ryan "is cracking down on Democrats' ability to win floor votes on hotly contested issues such as LGBT rights," the Associated Press reports late Wednesday morning. "The move means Ryan is reneging on a promise to protect the rights of lawmakers to take on a wide range of issue when the House debates annual spending bills."
"Hotly contested issues" -- read, "Issues on which the GOP is completely out of step with the rest of the country."
This, of course, is directly opposed to the promise he made when assuming the gavel to protect members' right to submit and advance bills. I guess he didn't think any Democrats would exercise that right.
This, I think, says it all:
Politico adds that an unnamed House aide "said Ryan is hearing that members 'want the Rules Committee to make sure we can govern as a majority and not allow Democrats to use the amendment process to take down the bills and derail the House’s work. . . ."
"Govern as a majority" -- don't they call that "one-party rule"? And isn't that the way it used to work in places like the U.S.S.R.?
More on this from TPM -- it looks like no one is happy:
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) told the Hill newspaper that Ryan's hand was forced.
“I think it was something he probably preferred not to do, but he felt like he had to do,” Cole said. “That’s his responsibility as Speaker. You have to make some tough decisions.
Not everyone was convinced.
“Our leadership is using this as an excuse to close down the process,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told the Hill.
Democrats took their own shot at Ryan for the decision.
“It has long been clear that regular order is not as important to Republicans as protecting their special interest agenda. Republicans are clearly afraid of the will of the House when it comes to protecting LGBT Americans or standing up for hard-working families," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
If you're wondering where The Hairpiece's slurs against the judge in the Trump U case could lead, read this. This part deals with a similar stunt by Larry Klayman, whom Ed Brayton calls "the dumbest lawyer in America not named Mat Staver":
Eventually, Chin dismissed Klayman’s client’s case with a few choice words for the way counsel had conducted it. Not long after, the judge got a letter from Klayman and his co-counsel, Paul Orfanedes, asking a few “questions” about the judge’s Asian American background and mentioning another case they had brought against the Clinton administration. They then filed a brief questioning the judge’s impartiality:
Mr. Klayman and Mr. Orfanedes became concerned that because the Court was a recent appointee of President Clinton … and Mr. Klayman had been prominently mentioned in the media for his role in the Commerce Department case, which focused in part on the White House, the Democratic National Committee, John Huang, Melinda Yee, and other persons in the Asian and Asian–American communities, and because the lawsuit had elicited such angry responses from the White House, Democrats and the Asian–American community, that the Court might be angry at them and unable to be fair and impartial ...
In a written response, Chin noted that he hadn’t been aware of Klayman’s other lawsuit. As for the questions about his race, he said, “This sentiment is absurd and demeans me individually and the Court as a whole.”
He then lowered the boom. Klayman and Orfanedes were required to withdraw as counsel from the case and would not be permitted to appear in Chin’s court on any matter ever again. They would be required to show his opinion to any other judge in the district in any future case. The court clerk would also report the sanctions to every court where they held bar membership.
It's not real smart to screw around with a federal judge.
Can I tell you how heartily sick I am of Donald Trump?
It wouldn't be so bad if the press weren't drooling over him. I mean, come on -- the man's a walking, talking basket case, and the media act as though he actually had something to offer this country -- besides extinction, I mean.
Add to that this -- let's call it "Today's Must-Read," also from Digby, which strikes me as a good analysis of the situation as it stands. I found this telling:
The press meanwhile was stuck in a different kind of spin cycle. They mostly just gawked at the spectacle like they were reporting on a 200 car pile-up on the interstate. They didn’t dig very deeply because, like the Republicans, they simply could not fathom that he would actually become the nominee. And frankly, they never really devote a ton of resources to each primary candidate. They do some perfunctory digging and check out oppo from the various rivals but they never go very deeply into the candidates until they get the nomination. But once the nomination is in hand, it’s no hold barred and the press is going to delve into the nominee’s business, personal life and history in every way. Apparently, Trump didn’t know this.
Good point, and you can see it happening, but as far as I'm concerned, the press is one reason Trump managed to get as far as he has.
I've been trying to bring myself up to speed on the Clinton e-mail witch-hunt (because you know that's what it is). It occurs to me that if there's anyone the right-wing hates worse than Obama, it's the Clintons.
This, from a patently slanted story dated May 8 at The Hill:
Over the next two months, at least six current or former aides to Clinton will be asked to give depositions as part of those cases, which are being led by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. Clinton herself could be asked to testify as well, a federal judge has ruled.
“Out litigation’s going to continue,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told The Hill in a recent interview.
“It doesn’t really matter what the FBI does, what the Justice Department does, in the sense that we have an independent right to get some accountability and to have the FOIA law vindicated.”
For all those Hillary Clinton opponents who have been hoping against hope that the likely Democratic presidential nominee will be indicted as a result of the FBI review of Hillary’s email server, CNN has some bad news. According to CNN correspondent Pamela Brown, the FBI is close to wrapping up the “investigation,” and thus far have found “no criminal wrongdoing”:
The interviews, we’re told, are focused on whether classified information was mishandled, and the security of the server. So far officials tell us, no, there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing at this point in the investigation, but, again, the investigation is not over.
It sounds like they’re really just waiting for Hillary Clinton to be interviewed so they can wrap things up, but if Republicans and Bernie Sanders and the media are counting on Hillary Clinton to suddenly crack under questioning, they haven’t been paying attention.
The bottom line is that the Republicans are going to keep harping on this, and on Benghazi!!1! (even though we now know that whole "investigation" was nothing more than a politically motivated witch hunt), and even Vince Foster, right through the conventions and the remaining campaign.
On March 15, Donald Trump won Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, and Illinois, dispatching Marco Rubio’s campaign to the ash heap of history and giving every impression that he had become the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. Hillary Clinton also did extremely well that day, taking Illinois, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina. The New York Times gave its prime spot—the top-right corner of the paper’s front page—to a story headlined “2 Front-Runners, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Find Their Words Can Be Weapons.” Readers quickly learned, if they had missed it previously, that Trump frequently used words like “bimbo,” “dog,” and “fat pig” to refer to some of the women he didn’t like, and this had led to disapproval ratings among women that reached historic proportions. And what “weapons” did Clinton give her adversaries? During a recent speech in coal country, she had suggested that her support for sustainable, clean-energy jobs would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Surely, you get the symmetry: Trump employs sexist school-yard taunts to denigrate roughly half the people on the planet. Clinton bravely tells her audience something they might not want to hear in support of a policy with short-term costs for some but long-term benefits for all. Same thing, right? Just ask, as the Times reporters did, a spokesman for the “anti-Clinton super PAC” America Rising, who opined that Clinton demonstrated a “brazen disregard for the men and women who help power America.” So you see, “dogs,” “pigs,” and “bimbos” versus clean energy. Both sides do it.
Read the whole thing -- you'll find all your contempt for the contemporary "news" media fully justified.
I hardly know how to react to this: one the one hand, it's funny as all hell, in a sick sort of way; on the other, it's just another example of the arrogance of the "Christian" right. From Tony Perkins (who else?):
This week, the president is back at it, using his Bible of convenience to justify his outrageous decree on public school bathrooms and showers. To the disgust of most Christians, Obama insisted that “my reading of Scripture tells me that [the] Golden Rule is pretty high up there in terms of my Christian belief.” Let me make a suggestion to the president: before quoting the Good Book, he should try reading what it actually says.
Perkins then proceeds to quote from the letters of Paul, who, as one commenter points out, never met Jesus and spent his life trying to proclaim himself as the one who really, really knew what God wanted. (Hmm -- sounds like a certain hate-group leader, doesn't it? Actually, it sounds like all the hate-group leaders.)
And there you have it, once again, in one noisome package: arrogance, self-absorption, and mendacity. I guess we all have to check with the FRC before we quote scripture now.
Yesterday, People for the American Way released a report showing that rather than leaving worldly politics behind in reaction to the rise of the boorish and profane Donald Trump, as many people have been predicting, the religious right is gathering their forces for more assaults on the state houses around the country in pursuit of what they have duplicitously labeled "religious liberty" (when it is, in fact, a form of religious oppression.) Whatever disappointments they may be experiencing in national politics, their zeal to force people who have different (or no) religious beliefs to conform to theirs continues apace.
These people do not appear to have gotten the memo that once marriage equality was affirmed by the Supreme Court the issue was settled. In fact, that ruling sparked a coordinated effort among conservative religious organizations to roll back gay rights wherever they can. The report says that in 2016 over 100 anti- LGBT equality bills have already been introduced in statehouses around the country. And there is every indication that these activities are picking up speed.
I've been saying since, oh, forever, that the religious right is not going to give up. They're still chipping away at Roe v. Wade two generations later, and although they've failed to make an equivalence between abortion and gay rights, they're not going to change their strategy -- and it's a long-term strategy. They are, after all, the beneficiaries of Eternal Truth™ as revealed by The One True God™ -- or the latest interpreters thereof.
Read the whole thing -- and pay attention to who's running for your state legislature.
Trump Voter: We are young, urban, and have a happy future planned. We seem molded to be perfect young Hillary supporters. But we're not. Both of us voted Libertarian in 2012, and ideologically we remain so. But in 2016? We're both going for Trump.
For me personally, it's resistance against what San Francisco has been, and what I see the country becoming, in the form of ultra-PC culture. That’s where it's almost impossible to have polite or constructive political discussion. Disagreement gets you labeled fascist, racist, bigoted, etc. It can provoke a reaction so intense that you’re suddenly an unperson to an acquaintance or friend. There is no saying “Hey, I disagree with you,” it's just instant shunning. Say things online, and they'll try to find out who you are and potentially even get you fired for it. Being anti-PC is not about saying “I want you to agree with me on these issues.” It's about saying, “Hey, I want to have a discussion and not get shouted down because I don't agree with what is considered to be politically correct.”
Let's start with the most obvious, not to dismiss what may be this person's own experience (there are idiots on the left, as well): Having tried to have rational discussions with right-wingers, the shouting down and name-calling seems to originate with those who can't support their positions any other way. What I'm getting from this is more regurgitated right-wing propaganda about the "fascist left" -- on the same order as the religious extremists who are screaming about being "persecuted" when they're not allowed to pick and choose which laws to observe. The fact that he voted Libertarian should tell you a lot.
And I can't help but wonder how many times this person has just tuned out when someone disagrees with him. I've run into a couple of commenters at blogs who don't seem to be able to respond to what I actually wrote -- they just repeat the same flat statements, without substantiation, as though that were some sort of argument.
It goes on, and gets more and more bizarre. Digby summed it up nicely:
It's all about him having to defend the fact that he's a raving asshole. Yep. I can see why he loves Trump so much. Having to show good manners in public is just too much.
as the election season progresses, whether we might just be able to do without a president for four years. After all, we haven't had a Congress for six years, and the world hasn't ended.
What sparks this comment is this post from John Aravosis and the attendant discussion in the comment thread. The post itself is about the Sanders campaign's repeated attacks on Peter Staley:
American AIDS activist Peter Staley.
For the second time in a week, the Sanders campaign has launched an oddly personal attack on Peter Staley, one of America’s top AIDS activists. . . .
The attack came once again from Sanders’ senior policy adviser Warren Gunnels, who falsely accused Staley, who has committed his life to HIV activism, of selling out people with AIDS to the pharmaceutical industry.
The Sanders campaign became enraged with Staley and other AIDS activists, including many who are (or were) Bernie Sanders supporters, after the activists called Sanders out for lying about his meeting with the activists last week. In that meeting, the activists raised their concerns about a drug initiative taking place in California, and sponsored by an anti-PrEP organization. When the meeting finished, Sanders issued a press release claiming the activists had joined the Vermont Senator in supporting the initiative.
To be perfectly honest, Sanders lost me a while ago. I was prepared to vote for him in the primary because I'm generally sympathetic to his positions, and then vote for Clinton in the general, since I assumed she would be the nominee.
I've come to the conclusion that Sanders is an idiot. My real concern with him as president was whether he could actually do anything, and it starts to look more and more that my concern was justified. It seems as though he can't even manage a campaign, much less a country.
What's even more interesting than the post, however, is the discussion in the comments thread. Lots of information, a fair amount of vitriol and finger-pointing (but that's normal for blog comments -- at least there is a marked scarcity of trolls) -- one thing about AmericaBlog's commenters is that they're generally well-informed -- and some interesting insights.
Burr, for his part, says the city of Charlotte needs to take responsibility for the role he believes it played in provoking Republicans to act.
“I think the legislature should go back and look at what they did, talk with Charlotte and figure out, as it relates to bathroom issue, there can be resolution. There didn’t seem to be a problem before. Charlotte created the problem and the General Assembly further created a problem,” he told WTVD.
The Pride flag flew on Parliament Hill on Wednesday in a historic all-party show of support to mark the start of the month celebrating Canada's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had the honour of raising the distinctive rainbow banner on the Hill for the first time at a celebration attended by MPs from all federal parties, as well as dozens of onlookers.
Can you imagine if Obama had done that? I mean, look at the reaction from painting a rainbow on the White House with lights.
And, because a little eyecandy never hurts, here's Justin Trudeau:
On Tuesday afternoon President Barack Obama issued his eighth and final proclamation declaring June LGBT Pride Month. By Tuesday evening some conservatives were outraged, taking to social media and voicing their anger on right wing websites that falsely claimed the President had "ordered" Americans to celebrate LGBT Pride.
These assholes have always been with us, hiding under rocks, but now they have Twitter. One wonders, though, if the outrage comes from the declaration, or because Obama did it. Six of one. . . .
