Welcome to Trump's America

It's not that you can't make this stuff up -- it's that you don't have to any more:

According to Ricky Berry, he and his roommate Philip Blackwell went to a CVS store in Carytown, Virginia in search of cheese.

After asking an employee if the store carried cheese, and being told it did not, Berry said the staffer and other employees who had been on floor disappeared.

“We looked around for probably 30, 45 minutes and we couldn’t find anybody,” Blackwell said, adding that they discovered another customer, attempting to purchase Oragel for a bad tooth, who also couldn’t find anyone to help him.

Berry stated that a police officer showed up and helped them search the store only to discover the employees huddled in a back room behind locked doors.

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

Coda: This:

“I was a little firm with him, and I just told him, ‘Hey, you know, my husband and I spend a lot of money here. We’ve been using you guys for ten years. We have $3,000 worth of stone.’” Shawlin recalled telling manager. “And [the manager] goes, ‘oh, that explains it now. The faggot that voted for Hillary.’”

Another customer expressed support for Donald Trump after overhearing the conversation, Shawlin said.

The father broke down in tears remembering how the customer later followed him and his son into the parking lot.

“He basically said, ‘What are these faggots going to do to this child?’” Shawlin recalled.

This is what happens when you validate assholes.

And again. I know where that store is. In fact, I bought a picture frame there. Not the behavior I would expect from someone from that neighborhood -- it's actually very close to where I lived for a number of years, what I used to call "South Suburban Boys' Town." Sadly, there are people like that in Chicago -- I remember a bizarre conversation I had with a woman at the bus stop, commiserating about reductions in service: She was convinced it was because Obama was giving people cars. Really.

Be warned -- it's about ten minutes.

Today's Must-Read: Americans Weren't the Only Ones Campaigning

A rather sobering article from Josh Marshall, on Russian dissemination of fake news during our election season and the reaction of other governments to the news, especially Germany:

But while they are on their guard, here in the US people are already starting to forget. We're on to worrying about Trump's latest outrage, taking up our preferred position in the internecine warfare within the Democratic party, cursing the pollsters and a lot else. Indeed, it's not just that many of us are starting to move on. All along the reality of what happened - that our election was manipulated by a highly effective Russian subversion campaign - is difficult to fully process or accept.

Marshall links to this article from Buzzfeed, which you should also read -- much more detail. In fact, click through to everything he's linked to in his article.

It was only half tongue-in-cheek that I referred to Trump several times as a Russian puppet. While maybe not strictly accurate (but at this point, who can tell, considering the ways he's mixing the presidency and his own business interests), I was more on target than I knew: Putin got the president he wanted.

Scary.

Happy Thanksgiving

Unfortunately, the day started out overcast, which always makes it hard for me to get started. And then one of the first stories I ran into this morning was this:

Renowned indigenous historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz explained this week that the Thanksgiving holiday was “never about honoring Native Americans” as many children are taught in U.S. schools.

In an interview with Democracy Now’s Nermeen Shaikh on Wednesday, Dunbar-Ortiz addressed misconceptions about the holiday.

“Actually, it’s never been about honoring Native Americans,” she remarked. “It’s been about the origin story of the United States, the beginning of genocide, dispossession and constant warfare from that time—actually, from 1607 in Jamestown—until the present. It’s a colonial system that was set up.”

It should only be that simple.

OK, by now we all know that the story of the first Thanksgiving we were taught in school was pretty much bogus. At this point, it's guesses for grabs what really happened, but I doubt it's as villainous as Dunbar-Ortiz makes it out to be.

Yes, Europeans have an appalling history vis-a-vis native peoples, not only in the Americas but everywhere else they wound up. (One of the great ironies of the fight over the Ugandan "Kill the gays" bill was the insistence in some quarters that practices that their pre-Colonial ancestors found perfectly acceptable were "not truly African." This while holding desperately on to the worst aspects of the Colonial regimes.)

But, to dig a little deeper, every society that practices agriculture has a harvest festival. Thanksgiving, although it comes a little later than most, is ours. It's gotten tied into a creation myth about the founding of the country -- one of many, as it happens -- but it's still basically a harvest festival.

So why can't we just be grateful for that?

(And, for a completely irreverent and off-the-wall aside, do you suppose that's why the white working class is, we're told, so afraid of undocumented immigrants? In light of what the first wave of undocumented immigrants did to those who were already here?)

Culture Break: Tummel: This Ship Is Sinking

Sadly, I couldn't find a video of the group performing this, but the song is so appropriate for Trump's America that I wanted to post it. It's from the album Payback Time, which is one of the most outrageous things I've ever heard.

YouTube seems to have the whole album posted. Look for my review December 4 at Green Man Review.

PC Amok

I'm old enough to remember when "politically correct" actually meant something, as used by the New Left in the 1970s and '80s, and it wasn't necessarily positive: I'm not real enthusiastic about ideological purity. Now that the right has bastardized the term so that it has no meaning any more: the right uses it to mean social norms that it doesn't agree with, which is most of them. There is an element of the far left that uses political correctness as a cue for outrage -- you know, those people who make a profession of being offended. This, though, has really got me scratching my head:

In a segment focused on the words of white supremacist leader Richard Spencer late Monday afternoon, CNN's chyron read: "ALT-RIGHT FOUNDER QUESTIONS IF JEWS ARE PEOPLE." 

It was a stunning summary of Spencer's comments, which CNN posted as reading:

"One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem," which The New York Times quoted today, noting that "golem" refers "to a Jewish fable about the golem, a clay giant that a rabbi brings to life to protect the Jews."

The CNN host called Spencer's words, "hate-filled garbage."

OK, this is fairly straightforward, but it's the chyron that generated the outrage.

People, including Jake Tapper -- it was on his show, although he was away at the time -- are up in arms. You can read some of the tweets at the link above, and then there's this post from Crooks and Liars, which has hardly any substance at all. There are more tweets, but if you check out the comments, what's missing is one very basic point: The chyron is quoting a white supremacist/Nazi leader whose words are, very rightly, condemned in the discussion. The quote is attributed. Seems perfectly within the standards of normalcy to me -- not the content, but the treatment, I should say.

So, I'm sitting here asking myself, why are so many people -- including the show's host -- outraged? I mean, not only the tweets but the comments from the C&L post -- not to mention the C&L headline, which reads "Jake Tapper Annoyed His Show Ran A Chyron Questioning If Jews Were People" -- make it sound as though CNN were endorsing this garbage when, in fact, the panel did just the opposite.

That, to me, is PC run amok.

If Wishes Were Nickels

From The Guardian:

President Barack Obama has warned Donald Trump he won’t be able to pursue many of his more controversial policies once he is in office.

In his final international speech before he leaves the White House in January, Obama said he could not guarantee Trump would not try to implement controversial positions he took during campaign but he could guarantee “reality will force him to adjust” how he approaches the issues.

Uh, Mr. President? You seem to assume that Trump has some contact with reality.

Giggle du Jour

You may know that the creationists/IDers figure their crushing argument against evolution is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Their argument, from this post by PZ Myers.:

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

Offhand, I'd say everyone knows about it.

 

What's New at Green Man Review

Yes, it's Sunday again, with more goodies at Green Man Review, including a new music review from me and a couple of fantasy/science fiction trilogies that were pretty damned good.

So click on through.

Today's Must-Read: Civil Rights on the Block

Jeff Sessions is probably one of the last people who should be considered for Attorney General. (OK, maybe Roy Moore would be worse, or David Duke, but still. . . .)

Josh Marshall has a good take on some of the real damage this appointment could do.

But I think this misses the point or is in some ways a distraction. As Tierney Sneed explains in this article, the single most distinguishing feature of Sessions public career is his hostility to African-American voting and the laws put in place to protect African-American voting rights. That stretches from bringing predatory voter fraud indictments with the fairly obvious aim of discouraging efforts to mobilize black voters in Alabama. You can see it in his long-running hostility to the Voting Rights Act. You can see it in his opposition to laws intended to end or the reduce the practice of permanently disenfranchising felons. Again, read Tierney's article. The list goes on and on.

He should find John Roberts very easy to work with.

(OK, so it's two "must-reads." So read them both.)

The VP's Night Out

No doubt you've heard this story, about Mike Pence being booed when he attended a performance of Hamilton. He also got a lecture from the cast:

At the conclusion of the show, cast members addressed Pence’s appearance — as a group locked in hand-to-hand — behind Brandon Victor Dixon who delivered the following message:

“Vice-president elect Mike Pence, we welcome you and truly thank you for joining us at Hamilton American Musical,” Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, the nation’s third vice president, said. “We sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our alienable rights, sir. We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us,” Dixon added. “We truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds and orientation,” Dixon concluded to a roaring applause by those in attendance.

(Video at the link.)

Needless to say, Il Duce Junior was not pleased:

Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump

The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!

7:56 AM - 19 Nov 2016

Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump

Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!

7:48 AM - 19 Nov 2016

Apparently, some of the reporters at NYT thought this was beyond the pale:

Digby has the best response to that:

I'm afraid I have to agree. Booing is very rude. What you're supposed to do is chant "lock him up!" and scream "Trump that bitch!" It's also fine to call him "nasty" to his face. This booing, however, is disrespectful.

Of course, all the usual suspects are jumping on the bandwagon. But if you read through the tweets at the link, you'll notice how none of them address the substance of the situation: The man is a well-known bigot, viciously anti-gay, attending a performance that is all about the diversity that is America.

Oh, wait -- this is the segment of American politics that thinks Nazis are OK.

Saturday Science: Earth: A Biography: Setting the Stage

Before we dive headlong into the Cambrian Era and all the excitement that was part of it, a few words about some basics of evolution.

It's important to remember the evolution -- that is, change over time -- operates in populations. For example, you have a species adapted to a particular environment -- say, an area bordering on a wetland. A group of individuals of that species starts to move into a slightly different environment -- let's say slightly farther from the wetland, up in the hills, where it's drier. Because sexual reproduction gives genetic variability in a population, some members of that group are able to take better advantage of the new environment -- they don't need to drink as often, or they are better able to obtain moisture from their food. Those individuals then are stronger and healthier and will produce more offspring, which inherit those favorable characteristics. After enough time has passed, this new population becomes a new species -- that is, in the classical meaning of the term, they no longer interbreed freely with the parent population. (At some point, probably soon, I will discuss the vagaries of taxonomy and how nature tends not to pay attention to our ideas about how it should operate.) Thus, through the operation of genetic variability in a particular environment, we have a new genotype: the population has evolved.

The other major factor here is geography, which is a basic and essential component of the environment. You may remember that long, long ago, when this all started, there wasn't very much land on earth. What there was was the result of vulcanism -- lots of volcanoes and such. Over time, as the rains came and rivers formed, sediments began to be added to the mix -- sandstone and the like -- and with the advent of skeletons in single-celled organisms, we have limestone. (Pinning down the earliest limestone is next to impossible, simply because it erodes so easily. This article discusses some of the problems in finding early specimens, and also gives a hint that limestone may very well predate the most common estimate of origins in the early Cambrian -- early fossils have been found in rocks that most likely predate the Cambrian, that is, they are older than about 535 million years.)

It's also worth remembering that the land wasn't uniform -- there were mountains, there were valleys, there were lots of variations in topography. This held true as much for the underwater portions of the earth as for dry land. Thus, even at this early date, we have a series of different environments largely determined by the shape of the land. All this land-building is important because most of what we're going to be discussing happened on land, although the great migration from sea to land isn't going to happen for a couple hundred million years.

So, by the beginning of the Cambrian, after a couple billion years of land-building, we have something like this:

 

This more or less sets the stage for the Cambrian Explosion, that period starting about 550 million years ago when all the present-day animal groups first made their appearance. Here's a taste of what we're in for.

Stray Thought: "They'll Pay For It"

It just occurred to me, thinking about Trump's insistence that Mexico will pay for his wall, that NATO and our other allies should pick up the tab for having troops stationed on their soil -- that's the way he's always done business: put together a project, line up investors and loans, pocket the cash, and walk away, letting everyone else pick up the tab.

Fake News

That seems to be the only kind we get lately. Call it the downside of social media, and the fact that fact-checking is passe:

What do the Amish lobby, gay wedding vans and the ban of the national anthem have in common? For starters, they’re all make-believe — and invented by the same man.

Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years. He has twice convinced the Internet that he’s British graffiti artist Banksy; he also published the very viral, very fake news of a Yelp vs. “South Park” lawsuit last year.

But in recent months, Horner has found the fake-news ecosystem growing more crowded, more political and vastly more influential: In March, Donald Trump’s son Eric and his then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, even tweeted links to one of Horner’s faux-articles. His stories have also appeared as news on Google.

Of course, we can count on some people to generate their own fake news:

CNN host Don Lemon nailed President-Elect Donald Trump’s surrogate Paris Denard on Thursday night’s show. Trump is drawing criticism after taking credit for Ford Motor Company not moving to Mexico. Denard attempted to explain that the truth doesn’t matter and Lemon wouldn’t let it slide.

Trump tweeted Thursday night, “I worked hard with Bill Ford to keep the Lincoln plant in Kentucky. I owed it to the great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me!”

Trump made the accusation that Ford was moving a Kentucky plant to Mexico in September’s presidential debate. Ford fact-checked Trump’s statement with a graphic showing that they have more American workers than any other auto company. Ford is also bound by a labor contract with the worker’s union that they cannot move their plant to Mexico. It was never in the cards for Ford to move to Mexico, despite Trump’s claims.

Read the whole thing -- the exchange is beyond belief. Sample quote: “It’s not about the truth. It’s about raising awareness[.]”

I simply don't have the words.

Didn't See That Coming

I'm just now hearing about this, over the past couple of days, now that Paul Ryan and his pals are figuring out just how to dismantle the safety net. Of course, repealing the ACA is at the top of the list, but converting Medicare to a voucher system?

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the chairman of the budget committee, told reporters on Thursday that Republicans are eyeing major changes to Medicare in 2017.

Price, who is being floated as a possible Health and Human Services Secretary in the next administration, said that he expects Republican in the House to move on Medicare reforms "six to eight months" into the Trump administration.
ADVERTISING

Privatization of Medicare has been a central feature of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's budget proposal for years, and the House GOP has voted in favor of it multiple times. Ryan himself said last week that Medicare would be on the table in the new Congress, signaling it could be taken up early in the new year. Price's comments suggest privatization won't be part of the first round of legislative initiatives rolled out by the Trump administration and GOP-controlled Congress.

Price also noted that Republicans are eyeing using a tactic known as budget reconciliation to make the change. That process allows Republicans to pass bills with a simple majority in the U.S. Senate.

Josh Marshall has more on this here. It doesn't look good:

I wanted to take a moment to update you on where we stand on Paul Ryan's plan to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance and vouchers. The short version: where we are is not good. Somewhat paradoxically, Medicare may actually be in far greater danger of being dismantled than Obamacare.

I may have to emigrate to Canada just to get health insurance.

This Would Be Funny

If it weren't my country. Sort of like the Keystone Kops taking over the government:

One day before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japanese officials said they had not finalized when or where in New York it would take place, who would be invited, or in some cases whom to call for answers. . . .

Japanese and U.S. officials said on Wednesday the State Department had not been involved in planning the meeting, leaving the logistical and protocol details that normally would be settled far in advance still to be determined.

“There has been a lot of confusion,” said one Japanese official.

The Japanese are masters of understatement.

In spite of Trump's denials, the picture that's coming out of his "transition" is one of a bunch of amateurs under the direction of a five-year-old trying to stage Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Culture Break: Kimmo Pohjonen and Kronos Quartet: Atmos + Utu

"Utu" is the first track on the Uniko album. This is from a live performance at the Helsinki Festival, 2004. The video's kind of artsy -- Pohjonen puts enough energy in his performances that the camera doesn't need to move around as well.

In case you're interested, here's a biography, and his website is here.

Like This Will Really Go Somewhere

I'm guessing this is an exercise in futility:

The Democratic Coalition has filed an FBI complaint against Trump Campaign Chairman Steven Bannon, which alleging that he violated a federal campaign finance law coordinating Super PAC activities with the Trump campaign, and receiving payments from it after becoming officially part of the Republican campaign. . . .

The Democratic Coalition wrote:

On Tuesday morning, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump reported Trump Senior Advisor and Former Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon to the FBI for breaking campaign finance law. Over the course of the Trump campaign, Bannon was paid $950,090 by pro-Trump Super PAC, Make America Number 1, through his company Glittering Steel LLC, both before and after Bannon assumed his role as campaign CEO.

Glittering Steel produced the propaganda/smear film Clinton Cash, which was used by a group of FBI agents in New York as the basis for an "investigation" (another investigation) into the Clinton Foundation. Yes, that's the same FBI headed by James Comey, who popped up eleven days before the election with another announcement about E-Mails!!1! from devices that had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. The same FBI that, sadly, is charged with enforcing the Federal Election Campaign Act, under which this complaint was filed.

I'm sure the FBI will get right on it.

On the Upside

I've been able to see the Supermoon the last two evenings from my windows, which face east.

Didn't think to get a picture, so this will have to do:

This is actually pretty much what it looked like -- it was a little cloudy.

Cross-posted at Booklag.

Oops!

Yesterday was What's New day at Green Man Review. Some interesting stuff there, so click on over.

Irony du Jour

Considering the role of the press in this election (see the first "Today's Must-Read" below), I hardly know how to react to this. The capper:

So what’s the plan? How can journalists prepare themselves for the age of Trump?

Aaron offers some advice. “Don't normalize; scrutinize,” he says. “Don't be a stenographer. Stay away from the press conferences and golf courses and dig into the documents, appointments and policies —i ncluding policies that will shape journalism, the internet and the media business.”

What else? “Stand up for those asking President Trump hard questions. Show solidarity with everyone committing acts of journalism even if they don't have fancy credentials. Get a good lawyer on speed dial. And encrypt everything.”

Maybe more journalists should have done this to begin with.

One wonders how the CEOs of the corporate media are going to deal with Trump's America, given the way they reacted to his campaign. After all, "the press" is no more monolithic than any other segment of our society, and the owners are the ones who decide what we get to see.

As a footnote to my comment about the press coverage of the election, see this:

James Fallows Verified account ‏@JamesFallows

 

.@digby56 with Gallup-based word-cloud of what voters had heard about candidates http://www.salon.com/2016/11/10/how-the-media-made-this-monster-they-normalized-donald-trump-and-demonized-hillary-clinton-and-its-not-over/ … Similar to Gore/Bush coverage 2000

• Retweets 432
• Likes 343
• 

6:06 AM - 10 Nov 2016

0 replies 432 retweets 343 likes

'Nuff said?