Credit Where Credit Is Due

You've no doubt run across stories about the push to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize -- based on something he had nothing to do with. There are a couple of posts at Hullbaloo that I really wish could have been combined, but they weren't, so I'm doing it.

The first is about the Peace Prize nonsense, from Digby:

Sure, of course. Makes perfect sense:

The campaign to award a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize to the current president — regularly criticized for delivering personal attacks on Twitter — is heating up, following news of this week’s historic summit between North and South Korea that could mark the first step toward denuclearizing the peninsula.

Thanks to the tentative progress being made on the Korean peninsula, at least one British bookie has predicted that Trump has favorable odds of winning a Nobel this year — and some of Trump’s top defenders are falling in line.

“After North Korea triumph Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, not Obama,” declared a Fox News op-ed published on Friday.

Offhand, I can't think of a bigger travesty right now. "Peace through strength"? Excuse me? Is that what he's been doing?

And the cherry on top is everyone's favorite Fox News bully:

However, for those of us in the reality-based universe, Digby also posted this:

The only reason I bring this up is because Trump is saying that nobody ever did what he has done etc, etc as usual and well, it's wrong. There have been other talks and they may end up being seen as the precursors to some kind of rapprochement between the two countries. They did not deter North Korea from pursuing their nuclear weapons program and it's highly unlikely, considering the message America has sent to the world about the consequences of giving them up. (America will invade you and your leaders will be killed.)

Trump will strut around like a conquering hero and we'll all be forced to kiss his hem as the living God he is, but it won't make it true. If this happens it will be because there has been a very slow, long term thaw and a tremendous amount of pressure coming from all directions over the course of many years. Trump's tweets will not have been the reason.

The bulk of the post is a timeline of meetings in this century between leaders of the two Koreas, and summaries of the substance/results of those meeting.

But, this is Trump: he has a history of taking credit for other peoples' accomplishments. (See "Obama, Barack H.") And the idea that his policies, whatever they are (even he doesn't know from minute to minute) are going to bring about world peace is beyond ludicrous.

Yeah, It's Sunday Again

And the news is just as dismal as ever, so to cheer you up, here's What's New at Green Man Review:

Yemeni coffee, Jack Vance: a tribute volume, A 40,000-year-old hedgehog, interlibrary loans, lakriti and other cool things

There's more of course -- there's always more. So head on over and lighten your day.

Last Light

I went out for the last smoke of the day just at dusk. There was still light from the sun reflecting off the windows of the high-rises along the lake, the lower-rises closer to my place were in shadow -- not deep shadow, but not lighted, except by the street lamps -- and the moon was about a quarter of the way up the sky and perfectly round and still pretty big -- not as big as at moonrise, but larger than it would be later, higher in the sky.

I love this city -- everywhere you look, there's a picture.

(Which maybe means I should poke myself and start taking pictures again.)

Image du Jour

From the comment thread to this post at Joe.My.God.

With thanks to commenter Bluto.

Oh, and about the post: My own comment was simply "They (Republicans) really hate the Establishment Clause, don't they?"

So I Went to the Zoo

Red-breasted merganser

It was yesterday, actually. I saw two rabbits, a mouse, red-breasted mergansers, another diving duck I couldn't identify, and a pair of geese with eleven goslings -- according to the lady who followed them from Wells and St. Paul to South Pond, about half a mile or more, and across a couple of busy streets. And lots of turtles basking.

Oh, and the animals in the Zoo collections, of course.

But Ya Are, Blanche!

You are a bunch of bigots:

The Catholic Church has demanded an apology from the BBC over a video that referenced the impact of religious homophobia from a “Bible basher.”

BBC Scotland’s The Social project released a powerful spoken word video earlier this month exploring what homophobia feels like in 2018.

The video, which has attracted millions of views on social media, is a first-person account of a man grappling the fear of casual homophobia from strangers while walking with his boyfriend. . . .

Addressing the anti-gay preacher he adds: “See him? He thinks it’s faith but under all that din it tastes like cardboard and it smells like hate.”

So of course, it's an attack on the Catholic Church:

Bishop John Keenan of Paisley has written to the Director of BBC Scotland to demand an apology for the video, which he claims “sanctions the idea that Catholics engender public hated of homosexuals.”

Well, the hierarchy do. The laity, at least in America, not so much. I don't know if Catholics in the UK have the same tendency to ignore the pronouncements of the bishops that American Catholics do, but I wouldn't be surprised.

As for that "public hatred" bit, a spot check on the Church's teaching:

The current Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the Church's teaching on homosexuality as follows:

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered'. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

(Emphasis added.)

That doesn't sound much like acceptance to me.

Keenan goes on:

Keenan added: “In the current climate of growing hostility to Catholics I would appeal that the BBC guard against adding fuel to the fire. In that regard I would ask that the Corporation now reach out to Catholics to understand their concerns, that they are being portrayed in a prejudicial way.

“When it comes to important public debates about the wellbeing of the human person and the truth and meaning of human sexuality Catholics feel their views are becoming increasingly marginalised, almost criminalised’ by a narrative in BBC news, comment, arts and elsewhere that amounts to ‘LGBT views good, Catholic views bad,’ an assumption which you must know is simplistic and imposed, and which is not strengthened by longitudinal research.

If the views of the Church on human sexuality are becoming marginalized, perhaps it's because they are totally out of line with reality. And the "longitudinal research" comment is nonsense -- seriously, what does that even mean? "Longitudinal research" on what? Every bit of research that's been done on homosexuality has confirmed that a) it's a perfectly normal variation in sexuality, and b) the overwhelming majority of the difficulties that gay men and lesbians experience comes from things such as the teachings of the Catholic Church.

If the Church wants apologies, how about it start by apologizing to all the gay people whose lives it has ruined?

Here's the video. If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching. And for those who have trouble with heavy Scottish accents, it's subtitled:

OMG! Common Sense Out of Washington

From a Democrat, of course:

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is proposing legislation aimed at putting an end to current payday lending practices by giving some banking services a new home: the U.S. Post Office.

The legislation, called the Postal Banking Act, would make retail banking services available at all U.S. Postal Service locations. That amounts to 30,000 post offices nationwide.

Services would include small-dollar loans for consumers that offer low fees and low interest rates.

Those transactions would compete with payday loans, a short-term advance that typically comes due with your next paycheck.

Since Mick "I only talk to people who give me money" Mulvaney doesn't want to do anything about payday lenders, it's good to see Gillibrand stepping in. Just in case you weren't aware:

The terms for payday loans are often unfavorable, said Alex Horowitz, senior research officer for the consumer finance project at Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent research organization.

About 12 million individuals use payday loans annually, according to Horowitz. The average loan is $375 for a period of five months, which accrues about $520 in fees, he said.

"These loans are extraordinarily expensive with annual percentage rates near 400 percent," Horowitz said.

That's worse than taking a cash advance on your credit card.

This won't go anywhere -- the major banks, co-owners of most of Congress, will see it as competition, which they don't like, currency exchanges won't like it, and the Republicans are trying to kill off the USPS anyway.

But it's nice someone's making the effort.

Via Joe.My.God. More reporting at the link.

She's Baaack!

I guess Laura Ingraham hasn't lost enough sponsors yet, but at least she's found a different dead horse to flog:

Now let’s face it. The runaway judiciary has become in effect a new flank of the resistance. They are taking away your power. And it’s time for Congress to circumscribe the authority and the reach of these district court judges. Think about national health care policy, immigration policy, national security. These matters are all beyond the scope and understanding frankly of a district court judge.

“It’s like giving a local mayor control over U.S. foreign policy. It’s ridiculous. The tyranny especially of the district court bench has to end. And the people’s will should no longer be held hostage to the capricious whims of one ill-equipped disgruntled life tenured jurist.

Well, let's see:

"Circumscribe the authority of judges"? Congress can't -- although theoretically Congress can dissolve all district and circuit courts, but I don't see that happening.

Policy -- the courts don't deal with policy, they deal with law. Ingraham should know that -- she clerked for a Supreme Court justice (Clarence Thomas, as a matter of fact; that explains a lot). But it doesn't fit the agenda.

The "people's will" is certainly not something you're going to find the Trump regime worrying about, and it is subject to limits: the people get to elect their representatives; that's the extent of it. (Oh, and as it happens, most of "the people" are against Trump's attempts to eliminate DACA.)

The right hates the whole idea of an independent judiciary, almost as much as they hate the idea of equal treatment under the law. I'm reminded of the hysterical reaction to Obergefell, which most right-wing commentators condemned at "lawless," which I found hysterically funny -- that's officially known as an oxymoron.

So, in the final analysis, she's not only an idiot, she's a liar. Somehow, that's no surprise.

There's video at the link, if your stomach's up for it.

Today in Cognitive Dissonance

Tony Perkins, again, who -- well, you can click through and read the whole thing if your stomach is up to it, but there's a couple of items that deserve special mention:

Family Research Council (FRC) is dedicated to ensuring our nation becomes a place where public school children are not exposed to pro-LGBT curriculum that encourages kids to ignore biology, use gender inclusive language, and even attend events with same-sex dates.

Apparently, it's of overwhelming importance to the religious freedom of "Christians" who someone else's kid takes to the prom. There is some speculation that Perkins is riled because of this story:

Prom 2018 pic.twitter.com/jK5be0WFLn

— Cameron Kasky (@cameron_kasky) April 23, 2018

And this:

. . . our ongoing vision of a culture where all human life is valued, families flourish, and religious liberty thrives.

Translation: all human life is valued until birth, some families flourish, if they're the right kind of families, and my religious liberty to tell everyone else how to live thrives.

You already know what I think of Tony Perkins, so I don't have to repeat it. Let's just add "overweening arrogance" to his "Christian" virtues.

So Much Winning

That's us, not him:

A third federal judge has rejected the Trump administration’s justification for winding down the program protecting immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children.

U.S. District Court Judge John Bates said on Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security’s legal explanation for the decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, was too flimsy and, ultimately, unpersuasive.

“DACA’s rescission was arbitrary and capricious because the Department failed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful,” Bates wrote in his 60-page opinion, released on Tuesday evening. “Neither the meager legal reasoning nor the assessment of litigation risk provided by DHS to support its rescission decision is sufficient to sustain termination of the DACA program.”

. . .

Bates is also opening up the possibility that the Trump administration could be ordered to take new DACA applications, something no other judge has required. Bates said in his decision on Tuesday that if DHS didn’t come up with a new, better explanation for the rescission within 90 days, the entire program would be restored.

The government's argument seems to boil down to "the program was instituted by that Muslim illegal immigrant Obama."

Via Joe.My.God.

Blatant

They don't even bother to pretend any more:

Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives on Tuesday that they should press lawmakers hard to pursue their agenda, and revealed that, as a congressman, he would meet only with lobbyists if they had contributed to his campaign.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

At the top of the hierarchy, he added, were his constituents. “If you came from back home and sat in my lobby, I talked to you without exception, regardless of the financial contributions,” said Mr. Mulvaney, who received nearly $63,000 from payday lenders for his congressional campaigns.

So now it's right out in the open: our government's for sale.

Via Joe.My.God.

Mouse Update

I have to confess, I was a little worried about the mouse (mice) -- it didn't seem that the food I left out had been touched for a couple of days, but there have been strange noises coming from under the air conditioner (which, you may remember, is under my desk). However, yesterday someone cleaned his (their) plate, and now I have one very bold, very tiny little guy who's been running around in plain sight while I'm at the computer, and keeps making hits at the new food while he thinks I'm not looking.

So I am reassured that all is well.

To Start the Week Off Right

An offering from the lighter side of life -- it's not what you think:

Four legs good, two legs better. Good morning. pic.twitter.com/o6BVImIL8K

— Paul Bronks (@BoringEnormous) April 20, 2018

Via Balloon Juice.

What's New at Green Man Review

Yep, it's Sunday again, and there are goodies a Green Man Review, as always:

Disposable fountain pens, Estonian pianist Kristjan Randalu, two chocolate goodies, Space Opera and other matters

Lots of Space Opera. Very good Space Opera. So check it out.

A Recommendation

If you haven't already, add Digby's Hullabaloo to your daily reading list -- some of the best commentary going.

Just today, for example, in addition to Dennis Hartley's Earth Day piece noted in the previous post, Digby has posts on Rod Rosenstein and what he's facing at the hands of Trump and his minions, the pernicious influence of Facebook, Trump's reaction to real news, Mike Pompeo's military record (oops!), and much more.

It's Earth Day

No, I don't have anything special planned for today, but then for me, just about any day is Earth Day. However, I ran across this essay by Dennis Hartley at Hullabaloo, the lead-in to his weekly film column, this time about "eco-flicks". He starts by discussing the iconic "Earthrise" photo taken by Apollo 8 crewmember Maj. William A. Anders:

He then goes on to note Trump's war on planet Earth:

Yes, that is a “pretty place down there.” Be a shame if anything happened to it:

The Trump administration’s tumultuous first year has brought a flurry of changes—both realized and anticipated—to U.S. environmental policy. Many of the actions roll back Obama-era policies that aimed to curb climate change and limit environmental pollution, while others threaten to limit federal funding for science and the environment.

It’s a lot to keep track of, so National Geographic will be maintaining an abbreviated timeline of the Trump administration’s environmental actions and policy changes, as well as reactions to them. We will update this article periodically as news develops.

Needless to say, many “updates” follow that intro (the most recent one is from April 6, and there will be more to come). Bookmark the link, if you dare (sick bag on standby).

I'm not going to go into detail on that, except to note that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been busy gutting every regulation that might help to make the planet livable -- when he's not flying off to Morocco first-class to lobby the Moroccan government on natural gas (and since when was that part of the EPA's portfoio?).

And do check out his film recommendations -- they look pretty interesting.

Another Episode of "Liars for Jesus"

You may have read that California is on the verge of banning "conversion therapy" (formally, "Sexual Orientation Change Efforts," or SOCE) as a deceptive business practice. Needless to say, "Christians" are up in arms.

A.B. 2943 extends the ban on the practice of Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) to all persons, not just minors, by adding the the words “advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual” to the "existing list of unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices," according to the bill's official summary.

That seems fairly straightforward -- and long overdue.

Oh, but wait:

But try telling that to California State Assembly member Travis Allen, a Republican who just happens to be running for governor, or the far right wing news network OANN, whose host offered this intro on Thursday:

"This is essentially criminalizing religious beliefs," Liz Wheeler said, falsely. "I don’t mean to speak in hyperbole here, but if this bill were to pass, would this prohibit the sale of the Bible, that teaches these things about sexual morality?"

No, Ms. Wheeler, that's not hyperbole -- that's bullshit.

"Well, literally, according to how this law is written, yes, it would," prohibit the sale of the Bible, he said, falsely. "This is, you know, PC culture, politically correct culture, gone horribly awry. This is really directly hitting at our First Amendment rights as American citizens. Now the Democrat legislators in this building, right behind me, the California state legislature, they want to tell you how to think, what sort of books that you can read, write and purchase."

There's this pyschological mechanism known as "projection". . . . Just sayin'.

There's video at the link, if you can stand it.

Today's Must-Read: The Road to Dictatorship, Part 455

That's approximately the number of days Trump's been squatting in the White House. Two posts from Hullabaloo on how the Trump regime's pernicious influence is bringing us more and more into line with such sterling examples of democracy as Turkey, the Philippines, and Venezuela. First, from Tom Sullivan, on a speech by French President Emanuel Macron:

Macron warns of “national selfishness and negativity” and a “fascination with the illiberal” spreading across Europe in the emergence of far-right movements and parties:

But his words also apply more broadly to the surge of illiberalism in Turkey, Egypt, Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Venezuela, among other places, where leaders have actively snuffed out civil society, suborned or faked elections, asphyxiated free expression, ignored rule of law, and repressed basic human rights. Leaders in such countries learn from one another as they refine methods to crush democracy, by banning or restricting nongovernmental organizations, creating laws to single out independent voices as “foreign agents,” imposing censorship on the news and social media, and, most tried and true, jailing those who dissent. They also echo one another’s claims that their imposed order offers a viable alternative to democracy, which can be so unpredictable and messy.

And authoritarianism becomes much easier to implement when a sizable portion of those institutions that are supposed to provide the "check and balance" are on board with Our Leader's agenda:

As if to drive home the Post's point about jailing dissenters (if indeed the editorial is not in reaction to this news), eleven Republicans sent a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging him to prosecute an enemies list of Trump foes. The list includes former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretray of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Acting Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Counsel Lisa Page.

Digby expands on this in another post. Her summation:

We are going to depend upon Jeff Session and Donald Trump to be the calm leaders who would never consider such actions. Indeed, assuming that we don't find ourselves in a major crisis I'd guess that Sessions and most other officials would oppose this.

It's good that there's no chance of a crisis, amirite? Everything's perfectly normal and in control thank goodness.

I'd surmise that Trump and/or Sessions put them up to it, but then, they don't have to, do they?

Culture Break: Tjønneblomen

I'm not listing an artist in the header because I'm bringing you two versions of this song. It's a Norwegian waltz, listed as "after Gjermund Haugen," from which I assume he did the arrangement offered here first: Annbjørg Lien on hardanger fiddle, with Bjørn Ole Rasch on keyboards.

Second, because it's a versatile tune that loses nothing in translation, the Danish String Quartet. Sadly, I couldn't find a video of them performing this, so we'll have to make do:

There. That ought to five you a nice peaceful feeling to start the day.

Republicans, In a Nutshell

Via Ann Laurie at Balloon Juice:

Tapper’s face in the fourth panel gives me life pic.twitter.com/WH7nME6Qcl

— Jean Little (@emily_littl) April 14, 2018