Thursday Reads: FUBAR in Virginia, Matt Whitaker’s Worst Nightmare, and Other News
Posted: February 7, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics 37 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
I’m getting a slow start this morning. Maybe it’s because I spent yesterday in bed with a stomach virus, but I’m feeling particularly hopeless today. I’ve been just sitting here wondering whether there will ever be a day that I get up and find that the news isn’t depressing as hell. Trump is still “president” and it feels like we’ve been cursed as a country. I really think it’s time for men to take a back seat and let women run things; but it’s not going to be easy to get men to sit down and listen to us for a change. We’re going to need to take over the media too, because misogynist “reporters” won’t stop trying to take down women candidates for office.
Is there any man in Virginia who doesn’t have skeletons in his closet? First we learned that Gov. Ralph Northam dressed in blackface when he was in medical school in 1984, then he denied it, but confessed that he wore blackface on a different occasion.
Northam is still refusing to resign, and in the meantime we learned that Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax has been credibly accused of a sexual assault (frankly, it was rape) by Professor Vanessa Tyson of Scripps College in California. The third person in line for the governorship is Attorney General Mark Herring, who came forward and admitted that he too had dressed in blackface in the 1980s. Next in line is Kirk Cox, a Republican.
USA Today:
It took Kirk Cox almost 30 years to rise from a freshman GOP member of the Virginia House of Delegates to the legislative body’s speaker.
Kirk Cox
He could jump to the governorship in a matter of weeks as the state’s top three officials, Democrats all, stagger under the weight of scandals.
First, Gov. Ralph Northam admitted wearing blackface in the 1980s. Then Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was accused of sexual assault, which he adamantly denies, stemming from a 2004 encounter. Finally, Attorney General Mark Herring admitted he, too, donned blackface in the 1980s.
Shouldn’t someone check to make sure Cox doesn’t have skeletons in his closet too?
Larry Sabato, head of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says that, if Northam does exit, he would be the state’s first governor since the Civil War not to complete his term.
But Sabato doesn’t see all three Democrats walking away.
“Speculation that all 3 statewide VA Dem officeholders will resign is overwrought,” Sabato said on Twitter. “One or more will survive. VA Dems won in an anti-Trump landslide in 2017. They’re not going to turn government over to a pro-Trump GOP House Speaker.”
Read more at USA Today.
Fairfax, Northam, and Herring
It’s difficult to see how Fairfax survives, but then Kavanaugh got away with attempted rape so who knows?
The New York Times: Vanessa Tyson, Accuser of Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, Describes Assault.
The woman identified herself on Wednesday as Dr. Vanessa C. Tyson, an associate professor of politics and expert in black history at Scripps College in California. She has also spent years advocating for victims of sexual assault and has spoken openly about being molested by her father when she was a child.
“What began as consensual kissing quickly turned into a sexual assault,” Dr. Tyson wrote, describing her encounter in a hotel room with the future lieutenant governor. “Mr. Fairfax put his hand behind my neck and forcefully pushed my head towards his crotch. Only then did I realize that he had unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and taken out his penis.”
The Times didn’t finish the story but they posted the full statement. Here’s the rest:
He then forced his penis into my mouth. Utterly shocked and terrified, I tried to move my head away, but could not because his hand was holding down my neck and he was much stronger than me. As I cried and gagged, Mr. Fairfax forced me to perform oral sex on him. I cannot believe, given my obvious distress, that Mr. Fairfax thought this forced sexual act was consensual. To be very clear, I did not want to engage in oral sex with Mr. Fairfax and I never gave any form of consent. Quite the opposite. I consciously avoided Mr. Fairfax for the remainder of the Convention and I never spoke to him again.
Vanessa Tyson
Read the rest of the statement at the link. Tyson never told anyone about the assault until about a year ago. One of the people she told was Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, who has called for Ralph Northam to resign.
Virginia Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott was made aware of allegations of sexual assault against now-Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax over a year ago by the alleged victim herself, ABC News has learned.
Scott learned of the allegations directly from Dr. Vanessa Tyson, who on Wednesday released a statement detailing the alleged 2004 assault, which took place at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Fairfax vehemently denies the assault claim.
In a statement given to ABC News on Wednesday, Scott wrote, “Allegations of sexual assault need to be taken seriously. I have known Professor Tyson for approximately a decade and she is a friend. She deserves the opportunity to have her story heard.”
Apparently, Scott never confronted Fairfax with the allegation. And there’s this:
Scott himself was previously accused of sexual harassment by a former aide, who said he touched her inappropriately when she was working in his Washington office in 2013. He denied the claim.
Bobby Scott
Sigh . . . can you see why I’m so depressed reading about this?
Tyson has hired the same lawyers who represented Christine Blasey Ford, and Fairfax has hired the ones who worked for Brett Kavanaugh.
One more story from Virginia at The Richmond Times-Dispatch: Va. Capitol Police sergeant placed on leave after antifa group posts allegation about him.
Virginia Capitol Police announced Wednesday that it had placed a sergeant on leave after local activists published allegations that he “has an affinity” for symbols associated with white supremacists.
In a news release, the Virginia Division of Capitol Police said Sgt. Robert A. Stamm is on paid administrative leave pending a review of possible violation of department policy…..
The activists on the blog post said Stamm’s social media activity suggests he follows the Asatru Folk Assembly. The blog says Stamm is friends with people who claim to be associated with the group, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a “hate group” blending Northern European paganism and ethnocentrism….
On its blog Tuesday, Antifascists of the Seven Hills, a leftist self-described “militant” group, posted Stamm’s name, links to social media accounts in his name and a description of his tattoos and interests listed under those accounts.
So, we’ll see what happens with that; but, honestly, I’ve reached the point that I don’t care who becomes Governor of Virginia after all the dust settles. I just wish there were a woman in the line of succession.
Matthew Whitaker
There’s a lot more depressing news out there, but I’d rather focus on tomorrow’s big story: Acting AG Matt Whitaker’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee.
Just Security: The Whitaker Hearing: Potential Executive Privilege and Subpoena Fireworks.
It appears acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker allowed an important deadline to pass on the eve of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), as chair, had directed Whitaker to inform the committee “no later than” 48 hours before Friday’s hearing whether President Donald Trump planned to assert executive privilege over a range of topics. This letter is among a series of somewhat unusual steps — including formal committee consideration of a subpoena authorization — taken by Nadler in advance of the Whitaker hearing to prepare the battlefield and short-circuit potential executive branch efforts to evade testimony about Whitaker’s communications with Trump and other White House officials.
Nadler had to threaten a subpoena in order to obtain Whitaker’s commitment to testify. On Jan. 15, Nadler sent a letter reiterating the committee’s demandfor Whitaker’s Feb. 8 appearance, after Department of Justice handlers suggested that the government shutdown might delay their boss’s testimony. In the letter, Nadler emphasized that the committee expected Whitaker to “provide direct answers to questions posed by members of both parties.” And he planted a seed: “If you plan to invoke executive privilege in an attempt to avoid answering any particular question, I ask that you consult with the White House well in advance of the hearing.”
Jerry Nadler
In its first two years, the Trump administration has avoided having to formally invoke executive privilege, because the Republican-led congressional committees did not issue subpoenas or threaten contempt in the face of stonewalling. I have written about some of those early skirmishes — and the failure to enforce congressional prerogatives – in the cases of Steve Bannon, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Sally Yates as former acting attorney general. That pattern will change now under a Democratic House majority.
A week after his letter repeating the committee’s demand, Nadler on Jan. 22 sent another, reiterating the committee’s expectation that Whitaker specifically testify about White House contacts with the DoJ. It was an effort by Nadler to preempt fancy footwork over executive privilege at the hearing.
Read the rest at the link.
And from The Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff: ‘They Hate This Guy’: Matt Whitaker Braces for Showdown With Dems.
The Justice Department is bracing for impact. Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is set to testify before Congress on Friday, and in the Department’s sprawling Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters, dozens of officials have been working to get him ready. The hearing will be the first blockbuster showdown between the Trump administration and oversight-antsy Hill Democrats who just recently secured the power to force the president’s allies to testify.
A person familiar with Whitaker’s preparation told The Daily Beast he is gearing up for an intense few hours.
“They hate this guy so much,” the source said.
Whitaker has gone through multiple practice committee hearings––known as moots––where Justice Department officials pepper him with questions that committee Democrats may lob, according to multiple DOJ officials involved in his preparation. They have tried to prepare him for lengthy statements, harsh tones, and leading questions. Dozens of department officials have helped him prepare, those officials told The Daily Beast, working through the government shutdown to brief him and get him ready. And they’re gearing up for questions about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, according to one source familiar with Whitaker’s preparation, including whether he had input on the investigation’s resources. On top of that, they’re braced for legal sparring if Democrats try to force Whitaker to testify about his conversations with the president.
“We don’t know what we’re up against with the House Judiciary Committee,” that source said. “We have no idea.”
Read the rest at the The Daily Beast.
More reads, links only:
The Washington Post: Sergei Millian, identified as an unwitting source for the Steele dossier, sought proximity to Trump’s world in 2016.
The Daily Beast: Paul Erickson, Russian Agent Maria Butina’s Boyfriend, Indicted for Fraud.
The Washington Post: The Mueller investigation has sprouted. Therein lies the jeopardy for Trump, by Joyce White Vance and Matthew Miller.
Garrett Graff at Wired: What Robert Mueller Knows–and Isn’t Telling Us.
The Washington Post: The Energy 202: Ocasio-Cortez, Markey unveil Green New Deal with backing of four presidential candidates.
Bloomberg: The Battle Over Trump’s Tax Return Begins.
Slate: Northam’s Yearbook Photo Reveals Medicine’s Broader Biases.
Franklin Foer at The Atlantic: Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America.
What stories are you following today?
Tuesday Reads: Investigations and Embarrassing Revelations as Trump Prepares SOTU
Posted: February 5, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics 46 Comments
FDR delivers 1941 SOTU , the Four Freedoms speech.
Good Afternoon!!
Tonight Trump will give his state of the union address in the midst of multiple criminal and counterintelligence investigations into his campaign, his business, his inaugural fundraising, his violations of the emoluments clause, and his efforts to interfere with and obstruct investigations–have I left anything out?
As he prepares for his big moment, shocking news keeps breaking about his behavior in office and involvement with Russia during the campaign and transition. Here’s the latest.
Buzzfeed News releases Trump Org. documents on the Trump Tower Moscow project: Secret Files Show How Trump Moscow Talks Unfolded While Trump Heaped Praise On Putin.
As a candidate, Donald Trump had a lot of praise for Vladimir Putin — and no business, he kept insisting, in Russia. These documents tell a different story.
When Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and longtime fixer, testifies before Congress this week, one topic that is likely to be front and center is his work on Trump Moscow, the over-the-top luxury real estate venture he helped spearhead leading up to the election.
“The development, which was never built, has already become a focus for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign. And when Cohen was convicted last November of lying to Congress, it was over his false testimony that the deal had fizzled in January 2016, well before Trump emerged as the Republican nominee.
Harry Truman SOTU, 1950 says “Our Social Security System should be developed into the main reliance of our people for basic protection against the economic hazards of old-age, unemployment, and illness.”
BuzzFeed News is today publishing a cache of internal Trump Organization documents that lay bare the secret negotiations that continued long after Cohen claimed the deal had been abandoned. The documents, many of which have been exclusively obtained by BuzzFeed News, reveal that — despite Trump’s claim that the development was never more than a passing notion — the effort to get the tower built was long-running, detail-oriented and directly entwined with the ups and downs of his campaign.
As Trump went from rally to rally, vociferously denying any dealings in Russia, his representatives, Michael Cohen and his associate Felix Sater, worked with Trump Organization lawyers and even Ivanka Trump to push forward negotiations to build a 100-story edifice just miles from the Kremlin. The fixers believed they needed Putin’s support to pull off the lucrative deal, and they planned to use Trump’s public praise for him to help secure it. At the same time, they plotted to persuade Putin to openly declare his support for Trump’s candidacy. “If he says it we own this election,” Sater wrote to Cohen….
This large trove of nonbinding business agreements, architectural renderings, texts, emails, and plans for Trump to travel to Russia to meet Putin offer an unprecedented glimpse inside the negotiations to build the tallest tower in Europe — a deal Trump’s fixers hoped would “help world peace and make a lot of money.”
Read the documents at Buzzfeed.
Emptywheel wrote about one exchange between Cohen and Slater: The WaPo Scoop on the DNC Hack (Temporarily) Killed the Trump Tower Deal.
Also from Buzzfeed: A Lobbyist At The Trump Tower Meeting Received Half A Million Dollars In Suspicious Payments.
A Russian-born lobbyist who attended the controversial Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 received a series of suspicious payments totaling half a million dollars before and after the encounter.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military officer turned Washington lobbyist, deposited large, round-number amounts of cash in the months preceding and following the meeting, where a Russian lawyer offered senior Trump campaign officials dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Eisenhower, 1960: “We must strive to break the calamitous cycle of frustrations and crises which, if unchecked, could spiral into nuclear disaster; the ultimate insanity.”
The lobbyist also received a large payment that bank investigators deemed suspicious from Denis Katsyv, whose company Prevezon Holdings was accused by the US Justice Department of laundering the proceeds of a $230 million Russian tax fraud.
The Trump Tower meeting and those who attended it have become a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. As part of that inquiry, banks were asked to pull financial information on the meeting attendees, and investigators at Wells Fargo handed over documents on Akhmetshin to the US RTreasury in 2017. Those records were passed to Mueller’s team, but Peter Carr, a spokesperson for the special counsel, declined to say whether the transactions are under investigation. Congressional investigators also requested the financial information from the Treasury Department.
Read the rest at the link above.
The Washington Post: Federal prosecutors issue sweeping subpoena for documents from Trump inaugural committee, a sign of a deepening criminal probe.
A wide-ranging subpoena served on the inaugural committee Monday seeks an array of documents, including all information related to inaugural donors, vendors, contractors, bank accounts of the inaugural committee and any information related to foreign contributors to the committee, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.
JFK SOTU 1962, announces NASA project to put a man on the moon
Only U.S. citizens and legal residents can legally donate to a committee established to finance presidential inaugural festivities….
The subpoena — issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York — indicates that prosecutors are investigating crimes related to conspiracy to defraud the United States, mail fraud, false statements, wire fraud and money laundering.
The subpoena also specifically seeks all communications with one donor, Los Angeles venture capitalist Imaad Zuberi, as well as the firm with which he is affiliated, Avenue Ventures. The company donated $900,000 to the inaugural committee, records show.
Read more at the WaPo.
https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1092598177272918017
We are getting closer to seeing Trump’s taxes. Paul Waldman at The Washington Post: We may finally see Trump’s tax returns, and Republicans are panicking.
Though they haven’t done it yet, Democrats are planning to utilize a law allowing the House Ways and Means committee to obtain any Americans’ tax returns to demand that the IRS turn them over. Once they have them, the committee can vote to release them to the entire House….
Legal experts make clear that the law is not ambiguous and the president can’t simply order the Treasury Department to keep his returns secret. So the administration’s plan seems to be to wage a PR battle while keeping the matter slogging through the courts for as long as possible — say, past November 2020.
Lyndon Johnson, 1965 SOTU, the “We Shall Overcome” speech
While Trump’s refusal to release his returns — something every party nominee and president has done for the last half century — has been controversial since 2016, once Democrats demand the returns it will become an intense controversy playing out on television and the front pages of newspapers. That means that Republican officeholders will be forced to take a position, which they haven’t really had to do before. And they’ll be expected to defend the president’s refusal to allow the public to know where he’s getting money from, who he owes money to, and how far his financial interests extend.
According to Nancy Cook at Politico, the Trumpists have a plan to keep his tax information secret.
Trump’s Treasury Department is readying plans to drag the expected Democratic request for Trump’s past tax filings, which he has closely guarded, into a quagmire of arcane legal arguments.
At the same time, officials intend to publicly cast the request as a nakedly partisan exercise. The two-pronged scheme was developed by a handful of top political appointees and lawyers inside the department — with the ultimate goal of keeping the president’s past returns private, according to four people familiar with the administration’s approach.
Richard Nixon SOTU 1974. ‘I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of the matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.’
The strategy will hinge on an argument that politically motivated Democrats will inevitably leak Trump’s tax information — a felony in and of itself — if the IRS hands over the documents. So because Democrats can’t be trusted to keep the documents private, they shouldn’t get them in the first place, officials will insist. Treasury officials have been waiting since early January for a top Democrat to make the request.
The battle between Treasury and the Democrats could plunge the country into yet another norm-breaking moment for the Trump presidency — with the fight stretching on for months and well into the 2020 campaign.
“What happens if the Treasury secretary just doesn’t answer or sends back a note saying we refuse to do what you are saying?” said George Yin, a former chief of staff on the House Joint Committee on Taxation, one of the three congressional committees involved in major tax issues on Capitol Hill. “To my knowledge, that has never happened. … We are essentially in uncharted territory if he refuses.”
It’s going to get ugly. Will all this take place with the 2020 election as background? That wouldn’t be good for Trump either.
Two more moves by House Democrats:
As for the speech tonight, Trump supposedly plans to call for “comity.” The Washington Post: Trump to call for ‘comity’ in State of the Union, but rivals scoff amid heightened political warfare.
Facing growing political head winds, President Trump on Tuesday will try to convince the nation that his presidency remains strong and viable in a State of the Union address that aides described as a sincere appeal to broaden his governing coalition.
But Trump is also expected to reaffirm his demand for Congress to support his hard-line immigration agenda and offer a robust defense of foreign policy initiatives that have engendered fierce criticism from Democrats who have asserted newfound power to try to blunt his agenda.
The dynamic suggests that any attempt from the usually truculent president to proffer a nod to bipartisanship and cooperation during his prime-time remarks is almost certain to be short-lived and viewed as duplicitous by his critics.
Trump “thrives on inflaming, and when he does otherwise, it seems inauthentic and unpersuasive,” said Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
Obviously, no one–even Republicans–will buy anything Trump has to say about national unity. I expect the speech to be pathetic and embarrassing, in contrast to many previous presidents’ SOTU speeches.
Now . . . what stories have you been following?
Monday Reads: How is this even a Thing? I try to fully Celebrate Black History Month this year
Posted: February 4, 2019 Filed under: 2018 elections, 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: Black History Month 72 Comments
RL Barnes, Ph.D. @DigitalHistory_ 24 Oct 2018 More “In 1828, T.D. “Big Daddy” Rice, a struggling white actor, made his New York stage debut. With a single dialectical song performed in blackface, his routine radically transformed the cultural landscape of North America.”
Well, it’s Monday Sky Dancers and it’s never too late to learn new things unless you’re Donald Trump.
The appalling way women have been historically treated was one of the hallmarks of the last two years. The #MeToo movement led to a very differently looking congress in 2018. The #BlackLivesMatter movement went back front and center yesterday at the Super Bowl.
It’s Black History month and it’s time to find teachers and take lessons. It’s also evidently time to relearn a few lessons some people failed to get the first million times out.
I’m fully beginning to think that the next election will be about the historically shameful way that Black people have been treated up to and way pass the Emancipation Proclamation and the enfranchisement of Black men into the voting populace in 1870 with the passing of the 15th Amendment. Virginia has once again taken center stage.
How can a man my age think that participating in any form of black face as an adult in any manner during–at the very least–the back half of the 20th century forward think that’s not an offense that should cause you to resign your position as Governor of the state that basically was ground zero for American slavery? How can a Democratic leader who relied on votes from African Americans not do the right thing? When will Virginia Governor Ralph Northram resign?
The drumbeat spread to the state’s public universities. The College of William and Mary on Monday announced that Northam would not attend Friday’s inauguration of new president Katherine Rowe, saying in a statement that “the Governor’s presence would fundamentally disrupt the sense of campus unity we aspire to and hope for with this event.”
University of Virginia president James Ryan issued a statement Sunday suggesting that Northam should resign, saying that if a leader’s “trust is lost, for whatever reason, it is exceedingly difficult to continue to lead. It seems we have reached that point.”
On Sunday night, the governor met with senior staffers of color to discuss his future following two days of defiance against the national clamor that he should resign. People familiar with that meeting said Northam had not reached a decision.
It was unclear who was present, but the group did not include Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D), who would become governor if Northam resigned, the people said. One Democratic official said the meeting was emotional in tone.
Calling the Sunday night meeting was a clear signal of Northam’s effort to weigh support within the administration as he evaluates his options. Although he pledged Saturday to stand his ground, he also said he would reconsider if he thought he could no longer be effective.
https://twitter.com/DigitalHistory_/status/1091782769708011522
Though blackface was the No. 1 entertainment form throughout the United States in the 19th century, it has a particularly notable legacy in Virginia. The first globally famous minstrel troupe hailing from New York City rebranded itself as the Virginia Minstrels in 1843. Dan Emmett, the group’s founder, understood his minstrel troupe needed to project a sense of authentic, stereotypical blackness. Virginia, a state that imported enslaved Africans as a colony as early as 1619, embodied the complex relationship between blackface entertainment, slavery and American culture in a single word. The troupe did not just borrow Virginia’s brand, but shaped it: Its song “Dixie” became the unofficial Confederate anthem.
That legacy can be seen in the history of blackface at the University of Virginia, founded and designed by another Virginia governor: Thomas Jefferson. Virginia was a state built on enslaved labor, and U-Va. was no different. Beginning in 1830, the university would “hire out” enslaved people from the surrounding area. Eventually, U-Va. purchased humans like “Big Lewis” Commodore in 1832 at auction for $580, permanently separating him from his family.
Virginia’s slave empire ended when African American slaves fought for their freedom in the Civil War. After 1865, Lewis Commodore was free. But when slavery disappeared, fundraising with amateur blackface minstrel shows and city minstrel parades emerged. They featured fictionalized blackface slaves and their Klansman counterparts — a pairing on display in the Northam photo — to sustain Virginia’s infrastructure and segregated economy, as well as to inculcate new generations into a form of white supremacy associated with collegiality, school spirit and patriotism.
Over the weekend, BB introduced me to Dr RL Barnes and her area of research which is basically the not so subtle and the subtle ways that the Institutions of this country remind every one of what racists think is the “place” of Black Americans in their own country. It’s also about how some of us passively, stupidly, and naively go along with it and internalize it.
I remember poring over literature, laws, and popular culture in the 1970s discovering how language, pictures, stories, and culture all work together to keep women in their “place”. As a teenager and young adult, it became very freeing to be able to point these things out and to discover it wasn’t all in your head that menfolk and their enabling women were out to get you.
I knew there was similar things in place for people of color including all the stereotypes of Native Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans that culture, the law, and society can feed you. I’m beginning to read stories of friends much the same way I read stories of friends screaming Me Too.
There was also a history of casually tossing bags of them on to the lawns of “inconvenient” neighbors which seems a bit like something the KKK would do. How is this a thing?
Bridging that gap requires unpacking why, for many black people and people of color, raw cotton is a symbol of racial terror.
Cotton represents the product of a system that required slave labor to function. More recently, perpetrators of racial intimidation have used cotton as a symbol of their hatred. Before white robes became the uniform, some KKK members wore ceremonial hornsstuffed with cotton. Two white men seeking to intimidate and unsettle members of the University of Missouri’s Black Culture Center littered the front lawn of the Center with cotton balls. The word even fills the mouths of students who bully their black peers by calling them “cotton pickers.”
Jasmine Gales, a black woman and social activist in Nashville, explains how this context translates into the contemporary mindset of many people of color:
“Black people’s association with the cotton plant is an obvious one of trauma and suffering,” she wrote for The Tennessean. “In being culturally sensitive to the history of African-Americans which includes slavery and the free labor of cotton harvesting, an institution wouldn’t choose to display it at a dinner meant to uplift the black experience.”
The individuals who reacted defensively or dismissively to the cotton complaints either ignored this context or were ignorant of it entirely. If there wasn’t an explicitly racist motive behind the design choice, they reasoned, then it wasn’t a problem.
Neither perception reflects an absolute truth. But the chorus of naysayers trying to drown out the voices of two black women reflects a power dynamic that must inform a culturally responsive interpretation.
So, I was horrified back in 1986 when the CJ Howell movie “Soul Man” came out. Haven’t seen it. Wouldn’t see it. Still can’t believe some one released and funded it and filmed it. It had obvious implications for my generation because of the Bakke Supreme Court decision in 1978 and my experience with busing and integration prior to that in and around 1973. There were mad white people every where about those decisions but I kind’ve wrote it all off to crazy white uneducated southern white trash and didn’t really explore it. Well, I’m exploring it now and finding that my assumptions were naive. Well, stupid if you really want the truth
There is, of course, no acceptable way for deeply unacceptable films to reach their merciful conclusions. But Soul Man manages to confound even one’s worst expectations. Before Mark’s big reveal to the campus, Gordon assumes the role of a pseudo-defense attorney, flipping the script on the product-of-his-environment argument. Mark, he argues, was brought up to be selfish and entitled, the product of an upper-crust white family in the suburbs. “Can you blame him for the color of his skin?”
For some reason, James Earl Jones’s character agrees with the assessment, and is even amused by Mark’s stunt. “You must have learned a great deal more than you bargained for through this experience,” he remarks, grinning. “I didn’t really know what it feels like, sir,” adding, “If I didn’t like it, I could always get out.”
That line is the movie’s nauseating coup de grâce, intended to justify the fact that Mark gets off with little more than a slap on the wrist for his deception. He tells Jones’s character that he wants to finish his law degree to “do some work that might be of use to someone.”
Mark’s happy ending prefigures a new era of racist film: the 21st-century white savior flick, a future constant in multiplexes and on Oscar ballots.
The deal is this. The blackface thing in that Virginia med school during the 1980s wasn’t an outlier. It was evidently another one of those “things” that I had no clue was a thing. I’m fortunate to know many New Orleans Writers and bloggers including a young black woman whose outrage at a cottonball decoration introduced me to more subtle ways that white culture continues to terrorize Black Americans.
I thought it prescient to repost this story today to remind folks that institutionalized racism is still alive and thriving behind the closed doors of collegiate fraternities throughout the South. Also to point out that the universities themselves should not be blamed. As evident in my story, Tulane struggled for years to separate the DKE’s from the school’s namesake going so far as to kick them off campus and not recognize them as an official fraternity. They existed as an independent entity living off-campus until the cancer finally died out around the late 90’s, or at least it went into remission. I would hope it’s dead but judging by the impenitent attitudes of the former DKE’s in the comment section of my post I would assume an entire new generation of kids are now carrying their fathers’ prejudices with them under alternate letters of the Greek alphabet.
My favorite dodge in that comment section was the DKE alum who tried to convince me that the noose in the 1975 yearbook picture was actually a tire swing sans tire:
A “tire swing sans tire” hanging twenty-something feet in the air would lead me to believe all these guys were on the Tulane pole vaulting team. And how, exactly, did the tire disappear from the noose? The tire split before the rope did? No one thought to ask, “Hey…you know…we have a noose hanging in our yearbook picture…should we take that down?” What a load of shit.University of Oklahoma president David Boren voiced his distaste with the actions of the SAE’s but he may have a hard time eradicating the fraternity from the campus if he so chooses. Once again, I don’t want to blame the educational institution itself, the actions of these fraternities do not represent the morals of the body wh ole. Anyway, here’s the story, reposted:
State Sen. Ernie Chambers (2017)
You may read Jason Brad Berry’s 2010 story at this link. I was in college at the University of Nebraska at the time. I was in grad school at the time of Northram’s adventure. I personally know of no one in my circle that would’ve done anything remotely like that even though I did witness a number of horrifying angry white people during the Omaha Public Schools “busing” policy’s start.
I grew up knowing that Omaha purposefully designed its interstate system to isolate the black part of town that provided the only black representative in the state’s unicameral. His voice was powerful and pissed off that powers that be for decades which frankly thrilled me to pieces. Senator Ernie Chambers turned 80 in 2017 and his legacy will be a forever thing there. Still, finding all this stuff went on with me totally unwoke embarrasses me and made me extremely sad. Senator Chambers was my primary teacher on racism until I moved to New Orleans. I have found I need more teachers. I need to learn more about these things that I did not know were a thing.
https://twitter.com/DigitalHistory_/status/1092457601747636224
As I delve more into Black history with so many motivations that it’s hard to unwind them all, I turn to this “How Frederick Douglass Harnessed the Power of Portraiture to Reframe Blackness in America”. Douglass knew the power of an image before nearly any one.
For Douglass, this was no happy accident. Today, he is remembered as an influential advocate of emancipation and civil rights, a legacy defined by his best-selling autobiographies and powerful speeches. But what has largely been forgotten is the way he deftly manipulated the power of images to advance his cause.To put it simply, Douglass was a photography buff. He penned four speeches expounding upon the medium throughout his life—one more than the man considered the Civil War era’s most prominent photo critic. He held Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype, in great esteem for broadening photography’s appeal beyond the upper class. Because of daguerreotypes, Douglass claimed, “the humblest servant girl may now possess a picture of herself such as the wealth of kings could not purchase fifty years ago.” He viewed photography as the most democratic of the arts.He also believed deeply in its objectivity. “For Douglass, photography was the lifeblood of being able to be seen and not caricatured, to be represented and not grotesque, to be seen as fully human and not as an object or chattel to be bought and sold,” says Celeste-Marie Bernier, co-author of Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American (2015).Photography was the perfect tool for a man trying to rewrite racial prejudices in the United States, and Douglass sought out every opportunity to be captured. With each portrait, he could present America with an additional image of blackness that contradicted the prevailing racist stereotypes.
Zulu 1937
The king of Zulu rides on his float.
The last time I really thought about the history of blackface was back when there was discussion of the role of Zulu and the incredible racist roots of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras. Here’s something you may want to read about the krewe and its signature looks from New Orleans investigative paper The Lens.
It’s hard to measure the scope of Zulu’s influence on what the Times-Picayune’s Doug MacCash has called the “new” Mardi Gras, and on what I have called the restoration of carnivalesque carnival, after the dark ages of the white supremacist anti-carnival ushered in by the Mystick Krewe of Comus in 1857. It’s a remarkable testament to the resilience of carnival spirit that, in the midst of the white supremacist era, when Comus, Momus, Proteus, and Rex ruled the day, the Zulu king first stepped off a banana boat in the New Basin canal wearing a lard can crown. The date: 1909.
That’s why it’s so upsetting — also a bit absurd — when people who have no understanding or appreciation for carnival aesthetics and social analysis chime in from hundreds of miles away with self-righteous finger-wagging. What they’re about is shaming traditions that are far more revolutionary than they are able to comprehend.
That’s exactly what has happened this year, when Tales of the Cocktail founder Ann Tuennerman went up on Facebook with a picture of herself in Mardi Gras regalia and since then, after taking flack for it, has been agonizing through a multi-part act of public contrition. Tuennerman’s sin is to have had the temerity to accept the great honor of riding in the Zulu parade on Mardi Gras morning, wearing the traditional mask of Zulu blackface.
I say “Zulu blackface” because the style of blackface worn by Zulu riders is distinct from other forms of blackface viewed as offensive due to their history as a tool of white supremacist ideology. One of the distinctive visual features of Zulu blackface is an enlarged white eye on one side of the face, which can be seen in depictions of the Zulu Big Shot as well as on Tuennerman’s face in her much-maligned social media posting. In the world of totalitarian expression — the opposite of carnivalesque expression — such nuances of signification go unnoticed.
A typically clueless (and arrogant) response to Ann Tuennerman’s posting came from Chicago’s Nikkole Palmatier: “I have a problem with the blackface entirely. As do most people outside of the New Orleans tradition. Just as those who live outside of Cleveland think the Indians logo is racist and the term ‘Redskins’ is racist.”
Yeah. Just let that sink in for a minute. It’s hard to conceive of a more egregiously false analogy than this. Are the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins actually Native American institutions, founded, owned, and staffed, at all levels, by Native Americans?
Palmatier’s argument leads us to question whether Zulu’s iconography should be practiced by anyone, not just whether Zulu should accept white riders. And that’s a whole other can of worms. It calls into question the extent to which black people should be allowed agency in representing their own experience; it also places limits on how black people themselves choose to enunciate anti-racist arguments.
There’s also the Spike Lee film “Bamboozled” for an interesting take. This film was made in 2000.
I feel this year that I need to unpack a lot more about black history and experience than reading inspirational speeches by the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. We’ve all seen the images of black stereotypes that were prevalent in the pre Civil Rights era. I’ve only used the original “Jim Crow” here but we likely all know many more. For me, it’s time to learn some of the deeper stories and to listen more about how this country continually dehumanizes our Black Americans.
I intend to fully celebrate Black History month.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: February 2, 2019 Filed under: Cats, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, racism, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bandy X. Lee, Concord Management and Consulting, Donald Trump, Justin Fairfax, Ralph Northam, Robert E Lee, Robert Mueller, slavery, Stonewall Jackson 37 Comments
Catsquatch by Syama Golden
Good Morning!!
There is so much news this morning that it’s difficult to know what to focus on. I guess I’ll begin with the followup to the story Dakinikat wrote about in yesterday’s post–Trump’s horrifying decision to withdraw from the INF treaty. This was nothing but a gift to Trump’s puppet master Putin–did they coordinate this?
Associated Press: Russia to pull plug on nuclear arms pact after US does same.
MOSCOW (AP) — Following in the footsteps of the U.S., Russia will abandon a centerpiece nuclear arms treaty but will only deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles if Washington does so, President Vladimir Putin said Saturday.
U.S. President Donald Trump accused Moscow on Friday of violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with “impunity” by deploying banned missiles. Trump said in a statement that the U.S. will “move forward” with developing its own military response options to Russia’s new land-based cruise missiles that could target Western Europe.
By Alfonso Rocchi
The collapse of the INF Treaty has raised fears of a repeat of a Cold War showdown in the 1980s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent. Such weapons were seen as particularly destabilizing as they only take a few minutes to reach their targets, leaving no time for decision-makers and raising the likelihood of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning.
After the U.S. gave notice of its intention to withdraw from the treaty in six months, Putin said that Russia would do the same. He ordered the development of new land-based intermediate-range weapons, but emphasized that Russia won’t deploy them in the European part of the country or elsewhere unless the U.S. does so.
“We will respond quid pro quo,” Putin said. “Our American partners have announced they were suspending their participation in the treaty and will do the same. They have announced they will conduct research and development, and we will act accordingly.”
“Quid pro quo?” Is that shade from Putin? Because it’s obvious as this point that Trump is checking off everything on Putin’s wish list in order to repay him for the 2016 election and likely promises that he’ll eventually get that Trump Tower in Moscow.
And it’s not just the 2016 election. Natasha has a revealing post up at The Atlantic this morning on Robert Mueller’s latest court filing: Russia Is Attacking the U.S. System From Within.
A new court filing submitted on Wednesday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller revealed that a Russian troll farm currently locked in a legal battle over its alleged interference in the 2016 election appeared to wage yet another disinformation campaign late last year—this time targeting Mueller himself.
Didier Lourenço Lithograph, 2012
According to the filing, the special counsel’s office turned over one million pages of evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting as part of the discovery process. The firm is accused of funding the troll farm, known as the Internet Research Agency. But someone connected to Concord allegedly manipulated and leaked those documents to reporters, hoping the documents would make people think that Mueller’s evidence against the troll farm and its owners was flimsy. The tactic didn’t seem to convince anyone, but it appeared to mark yet another example of Russia exploiting the U.S. justice system to undercut its rivals abroad….
When Mueller indicted Concord Management and Consulting in February 2018, along with two other corporate entities and 13 Russian nationals allegedly connected to the Internet Research Agency, it seemed highly unlikely that the indictment would result in a trial because Russians cannot be extradited to the United States. But Concord unexpectedly hired the well-connected American law firm, Reed Smith, to fight Mueller, arguing that the charges should be dropped because the special counsel was illegally appointed. The judge in the case, Dabney Friedrich, has twice refused to dismiss the case and recently lambasted Concord’s American lawyers for submitting “unprofessional, inappropriate and ineffective” court filings, and the legal battle has raged on.
Now, according to the Mueller filing this week, unidentified actors working out of Russia appear to have weaponize the U.S. discovery process to Concord’s benefit. Over 1,000 files on the website that hosted the leaked documents “match those produced in discovery,” the special counsel said. The documents were published from a computer with a Russian IP address, according to Mueller, and whoever released them clearly “had access to at least some of the non-sensitive discovery produced by the government.” But forged documents were mixed in to the trove, too, apparently in an attempt to accuse Mueller of characterizing American websites and Facebook pages like Occupy Democrats as Russian disinformation operations. The website also inserted irrelevant documents into the unique folder names—known only to those with access to the discovery materials—and characterized them as the sum-total of Mueller’s evidence “in an apparent effort to discredit the investigation,” the special counsel said.
It’s complicated, so I hope you’ll go read the rest at The Atlantic.
Girl With a Cat, 2012, by Ju Hong Chen
Yesterday, the The Virginian-Pilot broke the news that Governor Ralph Northam included a racist photo of himself and another man in his medical school yearbook. I’m not going to post the photo; I’m sure you’ve seen it by now.
A photo from Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook shows him and another person in racist costumes — one wearing blackface and one a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood, though it was not clear which person was the future governor.
Hours after the 35-year-old photo came to light Friday, Northam apologized for his decision to appear in it. Elected officials and activist groups from across the political spectrum called for him to resign.
But in a video posted to Twitter Friday evening, Northam said he had spent the past year “fighting for a Virginia that works better for all people” and he would continue to do so throughout the rest of his term, which ends in January 2022.
Northam admitted that he appears in the photo, but for some reason did not say which of the costumed men he is. It’s obvious he is going to have to step down, but as of this morning he’s apparently still hanging on. Multiple Democratic politicians, including former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe have called for his resignation.
Shortly after this news broke, CBS New reported that the yearbook also lists a racist nickname for Northam, who was 25 years old at the time.
CBS News uncovered a page from Northam’s yearbook at the Virginia Military Institute that had nicknames listed underneath his name. One of them was “Coonman,” a racial slur.
Woman with a black cat, by Pablo Picasso
Northam has to go, but the upside of this is that his Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax is a rising star and would be Virginia’s second black governor if Northam resigns. The Washington Post:
Justin Fairfax is an Ivy League-educated lawyer descended from slaves, who as lieutenant governor of Virginia was known mostly for sitting out tributes to Confederate leaders in the historic Capitol in Richmond.
He could now become the commonwealth’s 74th governor, if fellow Democrat Ralph Northam resigns over a racist photo he included in his medical school yearbook in 1984.
Fairfax, 39, was elected as Northam’s deputy in the 2017 blue wave in which Democrats won all three statewide offices and picked up 15 seats in the House of Delegates.
He would be the second African American governor of Virginia, following L. Douglas Wilder, who held the office from 1990 to 1994. Only two other African Americans have been governors in modern U.S. history.
Read more about Northam’s background at the WaPo. Also check out this powerful piece at the Root: Justin Fairfax, The King of Confederate Shade, Shuts Down 100-Year Tribute to American Traitors.
For more than 100 years, the Virginia State Senate has had a little tradition, where they honor Confederate “heroes” Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee at the close of a Senate session sometime near the birthdays of two men. Now if you didn’t take Treason 101 in high school, you probably missed the part where Jackson and Lee were part of the Confederacy that broke away from the United States and started the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter. Perhaps you also didn’t learn that Robert E. Lee, as head of the Confederate Army, is responsible for more American deaths than the Nazis, The Vietcong, ISIS, the LAPD, Cobra, Hydra, and high blood pressure.
The point is, at the time and by modern standards, Jackson and Lee were horrible men. They also happen to have birthdays very close to each other (Jackson, January 21; Lee, January 19) and Jackson occasionally shares a birthday with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
By François Batet 1921
Consequently, for years, on or around the birthdays of these two Confederates, a member of the Virginia Senate would announce, “I would like to adjourn in honor of General Lee or Stonewall Jackson.”
The Senate would agree, someone would take the podium to speak a couple of words, and then everyone would break for orange slices and Mint Julip Capri-Suns. All of this has gone off without a hitch for decades, even after the first African Americans got elected to the Virginia Senate; even after the state adopted the ridiculous Lee-Jackson-King Holiday from 1984 to 2000; even after Virginia elected its first black governor, Doug Wilder, from 1990-1994. However, Justin Fairfax didn’t come to Richmond to play footsie with Confederates and he is very much his great-grandfather’s child….
Since being elected Lt. Governor of Virginia in 2017, Fairfax has served as the president of the state Senate and has quietly left the podium whenever state senators have attempted to honor Stonewall or Lee at the end of the session. He did it last Friday when a Republican senator stepped up to honor Robert E. Lee. The reasons are obvious. First, no one should be honoring American traitors in a government building, no matter where that traitor was born. Secondly, Justin Fairfax, a man who literally took his oath of office with his three-greats-ago grandfather’s Freedom papers in his pocket, knows history and knows power.
It sounds like Fairfax would do just fine as governor; he was expected to run in 2021 after Northam completed his term-limited governorship anyway.
I’m post a few more important reads in the comment thread, but I want to call attention to this one from Raw Story: ‘Incredibly dangerous’: Yale psychiatrist warns Trump will resort to ‘extreme measures’ as Mueller closes in.
‘La Sieste’ by Magalie Bucher
On Thursday, President Donald Trump declared that he was not concerned about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
He claimed that departing Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein had told him he was not a person of interest in the investigation.
“He told the attorneys that I’m not a subject, I’m not a target,” Mr. Trump told the New York Times.
Nevertheless, the probe seems to be circling closer to the president and his family. The arrest of long-time Trump ally Roger Stone—and wording in his indictment that suggested he’d been directed to perform criminal acts by a more senior campaign official—spurred discussion that Donald Trump Jr. or even Trump himself would be implicated in Stone’s alleged crimes.
Trump also told the Times that he would build a wall along the Southwest border with Mexico regardless of Congress.
Raw Story spoke with Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee about how the latest developments are likely to impact the president. Lee’s views are her own, not a reflection of Yale’s position.
I hope you’ll go read the whole interview. Here’s an excerpt:
Bandy X. Lee: His anxieties are palpable, as he resorts to more and more extreme measures and unreal justifications for building a wall. We had the extended shutdown that put us at real security risk, according to the FBI, and declaring a national emergency is a very real possibility.
He needs to maintain his shrinking base as well as to give himself a sense of victory, and he will go to all lengths to achieve it. What concerns me, however, is our own lack of readiness for when the real crisis comes. As a nation, we continue merely to react, while dangers escalate, and underestimate the profound effects that mental instability can have.
With all the negative news for Mr. Trump, “rational” people may feel relief, as he is finally held to account, but while being driven to a corner, the president’s only desperate remaining diversion may be war. Forces around the globe—the Israelis and the Saudis, for example—want that for their own reasons, and with a foreign policy team that now reflects his psychology, times could turn incredibly dangerous.
What stories have you been following?
Friday Reads: The Trump Administration represents a Clear and Present Danger
Posted: February 1, 2019 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Abortion hysteria, Arms Control, Cory Booker, INF Treaty 56 Comments
Icicles in Minneapolis
Well, it’s another Friday Sky Dancers!
I would like to think we’re closer to neutering the crazy in Drumpfistan but we’re not. Each day it becomes radically clear that world order is being upended and that most third world nations have a better grasp on economic and foreign policy than our executive branch. Again, what fresh hell is this and how much longer can our country and the world tolerate this ignorant and rogue administration that lurches from the creation of one disaster to the next.
Today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo–religious nutbag extraordinaire–announced that the US is withdrawing from a Cold War nuclear arms control treaty with Russia. Pompeo cited Russian violations which actually have been discussed by NATO and the UN for about 5 years. Why the hurry to leave the table now?
Pompeo first announced the U.S. intention to withdraw in December, giving Russia a 60-day window to come back into compliance, and that window runs out on Saturday. Withdrawal now requires an additional six-month window, according to the treaty’s terms. The agreement, signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, banned ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 310 and 3,100 miles.
While Pompeo spoke only of Russia, U.S. officials have been concerned about China’s growing military prowess as China is not a party to the Cold War pact. Officials worry that puts the U.S. at a military disadvantage, although a senior administration official denied Friday that the decision was made because of the actions of any other country besides Russia.
President Donald Trump issued a statement saying Russia had violated the INF Treaty with “impunity, covertly developing and fielding a prohibited missile system that poses a direct threat to our allies and troops abroad.”
The U.S. first accused Russia of violating the pact in 2014, but Russia first denied it possessed the weapon in violation and then later said that weapon didn’t violate the treaty’s terms.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday Russia regrets the U.S. decision and accused the U.S. of being “unwilling to hold any substantial talks.”
But the top U.S. diplomat for arms control had met with Russia repeatedly in the last two months, saying after each meeting that Russia continued to deny its deployment and the U.S. had no other choice.
I frankly wonder if these actions were taken because the President wanted some action that looked like he didn’t favor the Putin Regime over American interests. There appears to be no diplomatic path to resolution. It just seems one more act of chaos on the international stage.
US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Andrea Thompson on Thursday held last-ditch talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in Beijing ahead of the expiration on Saturday of a US 60-day deadline for Moscow to return to compliance with the treaty.
Thompson and Ryabkov said afterwards that the two countries had failed to bridge their differences. They met on the sidelines of a meeting of the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members – the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain – all nuclear powers.
European officials are concerned about the treaty’s possible collapse, fearful that Europe could again become an arena for nuclear-armed, intermediate-range missile buildups by the United States and Russia.
In an interview, Thompson said she expected Washington to stop complying with the treaty as soon as this weekend, a move she said would allow the US military to immediately begin developing its own longer-range missiles if it chose to do so, raising the prospect they could be deployed in Europe.
“We’ll be able to do that (suspend our treaty obligations) on 2 February”, she told Reuters in Beijing. “We’ll have an announcement made, follow all the steps that need to be taken on the treaty to suspend our obligations with the intent to withdraw.”
Once announced, the formal withdrawal process takes six months. Halting treaty compliance would untie the US military’s hands, Thompson said.
“We are then also able to conduct the R&D and work on the systems we haven’t been able to use because we’ve been in compliance with the treaty,” she said. “Come 2 February, this weekend, if DoD (the US Department of Defense) chooses to do that, they’ll be able to do that.”
Washington remained open to further talks with Moscow about the treaty, she added.
Ryabkov said Moscow would continue working toward an agreement but accused Washington of ignoring Russian complaints about US missiles and of adopting what he called a destructive position.
Trump appears to be throwing all of his cards into white evangelical insanity. This Washington Monthly article appeared yesterday and rumors are that we’re going to be treated to a SOTU focused on fetus fetishes via Politico. We’ve already been told by the Huckabeast that white jesus made Trump President. These people join Trump in being a menace to the world.
We’ve already been treated to grisly rape fantasies about women seeking US asylum on the border. What horrid and particularly heinous lies will we hear on Tuesday? From the Politico article:
President Donald Trump is telling conservative allies he wants to incorporate firm anti-abortion language into his State of the Union address Tuesday, and potentially include an anti-abortion figure among his list of invitees, according to four sources familiar with his plans
Trump sees an opening to energize his evangelical supporters and capture moderate voters who administration officials believe may be turned off by widespread coverage of New York’s newest abortion law, which allows for termination of some pregnancies after the 24-week mark for health reasons.
Partially frozen Naigara Falls
The country continues to be regaled to the fetus fantasy fetish porn about so-called “third term abortions”. There are either successful or unsuccessful deliveries at this point but don’t expect the disingenuous religious nutters to believe or spout medicine. The unsuccessful deliveries are from something that’s gone extremely wrong and no positive outcome is ever expected so viability is central to any medical intervention at this point in the gestation cycle by both law and ethics. Kathy Tran from Virginia has proposed a similar bill to the New York bill. From The Intelligencer:
Tran’s bill wasn’t as salacious as its detractors insist. It would have reduced the number of doctors required to sign off on a third-term abortion from three to one, and it would have allowed that physician to approve a late-term abortion for any medical reason, including harm to a woman’s mental health. This provision would have altered the state’s existing statute, which currently allows a team of three physicians to approve third-term abortions for women whose health would be “substantially and irredeemably” harmed by continuing their pregnancies. The bill would have also allowed second-term abortions to be performed outside licensed hospitals, in facilities like clinics. A House subcommittee rejected the bill, but if it had become law it would not have licensed Virginia physicians to perform abortions as a fetus enters the birth canal. Tran’s bill resembles New York’s Reproductive Health Act in that it expands access to later-term abortions, but partial-birth abortion, or “born-alive abortion,” as GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called it in a tweet, is already illegal. RHA didn’t legalize it, and neither would Tran’s bill.
In other news, Cory Booker announces his candidacy for the Democratic Nomination for President.
From The Atlantic: “Cory Booker Launched His Presidential Campaign in the Most Cory Booker Way Possible”. He spent last night at his church. I’m still thinking on that one. I like deeply held beliefs guiding people’s individual choices in a sincere way and in private. It’s sort’ve like the difference between knowing you have a penis or vagina tucked away down there that influences your life and whipping either of them out for public display and commentary. I hate it when sanctimony gets on a public stage. But, we’ll see what he does.
The New Jersey senator announced his presidential campaign hours later on Friday morning, the first day of Black History Month, with a run of early-morning appearances on black and Spanish-language radio. His first big interview would be across the river in Manhattan for The View.
After a break for the Super Bowl, there will be more next week, then a swing to South Carolina and Iowa next weekend. His launch video, set to the snare drums of a high-school marching band, runs through his own family’s story of white lawyers helping his family break through a pattern of local housing discrimination in a way that changed the course of his life. It splices together clips of resistance marches and civil-rights marches, and talks about collective action and interwoven destiny, panning from shots of the homeless on a city street to a field growing corn.
Booker’s campaign will roll out big lists of staff hires and supporters in all the early-presidential-primary states, years of preparations unleashed for a show of force he and his aides think is going to pave the way for a traditional ground game, despite being built around a black man obsessed with the “conspiracy of love” who is not a traditional candidate at all. But before it began, he brought together a group of friends, supporters, and current and former aides for what the reverend described on Thursday night as an intimate prayer service. Booker’s Senate office in Washington is filled with religious books; last week he quoted the Torah in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He’s comfortable sitting for six hours in a church service, head bowed, nodding along. Even as other plans shifted, he knew he wanted this to be where he spent the night before everything became official.
Chicago
It’s one thing to use a belief system to extend civil rights to all individuals. It’s completely another to use it to deny others’ humanity. I’ll personally be watching Corey’s campaign carefully.
Meanwhile, the NYT did an Oval Office interview with our abysmal *President. They sent the usual suspects to interview him (Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker) which sent up warning flags to me. Here’s about how I would sum the entire thing.
You can, of course, read it for yourself. It’s full of the usual Trump whoppers so I really don’t see the point.
Anyway, it’s warming up a bit down here in New Orleans but I still keep hearing how frigid it is up there north of me. Stay Warm if you’re still deep in the Polar Vortex.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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