Tuesday Reads

Leon Kroll, Nude Woman Reading a Paper

Good Morning

A quick update: I think I’m beginning to recover from my pain flare-up. I’ve found a good book on dealing with chronic pain along with an chronic pain app that is helping me better understand what is happening in my body and brain. I’ve been working on slowing down my breathing and letting go of my fear of the pain. So I’m working on being proactive.

Here are some stories that have captured my interested this morning:

The ACLU has apologized for it’s offensive editing of a famous quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The New York Times: A.C.L.U. Apologizes for Tweet That Altered Quote by Justice Ginsburg.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Monday that he regretted that a tweet sent out recently by his organization altered the words of a well-known quote by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The A.C.L.U. tweet, which was sent out Sept. 18, changed Justice Ginsburg’s words, replacing each of her references to women with “person,” “people” or a plural pronoun in brackets. Justice Ginsburg, who died last year, is a revered figure in liberal and feminist circles and directed the A.C.L.U.’s Women’s Rights Project from its founding in 1972 until she became a federal judge in 1980.

The tweet by the A.C.L.U. occasioned mockery and some anger on social media from feminists and others.

“We won’t be altering people’s quotes,” Mr. Romero said in an interview on Monday evening. “It was a mistake among the digital team. Changing quotes is not something we ever did.” Mr. Romero first noted his regrets in an interview with Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times columnist, who wrote a column that spoke to the danger of trying to “change the nature of reality through language alone.”

From Michelle Goldberg: The A.C.L.U. Errs on R.B.G.

Recently, on the anniversary of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, the American Civil Liberties Union set out to pay tribute to her pro-choice heroism, and ended up making the sort of self-parodic blunder the right salivates over.

One of R.B.G.’s iconic quotes came from her 1993 Senate confirmation hearings, when, instead of shying away from commenting on reproductive rights like most Supreme Court nominees, she made a forthright case for their indispensability to human flourishing.

Interno (1921). Luigi (Gigi) Chessa (Italian, 1895-1935)

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices,” Ginsburg said.

In a ham-handed attempt to make the quote conform to current progressive norms around gender neutrality, the A.C.L.U. rendered it this way in a tweet: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity … When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.”

This was a mistake for two reasons, one that’s easy to talk about, and one that’s hard.

Goldberg explains:

The easy one is this: It’s somewhat Orwellian to rewrite historical utterances to conform to modern sensitivities. No one that I’m aware of used gender-neutral language to talk about pregnancy and abortion in 1993; it wasn’t until 2008 that Thomas Beatie became famous as what headlines sometimes called the “First Pregnant Man.” There’s a difference between substituting the phrase “pregnant people” for “pregnant women” now, and pretending that we have always spoken of “pregnant people.”

What’s more difficult to discuss is how making Ginsburg’s words gender-neutral alters their meaning. That requires coming to terms with a contentious shift in how progressives think and talk about sex and reproduction. Changing Ginsburg’s words treats what was once a core feminist insight — that women are oppressed on the basis of their reproductive capacity — as an embarrassing anachronism. The question then becomes: Is it? [….]

A gender-inclusive understanding of reproduction is in keeping with the goal of a society free of sex hierarchies. It is one thing to insist that women shouldn’t be relegated to second-class status because they can bear children. It’s perhaps more radical to define sex and gender so that childbearing is no longer women’s exclusive domain.

Yet I think there’s a difference between acknowledging that there are men who have children or need abortions — and expecting the health care system to treat these men with respect — and speaking as if the burden of reproduction does not overwhelmingly fall on women. You can’t change the nature of reality through language alone. Trying to do so can seem, to employ a horribly overused word, like a form of gaslighting.

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” Simone de Beauvoir wrote. You can interpret this to support the contemporary notion of sex and gender as largely matters of self-identification. Or you can interpret it as many older feminists have, as a statement about how the world molds you into a woman, of how certain biological experiences reveal your place in the social order, and how your identity develops in response to gender’s constraints.

Seen this way, a gender-neutral version of Ginsburg’s quote is unintelligible, because she was talking not about the right of all people to pursue their own reproductive destiny, but about how male control of women’s reproductive lives makes women part of a subordinate class. The erasure of gendered language can feel like an insult, because it takes away the terms generations of feminists used to articulate their predicament.

Read the whole thing at the NYT.

The Bookseller’s Son, by Chad Gowey

The Washington Post reports on a “revelation” from the new book by former Trump WH press secretary Stephanie Grisham: Trump played tough with Putin when cameras were around, while Putin toyed with his insecurities, a new book says.

Little is known about what happened in the 90-minute conversation between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Osaka, Japan, two years ago. But as journalists were quickly ushered out of the room at the 2019 Group of 20 Summit, Stephanie Grisham once again found herself with a close-up view of the action.

She saw Trump lean toward Putin that day and tell him: “Okay, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave, we’ll talk. You understand.” [….]

Raw Story on what happened next: 

Trump then “quickly” and “playfully” told Putin not to meddle in U.S. elections, USA Today reported at the time.

“Don’t meddle in the election, president,” Trump said in a joking manner, wagging his finger at Putin.

“When an interpreter translated Trump’s ‘request,’ Putin laughed,” USA Today reported.

Seriously: was anyone taken in by that? I doubt it. More on the Grisham book from the WaPo article:

Her 352-page book — obtained by The Washington Post — alleges a litany of misdeeds by the 45th president: from ogling a young female staffer, to orchestrating lies for the public, to attempting to ban the news media from the White House compound. It also gives a rare firsthand look at Melania Trump, who craved her privacy, and a blow-by-blow of how she wound up wearing that “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” jacket.

Grisham even claims to know dirt on Trump’s hair, which she says he cuts himself with “a huge pair of scissors that could probably cut a ribbon at an opening of one of his properties.” [….]

A major theme of the book is the culture of lies that pervaded Trump’s administration. “Casual dishonesty filtered through the White House as if it were in the air conditioning system,” Grisham writes.

For example, in 2019, Trump went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center without disclosing to the media that he was going, or why.

It was a days-long mystery in the national news, but Grisham’s book strongly hints that the president went for a simple colonoscopy, without actually using the word. (She wrote that it was “a very common procedure” for which “a patient is sometimes put under” and that George W. Bush had one as president, too.)

As for the elaborate concealment — Grisham writes that Trump was resistant to having Vice President Mike Pence in power even for a short period of time, and he didn’t want to be “the butt of a joke” on late-night TV.

Alice, by Sir John Lavery 1856-1941

Grisham on Jared and Ivanka:

She is particularly negative about the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner — both of whom held senior White House positions. She wrote that the first lady and White House staff called Ivanka “the Princess” who regularly invoked “my father” in work meetings, and Grisham dubbed Kushner “the Slim Reaper” for his habit of inserting himself into other people’s projects, making a mess and leaving them to take the blame.

Tellingly, Grisham writes that Ivanka and Jared tried to push their way into meeting Queen Elizabeth II alongside the president and first lady, a wild breach of protocol on a state visit, but were thwarted when they couldn’t fit into the helicopter. “I finally figured out what was going on,” Grisham writes. “Jared and Ivanka thought they were the royal family of the United States.”

On Melania’s I don’t care jacket:

The first lady had been upset by the situation her husband’s immigration policies had caused and wanted to see it for herself. For reasons that still remain a mystery, she’d ordered a $39 jacket online from Zara. Grisham said she was on her phone ironing out details for the trip and missed the chance to stop Melania Trump from wearing it.

It was just a jacket, Melania said, as she huddled with Grisham for a damage-control session on the plane. As they arrived back at the White House, an aide told them the president wanted to see his wife in the Oval Office. It was the first time he’d ever summoned her in such a way in front of staff. He yelled and asked “what the [expletive]” they thought they were doing. Then just as quickly he came up with a solution. He would tweet out that the jacket was a message to the Fake News Media.

So that’s your daily dose of gossip.

More stories to check out today:

The New York Times: As Sinema resists the budget bill, she is set to raise money from business groups that oppose it.

Insider: The former Fox News editor who called Arizona for Biden says the Cyber Ninjas audit was meant to undermine trust in elections.

CNN Politics: ‘We won’: Trump and his allies barrel ahead with election lies despite Arizona review confirming his loss.

Steve Benen at MSNBC: When Trump says the U.S. ‘will not survive,’ don’t look away.

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic: The Lie About the Supreme Court Everyone Pretends to Believe.

The vaccine misinformation is happening in Canada too. Global News: Edmonton family with father in ICU for surgery complications witnessed ‘surreal,’ horrific scenes.

Fiona Hill at Foreign Affairs: The Kremlin’s Strange Victory. How Putin Exploits American Dysfunction and Fuels American Decline.

What stories are you following today?

 

Saturday Open Thread

Good Morning Sky Dancers!!

I’m still having a difficult time with sciatica. I’m trying to hang in there, but I can’t do a regular post yet. Wish me luck!

I wanted to share this Twitter thread from Gregg Gonsalves on the anti-abortion laws and the elite insistence from the Washington elites that we must be polite and respectful with our protests. Gonsalves is a long-time AIDs activist and Associate Professor at Yale School of Public Health.

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441713458186174466?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441713974194679814?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441714934744686592?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441716533844189184?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441717967205642240?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441720272663498754?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441722947740135426?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441725935464550401?s=20

There’s much food for thought there. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Thursday Reads

Leon Kroll, Blanche Reading

Good Morning Sky Dancers!!

I’m still under the weather, but I’m going to post some stories for you to check out today. I talk to my doctor this afternoon; I hope she will have some suggestions for me. I’ve mentioned before that I have rheumatoid arthritis, but I have also had sciatic nerve pain for years. Apparently, the two are related, at least in that they involve inflammation. This is the worst it has ever been. I’d be very grateful if you would keep me in your thoughts.

https://twitter.com/19Dumptrump/status/1440812909496455171?s=20

This is an open thread.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

Boy with a Cat, by Christopher Wood, 1926

Law enforcement sources are preparing for a planned Trumpist “Justice for January 6” rally today even though many Trump fans are claiming it could be a “false flag” and telling others not to attend. This time Capitol Police are not taking chances on a repeat of the January 6 insurrection.

The New York Times: Capitol Area on Edge Over Right-Wing Protest of Jan. 6 Arrests.

Law enforcement and residents of the District of Columbia were on high alert on Saturday as far-right demonstrators were expected to gather at the foot of the Capitol to protest the jailing of Donald J. Trump supporters who stormed the building on Jan. 6.

The Defense Department put 100 National Guard troops on standby. The Capitol Police erected fencing around Capitol Hill. Even youth soccer games were canceled before the “Justice for J6” rally, the first significant gathering of right-wing demonstrators at the Capitol since a mob attacked the building in January as Congress was officially certifying President Biden’s victory.

The rally is being organized by Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign operative, and his organization, Look Ahead America. The organization has demanded that the Justice Department drop charges against what the group calls “nonviolent protesters” facing charges stemming from the Jan. 6 riot. Organizers have secured a permit for 700 attendees, according to the document.

Mr. Braynard has told protesters to be peaceful, “respectful and kind” to the hundreds of police officers expected to meet them, and to refrain from bringing signs, flags or clothing promoting a candidate or objecting to the 2020 election.

“What we’re looking for is pure patriotism,” he said in a promotional video.

But the Department of Homeland Security has warned of potential violence.

“We are aware of a small number of recent online threats of violence referencing the planned rally, including online discussions encouraging violence the day before the rally,” the department’s intelligence officers wrote in a report obtained by The New York Times.

The Washington Post: Justice for J6: What to know about Saturday’s rally for those arrested in the Capitol riots.

Demonstrators in support of the pro-Trump mob that mounted the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are returning to the scene of the insurrection Saturday to demand “justice” for those arrested in the riot.

Organizers of the “Justice for J6” rally argue that many of the hundreds of people charged during the January insurrection, when a crowd incited by President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election stormed the Capitol, were actually nonviolent and participating in a political protest.

Now, rally organizers argue, those people are facing unjust charges and being detained as “political prisoners,” an assertion that has exploded beyond the far right and been embraced in mainstream conservatism….

The “Justice for J6” rally is scheduled to begin at noon at Union Square, a public park near the Capitol Reflecting Pool. Organizers are expecting around 700 attendees, according to a permit application submitted to the U.S. Capitol Police Board by Look Ahead America, a group that has planned protests in support of people arrested in the riot.

However, many far-right extremists have actually discouraged people from attending this rally, and there does not appear to be widespread coordination to bring people to the demonstration, researchers who study domestic extremism said.

Users in far-right Internet forums and groups have claimed without evidence that the rally is a “trap,” created by the federal government to lure demonstrators to Washington, where federal officials will arrest them. Users also allege without evidence that the event will be infiltrated by left-wing activists who will disguise themselves as Trump supporters and deliberately cause trouble to make the rallygoers look unlawful.

It still seems wise that law enforcement organizations are prepared and on alert. It doesn’t take a large mob to set off a bomb somewhere.

John Everett Millais, A Flood

USA Today talked to the organizer of today’s event: ‘Might just be me and a bullhorn’: Meet the unlikely organizer of the Justice for J6 rally in DC.

The organizer of Saturday’s rally, aimed at recasting Jan. 6 as something other than the violent insurrection it was, immediately appears as an unlikely messenger for the Republican far-right.

Until Matt Braynard emerged as the face of a demonstration, staged to support hundreds arrested in the Capitol riots, the Republican operative had a relatively modest public profile, though  a recent spate of false voter fraud claims has gained him financial support.

Yet in the run-up to Saturday’s event, he has been everywhere – including a Friday appearance on C-SPAN.

In recent days, Braynard has appeared to downplay expectations for the size of the gathering, contending that the heavy security measures are more aimed at “intimidation” than protection and designed to discourage people from attending the so-called “Justice for J6” event. 

“It’s all meant to deter people from coming,” said Braynard, a former Trump campaign staffer, whose group has tried to present most of the hundreds arrested in the Capitol attack as “political prisoners.”

“It’s all about dragging down attendance. In the end, it might just be me and a bullhorn,” he told USA TODAY in a brief interview this week. 

At MSNBC, Dean Obeidallah argues that the message of the rally itself is extremely problematic: Trump allies are still spreading a dangerous Jan. 6 myth.

The rally sends a clear message: If you commit acts of violence to help Trump, he and his supporters will have your back. Despite the fact that the event may in fact be relatively small at an estimated 700 attendants, that message and what it represents makes this arguably the most dangerous pro-Trump rally yet.

Saturday’s event, named the “Justice for J6” rally, is organized by a former Trump campaign strategist, Matt Braynard, who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations by claiming he had proof of 2020 election fraud, predicated upon the false claim that those still being held in custody are political prisoners.

On Thursday, Trump released a statement that read in part, “Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest,” insisting as he has before that the prosecutions are political in nature.

Adolf Fleishchann Esslingen, Drei Katzen, late 1920s

This is nothing new — Trump has been leading that crusade for some time, baselessly claiming that the Jan. 6 attackers still behind bars “are being treated unbelievably unfairly. ” He’s also compared their treatment by law enforcement to other groups: “You look at people in prison and nothing happens to Antifa and they burned down cities and killed people.” (The Associated Press has detailed that hundreds of people were prosecuted for crimes arising from last summer’s protests, with an average sentence of 27 months in prison.)

Whether or not the rally turns violent, the real damage lies in its bolstering of Trump’s dangerous message, and the possibility that the Jan. 6 attacks may be more than a one-off attempt by Trump and his supporters to overturn future elections using violence. A CBS poll from late July found that 55 percent of Trump voters view the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol as “defending freedom.” (That’s compared to 31 percent of all Americans who share that view.) And among Republicans, only 39 percent “strongly disapprove” of the Jan. 6 attack — down from 51 percent in January.

Those poll numbers, along with recent DHS reports that “some conspiracy theories associated with reinstating former President Trump have included calls for violence if desired outcomes are not realized,” are a wake-up call we cannot afford to ignore.

Although Trump isn’t planning to be at the rally, he is still pushing the notion behind it–that the January 6 thugs are really “political prisoners.” The Washington Post: Republican leaders remain silent as Trump casts perpetrators of Jan. 6 attack as political prisoners.

The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and the falsehoods that inspired it continue to shape the Republican Party, with former president Donald Trump ramping up his defense of the rioters who participated in the violence while marshaling opposition to GOP lawmakers who have denounced the attack as an insurrection and a threat to American democracy.

The state of the party was put into focus this week with the sudden retirement announcement of Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), a onetime rising GOP star who became one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump after the riot, which earned him a Trump-backed primary challenger. He cited a “chaotic political environment” and “the toxic dynamics inside our own party” for his decision.

Meanwhile, Trump this week expressed sympathy for his supporters who participated in the attack and are now being prosecuted by federal authorities ahead of a Saturday rally at the Capitol that is expected to attract a small cohort of far-right protesters, claiming that the arrestees are being held as “political prisoners.”

“Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election,” Trump said in a statement Thursday, adding that the prosecutions have “proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice.”

On Friday, Trump hailed Gonzalez’s retirement, saying “Good riddance to Anthony” and “1 down, 9 to go!” His primary opponent, former Trump aide Max Miller, thanked the former president for his continued support.

Trump’s willingness to not only sweep the Jan. 6 riot under the rug, but to embrace its perpetrators as political martyrs, has been met with silence by GOP congressional leaders, despite their stated desire to move on from the past and focus the party on opposing President Biden’s governing agenda.

Henriette Ronner-Knip, Hide and Seek, mid 19th century

More on this theme from Margaret Carlson at The Daily Beast: The GOP’s Young Stars Don’t Want to Represent Trump’s Party.

Rep. Anthony Gonzales was a rising star in the Republican firmament until a vengeful Trump helped snuff out the re-election campaign of the intelligent, charismatic two-term Ohioan as a warning to others of what awaits infidels in his party.

In 2018, Gonzales was the party’s prize recruit for an Ohio seat, a Cuban American football star out of Ohio State, a first-round draft pick of the Colts with an MBA from Stanford. All was fine—Trump loves athletes and took Gonzales on Air Force One—until Gonzales voted to impeach the president over Jan. 6. That day, Gonzales was present during a phone call in which the president could have called off his mob but didn’t.

Gonzales says that although he could have beaten the crony Trump chose to challenge him, he decided it wouldn’t be worth the effort it would take only to return to a caucus in thrall to a flawed man he called a “cancer” on the party and who forced him to get security to protect his family. His retirement comes two days before his 37th birthday.

Gonzales is a sterling example of who the Republican Party is sacrificing on the altar of The Donald. Trump’s only animating force for interfering in the 2022 primaries is punishing apostates—any party member who suggests that he didn’t leave the White House for the warm waters of Mar a Lago voluntarily, or upheld the results of the election he lost or, worst of all, voted for impeachment. Already, Trump has supported challengers to three secretaries of state who didn’t declare the election stolen, including Brad Raffensperger who refused to “find” the 11,570 votes needed to steal Georgia from Biden.

Trump is also supporting a challenge to Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and endorsing Mo Brooks, who’s running to replace retiring Sen. Richard Shelby. Brooks stood on the Mall on Jan. 6 in a camouflage hat crying out that, “Today is the day that American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” So far Trump has endorsed close to 40 candidates in 23 states who have little in common save for their abject fealty to him.

In response to Gonzales retiring, Trump sent out a statement that sounded like something out of the Politburo, noting the congressman’s “tremendous loss of popularity, of which he had little, since his ill-informed and very stupid impeachment vote against the sitting president of the United States, me.”

John Alonzo Williams, Cat on a table in front of a window

Meanwhile, Trump is re-upping his claims about the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Yahoo News: Donald Trump wrote to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to ‘decertify’ the 2020 election.