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FOCUS: I Have No More Patience for Trump Supporters |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Thursday, 24 August 2017 11:09 |
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Pierce writes: "A guy basically went mad, right there on the stage in front of you, and you cheered and booed right on cue because you're sheep and because he directed his insanity at all the scapegoats that your favorite radio and TV personalities have been creating for you over the past three decades."
President Trump. (photo: Getty)
I Have No More Patience for Trump Supporters
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
24 August 17
Last night in Arizona, Trump came right up to the edge of inciting you to riot and you rode along with him.
 t least, old Ted Agnew had the late William Safire writing his stuff for him. "Nattering nabobs of negativism." "Pusillanimous pussyfooters." I mean, that's the top-shelf brand right there. It's an honor to have such invective thrown in your direction. Ol' Ted broke new ground in only two areas—taking cheap-ass bribes in the office of the vice president and attacking the media.
Instead, 45 years later, we get this mendacious litany of sixth-grade sneering.
So the -- and I mean truly dishonest people in the media and the fake media, they make up stories. They have no sources in many cases. They say "a source says" -- there is no such thing. But they don't report the facts. Just like they don't want to report that I spoke out forcefully against hatred, bigotry and violence and strongly condemned the neo-Nazis, the White Supremacists, and the KKK.
(APPLAUSE)
I openly called for unity, healing and love, and they know it because they were all there. So what I did --
(APPLAUSE)
So what I did is I thought, I'd take just a second, and I'm really doing this more than anything else, because you know where my heart is, OK?
(APPLAUSE)
I'm really doing this to show you how damned dishonest these people are.
And then,
You know why? Because they are very dishonest people. So I said, racism is evil. Now they only choose, you know, like a half a sentence here or there and then they just go on this long rampage, or they put on these real lightweights all around a table that nobody ever heard of, and they all say what a bad guy I am. But, I mean do you ever see anything -- and then you wonder why CNN is doing relatively poorly in the ratings. Because they're putting like seven people all negative on Trump. And they fired Jeffrey Lord, poor Jeffrey. Jeffrey Lord. I guess he was getting a little fed up, and he was probably fighting back a little bit too hard. They said, we've better get out of here; we can't have that.And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold true as Americans. Now let me ask you, can it be any better than that, in all fairness? And you know I mention that, but to the best of my knowledge when there was a big problem, Barack Obama never said it took place because of radical Islamic terrorists, he never said that, right.
And, finally, the full Schickelgruber:
And -- and I say it, and you know, we're all pros. We're all, like, we have a certain sense. We're smart people. These are truly dishonest people. And not all of them. Not all of them. You have some very good reporters. You have some very fair journalists. But for the most part, honestly, these are really, really dishonest people, and they're bad people. And I really think they don't like our country. I really believe that. And I don't believe they're going to change, and that's why I do this. If they would change, I would never say it. The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself, and the fake news…These are sick people. You know the thing I don't understand? You would think -- you would think they'd want to make our country great again, and I honestly believe they don't. I honestly believe it. If you want to discover the source of the division in our country, look no further than the fake news and the crooked media...
Before we get to the other stuff, and there was lots of other stuff, I'd like to address myself to those people represented by the parenthetical notation (Applause) in the above transcript, those people who waited for hours in 105-degree heat so that they could have the G-spot of their irrationality properly stroked for them. You're all suckers. You're dim and you're ignorant and you can't even feel yourself sliding toward something that will surprise even you with its fundamental ugliness, something that everybody who can see past the veil of their emotions can see as plain as a church by daylight, to borrow a phrase from that Willie Shakespeare fella. The problem, of course, is that you, in your pathetic desire to be loved by a guy who wouldn't have 15 seconds for you on the street, are dragging the rest of us toward that end, too.
A guy basically went mad, right there on the stage in front of you, and you cheered and booed right on cue because you're sheep and because he directed his insanity at all the scapegoats that your favorite radio and TV personalities have been creating for you over the past three decades. Especially, I guess, people like me who practice the craft of journalism in a country that honors that craft in its most essential founding documents. The President of the United States came right up to the edge of inciting you to riot and you rode along with him. You're on his team, by god.
Are you good people? I keep hearing that you are, but let's go back to Tuesday night's transcripts and see what we find.
One vote away. One vote away. We were one vote away. Think of it, seven years the Republicans -- and again, you have some great senators, but we were one vote away from repealing it.
(CROWD CHANTING)
But, you know, they all said, Mr. President, your speech was so good last night, please, please, Mr. President don't mention any names. So I won't. I won't. No I won't vote -- one vote away, I will not mention any names. Very presidential, isn't' it? Very presidential. And nobody wants me to talk about your other senator, who's weak on borders, weak on crime, so I won't talk about him.
Right there, in the passive-aggressive fashion of the true moral coward, he made a bobo out of a former POW who currently is undergoing treatment for what is likely a terminal brain cancer. And you chanted and cheered. Do good people chant and cheer a rhetorical assault on a dying man of respect and honor?
I have no more patience, and I had very little to start with. I don't care why you're anxious. I don't care for anybody's interpretation of why you voted for this abomination of a politician, and why you cheer him now, because any explanation not rooted in the nastier bits of basic human spleen is worthless. I don't want any politicians who seek to appeal to the more benign manifestations of your condition because there's no way to separate those from all the rest of the hate and fear and stupidity. (And, for my colleagues in the Vance-Arnade-Zito school of Trump Whispering, here's a hint: They hate you, too.) I don't care why you sat out in a roasting pan since 5 a.m. Tuesday morning to whistle and cheer and stomp your feet for a scared, dangerous little man who tells you that your every bloody fantasy about your enemies is the height of patriotism. You are now the declared adversaries of what I do for a living, and your idol is a danger to the country and so are you. Own it. Deal with it. And, for the love of god, and for the sake of the rest of us who live in this country, do better at being citizens.
As to the rest, I might have been a little groggy, but I thought I heard him say he was going to shut down the government unless Congress gives him money for his stupid wall that Mexico was supposed to finance. I thought I heard him tell that evil racist gossoon, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, to count on a pardon down the line somewhere. And, I swear to god, I thought I heard him call the Democrats in the Congress communists.
Wait. What?
It's all they're good at. It's all they're good at. That's all they do. On healthcare, they have 48 Democrats. We got no votes. We got no votes. And it would have been great healthcare. And by the way, would have been great healthcare for Arizona. Would have been great. So the Democrats have no ideas, no policy, no vision for the country other than total socialism and maybe, frankly, a step beyond socialism from what I'm seeing.
(BOOING)
Thought so.
(Also, note to all the Purity Police who think people like Joy Reid are "red-baiting" when they mention that Russian ratfcking helped decide the last presidential election. That bit right at the end there? That's actual red-baiting. Please take notes. I don't want to have to go over this again.)
It was a deadening, numbing 77 minutes. (If there's one modern orator he most resembles, it's Fidel Castro.) The abiding feelings that I took away from this carnival of the Id were twofold: first, that this jefe manqué is on the verge of sending people infinitely better than he is to die in a war he doesn't understand, and second, and probably most important, this is a president* who is scared to death. He's frightened of the responsibilities of his office, of the mounting unpopularity of both himself and his policies, and of the hounds baying at the frontiers of his shady past and shadier present. He's terrified, and he should be. He's desperately shoring up the bubble that his ovine followers helped him build to insulate him from the truth and from empirical reality.
Come to this house.
Be one of us.
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Justice Works in America for Those Who Can Buy It |
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Thursday, 24 August 2017 08:23 |
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Warner writes: "I spent 21 years behind bars for a crime I did not commit."
Lakeith Stanfield plays Colin Warner in the movie created based on Warner's real life, "Crown Heights." (photo: IFC Films)
Justice Works in America for Those Who Can Buy It
By Colin Warner, USA Today
24 August 17
Demand for confessions and plea deals keeps young men of color and the poor from getting due process.
 spent 21 years behind bars for a crime I did not commit.
In 1980, I was living in Crown Heights, N.Y., and was convicted in the shooting death of a 16-year-old in the nearby Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. I was 18, and was incarcerated despite persistent efforts by friend and fellow Trinidadian Carl King to secure my freedom. King is my hero. Most people in the system have no one like him fighting on their behalf.
The law enforcement officials in charge of the investigation had reason to know, even as they charged me, that the criminal justice system wasn’t working.
It was a new era of mass incarceration, and the police and prosecutors were empowered, as they still are, to detain young men of color, and to find a reason to charge them and lock them up. A system built upon rounding up suspects and demanding confessions and plea deals, in which the state has great power and the accused have little, is a system that does grave harm.
Finally exonerated
In 2001, someone else confessed to the crime. I was exonerated that February.
A thorough investigation would likely have prevented me from going to prison, but no one had a stake in sorting out my innocence. I didn’t have enough money to pay for a better defense, and consequently I was sentenced to 15 years to life.
Too often, the system doesn’t work for people who can’t afford to defend themselves.
After 15 years, I became eligible for parole, I was in my 30s and married to an incredible woman who, along with King, gave me the strength to endure this ordeal. I hoped to be set free. But to get parole, I had to admit to the crime and exhibit remorse. When I insisted upon my innocence, any consideration of parole disappeared.
Shouldn’t a parole board be predisposed, in the absence of negative information about a person’s performance in prison, to offer hope and some sort of path toward freedom? Despite evidence that aging offenders are less likely to return to crime, parole boards keep people imprisoned who are of little threat to public safety.
Prepare prisoners to return to society
Many of the men I met in prison were guilty of serious crimes and serving long sentences. I believe certain guilty people need to be incarcerated, but I also know that many have potential and deserve a second chance. They come into the legal system with few resources, are confined in a way that resembles slavery, and eventually are released with still fewer resources.
Prison does not prepare you to go home.
Our criminal justice system is a waste pit of lost human potential. No one benefits from the extended periods of incarceration that are the norm in our country — not taxpayers, not victims, not law enforcement, not the community. There are fairer, cheaper and more humane ways to treat people who are guilty of crimes other than long, mind-numbing sentences.
Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice research center, has suggested that sentences of more than 20 years are counterproductive and costly.
In my mind, the first purpose of incarceration is to punish a guilty person by restricting his freedom and separating him from his community. But when someone is incarcerated, the system should prepare that person for a successful return to family, friends and community.
Instead of stripping people of their rights, time in prison should include enough education to enable inmates to function and give back. People coming out of prison should be ready to work or attend school, pay taxes, participate in elections, serve on juries, and become useful citizens. Prison should make you a better person, not destroy your potential.
Long sentences change people for the worse. When hope disappears, it takes with it any motivation for self-improvement. I saw men fall apart and engage in crazy behavior that I had seen only on TV.
Prison needs to be a place for growth, enabling people who are locked up to prepare for better lives. Because sooner or later, most of us do come home.
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We Might Lose Giant Sequoia National Monument This Week |
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Thursday, 24 August 2017 08:15 |
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Moffitt writes: "While Congress is on recess, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is continuing his 'review' of national monuments across the country. A thinly veiled step towards selling out some of our country's best wild places and historic sites."
Sequoia trees in Sequoia national monument. (photo: NPS)
We Might Lose Giant Sequoia National Monument This Week
By Lena Moffitt, The Hill
24 August 17
 hile Congress is on recess, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is continuing his “review” of national monuments across the country. A thinly veiled step towards selling out some of our country’s best wild places and historic sites, the review threatens not just the national monuments on Zinke’s list, but parks and public lands across the U.S.
The Trump administration has made it clear that dirty fuel development and other extractive industries are the top priority of the Interior Department. At a recent speech before the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, Zinke noted he sides more with Gifford Pinchot than environmentalist John Muir. That’s not surprising since Pinchot, a Muir contemporary, favored extracting resources from public lands.
Thankfully in the tug of war between extraction and preservation, preservation won out in places like Muir’s beloved Sierra Nevada forests. Muir pushed back against the timber industry, which had logged Giant Sequoias almost out of existence. He advocated for protection for the big trees and their forests.
Today Giant Sequoias provide a towering reminder of the wonder and power of the natural world, as well as our place in it and role in its protection. Safeguarded by national parks and monuments, these trees now also help drive a thriving outdoor recreation economy. Diners, breweries and hotels have sprung up as visitation has increased with the placement of parks and monuments on the map.
The designation of Giant Sequoia National Monument in particular has hitched the monument to a host of other benefits. The monument is the closest access point to the Sierras the 18 million people who live in greater Los Angeles for example. It also provides a chance for youth from California's Central Valley — an area suffering from the worst air and water pollution in the nation — to experience nature. That access is especially important in an increasingly digital world, confirmed by a growing body of research into the importance of the outdoors for better health and wellness.
The watersheds in the monument support downstream farms in the Central Valley that grow 8 percent of all food produced in the U.S. And in other far-ranging effects, the monument mitigates climate change. Researchers have discovered that Giant Sequoia and related coast redwood forests store more climate-altering carbon pollution per acre than any other forest type on Earth.
Yet, Giant Sequoia remains on Secretary Zinke’s list for review. As do many other irreplaceable natural and cultural sites that are worth much more preserved than mined, logged, fracked or drilled.
The cultural sites of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah hold history that can never be replaced. Its recognition as a national monument was a promise for the future, and a better way of working with Tribal Nations, as much as an acknowledgement of the past. From Apollo astronaut training sites in Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks to the dinosaur fossil “Shangri-la” of Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, the national monuments Zinke is reviewing were all protected for a reason. Over time the reasons to continue safeguarding them have only grown, as these national monuments have become an integral part of local communities, economies, and our national identity.
That Zinke would even consider giving all this away is a nod to the power of the extractive industry’s influence over the Trump administration. Trump’s executive order to review national monument protections designated in the last 30 years was Zinke’s Grand Canyon moment — his chance to stand up for our great outdoors against private interests just as Teddy Roosevelt did when he protected the Grand Canyon.
Later this week Zinke is set to issue his final recommendation for the future of our national monuments. As he does so, I hope he will remember that nobody looks back with regret on the decision to protect the Grand Canyon or to save the Giant Sequoias.
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Trump Unhinged |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=40776"><span class="small">Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page</span></a>
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Wednesday, 23 August 2017 14:04 |
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Rather writes: "Blame the press. Blame President Obama. Insist down is up and up is down. Create an alternate reality. Gaslight. Gaslight. Gaslight. Misquote yourself. Leave out the words that outraged a majority of a nation. The speech that President Trump gave tonight was not the teleprompter-confined President of last night's speech on Afghanistan."
Dan Rather. (photo: Reuters)
Trump Unhinged
By Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page
23 August 17
 lame the press. Blame President Obama. Insist down is up and up is down. Create an alternate reality. Gaslight. Gaslight. Gaslight. Misquote yourself. Leave out the words that outraged a majority of a nation.
The speech that President Trump gave tonight was not the teleprompter-confined President of last night's speech on Afghanistan. He was the martyr to an unfair witch hunt. His words after Charlottesville were in reality healing - if the press would just tell the truth. He was misquoted and taken out of context. He has drawn the battle lines to divide a nation between his "us" and the "them" of the others. And he basks in the swagger.
Nevermind all the critics outside of the press, the CEOs, the GOP officials who have questioned his mental stability, and the global condemnation.
But why does he attack the press, as "bad people" who "don't like our country?" "Sick people?" Why does he say "the only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media and the fake news?" CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post is the enemy. Fox News and Sean Hannity are the good guys.
This bombast is because the press is a check on power. The press is performing its constitutional responsibilities. The investigative reporting has drawn blood.
The forces of political gravity that have tethered his agenda to reality went unstated. So he attacks sanctuary cities. He touts a wall that is apparently being built, and over which he is willing to apparently shut down the government. He hinted at a pardon for the controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio. "Sheriff Joe can feel good."
He keeps fighting the battle over healthcare, unable to let go of a stinging defeat. Over and over he said "one vote away..." fully conscious that one of those key votes that doomed his healthcare effort was the senior senator from Arizona, John McCain. "I won't mention any names. Very presidential." And then he attacked the junior senator from Arizona, Republican and Trump critic Jeff Flake, without mentioning his name either. But the tenor was clear. Mr. Trump was ready to attack any GOP senator who has the temerity to go against him.
This was Trump as candidate, uncaged, unscripted, unabashed, and frankly unhinged. The crowd got to chant "lock her up" to the name of Hillary Clinton and cheer a president who claims that he has accomplished more than any president at this point in a term (nevermind reality). He was playing to the home crowd. But there is a much bigger world out there, no matter the picture Mr. Trump may wish to paint.
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The CEOs Won't Save Us |
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Wednesday, 23 August 2017 14:00 |
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Dayen writes: "Why do we keep falling for the myth that business leaders are the moral pillars of America?"
Trump meets with CEOs of GM, Ford, Fiat Chrysler. (photo: CNN)
The CEOs Won't Save Us
By David Dayen, The New Republic
23 August 17
Why do we keep falling for the myth that business leaders are the moral pillars of America?
 ur everyday lives have become so consumed by partisan politics that fabulously wealthy and powerful CEOs can become folk heroes for defying a president. Since Donald Trump preempted mass resignations from his business executive panels last week by disbanding two of them (on manufacturing and economic policy) and canceling a third (on infrastructure), pundits have fallen over themselves to praise CEOs as the moral conscience of the nation.
The same corporate celebrity culture that elevated Trump from the boardroom to the White House is now building monuments to the bold CEOs who criticize him. But like the sets of The Apprentice, the backdrop is fake. Public relations spin aside, major corporations remain committed to the Trump agenda, and they have practically been the sole beneficiaries of the administration’s actions thus far. The only difference after Charlottesville is that all their lobbying and favor-trading has gone underground.
Let’s first stipulate that these corporate advisory panels, a staple of presidencies in the modern age, shouldn’t exist. They merely allow CEOs to influence the president directly, rather than through registered lobbyists. If you’re not remembering any made-for-TV White House meetings in which Medicaid or food stamps beneficiaries detailed their plight to President Trump and made the case for increased benefits, that’s because such open groveling only happens with business titans.
But CEOs didn’t really need to nudge this administration toward their preferred goals. Don’t believe the nonsense that the Trump-business alliance has somehow been “uneasy.” Since the inauguration, Trump’s executive branch has sought to strip as many regulations out of the federal register as possible, employing teams of subordinates with industry ties to do the job. The Environmental Protection Agency under Trump is on track to become the most responsive federal agency to corporate entreaties in history. And the Trump administration legislative agenda reads like a corporate wish list as well: huge corporate tax cuts, privatizing the nation’s infrastructure, and so on.
The advisory panels were always an appendage. When they began to anger the growing majority of consumers who don’t like the president, they became utterly superfluous. The neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, and Trump’s abhorrent comments afterward, became a convenient trigger for CEOs to hit the eject button on public ties to the president. But the private ties persist.
As Politico reported, CEOs will continue to lobby the White House aggressively to shape tax and regulatory policy. They won’t show up in a room with Trump when cameras are rolling, but otherwise it’s business as usual, with private outreach calls and routine staff-level communications. And because the Trump administration has eliminated the public release of White House visitor logs, we won’t know which CEOs are meeting with the president or his top associates.
CEOs who gave Trump advice before Charlottesville will surely continue now, if only because of the massive benefits. Stephen Schwarzman of private equity firm Blackstone has been a vocal ally of Trump, speaking to him often. This relationship netted Schwarzman’s company a $20 billion investment from the government of Saudi Arabia for a private infrastructure fund, which the kingdom announced while Trump was in the country. Schwarzman may no longer be the chair of the now-defunct Strategic and Policy Forum, but the idea that he’ll drop off the White House radar is absurd.
CEOs may snub a president who apologizes for white supremacy, but they’ll continue to ring up Vice President Mike Pence, the repository of millions of dollars in corporate lobbying. Pence’s own former congressional chief of staff has lobbied him on behalf of insurance company Aflac, tech giant Microsoft, biofuels trade group Fuels America, and telecom firms Verizon and AT&T.
The AT&T lobbying may have already paid off. Though candidate Trump threatened to nix the company’s $85 billion merger with Time Warner, reports indicate that the Justice Department will wave through the deal. AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson recently intoned how much black lives matter, but judging from his actions, the lives that matter most to him are shareholders’.
All you really have to do to see where corporations stand on Trump is watch some television. The Business Roundtable, a collection of leading corporations, has scheduled millions of dollars in television ads supporting corporate tax cuts, Trump’s biggest agenda item for the fall. “It is a priority of Business Roundtable to get tax reform done this year, and we remain committed,” the group’s vice president confirmed to Politico.
The chair of the Business Roundtable is JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, last seen leaking that he totally wanted to leave the president’s business forum after the fact, and thundering that “the evil on display by these perpetrators of hate . . . has no place in a country that draws its strength from our diversity and humanity.” If Dimon was so opposed to the president’s hatemongering, he wouldn’t be ponying up the advertising support for his legislative agenda.
This is what makes the deification of the CEO class so revolting. A few executives may have turned down some glorified photo-ops, but that was just an exercise in brand management. Business support for Trumponomics remains strong. Mere words of opposition do not amount to a profile in courage. Nor does the dissolution of a public lobbying campaign in favor of a private one. Anti-racist groups like Color of Change, which pressured corporations to back away from Trump, shouldn’t be fooled.
It’s amazing how many have embraced this fake revolt as a signal that American capitalism is about to turn a corner. “It took Donald Trump to convince corporate leaders that maximizing profits for shareholders is not all that matters,” gushed Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post. But no corporate leader actually believes that. There is no moral authority in the executive suites. Instead, there is an enduring partnership between CEOs and the White House on policy.
Perhaps the clearest example of how these resignations represent self-interest rather than public interest comes from corporate raider Carl Icahn. He quit his unofficial post as White House regulatory czar, not because of moral compulsion, but because he knew that The New Yorker was about to drop an article revealing the extent of his self-dealing on behalf of his refinery company. Hilariously, Icahn’s bid for personal enrichment failed only because more powerful oil company CEOs lobbied against it.
Far from selfless arbiters of right and wrong, CEOs are as responsible as anyone in America for skyrocketing inequality, climate crisis, waves of consumer fraud, and the biggest financial meltdown since the Depression. Condemning the unpopular views of an unpopular president whom they see as an inferior businessman is no sacrifice, especially when they are simultaneously plotting with administration officials to win as many perks as possible. CEOs aren’t “finding their voice”; they’re finding a way to control government like a marionette, while hiding the strings.
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