The president is going to say it anyway, so we need to help him.

This is quintessential Donald Trump (via here):

In the days ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first visit to the White House during the Trump presidency, in March 2017, NSC career staffers were told the president wanted to tell Merkel that other NATO countries owed the U.S. money. Could they prepare a report on the topic? Career NSC staffers got to work and returned with the basics: that NATO countries don’t owe the United States money because that’s not how the military alliance works; that every NATO country is supposed to spend at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense, and that while many had fallen short of that commitment, others met it or were on track to do so. In short, no one “owed” the United States anything.

NSC career staffers presented this information to a senior administration official in the West Wing. According to one of them, the official replied: “The president is going to say it anyway, so we need to help him. I mean, it’s not a legal document.”

The career staffers were flummoxed.

“It was the weird disregard for facts that made it offensive,” one of the then-staffers said. “They said, ‘Never mind all that, he’s going to do it anyway so give us stuff that helps the case.’ It was frightening, in a way.” The then-staffer said he refused to contribute further: “I didn’t want to lie.”

It’s also quintessential political correctness, you don’t say what’s true you say what the boss wants to hear. That’s what’s so bad about this, the only thing that matters to Trump is whether he likes it.

Religious discrimination

President Trump and conservatives are fond of yelling about religious discrimination (say Merry Christmas ya heathens) and hey here’s some (via here):

Maddonna, of Simpsonville, S.C., and her family had been told by Miracle Hill Ministries they were a great fit to help foster care children. Then the agency asked what church they attended. After learning the family is Catholic, Miracle Hill turned the Maddonnas away, saying they will only work with evangelical Protestants – not Catholics, Jews or people of any other faith. Miracle Hill, the largest foster care provider in South Carolina, is funded by the federal and state governments and must abide by laws that bar religion-based discrimination.

What say you President Trump?

Instead of denouncing this discriminatory practice, the Trump administration and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster doubled down, sanctioning the government-funded religious discrimination.

Ah, of course, it’s fine for certain religious groups to discriminate against others but try to make them sell cakes to gays and look out.

As Wonkette notes, this group doesn’t allow groups that constitute 65% of people in South Carolina to participate so this isn’t even a majority discriminating against a minority. This means that literally any group could be discriminated against if the Trump administration decides it’s ok–here it’s Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and us non-believers but next time maybe it will anyone who has been divorced or anyone who is left-handed. Yay.

More of Trump’s Political Correctness

The intelligence community has again said that President Trump is wrong:

On Tuesday, top intelligence officials described a different Iran than the president has, one that is not currently trying to make a nuclear bomb and appears to be complying with a 2015 nuclear agreement, even after Trump promised last year to withdraw from it.

On Syria, intelligence officials said the Islamic State would go on “to stoke violence” with thousands of fighters there and in Iraq, and with 12 networks around the world. They also said North Korea was not likely to permanently shed its nuclear weapons — contradicting a prediction Trump has made based on what he has called the “best” relationship the two nations have ever had.

Trump being Trump, he knows that this can’t be true:

In a series of posts the day after senior U.S. intelligence officials briefed Congress and directly contradicted some of Trump’s rosier estimations, the president reasserted his own conclusions and trumpeted his accomplishments on critical national security matters. He said the Islamic State’s control in parts of Iraq and Syria “will soon be destroyed” and there was a “decent chance of Denuclearization” in North Korea.

It’s a good time to remind everyone that when Trump says ‘fake news’ he means that he doesn’t like it, when he says something is wrong it’s probably right, and when his lips are moving or he’s sending out a tweet he’s lying. It’s all about his political correctness–it’s only right if it agrees with him.

Seven million more Americans uninsured because of Trump

As Kevin Drum notes, this isn’t sure yet but according to Gallup:

The U.S. adult uninsured rate stood at 13.7% in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to Americans’ reports of their own health insurance coverage, its highest level since the first quarter of 2014. While still below the 18% high point recorded before implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s individual health insurance mandate in 2014, today’s level is the highest in more than four years, and well above the low point of 10.9% reached in 2016. The 2.8-percentage-point increase since that low represents a net increase of about seven million adults without health insurance.

That’s a good job Donnie. Keep going and you can make even more Americans die.

An unsurprising result

I think most of us expected this:

In spring 2017, not long after President Trump took office, bullying rates among Virginia middle school students were 18 percent higher in places where voters had chosen Trump over Hillary Clinton, a study says.

There were no meaningful differences in bullying and teasing rates between Democratic and Republican localities before the 2016 election. But a statewide sample of more than 155,000 seventh- and eighth-grade students across Virginia’s 132 school districts suggested a correlation between voter preference and the rise in bullying after Trump was inaugurated.

…

They found that a 10-percentage-point increase in voters supporting Trump was associated with a 5 percent jump in middle school teasing because of race or ethnicity and an 8 percent increase in middle school bullying.

The paper is here. It includes this in their explanation for why they did the study:

Although rates of bullying have decreased since 2005 (Musu-Gillette et al., 2017), numerous media reports have claimed that racially and sexually related incidents are on the rise as a result of the 2016 presidential campaign (Bazelon, 2016). There have been more than 50 news reports of school bullying since the election in which students made statements linked to the newly elected president (Samaha, Hayes, & Ansari, 2017). The assumption of these reports is that the election of Donald Trump stimulated an increase in bullying behavior. The National Education Association (Blad, 2016), news analysts (Page, 2017), as well as experts on bullying (Juvonen, 2017) have characterized President Trump as engaging in bullying with his harsh and demeaning statements.

It is obviously difficult to demonstrate a causal link between statements by a public figure and schoolyard bullying. Nevertheless, there are incidents in which youth made threats and jeering statements that closely matched language used by President Trump (Thomsen, 2017). Such incidents are suggestive of the social learning model of aggression and classic studies showing how easily children model the aggressive behavior of adults (Bandura, 1971). However, skeptics have understandably questioned the evidential value of anecdotal observations (Kamenetz, 2016).

The President is a classic bully so it’s not surprising that some students might emulate him.

National emergency should mean impeachment

Democrats have said that they will not put funding for a border wall in the budget. President Trump’s response:

“We can call a national emergency because of the security of our country. Absolutely. We can do it,” Mr. Trump said. “I haven’t done it. I may do it. I may do it. But we can call a national emergency and do it very quickly. It’s another way of doing it. But, if we can do it through a negotiated process, we’re giving that a shot.”

If the president calls a national emergency when there is no emergency to get money for something the Congress has specifically failed to fund, I would think that would be grounds for impeachment even if it’s technically legal. Really, this would be the act of a dictator.

It’s also important to note that the president doesn’t care about the federal workers not being paid:

Mr. Trump expressed very little sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of federal employees going without a paycheck, saying many of them support his agenda.

“This really does have a higher purpose than next week’s pay,” Mr. Trump said. “And the people that won’t get next week’s pay or the following week’s pay, I think if you ever really looked at those people, I think they’d say Mr. President, keep going. This is far more important.”

Really, he doesn’t care:

Trump seemed to display little empathy for the 800,000 federal employees who have been furloughed or are working without being paid, saying that most workers support the shutdown and that the “safety net is going to be having a strong border because we’re going to be safe.” For workers who will not be able to pay their rent, Trump suggested that landlords would “work with” them and that he would encourage them to “be nice and easy” on their tenants.

I wonder how he thinks they’re going to buy food?

Trump makes America polluted again

It’s difficult to see how bad the Trump administration has been on the environment until you see a complete list like the NY Times has put together. It’s a list of 78 rules that have either been revoked or are in the process of being revoked. None of the rules by themselves are too terrible but put them together and you get:

All told, the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks could lead to at least 80,000 extra deaths per decade and cause respiratory problems for more than one million people, according to a separate analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard. That number, however, is likely to be “a major underestimate of the global public health impact,” said Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health.

It might lead to an extra 8000 deaths a year, but it also might lead to higher corporate profits so who’s to say if it’s bad. Ok, I do.

Yeah, global warming is real

Donald Trump is being stupid again (or is that still) on Twitter:

Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?

And there’s no hunger in the world since I just ate lunch. Also, his government just released a report:

A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the U.S. economy by century’s end.

The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Donald Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth.

Trump has taken aggressive steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions.

…

The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the U.S. economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.

For some reason, President Trump didn’t tweet about the report. He ignores stuff that doesn’t reinforce his worldview.

Trump tries to help Saudis

As Kevin Drum notes, this is pretty disgusting:

Trump administration officials last month asked federal law enforcement agencies to examine legal ways of removing exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen in an attempt to persuade Erdogan to ease pressure on the Saudi government, the four sources said.

The effort includes directives to the Justice Department and FBI that officials reopen Turkey’s case for his extradition, as well as a request to the Homeland Security Department for information about his legal status, the four people said.

…

Trump and Erdogan also recently discussed another option to relieve tensions — the release of Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who was sentenced in May to 32 months in prison by a U.S. federal judge for his role in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran, two people familiar with the discussion said. Erdogan has criticized the case against Atilla as a political attack aimed at undermining his government.

Erdogan has wanted to extradite Gulen for years because he claims Gulen was behind the attempted coup against Erdogan, but the US hasn’t complied because there is no real evidence, Now the Trump administration would be willing to give up this long time resident of the US to ease pressure on Saudi Arabia after they killed another long time US resident. And, as KD notes, this isn’t the first time that the Trump administration has been willing to give up Gulen:

A year ago the Wall Street Journal passed along a remarkable story about Michael Flynn, the crackpot National Security Advisor appointed by Donald Trump in late 2016 and then fired in early 2017. According to the Journal, Flynn and his son met in 2016 with some associates of Erdoğan who proposed to pay the Flynns $15 million to secretly kidnap Gulen and fly him to Turkey. This was in September, while Flynn was a top campaign surrogate for Trump. A second meeting was held in December, after Flynn had already been appointed NSA.

Now it seems there is pushback from the deep state:

The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation and complicates the Trump administration’s efforts to preserve its relationship with a close ally. A team of 15 Saudi agents flew to Istanbul on government aircraft in October and killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate, where he had come to pick up documents that he needed for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.

In reaching its conclusions, the CIA examined multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence. Khalid told Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, that he should go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents and gave him assurances that it would be safe to do so.

The Trump administration really wants to work with the Saudis, after all Jared Kushner is best friends with the prince, even if it means sacrificing a US resident or two, we’ll see what other Republicans say.

Trump again blames the victims and gets stuff wrong

There was a devastating wildfire in Paradise California:

 The flames burned down more than 6,700 buildings, almost all of them homes, making it California’s most destructive wildfire since record-keeping began. There were 35 people still missing.

Sheriff’s deputies recovered human remains from at least five homes as they went house-to-house in Paradise canvassing for the missing. It was unclear if the remains were in addition to the nine fatalities already reported by the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.

So what does President Trump tweet?

There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

That’s both offensive as hell and, this being Trump, wrong:

“Mr. President, with all due respect, you are wrong. The fires in So. Cal are urban interface fires and have NOTHING to do with forest management. Come to SoCal and learn the facts & help the victims,” the Pasadena Firefighters Assn. said on Twitter.

Experts have also said forest management was not a factor in California’s two most destructive fires: the Camp, which burned more than 6,000 structures this week in Paradise, and the Tubbs fire last year in wine country.

Forest thinning would not have stopped the Camp or the Tubbs. Fueled by dry grass growing amid scattered pine and oak trees, the Camp tore across land thinned by flames just 10 years ago. The Tubbs burned grassy oak woodlands, not timber land.

Fuck Trump.

Words have consequences

When asked if soldiers would fire on immigrants, Donald Trump answered that he hoped not but he said he told the military that if anyone threw rocks they should consider it a rifle. It seems the Nigerian army was listening:

The Nigerian Army on Friday shared a clip of President Donald Trump saying US troops would open fire on rock-throwing migrants to justify firing on and killing Shia protesters earlier in the week.

Nigerian troops fired on a group of roughly 1000 Shia protesters on Monday, killing over 40 people, according to Amnesty International and leaders of the march. Nigeria’s military has repeatedly been decried for ongoing human rights abuses, but the US government has continued to sell it warplanes and other military equipment.

…

John Agim, a spokesman for the Nigerian Army, on Friday said the video was released as a response to Amnesty International’s condemnation of Monday’s incident, The New York Times reports.

“We released that video to say if President Trump can say that rocks are as good as a rifle, who is Amnesty International?” he said. “What are they then saying? What did David use to kill Goliath? So a stone is a weapon.”

Trump now says he didn’t mean the military would shoot anyone:

 “They do that with us, they’re going to be arrested,” he added. “There are going to be problems. I didn’t say shoot. I didn’t say shoot.”

As usual, I don’t know if he’s so stupid or if he thinks we all are–of course it could be both.

In related news, it seems the Army doesn’t consider the caravan much of a threat:

According to military planning documents, about 20 percent of the roughly 7,000 migrants traveling through Mexico are likely to complete the journey. The unclassified report was obtained and published by Newsweek on Thursday. If the military’s assessment is accurate, it would mean the United States is positioning five soldiers on the border for every one caravan member expected to arrive there.

‘‘Based on historic trends, it is assessed that only a small percentage of the migrants will likely reach the border,’’ the report says. It was prepared by US Army North, a component of US Northern Command, which oversees the mission dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot.

The President has decided that out and out racism will help Republicans next Tuesday. I certainly hope he’s wrong.

Hate week

This caps off a horrible week:

 Armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and at least three handguns, a man shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire inside a crowded Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning, killing at least 11 congregants and wounding four police officers and two others, authorities said.

The week started with news of bombs being sent to Donald Trump’s enemies:

 

a pipe bomb delivered via mail to an estate in Bedford, New York, belonging to billionaire liberal activist George Soros.
That same day, Sayoc, still under the radar of law enforcement, retweeted a post saying, ‘‘The world is waking up to the horrors of George Soros.’’

Additional packages followed, delivered the next day for Clinton and Obama and after that to the cable network CNN, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former Vice President Joe Biden — and other Democratic targets of conservative ire.

In the middle of the bombs, a racist tried to bomb a church:

A white man with a history of violence and mental illness was recorded on surveillance video apparently trying to get inside a predominantly black church in Kentucky before he went to a grocery store and fatally shot two African-Americans, police said.

It was a horrible week but there have indications for a while:

‘‘Prior to the election of President Donald Trump, anti-Semitic harassment and attacks were rare and unexpected, even for Jewish Americans who were prominently situated in the public eye. Following his election, anti-Semitism has become normalized and harassment is a daily occurrence,’’ the report says.

The New York City-based ADL has commissioned other studies of online hate, including a report in May that estimated about 3 million Twitter users posted or reposted at least 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets in English over a 12-month period ending Jan. 28. An earlier report said anti-Semitic incidents in the United States the previous year had reached the highest tally it has counted in more than two decades.

And it didn’t stop President Trump from ramping up the Xenophobia:

 The Trump administration is planning to dispatch 800 more troops to the border at the direction of a president who has declared illegal immigration a ‘‘national emergency’’ and has been stoking fears about it ahead of the fast-approaching midterms just as he did before his own election.

He threatens to close the border, Republicans call a caravan of people seeking asylum an invasion, and obviously stupid conspiracy theories are now believed and acted on. It’s a depressing and frightening time.

Trump administration is still kidnapping children

Officially the Trump administration’s policy of taking children from their parents is no more, but:

But, at a packed processing hub, Christian was taken from Noehmi and placed in a cage with toddlers. Noehmi remained in a cold holding cell, clutching Helen. Soon, she recalled, a plainclothes official arrived and informed her that she and Helen would be separated. “No!” Noehmi cried. “The girl is under my care! Please!”

Noehmi said that the official told her, “Don’t make things too difficult,” and pulled Helen from her arms. “The girl will stay here,” he said, “and you’ll be deported.” Helen cried as he escorted her from the room and out of sight. Noehmi remembers the authorities explaining that Helen’s mother would be able to retrieve her, soon, from wherever they were taking her.

Later that day, Noehmi and Christian were reunited. The adults in the family were fitted with electronic ankle bracelets and all were released, pending court dates. They left the detention center and rushed to Jeny’s house, in McAllen, hoping to find Helen there. When they didn’t, Noehmi began to shake, struggling to explain the situation. “Immigration took your daughter,” she told Jeny.

Is it even crazier and worse? Of course it is, this is the Trump administration:

But, in early August, an unknown official handed Helen a legal document, a “Request for a Flores Bond Hearing,” which described a set of legal proceedings and rights that would have been difficult for Helen to comprehend. (“In a Flores bond hearing, an immigration judge reviews your case to determine whether you pose a danger to the community,” the document began.) On Helen’s form, which was filled out with assistance from officials, there is a checked box next to a line that says, “I withdraw my previous request for a Flores bond hearing.” Beneath that line, the five-year-old signed her name in wobbly letters.

Is it even stupider and inane? Of course it is, this is the Trump administration:

He agreed to represent Noehmi and her family, and at the summer’s end he went with them to court to represent them in removal proceedings. There, a judge granted Noehmi and her relatives more time to apply for asylum. Toward the end of the hearing, Delgado brought up Helen.

“Judge, this case doesn’t stop here,” Delgado said. “What about the little child lost in the system?”

The judge looked confused. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, where is Helen, the five-year-old?”

The judge, Delgado recalled, seemed startled. Both he and the government prosecutor had no idea that Helen existed, let alone where she was being held.

Is there a glaring moment of hypocrisy? Of course, this is the Trump administration:

Soon after, the shelter sent a small black backpack that Helen had left behind. It held Helen’s legal paperwork, including the document that the five-year-old had been told to sign, withdrawing her request to see a judge. The backpack also held Helen’s colored sketch of Lady Liberty. Beneath the statue’s image, a lesson summary, in Spanish, read, “Objective: That the students draw one of the most representative symbols of the United States.”

This is the US under Donald Trump.

The Trump administration is both cruel and incompetent

Here’s another example that shows what the Trump administration is all about:

The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown at the border this spring was troubled from the outset by planning shortfalls, widespread communication failures and administrative indifference to the separation of small children from their parents, according to an unpublished report by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.

…

The DHS Office of Inspector General’s review found at least 860 migrant children were left in Border Patrol holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit mandated by U.S. courts, with one minor confined for 12 days and another for 25.

…

The investigators describe a poorly coordinated interagency process that left distraught parents with little or no knowledge of their children’s whereabouts. In other instances, U.S. officials were forced to share minors’ files on Microsoft Word documents sent as email attachments because the government’s internal systems couldn’t communicate.

…

Based on observations conducted by DHS inspectors at multiple facilities along the border in late June, agents separated children too young to talk from their parents in a way that courted disaster, the report says.

“Border Patrol does not provide pre-verbal children with wrist bracelets or other means of identification, nor does Border Patrol fingerprint or photograph most children during processing to ensure that they can be easily linked with the proper file,” the report said.

…

On June 23, three days after the executive order halting the separations, DHS announced it had developed a “central database” with HHS containing location information for separated parents and minors that both departments could access to reunite families. The inspector general found no evidence of such a database, the report said.

Remember that there was no surge in illegal immigration, this was all caused by policies of the Trump administration and they didn’t plan for it. And then they lied about it when taken to task. So, not only was the family separation policy unnecessarily cruel it was also badly administered. This is the Trump administration in a nutshell.

Trump’s Labor Day

Next Monday the country celebrates labor, this is the way President Trump does it:

President Donald Trump has told Congress he is canceling a pay raise that most civilian federal employees were due to receive in January, citing budgetary constraints.

Last year, his administration passed a tax cut that has mainly gone to the rich and now he uses that as an excuse to get rid of pay increases (and since there is this thing called inflation, that means there’s basically a pay cut). Happy Labor Day.

Another reason government regulations matter

Ronald Reagan snarkily said:

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

This has become the Republican mantra, private business is always better and more trustworthy than government. Here’s a counter example:

The 50-year-old woman and her husband, 49, operated a so-called baby farm. That is, they earned a living taking in children whose parents were unable or unwilling to care for them. Over the course of three years, about 200 children were taken into their custody. Not all of them survived.

…

Joanne Hulbert, who studied the case as Holliston’s town historian, said the Reynolds farm was symbolic of the kind of dangers faced by abandoned and poor children during the 1800s.

“This wasn’t the only baby farm out there, this was just one of many,” said Hulbert. “And maybe [the Reynolds farm had] a more heinous history, the worst of the worst, but none of these places had any oversight.”

…

Even so, the baby farm system would continue for decades, and the risks children faced could be nightmarish. Amelia Dyer, who worked as a baby farmer in Britain during the latter half of the 19th century, is believed to have murdered hundreds of children during her spree. She was hanged in 1896. In New Zealand, Minnie Dean became the only woman executed in that country’s history when she was hanged in 1895 for murdering a baby in her care. Investigators reported also finding three dead children buried in her garden.

Even in Boston, the law that Reynolds inspired did not eliminate risks faced by children. In March 1895, the Globe reported on a baby farm on Shawmut Avenue where a child was “willfully exposed to a draft” and died so the farm’s operator could claim insurance taken out on the child.

This is what some businesses will do without oversight–it’s why rivers were so polluted they caught fire and Lake Erie was declared dead. Governments are far from perfect but at least they have some public oversight.

Lock them up

It was not a good day for Donald Trump yesterday. Paul Manafort, who was his campaign manager for five months, was convicted on eight counts:

Manafort was convicted of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the remaining 10 counts, and the judge declared a mistrial on those charges.

This one seems like a building block case for the possible Russian collusion-it doesn’t talk about the collusion directly but it shows Manafort committed crimes while working with people who worked with Russians, if there was collusion he was probably involved.

In the second case, Michael Cohen pled guilty to counts of breaking campaign finance laws, tax evasion, and bank fraud. This seems less related to Russian collusion but was more directly damaging to Trump:

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, made the extraordinary admission in court Tuesday that Trump had directed him to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 campaign to keep them from speaking publicly about affairs they said they had with Trump.

The whole Mueller probe seems like a classic mob prosecution. It started with lesser figures and is working it’s way in (see who has been charged so far here). There is already enough so that the House should be talking about impeachment, but that’s unlikely as long as Republicans hold the majority. Vote in November.

Turkey, compare and contrast

Donald Trump is very upset with Turkey:

U.S. President Donald Trump intensified his spat with Turkey on Friday by imposing higher tariffs on metal imports, putting unprecedented economic pressure on a NATO ally and deepening turmoil in Turkish financial markets.

Why is he so upset?

Brunson, an evangelical Presbyterian pastor from North Carolina, was jailed for allegedly supporting a group that Ankara blames for an attempted coup in 2016. Brunson denies the

charge. His cause resonates with Christian conservative supporters of Trump, who could also be influential as Republicans seek to retain control of Congress in midterm elections in November.

This was a change:

At the U.N. General Assembly last year, Trump called Erdogan a “friend” who got “very high marks” for how he runs the country.

Just weeks ago, Trump was reported to have fist-bumped Erdogan during a NATO meeting in Brussels.

Now compare this to an incident last May:

Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, including his government security forces and several armed individuals, violently charged a group of protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence here on Tuesday night in what the police characterized as “a brutal attack.”

…

The episode was not the first time that Turkish security forces have ignited violence in the American capital. The police and members of Mr. Erdogan’s security team clashed with demonstrators last year outside the Brookings Institution, where Mr. Erdogan was giving a speech. Brookings wrote on its website that his bodyguards had “behaved unacceptably — they roughed up protesters outside the building and tried to drag away ‘undesired’ journalists, an approach typical of the Russians or Chinese.”

After that incident, President Trump … still called Erdogan a good friend. So, roughing up US protestors in the US is fine but jailing an evangelical pastor crosses the line? This is life in the time of Trump.

How the pro-life treat immigrants

Well, this is typical of the Trump administration (in other words, horrific):

Two weeks after arriving in the US seeking asylum, E, 23, found herself in a detention cell in San Luis, Arizona, bleeding profusely and begging for help from staff at the facility. She was four months pregnant and felt like she was losing her baby. She had come to the US from El Salvador after finding out she was pregnant, in the hopes of raising her son in a safer home.

“An official arrived and they said it was not a hospital and they weren’t doctors. They wouldn’t look after me,” she told BuzzFeed News, speaking by phone from another detention center, Otay Mesa in San Diego. “I realized I was losing my son. It was his life that I was bleeding out. I was staining everything. I spent about eight days just lying down. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t do anything. I started crying and crying and crying.”

…

While the national focus has been on family separations, another Department of Homeland Security policy quietly introduced by the Trump administration five months earlier has devastated women fleeing violence in their home countries: the detention of pregnant women not yet in their third trimester.

Before that directive, which the Trump administration implemented in December before announcing it in March, ICE was under an Obama administration–era directive not to detain pregnant women except in extreme circumstances or in relatively rare cases of expedited deportation.

The new ICE directive states that women are not to be held into their third trimester and that ICE is responsible for “ensuring pregnant detainees receive appropriate medical care including effectuating transfers to facilities that are able to provide appropriate medical treatment.”

But BuzzFeed News has found evidence that that directive is not being carried out. Instead, women in immigration detention are often denied adequate medical care, even when in dire need of it, are shackled around the stomach while being transported between facilities, and have been physically and psychologically mistreated.

This from the most pro-life President in American history. Of course, I’m not sure this administration considers immigrants real people.

There’s a bill in the Senate to stop this and there is also action in the House. Both of my Senators are co-sponsors and my Rep (Katherine Clark) introduced an amendment for similar restrictions. Yay Massachusetts.

Civility

Most people have heard this quote from William Lloyd Garrison about civility:

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.

But he has an even more relevant quote:

With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.

People who take children away from their parents are not reasonable or humane and being civil with them gains little.

Wonkette brings up another relevant case here:

Anti-abortion activists recently blanketed two Indianapolis neighborhoods with flyers to tell people living there that one of their neighbors is a doctor who performs abortions.

The flyers were produced in conjunction with a national conference held this week in Indianapolis by an organization that seeks to abolish legal abortion.  About 200 to 300 members of Dallas-based Operation Save America will attend the conference, said James Farrar, pastor of the Aletheia Church on the southside, a local church that is helping host the event.

…

Operation Save America does not advocate violence, Farrar said. Every person who attends the conference signs a pledge of non-violence.

“We are pro-life. We believe that people have a right to live. … In the entire history of OSA, there’s never been a case where OSA has ever been prosecuted or been violent towards anyone,” he said.

Hey, here’s a story about OSA:

The group’s protest efforts have been focused on site of the future Planned Parenthood clinic on South Claiborne Avenue, but on Sunday, they took a different turn when members showed up inside the First Unitarian Universalist Church at Claiborne and Jefferson. The disturbance took place as the congregation was holding a moment of silence for a member of the church who had died the week before, said the Rev. Deanna Vandiver.

“Into that sacred silence, a voice began to speak, and it began to speak about ‘abominations,’ ” Vandiver said. The protesters were shouting that the church was not a true faith, she said. “Literally in our most tender and vulnerable space, religious terrorism began.”

And let’s look at some history of the organization:

In 1994, Flip Benham became the director of the organization, then called Operation Rescue National. Benham replaced Keith Tucci, who had replaced Randall Terry.^[3] Terry, Tucci and Benham have all been convicted of crimes related to their protest activities.^[4] Rusty Thomas is the current national director, having taken over when Flip Benham stepped down.

And some more history:

On May 31, 2009, Tiller was assassinated in his church. Scott Roeder of Merriam, KS was convicted of first degree murder in the shooting. Operation Rescue denounced Tiller’s murder in numerous statements, describing it as “cowardly”^[27][28] and “antithetical to what we believe”.^[29] The group also said that Roeder had “never been a member, contributor, or volunteer with Operation Rescue.”^[30] Roeder responded to Newman’s disavowal by declaring, “Well, my gosh. I’ve got probably a thousand dollars worth of receipts, at least, from the money I’ve donated to him.”^[31]

The phone number for Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor, Cheryl Sullenger, was found on the dashboard of Scott Roeder’s car.^[32] At first Sullenger, who was convicted for conspiring to blow up a California abortion clinic in 1988, denied any contact with him, saying that her phone number is freely available online. Then, she revised her statements, indicating that she informed Scott Roeder of where Dr Tiller would be at specific times:

“He would call and say, ‘When does court start? When’s the next hearing?'” Sullenger said. “I was polite enough to give him the information. I had no reason not to. Who knew? Who knew, you know what I mean?”

And Wonkette looks at a list of violence against abortion providers:

Since the 1994 murder of Dr. David Gunn, there have been 10 more murders and 26 attempted murders related to anti-abortion terrorism. Between 1977 and 2009, according to the National Abortion Federation, there were 179 incidents of assault and battery, 41 bombings, 175 arsons, 96 attempted bombings or arsons, 390 invasions, 1400 incidents of vandalism, 1993 incidents of trespassing, 100 butyric acid attacks, 659 anthrax threats, 4 kidnappings, 506 death threats, 151 burglaries and 525 incidents of stalking committed by anti-abortion terrorists. Obviously those numbers have gone up in the last 9 years.

These people have shown they don’t deserve civility. And it’s a waste of time to try to engage with them. Fuck them.