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tenderfoot
tenderfoot's Journal
tenderfoot's Journal
June 18, 2018
Border patrol agents jokes that wailing children sound like an orchestra
New: ProPublica has obtained audio from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, in which children can be heard wailing.
Border Patrol agent jokes, “We have an orchestra here.”
https://twitter.com/ProPublica/status/1008799826669178880
It's no wonder Trump poll numbers are up... 
P.S. FUCK YOU lurking wingnuts
June 15, 2018
<snip>
Bruni is far from alone in smarmily crying out THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON! every time a liberal gets angry about something they ought to be angry about. It is the laziest, stupidest theory, one that posits that the only possible way to take down Trump from his evildoing is to keep your voice so quiet that everyone else can opt out of hearing it. It’s also a clear case of naked pandering from newspapers that skew liberal but still yearn—whether for financial reasons or out of sheer vanity—to appear fair to both sides. This is how you end up with two sets of rules for each party. Republicans can be openly racist, nationalist, corrupt, and horny. Democrats have to be GOOD, because Americans apparently crave goodness even though 60 million of them voted for Donald Trump.
Would you like to know why Trump REALLY won? Cool. Donald Trump got elected because the electoral college is outdated and worthless. He got elected because of voter suppression. He got elected because of the fear and the racism of some white voters—whether that racism is out in the open, or kept in a closet in the suburbs somewhere. He got elected because his opponent had a poor election strategy. He got elected because of the great ocean patch of horseshit news that floats into every corner of the Internet, and the willingness of bad actors (Fox News, Infowars, Russia) to add to that patch. And he got elected because of the platforms of people like Frank Bruni, who continually preach adherence to norms and believe any deviation from them is a losing strategy.
There are many people to blame for Trump, but celebrities who vocally oppose him are probably the last people you should target. That fabled high road that Bruni is preaching? Well, he can rest assured that the Democratic Party also has an enormous hard-on for it. Chuck Schumer has openly praised Trump and courted him. A bunch of Democrats voted for a toxic bank-deregulation vote and have confirmed nearly every crooked nominee that Trump pulled out of the sewer to further rip off the American people. They’ve also pretty much dropped cries for gun control. They’re being MORE than civil, and the result is Republicans running roughshod over our most vulnerable citizens.
Wanna know how Trump wins re-election? This is how. It’s the same goddamn reason he won in 2016. He’ll win again because both the establishment media and the Democratic kingmakers are thin-skinned dipshits who will blame literally ANYONE for Trump but themselves. They will also recognize the Republican Party as legitimate and deserving of its power, when it has long since been exposed as a wholly criminal enterprise that needs to be destroyed. I guess that’s strong language, but strong language is needed when the supposed guardians of democracy are willing to yuk it up with Sarah Sanders at a dinner and concoct 900 synonyms for the word lie, all in the name of politesse.
https://www.gq.com/story/this-is-why-trump-won
GQ: This Is Why Trump Won
On Wednesday, MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff got to tour a former Walmart turned detention facility—a prison, really—for immigrant children, many of whom have been forcibly separated from their parents by U.S. officials. There, he found a Soviet-style mural of President Trump alongside a quote from The Art of the Deal. According to Soboroff, the kids only get two hours outside a day. The prison is growing overcrowded and is only getting worse, thanks to the Trump administration’s zeal for prosecuting immigrants, some of whom were already living here legally. And these are just the kids who are accounted for. There are also, of course, over a thousand immigrant children who are now UNACCOUNTED for.
In other news, Robert De Niro said a bad word in public.
This was apparently an egregious enough offense that it merited two separate op-eds in The Washington Post, and another op-ed in The New York Times from Frank Bruni, who was once a wonderful restaurant critic and is now one of the most singularly inane political columnists working today, which is saying a lot! His column about De Niro came in the form of an open letter, because Bruni is apparently an 8th grader. It’s also full of the same tepid, tut-tutting “Take the high road” hogwash that helped get us into this mess in the first place. Worst of all, Bruni posits all of his pathetic complacency as a grand, overarching form of political strategy.
When you answer name-calling with name-calling and tantrums with tantrums, you’re not resisting [Trump]. You’re mirroring him. You’re not diminishing him. You’re demeaning yourselves. Many voters don’t hear your arguments or the facts, which are on your side. They just wince at the din.
<snip>
Bruni is far from alone in smarmily crying out THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON! every time a liberal gets angry about something they ought to be angry about. It is the laziest, stupidest theory, one that posits that the only possible way to take down Trump from his evildoing is to keep your voice so quiet that everyone else can opt out of hearing it. It’s also a clear case of naked pandering from newspapers that skew liberal but still yearn—whether for financial reasons or out of sheer vanity—to appear fair to both sides. This is how you end up with two sets of rules for each party. Republicans can be openly racist, nationalist, corrupt, and horny. Democrats have to be GOOD, because Americans apparently crave goodness even though 60 million of them voted for Donald Trump.
Would you like to know why Trump REALLY won? Cool. Donald Trump got elected because the electoral college is outdated and worthless. He got elected because of voter suppression. He got elected because of the fear and the racism of some white voters—whether that racism is out in the open, or kept in a closet in the suburbs somewhere. He got elected because his opponent had a poor election strategy. He got elected because of the great ocean patch of horseshit news that floats into every corner of the Internet, and the willingness of bad actors (Fox News, Infowars, Russia) to add to that patch. And he got elected because of the platforms of people like Frank Bruni, who continually preach adherence to norms and believe any deviation from them is a losing strategy.
Enough with “idiot” and “moron” (unless you’re directly quoting an administration official). They’re schoolyard and splenetic. Enough with Hitler, too. Has Trump shown fascistic tendencies? Yes. Is he the second coming of the Third Reich? No. Nor are the spineless Republicans who have enabled him Nazi collaborators, not on the evidence of what has and hasn’t happened so far.
There are many people to blame for Trump, but celebrities who vocally oppose him are probably the last people you should target. That fabled high road that Bruni is preaching? Well, he can rest assured that the Democratic Party also has an enormous hard-on for it. Chuck Schumer has openly praised Trump and courted him. A bunch of Democrats voted for a toxic bank-deregulation vote and have confirmed nearly every crooked nominee that Trump pulled out of the sewer to further rip off the American people. They’ve also pretty much dropped cries for gun control. They’re being MORE than civil, and the result is Republicans running roughshod over our most vulnerable citizens.
Wanna know how Trump wins re-election? This is how. It’s the same goddamn reason he won in 2016. He’ll win again because both the establishment media and the Democratic kingmakers are thin-skinned dipshits who will blame literally ANYONE for Trump but themselves. They will also recognize the Republican Party as legitimate and deserving of its power, when it has long since been exposed as a wholly criminal enterprise that needs to be destroyed. I guess that’s strong language, but strong language is needed when the supposed guardians of democracy are willing to yuk it up with Sarah Sanders at a dinner and concoct 900 synonyms for the word lie, all in the name of politesse.
https://www.gq.com/story/this-is-why-trump-won
June 13, 2018
Trump Appointee Compiles Loyalty List of U.S. Employees at U.N., State
Foreign Policy reports:
A senior advisor to the State Department appointed just two months ago has been quietly vetting career diplomats and American employees of international institutions to determine whether they are loyal to President Donald Trump and his political agenda, according to nearly a dozen current and former U.S. officials.
Mari Stull, a former food and beverage lobbyist-turned-wine blogger under the name “Vino Vixen,” has reviewed the social media pages of State Department staffers for signs of ideological deviation. She has researched the names of government officials to determine whether they signed off on Obama-era policies — though signing off does not mean officials personally endorsed them but merely cleared them through the bureaucratic chain.
And she has inquired about Americans employed by international agencies, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations, asking their colleagues when they were hired and by whom, according the officials.
More: http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/13/trumps-vino-vixen-compiles-loyalty-list-of-u-s-employees-at-u-n-state-mari-stull-political-appointee-state-department-international-organization-united-nations-political-retribution-chaos-dysfunction/
https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1006933847274065920
https://twitter.com/caitlin__kelly/status/1006934816472870913
June 5, 2018
Trump unable to remember words to "God Bless America" at replacement event...
he commissioned to prove his patriotism
https://twitter.com/Deadspin/status/1004095514944704512
May 30, 2018
After months of back-channel talks between Kim Kardashian and Jared Kushner, the high priestess of reality television is coming to the White House. By late afternoon on Wednesday, Secret Service agents will wave Kardashian and her attorney through the southwest appointment gate to the West Wing, where they will meet Kushner to discuss prison reform before he walks with them to sit down with President Donald Trump, likely in the Oval Office, along with White House counsel. According to a person familiar with the meeting, Kardashian plans to ask Trump to pardon a woman serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. (White House staffers have joked about who will get to accompany her to the West Wing, and what they should wear for the occasion. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
Prison reform is an issue near and dear to Kushner, whose father, Charles, spent more than a year in a federal prison camp in 2005 and 2006 on charges of tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering. The experience left an indelible mark on the young Kushner who, for years, carried a wallet his father made for him in prison; when he joined the White House as senior adviser, he vowed to help improve the system that his father had come through. And so, while other initiatives in his once-dizzying portfolio have fallen by the wayside, Kushner has made significant progress in getting Republican lawmakers on board with the effort, bringing law enforcement officials and Evangelical leaders to the White House, taking meetings on Capitol Hill, and hosting dinner parties with key Washington power players at the home he shares with his wife, Ivanka Trump. He pushed Congress to support a bipartisan bill known as the First Step Act, which aims to better prepare inmates to re-enter society by incentivizing participation in job-training and drug-treatment programs, and which would also give nonviolent offenders more options to serve the ends of their sentences in halfway houses or home confinement. (Kushner’s father left prison 10 months early, and finished his two-year sentence at a halfway house in Newark, New Jersey.)
<snip>
Kardashian, a more recent prison reform evangelist, appears to be approaching the White House meeting with equal seriousness. She will not be bringing the camera crew for her reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, nor will she bring a publicist or her sisters, according to the person familiar with the situation. (Her husband, Kanye West, who recently tweeted a photo of his red Make America Great Again hat, will not be present either, though there have been talks about him making a White House appearance of his own at a later, to-be-determined date.) Instead, Kardashian hopes to make a legal argument to President Trump for why he should pardon Alice Johnson, a 62-year-old great-grandmother serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. More than 21 years after Johnson went to prison, Kardashian came across Johnson’s story on Twitter earlier this year and reached out to Ivanka, who connected her to Kushner, according to the source. In an interview earlier this month, Kardashian said that, if given the opportunity, she would “explain to [Trump] that, just like everybody else, we can make choices in our lives that we’re not proud of and that we don’t think through all the way.”
Kardashian’s plea, and Kushner’s push for reform, are at odds with the Trump administration’s own policies. In one of his first moves as attorney general, Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama-era memo that increased leniency for low-level drug offenders, instructing federal prosecutors to bring punitive charges that could trigger precisely the sort of tough mandatory sentencing that condemned Johnson to life without parole. The president, however, has proven amenable to personal entreaties—especially when celebrities are involved. Last week, Trump hosted Sylvester Stallone, Lennox Lewis, and Deontay Wilder in the Oval Office, as they asked him to pardon Jack Johnson, the legendary boxer who, in 1913, was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for the purpose of prostitution or any other “immoral” reason. Johnson, who was widely believed to be convicted because he was black, served a year in prison. After Trump agreed to pardon Johnson, he said in a statement that he was pleased to be able to “correct a wrong that occurred in our history,” before throwing in a jab to his predecessor. “They thought it was going to be signed in the last administration, and that didn’t happen.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/keeping-up-with-the-kushners-kim-kardashian-white-house-visit-prison-reform
the article is from 2015
KEEPING UP WITH THE KUSHNERS: WITH JARED BACK ON TOP, KIM KARDASHIAN HEADS TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Months of talks between Jared Kushner and Kim Kardashian is set to culminate in a meeting with President Trump, in which the reality-TV star will ask him to pardon a 62-year-old great-grandmother serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense.After months of back-channel talks between Kim Kardashian and Jared Kushner, the high priestess of reality television is coming to the White House. By late afternoon on Wednesday, Secret Service agents will wave Kardashian and her attorney through the southwest appointment gate to the West Wing, where they will meet Kushner to discuss prison reform before he walks with them to sit down with President Donald Trump, likely in the Oval Office, along with White House counsel. According to a person familiar with the meeting, Kardashian plans to ask Trump to pardon a woman serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. (White House staffers have joked about who will get to accompany her to the West Wing, and what they should wear for the occasion. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
Prison reform is an issue near and dear to Kushner, whose father, Charles, spent more than a year in a federal prison camp in 2005 and 2006 on charges of tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering. The experience left an indelible mark on the young Kushner who, for years, carried a wallet his father made for him in prison; when he joined the White House as senior adviser, he vowed to help improve the system that his father had come through. And so, while other initiatives in his once-dizzying portfolio have fallen by the wayside, Kushner has made significant progress in getting Republican lawmakers on board with the effort, bringing law enforcement officials and Evangelical leaders to the White House, taking meetings on Capitol Hill, and hosting dinner parties with key Washington power players at the home he shares with his wife, Ivanka Trump. He pushed Congress to support a bipartisan bill known as the First Step Act, which aims to better prepare inmates to re-enter society by incentivizing participation in job-training and drug-treatment programs, and which would also give nonviolent offenders more options to serve the ends of their sentences in halfway houses or home confinement. (Kushner’s father left prison 10 months early, and finished his two-year sentence at a halfway house in Newark, New Jersey.)
<snip>
Kardashian, a more recent prison reform evangelist, appears to be approaching the White House meeting with equal seriousness. She will not be bringing the camera crew for her reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, nor will she bring a publicist or her sisters, according to the person familiar with the situation. (Her husband, Kanye West, who recently tweeted a photo of his red Make America Great Again hat, will not be present either, though there have been talks about him making a White House appearance of his own at a later, to-be-determined date.) Instead, Kardashian hopes to make a legal argument to President Trump for why he should pardon Alice Johnson, a 62-year-old great-grandmother serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. More than 21 years after Johnson went to prison, Kardashian came across Johnson’s story on Twitter earlier this year and reached out to Ivanka, who connected her to Kushner, according to the source. In an interview earlier this month, Kardashian said that, if given the opportunity, she would “explain to [Trump] that, just like everybody else, we can make choices in our lives that we’re not proud of and that we don’t think through all the way.”
Kardashian’s plea, and Kushner’s push for reform, are at odds with the Trump administration’s own policies. In one of his first moves as attorney general, Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama-era memo that increased leniency for low-level drug offenders, instructing federal prosecutors to bring punitive charges that could trigger precisely the sort of tough mandatory sentencing that condemned Johnson to life without parole. The president, however, has proven amenable to personal entreaties—especially when celebrities are involved. Last week, Trump hosted Sylvester Stallone, Lennox Lewis, and Deontay Wilder in the Oval Office, as they asked him to pardon Jack Johnson, the legendary boxer who, in 1913, was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for the purpose of prostitution or any other “immoral” reason. Johnson, who was widely believed to be convicted because he was black, served a year in prison. After Trump agreed to pardon Johnson, he said in a statement that he was pleased to be able to “correct a wrong that occurred in our history,” before throwing in a jab to his predecessor. “They thought it was going to be signed in the last administration, and that didn’t happen.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/keeping-up-with-the-kushners-kim-kardashian-white-house-visit-prison-reform
the article is from 2015
May 28, 2018
Since the founding of the United States, politicians and pundits have warned that partisanship is a danger to democracy. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, worried that political parties, or factions, could "allow cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men" to rise to power and subvert democracy. More recently, many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions.
A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.
<snip>
Trump's nativist language made the GOP's sympathies more explicit, leading to further erosion of support among non-white voters. George W. Bush won 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; Trump won only 28 percent. His showing with Asian-American voters was only 27 percent — worse than any winning presidential candidate on record.
White people continue to decrease as a percentage of the U.S. population; at some point, it's going to be impossible to win a national, democratic American election with a platform that alienates people of color. The GOP, seeing their coming demographic apocalypse, has pushed voter ID laws and other barriers to voting to try to prevent black and other minority voters from getting to the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker even attempted to delay elections for state seats that he believed Democrats would win.
<snip>
Blaming authoritarianism on partisanship suggests that both sides are equally to blame for the erosion of democratic norms. But greater commitment to abortion rights and free healthcare in the Democratic party isn't a threat to the foundations of democracy. The growing concentration of intolerant white voters in the GOP, on the other hand, has created a party which appears less and less committed to the democratic project. When faced with a choice between bigotry and democracy, too many Americans are embracing the first while abandoning the second.
"Social intolerance isn't just leading to GOP support as we know it and see it now," Miller says. "It's leading to preferences in favor of the kind of candidate the GOP ultimately nominated and supported for president." In embracing the politics of white identity, then, the GOP made a Trump possible — and is likely to make more Trump-like candidates successful in the future.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-effect-new-study-connects-white-american-intolerance-support-authoritarianism-ncna877886
The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism
The research suggests that when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.Since the founding of the United States, politicians and pundits have warned that partisanship is a danger to democracy. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, worried that political parties, or factions, could "allow cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men" to rise to power and subvert democracy. More recently, many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions.
A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.
<snip>
Trump's nativist language made the GOP's sympathies more explicit, leading to further erosion of support among non-white voters. George W. Bush won 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; Trump won only 28 percent. His showing with Asian-American voters was only 27 percent — worse than any winning presidential candidate on record.
White people continue to decrease as a percentage of the U.S. population; at some point, it's going to be impossible to win a national, democratic American election with a platform that alienates people of color. The GOP, seeing their coming demographic apocalypse, has pushed voter ID laws and other barriers to voting to try to prevent black and other minority voters from getting to the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker even attempted to delay elections for state seats that he believed Democrats would win.
<snip>
Blaming authoritarianism on partisanship suggests that both sides are equally to blame for the erosion of democratic norms. But greater commitment to abortion rights and free healthcare in the Democratic party isn't a threat to the foundations of democracy. The growing concentration of intolerant white voters in the GOP, on the other hand, has created a party which appears less and less committed to the democratic project. When faced with a choice between bigotry and democracy, too many Americans are embracing the first while abandoning the second.
"Social intolerance isn't just leading to GOP support as we know it and see it now," Miller says. "It's leading to preferences in favor of the kind of candidate the GOP ultimately nominated and supported for president." In embracing the politics of white identity, then, the GOP made a Trump possible — and is likely to make more Trump-like candidates successful in the future.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-effect-new-study-connects-white-american-intolerance-support-authoritarianism-ncna877886
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Current location: West Coast
Member since: Tue Sep 3, 2013, 01:59 PM
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