Seen in the bookstore today. Note title on the far left.
President Trump’s chaotic, leaky, feud-filled past 24 hours, explained
The Mattis-Bannon Race for Secret President
Bodega rally.
The Madness of King Donald
Why Was Betsy DeVos the One Trump Nominee Who Provoked Opposition?
Please Excuse Seth Meyers While This List of Things Donald Trump Has Tweeted About Scrolls for an Indeterminate Length of Time
Chaffetz's Town Hall.
We're keeping our health plan secret because you will hate it.
The Myth Endures That Democrats Must Cooperate With Trump
Trump impersonations with Jimmy and Alec.
Trump tweets about everything.
Gym owner not happy to have Ivanka sneak in.
Who's in the mood to work? Nobody.
Inside the Linguistic Anatomy of the Perfect Trump Insult
This may make you feel better: contact hypothesis. "The contact hypothesis makes a simple claim: If you could get more non-Muslims to interact with Muslims, whether as neighbors or business partners or in a host of other contexts, that percentage would likely drop. And while this idea sounds idealistic, there’s solid evidence behind it — significantly more than there is behind other ideas, like corporate diversity trainings, for reducing prejudice that focus more on information and awareness than personal relationships."
On a related note, I love this photo.
On another related note: "People may not know the story about how the University of Alabama football team finally became integrated. It’s legendary coach, Bear Bryant, wanted to integrate the team but was vehemently denied by the racist governor, George Wallace. So, Bryant invited the integrated USC football team down to Alabama in 1970 and Alabama got CRUSHED. After the game, Bryant was seen with a smile on his face because he knew this was the turning point: Alabamans were stubborn as hell to change… until they saw it affect their football team." (It makes sense if you read it all...)
"No one goes. No athletes. No championship teams. No performers. No musicians. No celebrities. ALL invitations are rejected. No White House Correspondents Dinners. No Inauguration Balls. No State dinners. No singing Christmas carols with the Trump kids. Nothing. Full boycott. No exceptions. Donald Trump does not get to enjoy the perks of this job. Period. For the rest of us: we don’t support anyone or any company that enabled Trump. Like those NBA teams, we boycott all Trump businesses. We turn off CNN. We don’t buy Ivanka’s bracelets. This amazing GrabYourWallet campaign will tell you how (@shannoncoulter). We don’t spend money to support the teams of his owners — we don’t buy their merchandise or tickets to their games. We leave their stadiums empty and we reject the advertisers who support them. And we turn away from anyone who violates this ban, no matter how much we might like their work. Any product, team or company associated with Trump is one that tacitly funds bigotry and intolerance."
Russia Considers Returning Snowden to U.S. to ‘Curry Favor’ With Trump: Aw shiiiiiiiiiiiit. "Finally: irrefutable evidence that I never cooperated with Russian intel," Snowden said. "No country trades away spies, as the rest would fear they're next."
US investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier. Calm down.Though we're all still waiting about the pee.
Loudoun high schools walk out in protest.
"Over the last day or so, however, we're seeing something a bit new: Trump caving or getting rolled on numerous fronts all at once. Just in the last 24 hours he appears to have been rolled so many times that one imagines his rough edges might start to be worn down until he becomes something more like a clumpy and perhaps oblong ball."
"Reached late last night, Conway, referring to the song used in the popular “Saturday Night Live” skit about her last year, said, sarcastically, “I’m walking on sunshine.” (New Yorker)
People Are Addressing 'President Bannon' on Postcards to White House
Elizabeth Warren made her own shirts.
"almost every single move that Trump has made against the scientific enterprise has quickly been retracted. His administration may be prone to grand, aggressive gestures of control, but it always seems to follow them with a grand volte-face." ... "It’s possible that Trump has been governing by trial balloon. That’s how he carried out his presidential campaign: He’d float some outlandish notion—e.g., that South Korea and Japan ought to have nuclear weapons or that women should be punished for illegal abortions—and then abandon it if necessary. Perhaps his staff has adopted this approach. They’ll propose something extreme (a case-by-case review of all scientific publications, for instance) and then back down if it doesn’t fly."
He caved on China, thank god.
Sabbath’s Tweeter: A scientific examination of the garbage Trump posts on Jared and Ivanka’s day of rest.
How much do the early days of the Trump administration look like the Third Reich? "Do you feel much more hopeful about the future here and in Europe? Because people are not killing each other in the streets, as you mentioned earlier. Yeah. They’re just killing each other in tweets."
Safety Pin Box. "Sure, the sample project we have on our site right now is about power-mapping. It involves guiding folks through exercises to learn what power-mapping is — how to define power, learning to evaluate power structures in their lives personally, then taking it a little wider and evaluating power in their community. We ask them to go to some sort of community meeting, whether it’s a city council or a school board meeting, and take notes: Who holds power in the meeting? Who talks first? Who talks longest? Why is that?"
Trump Land: a fictional (for now) story: " Even though you entered Trump Land through the ass—Trump’s asshole, to be clear."
Chorus: a fictional (for now) story: “People in places like Cambridge and San Francisco, they cheered over Trumpie resigning. But they didn’t realize Pence was gonna be worse.” I nodded. “You old enough to vote?” I asked. I wasn’t. I’d only just turned 16. “Next time I will be,” she said. “But will it matter?”
"DO YOUR JOB!"
The scandal over Mike Flynn's secret talks with the Russians, explained
The psychiatrist who wrote the guide to personality disorders says diagnosing Trump is “bullshit”
"Being president is harder than Donald Trump thought, according to aides and allies who say that he’s growing increasingly frustrated with the challenges of running the massive federal bureaucracy. In interviews, nearly two dozen people who’ve spent time with Trump in the three weeks since his inauguration said that his mood has careened between surprise and anger as he’s faced the predictable realities of governing, from congressional delays over his cabinet nominations and legal fights holding up his aggressive initiatives to staff in-fighting and leaks."
Logical Answers to Political Problems
http://www.breakyourownnews.com/
Americans Now Evenly Divided on Impeaching Trump
57 lies so far.
Oh noes! The first lady of Japan was left alone without a First Lady to accompany her!
More A Spanish newspaper used Alex Baldwin's picture instead of Trump's. If Toddler in Chief sees this we're going to war.
How it should be glamorous to change your mind: "We cannot properly convince anyone so long as we depict our opponents as straw figures. We will be unnecessarily weak advocates of our own ideas when we forget what it was like not to hold them. But once we grow into people who change their minds, and remember without shame why we were once on the other side of an argument, we’ll acquire the greatest gift for trying to communicate our ideas to the world: we’ll know what it was like to disagree with ourselves."
Why pessimism is the key to good government. "In an ideally pessimistic society, rather boring and extremely steady politicians are the norm. No one believes the wilder utopian promises of firebrand leaders. The electorate is simply far too pessimistic to trust in easy, rapid solutions to any of the nation’s substantial problems. Dramatic promises at the stump are immediately discounted with a wry, dismissive shrug. Because pessimists know just how flawed any one individual can be, the ideal pessimistic society invests heavily in strong, slow-moving, independent institutions that prevent too much power from ever falling into the hands of a single person. Furthermore, these institutions are insulated from the fluctuations of public opinion – which, pessimistically, are seen as being hugely prone to hysteria and overreaction."
How Trump became an incredible unpopular "hit": "Well, you mentioned Trump, and obviously we can’t escape this conversation without talking about Trump."
Has skewering Trump made Saturday Night Live great again?
Betsy tries to make a cute joke about pencils, gets hammered by reality and bears.
"Hey @realDonaldTrump - remember us? Since you won't meet with vets at the WH, we're airing this ad on #SNL this weekend to get on your TV."
Learning To Scream Again: Promoting Leftism for Artists and Writers
Washington Post section:
Republicans in Idaho tried to design a better plan than Obamacare — and failed: "No plan could rise above the toxic politics surrounding the health-care law."
A potentially historic number of people are giving up their U.S. citizenship
"At the very least, Thursday's town halls are broadcasting to Republicans in Congress what most of them already know: If you're going to repeal Obamacare, you better make sure you replace it with a plan that truly is, in Trump's words, “something terrific.” Because health care has proven to be an issue that gets people into town halls and out to voting booths."
"The damage to the next generation may be compounded by other, less obvious assaults on their biology and psychology. Research by Rachel Yehuda and her colleagues at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York has demonstrated that the consequences of Holocaust survivors’ extreme trauma can be passed down to their children and grandchildren, making them exquisitely sensitive to the ordinary stresses of relatively safe lives."
Sean Spicer went full Melissa McCarthy today
In Congress, Republicans are quiet and meek as mice: "There would have been howls of outrage, of course, and multiple investigations, and even calls for impeachment. But it’s President Trump doing all those things, so Republicans in Congress are as meek and quiet as mice. Perhaps the most striking thing about the chaotic and exhausting first three weeks of the Trump administration is the degree to which Republicans have held together, placing loyalty above all else. The party of Lincoln has sold its soul — and like all Faustian bargains, this one will not end well."
What Milo Yiannopoulos and Elizabeth Warren have in common: "What’s the best way to make sure a message gets heard? Try to muzzle it. Both liberals and conservatives are newly rediscovering the political power of this phenomenon, known as the Streisand Effect."
In a time of tragedy, could Trump soothe the nation? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. "The second caveat is that we don’t know the ending of Trump’s story. His style of communication is attractive now because it helped him overcome nearly impossible political odds. But in, say, the fourth and final year of a failed presidency, Trump’s tone and approach — his insults, his self-centeredness, his strange inability to discern appropriateness — may appear in a different light. A virus produces antibodies. Americans may become exhausted with his shtick. The decency of the country may be deeper than the Trump phenomenon."
The life-sucking tedium of covering official lies
What I'll do next. "My biggest plan is a Valentine’s Day thank-you drive: I’m organizing valentines to members of Congress from both parties who have shown strength of character and sound judgment in standing up to President Trump’s agenda. Even a small gesture gets a valentine, as I want to encourage as many positive acts by our representatives as possible. I’ve already sent about 20 valentine cards out and will continue until the 14th — I’m hosting a valentine party this weekend."
I also like this guy from my town: "If our state, which yielded almost two votes for Hillary Clinton for every one for Donald Trump, is unable to resist the backward actions of the new federal government to my satisfaction, I will work toward independence for the California Republic."
And this one: " I’m still searching for how to follow up but will not quit the resistance."
Here’s how you can deal with Trump — besides drinking Everclear: "Join. A church or synagogue, a union, your local Planned Parenthood chapter, the Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club, Elks Lodge, Veterans of Foreign Wars or American Legion post: The issue and the ideology don’t much matter; what matters is connection."
A blueprint for resistance to Trump has emerged. Here’s what it looks like. "1) Have (guarded) faith in our system. The battle over Trump’s immigration ban is not over — the question of whether it will remain on hold goes to the Supreme Court, and the underlying legal dispute still must be resolved. But Thursday’s unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit — which kept the hold in place for now — is significant. Crucially, the decision affirmed the role of the courts in “reviewing the constitutionality of actions taken by the executive to promote national security … even in times of conflict.”
Whatever the legal significance of that declaration in this case, as a statement of principle this may loom large later, given what we might expect Trump to try to do on national security grounds, particularly in a “time of conflict.”
2) Keep pressuring Republicans to exercise real oversight on Trump. The fact that House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) agreed to rebuke Kellyanne Conway for her on-air commercial for Ivanka’s clothing line is an indication that congressional Republicans cannot ignore any and all of the Trump White House’s ethical transgressions forever. 3) Fight hard in the Senate with all available procedural weapons. Congressional scholar Sarah Binder has a good piece Friday that details all the procedural tools that Senate Democrats can use to “focus attention on controversial parts of the president’s agenda and force Republicans to cast potentially unpopular votes.” They can also “offer unrelated amendments to bills under debate, affording Democrats the chance to create discord among Republicans and between Republican senators and the White House.” 4) Keep looking to civil society and try to fortify it where possible. The Atlantic’s Jonathan Rauch has a nice piece arguing that if Trump does continue shredding basic democratic and governing norms, civil society — a loosely knit coalition of legal and political groups, given ammunition by intense scrutiny from watchdogs and media outlets, and backed up by meaningful, sustained public mobilization — can have a real illuminating and constraining impact. As Brian Beutler notes, the early indications are actually somewhat positive: “Our democratic and civil society institutions, however flawed and weakened, are still working.” 5) Keep Trump distracted and off balance, to minimize the damage he can do. It is often argued that Trump throws out chum about trivial matters to distract the press from covering more damaging stories. But I’m going to suggest an alternate possibility: Trump’s cause is also harmed by trivial, petty and burlesque distractions."