Reblog if you are an alpha woman who are unable to love, you support alpha women who are unable to love, or you just laughed really hard at the article title
“who are unable to love… self-focused little boys who think they should be adored by women simply because they have a penis.”
“Ran out of space. Didn’t even get to the ones I heard while interviewing for engineering jobs and from some of the auditors who came through the lab.#shepersisted”
during the debate between Ted Cruz and Bernie sanders last night about obamacare this one woman told Bernie she has a small business (I think a hair salon) and she was like I can’t grow my business because I have to provide my employees with health insurance and it’s too expensive. and Bernie straight up told her, hey you’re not gonna like my answer, but I’m sorry I think you need to provide them with insurance (and then he brought up the fact that he thinks single payer health insurance is still the way to go). then this lady told Ted Cruz that without Obamacare, she would have died. and he gave some generic answer about how he doesn’t wanna take away all aspects of Obamacare (which btw is a lie because he once held a 20 hour filibuster in which he read green eggs and ham in order to repeal every last word of Obamacare). but like…..this is where we’re beginning the discussion. “I can’t grow my business” vs “I would have died”
but it’s even more lopsided than that. it was really more like, “if I hire a 50th employee then maybe I might not be able to afford a 3rd Mercedes” vs “I would have died”
the small business woman was flat out lying
she was using an old republican trope to justify taking a dig at Obamacare. but if they’re honest, *anyone* who has ever run a business will tell you that if you’re in a position where you have so much demand for your business that you need to hire another employee, then you hire another employee almost without even thinking about it. you cannot wait to hire someone and start training them to close the gap
not having enough business is a problem. needing to add more employees due to increased demand is the opposite of a problem
and unless you’re paying them in gold bars it’s a pretty safe bet that you can afford it. because adding one more employee costs a lot less than the extra revenue you’re missing out on - that’s iff you’re *honestly* at the point where demand is so high that you really need a new hire to keep up with additional business & customer demands.
and like maybe you shouldn’t be in business if you literally can’t hire any more people because you take so much of the cut and you can’t afford to cut your own pay to provide your employees with semi-subsidized health insurance
boom!
thank you! I’m tired of ppl acting like owning a business is an entitlement to wealth.
1) not every business can become a massively successful business. Sometimes it’s just okay. Deal with it.
2) Sometimes your business sucks and if you cant make money it’s because you suck at what you’re doing or it’s not a good product. The end.
yes! sometimes it is a real skill to be able to determine whether or not you’re at that point where it’s necessary to add an employee, plus a lot of small business owners make the mistake of treating their business like a piggybank instead of paying themselves a salary just like any other employee
but yeah, most businesses are just okay. even franchises. don’t blame Obamacare if you’re too greedy, or if you just are not a good proprietor
And it’s like, we literally only do this when it comes to the cost of human labor. Like for instance, if a restaurant can’t afford to keep up with health code standards and makes food last longer by using spoiled ingredients, we blame the owners for running a shitty business, we don’t blame the health department for enacting those standards. Or if a business gets shut down because they couldn’t pay their rent, it’s not the fault of their landlords for asking that they pay it. But when it comes to employees, we seem to blame the system for asking that we pay them fairly and give them basic benefits.
I actually had to ratchet my reading list down from 150 to 130 this year.
I often imagine the leaning tower of Pisa to be a physical manifestation of my ebook queue. I want to finish more books, but can’t seem to get through them quickly enough. As Harvard Business Review (HBR) explains, it’s not about reading speed, but about creating concerted efforts to read. Here are tips to do just…
SNL's on to something here. We need them to gender swap everybody in Trump's admin. Which means we lose Alec Baldwin as Trump, but we could gain Melissa McCarthy!
Did Melissa McCarthy seal Sean Spicer’s doom? Spicer was already reportedly out of favor with Donald Trump, but within days of McCarthy’s viral performance as him on Saturday Night Live, there are reports that he’s going to lose one of his two job titles. Spicer has been both press secretary and communications director, and sources tell CNN he may be replaced as communications director.
Not only that, but his poor performance is being used in the vicious, leak-prone power struggle between Trump’s top advisers:
A longtime Republican operative, Spicer is a close ally of White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. According to the source close to the hiring process, Trump is upset with Priebus over the selection of Spicer for arguably the administration's most visible position, next to the President.
"Priebus vouched for Spicer and against Trump's instincts," the source said.
The President "regrets it every day and blames Priebus," the source added.
Other White House sources deny this and say Trump is “100 percent” behind Spicer. What may be most disturbing is that both things could be sort of true, depending what time of day Trump is asked about Spicer, who’s asking, and how the question is framed. But the stories saying Trump has problems with Spicer have been leaking out consistently since Day One, and it’s way too plausible that the indignity of having his press secretary played by a woman on Saturday Night Live would be Not Okay with Trump.
What Trump needs to realize, though, is that it’s not the gender of the person playing his staffer on TV that makes Trump looks weak. It’s the constant leaking by his aides, the use of the press to publicly play out the struggle for power in this White House, and the total lack of respect that the people closest to him display by running to the press—not just to trash each other, but to make Trump look like an out-of-his-depth joke.
Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have been selling Donald Trump's border wall as a mere (!) $10- to $15-billion project. Now that appears to be an enormous undersell and especially egregious for Ryan, who prides himself on his wonky Midwestern ways. Here's what Politico Playbook Plus is reporting:
ACTUALLY -- People on the Hill involved in budgeting think it could be as high as $50 billion when all is said and done.
Holy cow—50 billion smackaroos! That is particularly startling given that the entire budget the Department of Homeland requested for 2017 was $40.6 billion.
"The President's Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 Budget Request of $40.6 billion for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reflects our continued commitment to the security of our homeland and the American Public."
But that was under President Obama, sans border wall. Better double that number and then some. Man, Republicans are really rolling out the savings here.
PPP released a poll Friday showing a majority of Americans oppose building this boondoggle of a wall if they have to pay for it out of their own pocket—which is exactly what will happen.
Only 37% of voters want the wall if US taxpayers have to front the cost for it, to 56% who are against that.
That was before we knew it could cost $50 billion, with a B! Trump’s stuck a lot of small business owners with the bill for work they did on his properties over the years, now he’s gonna stick American taxpayers with a $50 billion tab for his “big, beautiful” border wall. #MAGA
Well, it depends on what you teach during WHM, now doesn't it? Don't you think it's about time these folks learned just HOW shitty their ancestors have been? And just HOW so many shitty white people got so much land, money, and power?
Nearly half of voters who supported Trump think there should be a special month set aside to celebrate white history in the United States, according to a pollpublished Friday by Public Policy Polling.
Apparently dissatisfied with white people dominating nearly every aspect of American life and culture for the past 250 years, 46% of Trump voters now desire an official white history month. Only 36% of Trump voters oppose the idea.
Additionally, only 47% of Trump voters are aware that legendary black abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass is dead. Read more(2/10/17 11:52 AM)
“Kushner, 36, has no traditional foreign policy experience yet has become the primary point of contact for presidents, ministers and ambassadors from more than two dozen countries … ‘Everyone is trying to get to know Jared Kushner,’ said the ambassador from one U.S. ally … Many ambassadors were loath to put even their positive thoughts about Kushner on the record for fear of jeopardizing what has become their most important contact in Trump’s Washington.“”
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WaPo
Oh good. A 36 year-old poor little rich kid with no experience in diplomacy or foreign policy is becoming the primary point of contact between our idiot manchild president and the rest of the world. Good thing there aren’t experienced diplomats or other government officials who know how to manipulate idiots who are totally out of their depth and are too arrogant to consider how unprepared they are!
OK, but seriously, that WOULD be the FIRST thing I would do. Or, at least, the first thing I would WANT to do.
Johnny Depp, whose descent from generally beloved superstar to accused domestic abuser and disheveled, potentially penniless wino happened seemingly almost overnight, is reportedly adding a new character trait to his increasingly bizarre repertoire: eccentric recluse!
“But-but only coastal elites hate the Republican party!!!” /s
Utahans hated Trump so much almost a quarter of them voted for a Republican running a third-party insurgent campaign. Of course they’re going to drag their representative for not doing his job.
there’s a website where you put in two musicians/artists and it makes a playlist that slowly transitions from one musician’s style of music to the other’s
Early Thursday, immigration attorneys in Los Angeles started getting calls from clients across the city. Some callers reported being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at their homes. Others were caught at their workplaces, including one man detained at a Target store. The first round of Trump-era deportation sweeps had begun.
The news quickly filtered back to immigrant rights activists, who confirmed the detentions and alerted their networks. According to Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), as many as 134 immigrants were detained in the sweep. Based on her conversations with lawyers, many of those detained had outstanding orders for deportation—and some were sent back to Mexico as early as Thursday afternoon.
On Thursday evening, activists held a vigil at ICE's downtown Los Angeles field office. Later, an estimated 100 to 150 protesters blocked a nearby highway on-ramp:
In a Friday afternoon press release, ICE said 160 immigrants were arrested during what it called a "five-day targeted enforcement operation" in Southern California that was "aimed at at-large criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants, and immigration fugitives." Of the 160, ICE claimed that 150 had criminal histories, and that 5 of the remaining 10 had final orders of removal or had been previously deported. While the release said "many of the arrestees had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses," ICE did not give a full breakdown of those convictions.
Earlier Friday, an ICE spokeswoman told Mother Jonesthat "enforcement surges have been part of our operational play book for many years." The subsequent press release echoed that line: "The focus was no different than the routine, targeted arrests carried out by ICE's Fugitive Operations Teams on a daily basis."
The sweep was the second high-profile ICE action in two days. On Wednesday night, immigration agents in Phoenix found themselves swarmed by protesters when they attempted to deport Guadalupe García de Rayos, a 35-year-old Mexican immigrant with two teenage children who are American citizens. García de Rayos had been caught using a fake Social Security number during an ICE workplace raid in 2008.
García de Rayos' deportation sent shock waves through the immigrant rights community and dominated Spanish-language media on Thursday. Ever since the 2008 raid, she had checked in annually with ICE to review her case—brief meetings that always resulted in her walking free, even though she had been convicted of a felony and later had a deportation order against her. This partly reflected the Obama administration's emphasis on deporting serious criminal offenders. But her deportation to Nogales, Mexico, signals that the Trump administration plans to follow through with its plans to remove all undocumentedimmigrants who've committed "acts that constitute a chargeable offense"—which, as Vox's Dara Lind has pointed out, could include everything from entering the country illegally to driving without a license. (In a statement to reporters Thursday, ICE said it will "focus on identifying and removing individuals with felony convictions who have final orders of removal.")
Indeed, social media was abuzz Friday with rumors of deportation raids throughout the country. On a conference call late in the day, Dave Marin, ICE's LA field office director for enforcement and removal operations, confirmed that there were also operations in Atlanta, Chicago, and New York during the week. And Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) tweeted Friday afternoon about additional ICE activity in South and Central Texas:
"A lot of things have changed since January 20," says CHIRLA's Salas. She notes that during the Obama years, ICE would typically give groups like CHIRLA basic information such as names and the number of people detained following any large sweep or workplace raid. But Salas says she finds it troubling that following Thursday's actions, there was little to no communication with the agency. "It's important that we don't get used to the idea that they don't have to give out this information," she says.
CHIRLA is currently focusing on educating immigrant communities on civil and constitutional rights. According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, greater Los Angeles is home to 1 million undocumented immigrants—second only to the New York City area, which is home to 1.15 million. On Friday, the group ran hourly know-your-rights workshops, and it's also holding legal clinics where immigrants can get advice. Similar efforts have been happening nationwide: Earlier this week, for example, public school educators in Austin, Texas, handed out flyers to students in English and Spanish about what to do in an encounter with immigration officials.
Salas says that organizers' next step is to continue to engage elected officials. Notably, Rep. Ruben Gallegos (D-Ariz.) and California State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León have criticized ICE on Twitter over the last day.
Right, it's the STAFF that's at the root of the problem.
The flood of stories about how terrible Donald Trump is at being president—how ignorant he is about what the job entails, how unhappy he is, how bad the infighting among his staff has grown—continues, with an entry from Politico:
In Washington circles, talk has turned to whether a staff shake-up is in the works.
One person close to Trump said: "I think he'd like to do it now, but he knows it's too soon."
Those closest to the president are unnerved by that prospect, which they say would be a tacit acknowledgment that their team is struggling.
So Trump’s desire to have a temper tantrum and fire people is at war with his aversion to admitting he made a mistake? If that’s true, it’s amazing he’s still standing and semi-coherent.
There are 62,979,879 reasons Hillary Clinton didn't win the election, but a simple one is: A lot of people didn't want a woman to be president.
For the most part, that feeling was subconscious, snugly cushioned by opposition-manufactured narratives cloaking hidden realities of cognitive dissonance, or, put more simply, "emails." Still, plenty of others would tell you and the rest of Facebook that the presidency is a man's job. That feels too sexist to say out loud. It should.
The reasoning behind the institutionalized sexism that has kept women from the Oval Office isn't usually explained, but the idiotic stereotypes mostly have to do with emotion. Women are too emotional to be trusted with the highest office in the free world. They'll make "rash decisions," possibly while PMSing. They could be signing executive orders, and conducting foreign policy, and condemning private offices and individuals guided by no discernible metric beyond the flow of hormones! Look how emotional I'm getting right now! I'm a triggered snowflake, right? (By the way, the inversion version of this argument, published by TIME in 2015, is that Clinton would be a good president because she's already gone through menopause.)
Here's the ironic part: All of the nonsense behind the misogynistic fear of a female president has been coming to fruition in Donald Trump's first weeks in office. Worried that a woman in the White House would have careening mood swings often spurred by catty arguments? Look no further than Trump's Twitter feed.
The short version of all the women-can't-be-president nonsense is that we'd risk nuclear war once a month. The first time someone told me that joke, I was too young to have a full briefing on periods and didn't get the punchline. In case you don't, it's a biological disparagement of women as erratically unhinged. I'm going to pretend that we all agree misogyny is bad. I don't have the word count or patience to work under any other assumption. Let's also agree that someone who is erratically unhinged should be kept one restraining order's distance away from the White House. Finally, be so kind as to grant me the establishing belief that having public breakdowns about reality television, recklessly condemning businesses in the private sector for personal gain, and using Twitter as if it is a series of text messages to your id is erratically unhinged behavior.
I'm not even beginning to address policy or ideology here (see again: word count, patience). The unimaginable cruelty of Trump signing away human lives with the stroke of a pen—on pieces of paper he may have failed to read—has been well documented. This is not about partisanship; it's about fitness to serve, an issue that has nothing to do with gender. If Trump's first executive orders compelled airlines to provide free alcohol and a human amount of leg room, it would remain deeply disturbing that the president of the United States is struggling so much with the duties of the office.
On the left, there's been a lot of speculation around Trump's physical and mental health. You may find that ridiculous, but it doesn't begin to touch the outrageous and sexist fear-mongering around Clinton's health, which was deliberately manufactured by the alt-right and then adopted by the Trump campaign itself. Trump also claimed Clinton didn't have a "presidential look" or the "stamina to be president"—another stereotype that's ironic in retrospect when you hear reports that Trump was "fatigued" during an apparently contentious call with the Australian prime minister.
While we're on the topic of double standards, the conflicts of interest juxtaposition of the Clinton and Trump foundations alone is like comparing apples to a malignant tumor shaped like an orange. After spending months inveighing against Clinton's supposed coziness with Wall Street, Trump is putting former Goldman Sachs executives in charge of the government; after Trump complaining ad nauseum about Clinton's lax email practices, his own White House staff is reportedly using private email accounts. The list goes on.
Sexism defines a woman's existence with granular intricacy. On a more macro level, it holds back more than 50 percent of the population from equal pay, reproductive rights, and even physical safety. The deep, pervasive nature of sexist ideas is the reason we have never had a female president, and baked into that condemning non-statistic is the grotesque belief that menstrual cycles cast women outside the realm of reason and common sense. "Outside the realm of reason and common sense" sounds like a pretty accurate descriptor of Trump's first weeks in office, or really just his Twitter feed.
The notion that Clinton (or any woman) would be weak, or irrational, or guided by her hormones, was always sexist nonsense. But as a consequence of too many people buying into that nonsense, we've got a president who actually has problems with controlling his impulses and letting emotion overrule reason. It would be funny, except we're all going to be living through it for four years.
Hey, Scalzi! It is I, your fake interlocutor! I wish to ask you about your thoughts on Trump and the news this week!
Ugh. I mean, okay? I guess?
You don’t sound excited!
I’m at this place where I do want to talk about what’s going on with our government, and at the same time I don’t, because it’s fucking tiring and depressing to think about for longer than a tweet.
Well, you have been tweeting about politics a lot.
Exactly — bang out 140 characters, say something snarky, and then bug the hell out. But, fine, let’s talk about stuff in a slightly-longer-than-tweet form.
Hooray! First up: Thoughts on the 9th Circuit Court stay on Trump’s Muslim ban?
Unsurprising.
That’s… not longer than a tweet.
Fine. It’s not surprising for me for two reasons. One, because the executive order was so sloppily constructed, and so clearly targeting Muslims as Muslims, that the constitutional issues with it were obvious to even a layman such as myself (Also, pro tip: If you don’t want your executive order limiting travel from seven Muslim-majority countries to be seen as an actual ban on Muslims, maybe don’t call it a ban when you tweet about it and maybe don’t have one of your pals brag about how cleverly you made a ban on Muslims without actually saying “DUDE THIS IS SO TOTALLY A MUSLIM BAN” in the executive order itself).
Two, because the administration’s argument to the 9th Circuit vis-a-vis the executive order was basically “not only should you pretend that Trump and his pals never said this was a ban elsewhere, but you shouldn’t even be able to review the constitutionality of this executive order for reasons,” followed by an attempted Jedi handwave designed to block the memory of the Constitution and two centuries of precedent regarding judicial review. Unsurprisingly! This did not work! Nor should it have. And now as a result, we have a circuit court very firmly on the record as saying that the Trump administration’s attempted rule by executive order is not going to be the fast track to blithely uncontested authoritarianism that they hoped it would be.
What about the Supreme Court?
What about it?
They could overturn the 9th!
Yeah, but they probably won’t. Even if one were to assume a standard ideological split (which I wouldn’t in this case but even so), it would be 4-4, and in the case of ties, the lower court stay would stand. But in this particular case, if SCOTUS takes it up at all, I think it’s more likely to see a 6-2 or 7-1 or even (really unlikely because Thomas is Thomas but still) a unanimous ruling because, again, one substantial part of the Trump administration’s argument is “the courts shouldn’t be able to review executive orders” — or at least this one, because national security, harumph harumph. I don’t see the Supreme Court, the highest judicial platform of our nation, saying, “oh, right, we shouldn’t do our job,” especially when told this by the nincompoops of this administration, and especially with such a bullshit, poorly-constructed executive order like this one, and especially especially when the administration’s evidence that this executive order is necessary for the protection of the nation is “trust us on this.” I mean, these motherfuckers literally cannot find light switches in the White House conference rooms.
So, really, no. I don’t see the Supreme Court siding with the Trump administration on this. Nor should they.
You’ve been wrong before.
Yes I have.
Speaking of the Supreme Court, any thoughts on Neil Gorsuch?
Uuuuuhhhh, he’s probably the best-case scenario for the Supreme Court in this particular adminstration?
But how can you say that? He’s a conservative!
I don’t know how to break it to you, but we elected a GOP president. Also, I’m not saying he’s my choice for the Supreme Court. What I am saying is that we’re goddamned lucky Trump didn’t offer up someone from his own stable of cronies, because he doesn’t know anyone else. Gorsuch appears to be a solid, legit choice for the Court, who I am very sure will take sides on rulings that I will be entirely unhappy with.
But Merrick Garland!
Garland should be on the court, yes. He’s not. He’s not going to be.
The Democrats should block Gorsuch! Just like the GOP blocked Garland!
I don’t think that will be possible in the long run, and I think the nation is generally best served with the Court at full capacity. If they want to try, I don’t think it’s going to hurt them much, politically. But the Democrats are also in the minority in the Senate, which I suspect matters.
What do you think about Gorsuch’s “Fascism Forever” club in high school?
You know, when I was in high school, I put out a flyer for “The Elitist Club,” which I meant as a joke, but which some kids at my school signed up for, because they didn’t know it was a joke. It was an obnoxious bit of humor on my part, but that was it. Knowing that about my own past as a smug teenage dude, I’m willing to cut Gorsuch a little slack for being an asshole back in the day; his club name was even more obnoxious than mine, but as far as I know he wasn’t in fact goosestepping around the quads as a kid.
Also, as a general rule, barring actual criminal activity or an active thread of asshole behavior from then to now (see: Ted Cruz), I’m usually willing to say what happens in high school and college stays there. I did a lot of asshole things in high school and college myself; I don’t know that they’re entirely indicative of who I am as a 47-year-old person engaged in the adult world.
Thoughts on the cabinet hearings?
They’re actually going better than I expected!
But DeVos! And Sessions! And Price in the middle of the night!
The fact Mike Pence had to drag his ass over to Capitol Hill to push DeVos over into the win column is a pretty substantial thing. I would have preferred her not getting the nod, but all things considered this was a decent showing by the Democrats. Likewise Sessions, for which there was only one defection, and the vote on Price was similarly lopsided. I don’t think that vote happening in the middle of the night matters for anything, incidentally; the vote totals wouldn’t have changed, and it’s not like people didn’t find out in the morning.
Anyway, look: The Democrats are in the minority right now. If they held the Senate, things might be different, but they don’t. Be happy they seem to have found their spines. Their spine-finding is going to be important over the next few years, especially because, if memory serves, 25 of them are up for re-election in ’18.
Okay, time for some quick takes.
Do it.
Flynn talking to the Russians about sanctions?
Stupid, possibly illegal, and in any other administration would be grounds for him to be removed. He will not be removed.
Conway pimping Ivanka’s fashion brand?
Really stupid, definitely against the rules, and in any other administration would be grounds for her to be removed. She will not be removed.
Spicer lying his motherfucking ass off all the time in the press room?
Also appallingly stupid, not against rules, but again in any other administration he’d be fired. And he might eventually be fired because apparently Trump doesn’t like him much! And I suspect that on that day, he will say thank you Jesus to himself and then wander off to be a talking head and write a memoir.
I will note that of all the people in the administration, I feel sorry for Spicer the most — I think he has a thankless task where people like Flynn and Conway (and DeVos and Sessions, etc) are actively malign. But on the other hand, he took the job, so I only feel a little sorry for him, and less so every single time he opens his goddamn lying mouth.
Bannon?
Man, don’t get me started on that racist piece of shit right now. I will be here all day.
Trump: possible dementia?
This is a thing that’s going around, I know. One, I’m nowhere near qualified to make an assessment; two, you know what? I don’t want to give him an excuse for being such an awful president. Unless definitely shown otherwise by medical experts, I am going to assume that Trump is both in complete charge of his faculties, and a historically awful president.
Is Trump the Worst President Ever™?
I still hold that spot for James Buchanan, who broke the country in a way that required fighting a war to fix, and also we’re still just three weeks into this administration, so it might be a little early for definitive pronouncements. But it’s also pretty clear that just three weeks in, if Trump is not the worst president since Buchanan, it’s not for lack of trying. His administration is hopelessly corrupt, he’s incurious and a bigot, his advisers are motherfucking white nationalists who aren’t even trying to hide that fact, and he literally has no idea what he’s doing.
In a way it’s exhilarating! Because this administration is entirely outside the experience of anyone, ever — it’s never been this bad, this fast. But then, it’s easy for me to say it’s exhilarating, since I’m one of those people who will be the last to be affected by the immense damage this administration has the potential to cause, and is indeed already causing. Let’s face it: Trump and his party pals are all in for me, Mr. Straight White Rich Dude, whether I want that or not. It’s everyone else they’re screwing, especially if they have a skin shade darker than my own fish-pale pallor, and even more so if they’re Muslim.
Again: I’m embarrassed that my president and his administration are corrupt, ignorant bigots, and I’m embarrassed that when given a choice between corrupt, ignorant bigots and not corrupt ignorant bigots, enough of us decided the corrupt, ignorant bigots would somehow be a refreshing change to make the electoral college go in that direction. But here we are, and this is what we’ve got.
Do you have advice for anyone following politics these days?
Briefly, until otherwise proven:
Assume any utterance from Trump is a lie and/or grossly misinformed;
Assume that Trump’s lieutenants will support that lie/ignorance and add their own;
Assume any executive order from Trump is unconstitutional, impractical and unvetted;
Assume the guiding principle of the administration is white power;
Assume the rationale for any administration initiative is “because fuck you, that’s why”;
Assume the Congressional and national GOP organization is all in for each of the above;
Assume this is how it’s going to be until January 20, 2021 at the earliest.
That’s pretty bleak.
Yeah, well. Welcome to your refreshing change.
Last time you wrote on Trump you said you were strangely optimistic. Would you care to revise that statement?
Nope! Three weeks in, as many people want to impeach this asshole as don’t, his unfavorables are up, and GOP congresscritters are literally running away from their constituents, who are angry as hell with what’s going on. Again — Trump and the GOP are in power right now and there’s nothing that can change that in the short run. But in the last week it appears the courts are willing to put on the brakes, the Democrats in Congress are willing to stand up (just a little!) and people are ready to confront the government. Life is not optimal. But it’s better than it would be if everyone was rolling over and just talking it.
So, yeah! I’m still feeling not entirely horrible! Let’s see how long that lasts.
OK, but can we set this to the soundtrack from that GoT episode?
Woefully unqualified but nonetheless Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was forcibly turned away by protesters Friday when she attempted to enter a DC middle school, though the school’s relief was short-lived—according to reports, she eventually made it inside through a different door.
