Tuesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Monday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

Donald Trump: None Dare Call it Treason

Today the Electoral College will vote and, if it confirms the election of Donald Trump, I suspect that future historians will note that today was the day that the 227 year old American republic died.  True, the trappings of the republic will linger for a while just as the Roman Senate and other offices of the Roman Republic lingered after Augustus made himself emperor.  But the constitution will have been gutted and America that all of us grew up in until now will be dead.  What I find most disturbing is that far too many Americans simply do not seem to care.  The situation is eerily similar to 1933 Germany when indifference and intellectual laziness and selfishness set Germany and the world on a course for disaster.  Similarly, few want to call out Trump for what he is: a traitor.  Bill Moyers has a piece that looks at what too few are to cowardly  to say.  Here are highlights:

Now that the CIA has determined that the Russians intervened in the presidential election to help Trump win, the Cold War politics of left and right have been flipped. If Stormer rewrote his book for 2016, its thesis might go like this:

Beware of Donald Trump. Witlessly or willfully, he’s doing the Kremlin’s bidding. Anyone who enables him — on his payroll or in the press, by sucking up or by silence, out of good will or cowardice — is Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot. This is a national emergency, and treating it like normal is criminally negligent of our duty to American democracy.

Trump as traitor: I can just imagine the reaction from the Tower penthouse. Lying media. Paranoid hyperbole. Partisan libel. Sour grapes. A pathetic bid for clicks. A desperate assault on the will of the people. Sad! (Note to the tweeter-in-chief: You’re welcome.)

As a kid in a New Jersey household where Adlai Stevenson was worshipped, I thought Stormer was a nut job, so I won’t pretend that accepting the modern inverse of his case is a no-brainer. I’m also not trying to recast my political differences with the president-elect as a national security crisis. Trump won. Elections have consequences. I get that.

I may not like it, but I’m not surprised that Trump tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a crusading climate change denier and an advocate of dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, to run the EPA, presumably into the ground.

I’m infuriated, but not startled that Trump refuses to disclose his tax returns, divest his assets, create a credible blind trust, obey the constitutional prohibition of foreign emoluments or eliminate the conflict between fattening his family fortune and advancing American interests. That’s not draining the swamp, it’s drinking it.

It’s abysmal that Democrats didn’t have a good enough jobs message to convince enough Rust Belt voters to choose their economic alternative to Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. It’s disgraceful that the media normalized Trump, propagated his lies, monetized his notoriety and lapped up his tweet porn. It’s maddening that the Electoral College apportions ballot power inequitably. But as enervating as any of that is, none of it is as dangerous to democracy as the CIA’s finding that Putin hacked the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. Without firing a single shot, the Kremlin is weeks away from installing its puppet in the White House.

It’s entirely conceivable that Russia has something on Trump. They may hold hundreds of millions of dollars of Trump debt. They may have spousally unsettling video of him — a KGB specialty, and a plausible Trump susceptibility. Surely the Kremlin has mapped his character disorder. In the third debate, when Trump said Putin had no respect for Clinton, and she shot back, “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president,” Trump’s interruption — “No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet, no, you’re the puppet” — sounded like a third-grader. Actually, it was a confession, what clinicians call projective identification. Putin’s psy ops must know every such string on him to play.

Trump blew off the Kremlin’s intervention in our election the way Putin denied Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Do we call that a lie, too? 

Maybe there’s a better word we should dare to use.

Controversy Continues Over Virginia Beach School Board LGBT Policy

When it comes to getting itself embroiled in controversy. few public bodies show the ineptitude of the Three Stooges like Virginia Beach School Board.  The board's public relations skills are nil and those on its PR team truly seem to be utterly incompetent. A case in point is what many see as the board's anti-LGBT mentality in the wake of the abrupt cancellation of a Gay-Straight Alliance assembly at Frank F. Cox High School, the neighboring high school to my old neighborhood in Virginia Beach. The Virginian Pilot is carrying another guest editorial  on the issue which like that by Grace Bonney previously highlighted is authored by two individuals who I have known for years.  Like others, they call on the Board to clarify policies towards LGBT students who still face daily harassment and bullying in far too many instances.  While Virginia Beach likes to picture itself as a modern city, it remains among the most reactionary cities in Virginia with Christofascists still holding too much sway in the public arena and in school policies.  It is long past time that the city moved into the 21st century. Here are op-ed highlights:

AS ALUMNI of Virginia Beach City Public Schools, we have followed the cancellation of Cox High School’s Gay-Straight Alliance event with concern and dismay. While the event has been rescheduled, the School Board has neither acknowledged any potential homophobia inherent in the event’s postponement nor addressed the atmosphere of harassment that LGBTQ students face in Virginia Beach schools. We find this troubling.

Incoming School Board member Victoria Manning, who called for the cancellation of the GSA assembly, noted in The Pilot on Dec. 9 that certain parents were upset about “the timing and nature of the event.”

This is puzzling. The “nature of the event” was to promote acceptance of differences and combat bullying. Despite Manning’s language, we don’t find anything controversial in that objective, and we suspect that opposition to the event reflects ingrained homophobia as much as procedural error.

We agree that club meetings and assemblies during the school day must be rare. But we are concerned here about process.

We suspect not. We note that the planned GSA gathering was optional; surely a parent concerned about a child missing class time might simply have advised her son or daughter not to attend.

The school division’s policies in this area are, by the board’s own admission, ambiguous. We are interested in the history of school-day gatherings at Cox and other schools. Under what circumstances and for what organizations have such assemblies been held? Indeed, the Virginia ACLU has asked the School Board for such data.

Manning has suggested that her 11th-hour email to Edwards was the result of outreach from parents who were concerned about the impact of the assembly on classroom time.

We ask: What compels parents to call a School Board member to register alarm about a specific assembly? We wonder whether parents routinely object to pep rallies and sporting events that interrupt the instructional day. What about guest speakers? Holiday celebrations? Theatrical events? Awards ceremonies?

The Cox GSA assembly — which was designed to celebrate “love is love” after a gay student who was bullied attempted suicide — was directly related to preserving the sanctity of the classroom experience for all students.

Nationwide, LGBTQ teens are at higher risk for bullying and harassment, including verbal and physical assault, and nowhere is such marginalization more conspicuous, even systematized, than in our schools.

Human Rights Watch recently conducted a study on the treatment of gay and lesbian youth in Alabama, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas and Utah and found that “almost all of the students interviewed reported encountering verbal harassment in their school environment, even in the most LGBT-friendly schools.”

Studies conducted by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network found that 32 percent of LGBTQ students did not go to school at least one day because of feeling unsafe, 44 percent had experienced physical harassment, 22 percent had experienced stronger violence (61 percent never reported it), and 31 percent said the school had made no attempt to respond to those students who had reported attacks.

These statistics reveal the atmosphere of intimidation that predisposes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth to a suicide rate that is four times higher than that of straight youth.

Virginia has no law prohibiting bullying based on sexual orientation or gender identity in schools (nor does it provide legal protections for LGBTQ teachers and administrators).

We condemn the fact that Manning has received threats. We also wish that “What really happened with the Gay-Straight Alliance,” her Dec. 10 Pilot column, had acknowledged the hostility that LGBTQ students face daily.

We are eager to learn the specific strategies that the School Board will employ to clarify its policies — and, more importantly, to ensure the safety and well-being of LGBTQ students in Virginia Beach classrooms.
 

As I told one school board directly, from my dealings with the Virginia Beach School Board that stretch back more than 20 years, I have very little confidence in its willingness to do the right thing for LGBT students.   I am still waiting to be proven wrong.  As for the parents who complained, I suspect that many or all are Christofascists who view any effort to stem their mistreatment and abuse of others as an "attack on their religious freedom."  I'm sorry, but the public schools should stand firm against bully based on toxic religious beliefs.  Religious freedom rights and the right to attend school free from harassment belong to everyone, not just the falsely pious "godly Christian" crowd.  

Monday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Saturday Night Live Spoofs Trump and Reality

 Once again Saturday Night Live did a great spoof on Donald Trump over the weekend,.  Sadly, what is frightening is the fact that the spoof likely exposes the reality of what the Trump/Pence/Putin regime will bring to America.  Trump has no allegiance to anyone but himself and his overweening ego.   This country has been truly betrayed by those who voted for Trump and, of course by Trump himself who doesn't give a rat's ass about America or the cretins who voted for him,   I truly hoe that Trump voters quickly begin to reap what they sowed and they deserve every misfortune, betrayal and calamity imaginable. It may sound cruel, but I hope they suffer immeasurably.  And some of us will unmercifully remind them that their suffering is self-inflicted and the direct result of their laziness and willingness to fall for appeals to bigotry, racism and misogyny.  There are no limits to the suffering that these individuals deserve. .   

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

Donald Trump: The Russian Lap Dog

Yes, I continue to suffer from melancholy as I watch what appears to be the end of the America that I always knew. A dangerous narcissist is on the verge of occupying the White House, racists, white supremacists and "Christian" religious extremists are all ascendant and emboldened.  Before the election I had in retrospect foolishly thought that the day would come where the scholarship for LGBT graduating high school students in honor of my late parents would not be needed.  Now, especially in light of Der Fuhrer's nominee for Secretary of Education, the need for the scholarship may instead be growing.  Equally disturbing is how I have to on occasion socialize with those who voted to kill democracy and unleash hate and bigotry - e.g., a holiday party this evening that I'd rather not attend whatsoever (I've told the husband that we make the briefest appearance possible).  The most troubling, however, is American's soon to be realigned position as an ally to a murderous despot by the name of Vladimir Putin.  I am not anti-Russian.  Sadly, the Russian people have been plagued by toxic rulers for years.  Now, America has joined the Russian people on that journey.  A column in the New York Times looks at the troubling things to come.  Here are highlights:

In Watergate, the break-in didn’t affect the outcome of the election. In 2016, we don’t know for sure. There were other factors, but it’s possible that Russia’s theft and release of the emails provided the margin for Donald Trump’s victory.

The C.I.A. says it has “high confidence” that Russia was trying to get Trump elected, and, according to The Washington Post, the directors of the F.B.I. and national intelligence agree with that conclusion.

Both Nixon and Trump responded badly to the revelations, Nixon by ordering a cover-up and Trump by denouncing the C.I.A. and, incredibly, defending Russia from the charges that it tried to subvert our election. I never thought I would see a dispute between America’s intelligence community and a murderous foreign dictator in which an American leader sided with the dictator.

Let’s be clear: This was an attack on America, less lethal than a missile but still profoundly damaging to our system. It’s not that Trump and Putin were colluding to steal an election. But if the C.I.A. is right, Russia apparently was trying to elect a president who would be not a puppet exactly but perhaps something of a lap dog — a Russian poodle.

Frankly, it’s mystifying that Trump continues to defend Russia and Putin, even as he excoriates everyone else, from C.I.A. officials to a local union leader in Indiana.

Now we come to the most reckless step of all: This Russian poodle is acting in character by giving important government posts to friends of Moscow, in effect rewarding it for its attack on the United States.

Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, is a smart and capable manager. Yet it’s notable that he is particularly close to Putin, who had decorated Tillerson with Russia’s “Order of Friendship.”

Whatever our personal politics, how can we possibly want to respond to Russia’s interference in our election by putting American foreign policy in the hands of a Putin friend?

Tillerson’s closeness to Putin is especially troubling because of Trump’s other Russia links. The incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, accepted Russian money to attend a dinner in Moscow and sat near Putin. A ledger shows $12.7 million in secret payments by a pro-Russia party in Ukraine to Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. And the Trump family itself has business connections with Russia.

[O]ver all it looks as if the Trump administration will be remarkably pro-Putin — astonishing considering Putin’s Russia has killed journalists, committed war crimes in Ukraine and Syria and threatened the peaceful order in Europe.

There are other issues to explore as well, including his role in enabling corruption in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world. The same is true of his role in complicity with the government of Angola, where oil corruption turned the president’s daughter into a billionaire even as children died of poverty and disease at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world.

This is not only about Tillerson just as the 1972 break-in was not only about the Watergate building complex. This is about the integrity of American democracy and whether a foreign dictator should be rewarded for attacking the United States. It is about whether we are led by a president or a poodle.

The GOP Didn't Care About Russia's Effort to Derail Democracy

Tomorrow the Electoral College will vote and, short of a miracle, instead of protecting the nation from a dangerous and unqualified demagogue as intended by the Founding Father, it will probably certify Donald Trump's election and send America down the road to the death of democracy.  All empires end over time and often their demise comes from both forces inside and outside of their border (News bulletin to Christofascists: Christianity, not homosexuality, played a major role in the fall of the western Roman Empire).  Such will be the death of the American republic, with the outside forces being Putin's Russia and the inside forces being the angry whites who backed a demagogic authoritarian and destroy the country rather than lose their white privilege, the only thing that much of the white trash element (not all of whom are economically desperate) has had to allow itself to feel superior.  What is most frightening is that the GOP, the Republican Party, that political got the nation through the cataclysm of the Civil War, cared nothing about the Russian intervention.  Yes, there will be huffing and puffing and posturing, and much pretense of patriotism, but when it mattered, the GOP cared only about winning. A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at this sickening reality:  

The [Obama] administration did a huge amount over the course of the fall to alert the public, alert the world was happening. They finally went so far as to issue a public consensus judgment of the entire US intelligence community about Russian tampering in the election.

This was loud. Everybody heard about it. It was widely reported. It certainly didn't get the same volume or intensity of attention as Hillary Clinton's emails. But the President can't control press coverage. The key issue was that political partisanship by and large kept Republicans from caring. The dynamics of the presidential contest were more important than foreign meddling or sabotage.

This may sound like a harsh judgment but it is demonstrably true. Not only did President-Elect Trump know about the charges. (Indeed, it is very likely his intelligence briefings included more detailed information than we in the public have even today.) He frequently discussed them and encouraged the tampering.

Yesterday, Monica Crowley, another typically Trumpian Fox News extremist, got an appointment to the Trump National Security Council. Soon enough someone found a Tweet in which she either joked about or encouraged (depends on your interpretation) Putin getting more documents to unearth about the Clinton campaign.

One of the weirdest things about the entire cycle was that Wikileaks went from being the scourge of GOP national security hawks and the national security establishment to being the toast of American conservatives.

Perhaps you have doubts about whether Russia was really behind the hacks. But the US government made abundantly clear who it believed was behind them. The notifications went far beyond leaks or interviews. They did a public and formal pronouncement! That almost never happens. The simple matter is this: Everybody knew this. But there was no making Trump, his supporters or most critically establishment Republicans or elected officials care.

Trump supporters, GOP elites, a substantial portion of the US electorate simply didn't care about what Russia was doing because they believed it hurt Hillary Clinton.

Having said all this, it is important to repeat what I think was also clear at the time. The vast majority, I would say basically all of what the Russians found, was pedestrian and inconsequential. I would say that it had a small to marginal effect on the outcome. But it was an extremely close election that can be enough to make the difference. Can you imagine the emails within the RNC as Trump went from being the scourge and mortal enemy to man of destiny? But having close to all of one side's private communication dribbled out into the public realm and fluffed up by a credulous press was obviously damaging.

Let's not make fools of ourselves again. For most of the Fall the US government was on the record about who was behind the disruption campaign. It was discussed widely in the press. The vast majority of Republicans simply didn't care.

Some will not like it, but in my mind, being a Trump supporter and a Republican is now more or less synonymous with being a traitor guilty of undermining the U.S. Constitution.  The vast majority of Americans who did not vote for Trump need to begin treating Trump voters accordingly. 

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1