More Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Trump and His Supporters See Only Whites as Full Citizens

Numerous writers have noted the sense of depression and/or stress that many Americans are experiencing as the regime of Der Trumpenführer rolls out it policies that aim to make white, heterosexual right wing Christians true citizens.  The rest of us are relegated to an inferior status under this selfish and hate driven world view.  Indeed, any restriction on the ability of the preferred class of whites to abuse and marginalize others is described as "persecution of Christians" and/or "white oppression."  It takes a very sick and evil mindset to view not being allowed to abuse and mistreat others as "persecution," but that is now the governing policy template that reigns at the White House. A piece in Salon looks at this toxic reality and what it bodes for many Americans.  Here are excerpts:

Woody Guthrie was one of the United States’ greatest folk singers and activists. Most Americans can recite the following lyrics from memory:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

These beautiful words were both a slogan and a demand.  Donald Trump does not share such egalitarian values.

Last week, Trump was the featured guest at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. where he outlined a vision of Christian nationalism. A twice-divorced man, repeat adulterer, professed sexual predator who has said he grabs women by their genitals, liar and fraud, guest star in a pornographic video and a person who is neither pious nor modest speaking on matters of God and faith might be seen as comedy gold. Likewise, Trump’s promises to tear down the boundaries between church and state could also be mocked as boilerplate right-wing talking points that only resonate with the ignorant or the politically unhinged.

In this historical moment, these matters are too serious to be greeted with laughter, however. Trump’s comments at the prayer breakfast are part of a much larger and very dangerous pattern.

Donald Trump used overt white racism as well as white racial resentment to secure his victory over Hillary Clinton. The narrative of “economic anxiety” among working-class whites is largely incorrect. White identity politics and ginning up fear about “white oppression” won Trump the White House.

Two of Donald Trump’s most senior and trusted advisers are Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller, long associated with white nationalist causes and publications.

Donald Trump has ordered that federal resources be diverted away from tracking white supremacist organizations.

Donald Trump’s administration does not view protecting the civil rights of non-whites as a priority. He has threatened to unleash the police and military on black and brown people who live in cities such as Chicago. Trump’s personal behavior is replete with examples of bigotry and racism.

This is a vision of America as a Herrenvolk society where democracy, freedom and opportunity are centered around the principle that white people are the in-group to be privileged and protected, while nonwhites are to be treated as second-class citizens. This vision of America also embraces what white supremacists and white nationalists have referred to as “ethno-nationalism”: the idea that the modern nation-state should be defined by “ethnicity,” and that there are certain core values that must be protected at all costs against “outsiders.”

But “ethno-nationalism” is no more than racist doublespeak. It is a somewhat more acceptable reframing of the white supremacist belief that America and Europe should be “white” by law, habit and tradition. By implication, people of color (and those who are not Christian — especially Muslims) are pollutants to be expunged, by whatever means necessary, from the white body politic.

Last week, Donald Trump doubled down on his embrace of these racist Herrenvolk and ethno-nationalist values when it was announced that former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Anton would be joining his administration.

Writing for the New Yorker, Jonathan Chait elaborates:

Anton describes the government (pre-Trump) as “the junta.” This cannot be dismissed as mere rhetorical exaggeration. To Anton, the rising share of the nonwhite population is a foreign invasion: “The ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle,” he writes.

Anton apparently now occupies a central advisory role in the White House and will be helping shape American foreign policy.

In his role as the white nationalist in chief of the United States, Donald Trump wants to make clear that America is a white man’s country and that everyone else permitted to live here is just a guest, permanently “on notice.” This is revanchism of the worst kind, and a desperate effort to turn back the clock to the wrong side of history.

Donald Trump and his minions will soon discover that black and brown people built America. Indeed, many of them were in the United States long before “white” Europeans arrived and tried to claim it exclusively as their own.

Yes, this agenda is similar to the Nazi myth of the Aryan Race.  To my "friends" who voted for Trump/Pence, it may hurt your feelings to call you out, but this mindset is what in my view motivated your vote.  All I can say is shame on you!

Anti-Gay AG Sessions Drops Push for Transgender Protections

Anti-gay bigot, Jeff Sessions with Paul "Reverse Robin Hood" Ryan

As this blog and numerous others pointed out, new Attorney General Jeff Sessions has a documented history of being a racist and homophobe.  Once sworn in, Sessions has wasted no time in proving that he is a menace to the LGBT community.  Indeed, not even 24 hours passed before Sessions directed Justice Department attorneys seeking to narrow an injunction against the Obama administration's efforts to afford protections to transgender students.  Other minorities need to take note that they too will now be targets for Sessions' white supremacist Justice Department.  When added to Der Trumpenführer's promise to sign the foul "First Amendment Defense Act" which would grant special rights to Christofascists, it all equates to open war of LGBT Americans - something I warned "friends" who voted for Trump about repeatedly. Politico looks at this disturbing but expected development.  Here are highlights:

The Trump administration has found a nationwide injunction it can live with.

In the slew of lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump's travel ban executive order, Justice Department lawyers have repeatedly argued that — whatever the alleged legal defects in his order — nationwide injunctions on its enforcement are improper.

However, on Friday night, Justice Department attorneys handling a lawsuit over President Barack Obama's efforts to protect transgender individuals dropped an effort to temporarily rein in a nationwide injunction a Texas federal judge imposed last year. That injunction prohibited the feds from enforcing the Obama administration's view that existing civil rights laws cover discrimination against those who are transgender.

Last November, the Justice Department appealed U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor's ruling to the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Justice Department attorneys urged the appeals court to limit the injunction so it only applied in the 13 states involved in filing the suit challenging the transgender policy.

That request to narrow O'Connor's injunction was set to be argued before a three-judge 5th Circuit panel on Tuesday in Austin, Texas, but on Friday evening the Justice Department withdrew the stay request.

No explanation for the change in position was given to the court. The move came one day after former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) was sworn-in as attorney general.

Dropping the stay request avoids Justice Department lawyers having to appear before the 5th Circuit this week to argue for the stay while likely having little clarity to offer the court on how what stance the Trump administration plans to take on the transgender issues at the heart of the dispute.

The Justice Department has not completely abandoned the position that O'Connor's injunction was too broad. Federal government lawyers could pursue that claim as the appeal goes forward, but with their action Friday they have given up the effort to keep enforcing Obama's interpretation of transgender rights while the appeal proceeds.

The Supreme Court might give some guidance on that issue relatively soon. The justices are set to hear arguments next month on a case involving a transgender Virginia student who was born female but sought to use the boys' room at his public high school.

Normally, the justices would decide the case by June. However, it's possible the court might drop the case altogether, not rule squarely on the transgender rights issue, or even punt the case until they have a ninth colleague on the currently shorthanded high court bench.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Kathleen Parker: Trump’s Two-Year Presidency

Conservative columnist - and at this point perhaps former Republican - Kathleen Parker is off the GOP reservation again and has a column in the Washington Post that I hope becomes predictive of what the Republican Party will face in two years if not sooner if it does not stop being a doormat for Der Trumpenführer.  It the Tea Party helped to give the GOP control of Congress in 2012, the growing resistance to the lies, conflicts of interest and attacks on civil rights of Der Trumpenführer could presage disaster for the GOP in 2018.  What I have found remarkable is the number of previously apolitical individuals belatedly waking to the reality that one must be politically involved to be a true patriot and to protect American democracy from those who would subvert it.   Here are column excerpts:

Good news: In two years, we’ll have a new president. Bad news: If we make it that long.

My “good” prediction is based on the Law of the Pendulum. Enough Americans, including most independent voters, will be so ready to shed Donald Trump and his little shop of horrors that the 2018 midterm elections are all but certain to be a landslide — no, make that a mudslide — sweep of the House and Senate. If Republicans took both houses in a groundswellof the people’s rejection of Obamacare, Democrats will take them back in a tsunami of protest.

Once ensconced, it would take a Democratic majority approximately 30 seconds to begin impeachment proceedings selecting from an accumulating pile of lies, overreach and just plain sloppiness. That is, assuming Trump hasn’t already been shown the exit.

With luck, and Cabinet-level courage that is not much in evidence, there’s a chance we won’t have to wait two long years, during which, let’s face it, anything could happen. In anticipation of circumstances warranting a speedier presidential replacement, wiser minds added Section 4 to the 25th Amendment, which removes the president if a majority of the Cabinet and the vice president think it necessary, i.e., if the president is injured or falls too ill to serve. Or, by extension, by being so incompetent — or not-quite-right — that he or she poses a threat to the nation and must be removed immediately and replaced by the vice president.

Thus far, Trump and his henchmen have conducted a full frontal assault on civil liberties, open government and religious freedom, as well as instigating or condoning a cascade of ethics violations ranging from the serious (business conflicts of interest) to the absurd (attacking a department store for dropping his daughter’s fashion line). And, no, it’s not just a father defending his daughter. It’s the president of the United States bullying a particular business and, more generally, making a public case against free enterprise.

To an objective observer, it would seem impossible to defend the perilous absurdities emanating from the White House . . .

In a hopeful note, a few Republicans are speaking out, but the list is short.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz recently got a taste of what’s ahead for Republican incumbents. Facing an unruly crowd at a town hallmeeting in Utah, the House Oversight Committee chairman was booed nearly every time he mentioned Trump. Even if many in the crowd were members of opposition groups, the evening provided a glimpse of the next two years. From 2010’s tea party to 2018’s resistance, the pendulum barely had time to pause before beginning its leftward trek.

While we wait for it to someday find the nation’s center, where so many wait impatiently, it seems clear that the president, who swore an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, has never read it. Nor, apparently, has he ever even watched a Hollywood rendering of the presidency. A single episode of “The West Wing” would have taught Trump more about his new job than he seems to know — or care.

Trump’s childish and petulant manner, meanwhile, further reinforces long-held concerns that this man can’t be trusted to lead a dog-and-pony act, much less the nation. Most worrisome is how long Trump can tolerate the protests, criticisms, humiliations, rebuttals and defeats — and what price he’ll try to exact from those who refused to look away.

More Saturday Male Beauty

The War Against Same-Sex Marriage is Just Getting Started

For obvious reasons, the husband and I are concerned about the growing efforts of Christofascists to push through so-called "religious freedom" laws which would grant homophobes and gay haters carte blanche to discriminate against same sex couples - and many others who fail to subscribe to their fear and hate based beliefs.  Under such laws, all that one would need do is claim that one's religious beliefs were in essence offended by same sex couples, cohabitation heterosexual couples and even women on contraception.  Here in Virginia, the Republican controlled Virginia General Assembly has passed a license to discriminate bill that fortunately will be vetoed by Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe.  Should Republicans win the governorship in November, such a law could be passed a year from now. But the effort to destroy the rights of same sex married couples isn't confined to Virginia.  At the federal level a pernicious anti-LGBT GOP sponsored bill is pending in Congress.  Hundreds of bills will likely be introduced in state legislatures this year.   I am worried about my own rights, but I am just as concerned about the poisonous impact these special rights for Christofascists would work on younger LGBT Americans who deserve full equality under the law.  A column in the Los Angeles Times looks at the coming war on gays.  Here are excerpts:

An executive order leaked to the media last week revealed plans to use the Oval Office to legalize broad discrimination against the LGBT community in the name of religion. A draft of the order, first published in The Nation, would allow “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations” to refuse services to LGBT people, whether in housing, employment, education or healthcare. In the media uproar that followed, Donald Trump said that he would not sign the order at this time.

But the president did not rule out doing so in the future.

The document is a reminder that while Trump has claimed he won’t overturn marriage equality in the White House, he doesn’t have to repeal Obergefell v. Hodges — the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage — to strip the rights of gay and lesbian couples. The order is specifically designed to allow anyone who has a religious objection to same-sex marriage to discriminate in the name of faith — and would prevent the government from taking action against any individual who acts on those views.

Trump, who said his personal view on same-sex marriage is “irrelevant,” claimed the case “was already settled.” . . . What makes this claim rather disingenuous is that Trump doesn’t need the court system to neuter the protections allowed by Obergefell v. Hodges, which offer the full legal rights of marriage to all couples.

Same-sex partners may get to keep their marriages under the Trump administration, but those unions will mean little if the federal government erodes the rights and benefits afforded to that status.

In essence, the leaked document is an executive version of the First Amendment Defense Act — or HR 2802 — a national version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act laws introduced in states like Indiana and Louisiana.

The bill — which also could be used to fire a gay employee for having a picture of his legally wedded partner on his desk, or to deny housing to a lesbian couple — will be debated by Congress later this year. On his campaign website, Trump vowed to sign it.

Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, would appear to confirm the administration’s commitment to so-called religious liberty over the rights of same-sex couples.

It remains to be seen how a SCOTUS with Gorsuch on the bench would rule if many of the central tenets of marriage equality — the equal protection of same-sex couples under the law — are disputed by religious liberty advocates.

The impending challenges to same-sex marriage, though, may take place sooner rather than later. The Texas Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this year on a case out of Houston, a trial that will decide whether same-sex couples in the Lone Star State are entitled to the same marriage benefits as heterosexual couples.  Although the court passed on it in September, the case has been a favorite of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who repeatedly lobbied for the judges to reconsider hearing it. Patrick, who famously suggested that the LGBT victims of the Pulse massacre deserved to be murdered, served as Trump’s campaign chairman in Texas.

Justice John Devine, the most far-right member of the Texas Supreme Court, already has stated his opposition to providing spousal benefits to same-sex couples, which he believes are not guaranteed under existing law.

Over 200 bills targeting the rights of the community were heard by state legislatures last year, a figure that more than doubled over the prior year. A majority of these cases were over the very religious objections that will take center stage this year.

The LGBT community would appear to have won an important victory with Trump’s momentary decision to put his executive order on hold — after many claimed it was already a done deal. But be warned: The war against same-sex marriage is just getting started.

Will "friends" who voted for Trump raise their voices and condemn such efforts to harm LGBT Americans?  I am not holding my breath.  Like Germans during the early 1930's, since they are not directly impacted, I expect most will do nothing. Be afraid. 

Coal Country's Embrace of Fantasy

Coal producing areas of the country, including the increasing backward Southwest Virginia, embraced Der Trumpenführer and his lies about the "war on coal" for many reasons, not the least of which was the desire of voters to return to "the god old days" in the coal industry.  Never mind that (i) there was no "war on coal" and (ii) domestic and global demand for coal is headed in a downward spiral never to return to past levels.  Rather than admit economic reality and to face the task of accepting change - and modern thinking - it was far easier to embrace Trump/GOP lies.  Wanting something to be true, however, doesn't make it true as a piece in Think Progress underscores.  These fantasy embracing voters are going to be most disappointed and Democrats need to find a way to turn their disappointment against the Republicans who played them for fools.  Here are article highlights:

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has a message for the new president: You are not going to bring coal back.

Donald Trump won the presidency with claims that he is a brilliant businessman who will create jobs. He railed against a political “war on coal” supposedly waged by President Obama, one Trump claimed was “killing American jobs.” On his first day in office, Trump deleted all the climate change references on the White House website, replacing it with an “energy plan” that asserts he is “committed to… reviving America’s coal industry.”

In a new analysis, leading independent energy experts at BNEF dismantle these claims. “Whatever President Trump may say, U.S. coal’s main problem has been cheap natural gas and renewable power, not a politically driven war on coal,’” explain BNEF chair Michael Liebreich and chief editor Angus McCrone. Therefore “it will continue being pushed out of the generating mix.”

They note global electricity demand has grown much less than expected (thanks in part to energy efficiency).  . . . .  In a world of flat demand, the electricity market is a ruthless game of musical chairs — where the slowest and most unwieldy power sources keep losing their seat.

Coal power is just too costly and inflexible, explains BNEF: “Super-low-cost renewable power — what we are now calling ‘base-cost renewables’ — is going to force a revolution in the way power grids are designed, and the way they are regulated.”

When you add the revolution in cheap fracked gas — which Trump has pledged to double down on — it’s no surprise the country shut down over 40 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations since 2000. “These will not reopen whatever anything President Trump does,” explains BNEF, “nor do we see much appetite among investors for ploughing money into U.S. coal extraction — stranded asset risk will trump rhetoric.”

[C]oal’s woes are not merely being driven by a collapse in the economic case here. It’s also being driven by a collapse in the export market, as countries from Europe to Asia also move away from coal because of its economic and human cost. Coal pollution is killing people and destroying the climate.

“Peak coal is coming sooner than expected,” Goldman Sachs told clients in a September research note. BNEF agrees.

So Trump won’t be bringing back the domestic coal industry. And even if he could, he can’t bring back the jobs because it’s the coal industry itself that wiped out most of those jobs through productivity gains from “strip mines and machinery,” as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explained in 2014.

The fact is clean energy jobs are the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades. Tragically, Trump’s misguided policies — his war on clean energy — mean the U.S. may not benefit from this exploding $50-trillion industry.

Andrew Sullivan - The Madness of King Donald

Former blogger Andrew Sullivan - who I had the opportunity meet several years ago - is back with a piece in New York Magazine which lays out his critical, and in my view, accurate summation of the nightmare currently gripping America in the person of Der Trumpenführer.  I don't always agree with Sullivan - especially on matters of religion and Catholicism - but he sums up matters well in his latest "conversation."   The bottom line is that the current occupant of the White House is mentally ill and this reality is what is unsettling if not down right frightening to the major it of Americans who did not and never will support the current president and all of the toxicity that he represents.  Here are some highlights:

I want to start with Trump’s lies. It’s now a commonplace that Trump and his underlings tell whoppers. Fact-checkers have never had it so good. But all politicians lie. Bill Clinton could barely go a day without some shading or parsing of the truth. Richard Nixon was famously tricky. But all the traditional political fibbers nonetheless paid some deference to the truth — even as they were dodging it. They acknowledged a shared reality and bowed to it. They acknowledged the need for a common set of facts in order for a liberal democracy to function at all. Trump’s lies are different. They are direct refutations of reality — and their propagation and repetition is about enforcing his power rather than wriggling out of a political conundrum. They are attacks on the very possibility of a reasoned discourse, the kind of bald-faced lies that authoritarians issue as a way to test loyalty and force their subjects into submission. That first press conference when Sean Spicer was sent out to lie and fulminate to the press about the inauguration crowd reminded me of some Soviet apparatchik having his loyalty tested to see if he could repeat in public what he knew to be false. It was comical, but also faintly chilling.

What do I mean by denial of empirical reality? Take one of the most recent. On Wednesday, Senator Richard Blumenthal related the news that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee for the long-vacant Supreme Court seat, had told him that the president’s unprecedented, personal attacks on federal judges were “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” Within half an hour, this was confirmed by Gorsuch’s White House–appointed spokesman, who was present for the conversation. CNN also reported that Senator Ben Sasse had heard Gorsuch say exactly the same thing, with feeling, as did former senator Kelly Ayotte.

The president nonetheless insisted twice yesterday that Blumenthal had misrepresented his conversation with Gorsuch — first in an early morning tweet and then, once again, yesterday afternoon, in front of the television cameras. To add to the insanity, he also tweeted that in a morning interview, Chris Cuomo had never challenged Blumenthal on his lies about his service in Vietnam — when the tape clearly shows it was the first thing Cuomo brought up.

What are we supposed to do with this? How are we to respond to a president who in the same week declared that the “murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 45 to 47 years,” when, of course, despite some recent, troubling spikes in cities, it’s nationally near a low not seen since the late 1960s, and half what it was in 1980. What are we supposed to do when a president says that two people were shot dead in Chicago during President Obama’s farewell address — when this is directly contradicted by the Chicago police? None of this, moreover, is ever corrected. No error is ever admitted. Any lie is usually doubled down by another lie — along with an ad hominem attack.

Here is what we are supposed to do: rebut every single lie. Insist moreover that each lie is retracted — and journalists in press conferences should back up their colleagues with repeated follow-ups if Spicer tries to duck the plain truth. Do not allow them to move on to another question. Interviews with the president himself should not leave a lie alone; the interviewer should press and press and press until the lie is conceded. The press must not be afraid of even calling the president a liar to his face if he persists. This requires no particular courage. I think, in contrast, of those dissidents whose critical insistence on simple truth in plain language kept reality alive in the Kafkaesque world of totalitarianism. As the Polish dissident Adam Michnik once said: “In the life of every honorable man comes a difficult moment … when the simple statement that this is black and that is white requires paying a high price.” The price Michnik paid was years in prison. American journalists cannot risk a little access or a nasty tweet for the same essential civic duty?

Then there is the obvious question of the president’s mental and psychological health. I know we’re not supposed to bring this up — but it is staring us brutally in the face. I keep asking myself this simple question: If you came across someone in your everyday life who repeatedly said fantastically and demonstrably untrue things, what would you think of him? If you showed up at a neighbor’s, say, and your host showed you his newly painted living room, which was a deep blue, and then insisted repeatedly — manically — that it was a lovely shade of scarlet, what would your reaction be? If he then dragged out a member of his family and insisted she repeat this obvious untruth in front of you, how would you respond? If the next time you dropped by, he was still raving about his gorgeous new red walls, what would you think? Here’s what I’d think: This man is off his rocker. He’s deranged; he’s bizarrely living in an alternative universe; he’s delusional. If he kept this up, at some point you’d excuse yourself and edge slowly out of the room and the house and never return. You’d warn your other neighbors. You’d keep your distance. If you saw him, you’d be polite but keep your distance.

I think this is a fundamental reason why so many of us have been so unsettled, anxious, and near panic these past few months. It is not so much this president’s agenda. That always changes from administration to administration. It is that when the linchpin of an entire country is literally delusional, clinically deceptive, and responds to any attempt to correct the record with rage and vengeance, everyone is always on edge.

There is no anchor any more. At the core of the administration of the most powerful country on earth, there is, instead, madness. 

Saturday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1