Who is Mike Flynn?

Just kidding. We all know who Mike Flynn is.

In place for fire (v3)

Just go sit in the rubbered uncirculated air

a step or two down from the cold terrazzo landing

where yellow pipes run up the cinder block wall.

Where water smolders behind red valves

with brass gauges ready to erupt throughout

the institution. I don’t go into the cave to hide

from wolves. I go for this: no whirring motors;

no leaking earbuds; no one reciting from their

collected injustices.  I can wait years for the words

sheltered from those thoughts of others.

The Nationalist's Delusion, by Adam Serwer

We are in the middle of a political civil war over our soul--America's soul--on two fronts: racism and sexism. This article in The Atlantic lays out the racism front. (I'd also like to note American isn't alone in this.)

Political and Media elites create other explanations for the 2016 election, because, this one, racism, is too destructive, perhaps even to their own personal esteem.

These supporters will not change their minds, because this is what they always wanted: a president who embodies the rage they feel toward those they hate and fear, while reassuring them that that rage is nothing to be ashamed of.

The specific dissonance of Trumpism—advocacy for discriminatory, even cruel, policies combined with vehement denials that such policies are racially motivated—provides the emotional core of its appeal. It is the most recent manifestation of a contradiction as old as the United States, a society founded by slaveholders on the principle that all men are created equal.

The idea that economic suffering could lead people to support either Trump or Sanders, two candidates with little in common, illustrates the salience of an ideological frame. Suffering alone doesn’t impel such choices; what does is how the causes of such hardship are understood.

Which scapegoat is more attractive: Wall Street and corporate America or that others (minorities, immigrants) are getting help that you deserve?

... what Trump’s supporters refer to as political correctness is largely the result of marginalized communities gaining sufficient political power to project their prerogatives onto society at large. What a society finds offensive is not a function of fact or truth, but of power. It is why unpunished murders of black Americans by agents of the state draw less outrage than black football players’ kneeling for the National Anthem in protest against them. It is no coincidence that Trump himself frequently uses the term to belittle what he sees as unnecessary restrictions on state force.

Birtherism is a synthesis of the prejudice toward blacks, immigrants, and Muslims that swelled on the right during the Obama era: Obama was not merely black but also a foreigner, not just black and foreign but also a secret Muslim. Birtherism was not simply racism, but nationalism—a statement of values and a definition of who belongs in America. By embracing the conspiracy theory of Obama’s faith and foreign birth, Trump was also endorsing a definition of being American that excluded the first black president. Birtherism, and then Trumpism, united all three rising strains of prejudice on the right in opposition to the man who had become the sum of their fears.

In this sense only, the Calamity Thesis is correct. The great cataclysm in white America that led to Donald Trump was the election of Barack Obama.

Abraham Lincoln began the Civil War believing that former slaves would have to be transported to West Africa. Lyndon Johnson began his political career as a segregationist. Both came to realize that the question of black rights in America is not mere identity politics—not a peripheral matter, but the central, existential question of the republic. Nothing is inevitable, people can change. No one is irredeemable. But recognition precedes enlightenment.

Who is George Papadoupolos? Updated 11/9/17

Who is George Papadopoulos? Tuesday from the Washington Post:

The court documents do not answer a key question: whether Papadopoulos also told his superiors that he had met a London-based professor who claimed to know that the Russians had "dirt" on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, including thousands of her emails.

Also Tuesday, NYT reports on Trump campaign's foreign policy team starting with Flynn. We get to Papadopoulos about halfway through. He is a minor player, but many prosecutions start low and work their way up.

Trump's whole team was marginal; he personally could care less about foreign policy. But it was oddly pro-Russian, and Trump did care a great deal about building a Trump property in Moscow. (At this time in the campaign (when he called Papadopoulos an "excellent" guy), I personally don't believe he thought he'd win, and was just enjoying himself, thumbing his nose (polite way to put it) at everyone and believing his was increasing the value of his brand.

More reporting Friday by Caldwell and Thorp of NBC:

• foreign policy panelist at Republican National Convention
• September 2016 interviewed by Russian Interfax as Trump campaign representative
• January 2017 met Israeli leaders

Papadopoulos's "Professor" Mifsud has gone to ground.

Her name is Olga Vinogradova.

Smoking Guns

What did Russia get? What is it still getting? from Trump campaign and administration?

• Softened RNC plank on arming Ukraine
• Trump Tower Meeting: Reconsidering the Magnitsky law
• Not implementing the new Russian sanctions that Trumped signed into law August 2, 2017

And this doesn't count the more macro (but less attributable directly to Trump) like softening the NATO alliance or an angry, bitter, divided American electorate.

United we stand; divided we fall. E pluribus unum.

Gun Safety

I drafted one my posts, collecting information and analysis on gun control, and then read Kristof's oped in today's NYT, How to Reduce Shootings. A great summary. I'm going ahead and publishing this post, even though it is a work in progress, because Kristof's piece is thorough and a great starting place. He frames the issue as a public health issue, like automobile safety, and tries to avoid the  moralistic and inflammatory rhetoric of liberals and conservative--the left and the right.

His oped is comprehensive. And near his conclusion he writes:

If you’re wondering how we managed to crank out all these charts and data in the immediate aftermath of the Texas shooting, here’s the secret: We didn’t. We spent weeks gathering the information and preparing the charts, because we knew that there would be a tragedy like this one to make it all relevant.

In October, 538's Julia Azari also summarizes the current data on gun violence, and advises us not to focus on mass killings to drive policy. She includes a good data visualization of gun deaths:

• suicide vs homicide vs accident
• men vs women
• age
• ethnicity

Different solutions are required for different causes. (I'm waiting to see another domain added to the visualization: type of gun (handgun, rifle, assault rifle ...)

Everytown For Gun Safety reports that 54 per cent of mass shootings involve domestic or family violence:

But there’s a loophole in the federal system. Federal law only requires background checks for gun sales at licensed dealers—a gap referred to as the unlicensed sale loophole. Nineteen states and Washington, DC have acted to close this dangerous loophole by requiring background checks on all handgun sales.13 There is strong evidence that closing this loophole saves lives. In states that have done so, 47 percent fewer women are shot to death by their intimate partners, 53 percent fewer law enforcement officers are killed with guns, and there is 48 percent less gun trafficking in cities.14

Only 10 per cent of mass shootings took place in gun-free zones:

Take, for example, the October 1, 2015 mass shooting in which Christopher Harper-Mercer fatally shot nine people in an attack at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR. At the time of the shooting, there were several students carrying concealed handguns on campus. But they recognized that an attempt to provide help may have confused law enforcement and decided not to intervene. As one student, a military veteran who was carrying a concealed gun at the time, explained: “Luckily, we made the choice not to get involved…not knowing where SWAT was on their response time, they wouldn’t know who we were, and if we had our guns ready to shoot, they’d think we were the bad guys.”15

Everytown For Gun Safety is backed, in part, by independent and former NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC is also active on gun control.

Good summary of NRA vs Bloomberg's PAC campaign spending in 2016 election.

A 2014 report, by Propublica, on Myth vs Fact: Violence and Mental Health. I hadn't seen this concept before of a "gun violence restraining order"--this seems like a tool the judicial system should have access to.

Smoking Gun

If today's reporting from Reznik and Meyer of Bloomberg is true, this is the quid pro quo: Trump's campaign wanted evidence of Clinton campaign getting donations from off-shore, tax-evaded accounts in exchange for reconsidering the Magnitsky law.

Yes the source is the Russian attorney, Veselnitskaya, who met Donald Trump Jr, Kushner, Manafort in June 2016 Trump tower--and must be taken with a grain of salt.

Who is Rick Gates?

In this post, I'll keep ongoing notes on Rick Gates, whose indictment by the Mueller investigation was unsealed today.

Monday afternoon, Allegra Kirkland of Talking Points Memo gave us an introduction:

Manafort’s business partner [Rick Gates] remained a key player in Trumpworld long after Manafort himself was forced out of the campaign over concerns about his work abroad. Gates coordinated behind-the-scenes preparations for Trump’s inauguration and served on a pro-Trump super PAC in the early months of 2017.

And as the Miami Herald reported Monday, a domestic entity listed in the indictment as one of the corporations Manafort and Gates used to hide foreign earnings even accepted a total of $70,000 from the Republican National Committee for “political strategy services” it provided in coordination with the Trump campaign, suggesting the line between Gates’ work for the campaign and his illicit dealings wasn’t quite so bright.

Greed giving us a nice paper trail.

Andrew Sullivan on the Trump Abyss

Late Friday, while the Astros were beating the Dodgers in Game 2, CNN first reported that an indictment had been made, but was sealed, by the Mueller team. We don't know who was indicted, or for what.

Andrew Sullivan, a Republican many democrats are happy to read, wrote earlier Friday in the New York Magazine on the Trump Abyss.

After spending many paragraphs reminding us just how grim things are, and how rock solid his 35 %-base support is, Sullivan offers these potential ways out:

1. a recession? this adheres to the "it's the economy, stupid" Clinton/Carville rules, but the responsibility for a recession is vague and diffuse
2. a catastrophe, like nuclear conflict with North Korea. no silver lining there.
3. a "massive and impregnable" revelation from Mueller's investigation
4. "massive mobilization of the anti-Trump majority at the polls next year"

The 2018 mid-term election offers the best hope.

We have to turn the mid-terms into a presidential election. Sane Republicans need to vote for the Democrat. Leftists have to put aside their divisive identity politics. Liberals need to coalesce around a simple strategy - not impeaching but checking Trump decisively.
We have close to 60 percent of the country with us. We have to mobilize every single one. Or the abyss will open wider.

By the way, Let's Go, Astros!

Take care of your goldfish

In the October 16 NYT Trilobites blog, we learned, what some of us have long suspected, fish get depressed. "The trigger for most domestic fish depression is likely lack of stimulation," reported Heather Murphy. Fish are naturally curious, Murphy quotes Dr. Victoria Braithwaite who recommends adding new objects to your fish tank, or moving them around.

Since at least in 2008, it has been common knowledge that low levels of anti-depressants are making their way out of our bodies, through the waste stream, and into the ocean (and back into our supply of drinking water). Fairly contained bodies of water, like Puget Sound, don't get flushed thoroughly. Here's a recent summary from 2016 on Vice (and abstract for the underlying research.)

For my Bay Area friends: Drugs in Water.

Here's a poem from five years ago about barnacles and the gasping ssri sea.

If you recall Darwin made his name in barnacles before publishing On the Origin of Species. His friend and mentor, Joseph Hooker, told Darwin that he and his fellow scientists would have little confidence in any speculation about the possibility of species evolving if it came from someone who had not done the real, nitty-gritty taxonomic work of describing some group in detail. Darwin replied to Hooker: “How painfully (to me) true is your remark.” He chose barnacles; he'd collected many in his travels. (Source: Naming Nature.)

In 1854, after 8 years of studying barnacles, Darwin wrote, "I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow moving ship."

Just do what you can do. Take care of your goldfish.

Unadulterated

Unadulterated

Outside the Krol hearing

a witness sits

in a holding room,
the door cracked open

so he could breathe.

A paper cup

stained red by worried lips

desiccates under fluorescent light.

White hair buzzing, she flares

gray over me.

You have no place here

so help me god!

As if god or some judge
could ever stop her.

The maroon smeared across the linoleum
must be coffee.

This is a rewrite of Periodic Evaluation. The previous title didn't do much, and I've referenced Krol hearing directly,which while more arcane, is google-able and precise. The new title is also probably too cryptic, but I like the word. There are 4 ways in which the "she" is unadulterated:
1. No lipstick, no hair color ... her natural self
2. Yes, institutionalized, she is taking her meds, but they aren't really changing anything.
3. Allusion to adultery.
4. Like meds, neither god nor the judge is changing anything.

I've tried to clarify the pronouns, and that it was the "she" talking. There are 2 things I worry about in this rewrite: have a lost any immediacy or surprise or velocity? And can the reader see her barging in--the shock, the surprise of her entering the supposedly safe conference room. I've tried many ways to make this more clear, but haven't found one I like.

Rewrite of Bordeaux poem

Rampage

The glass tapers so the wine avoids the tongue
and worms down the throat into the brain’s meaty pit.
In the browning edge the waitress says something I miss.
The glass breaks like an egg. A few drops bleed
into the table’s grain. Disappear. I hold the glass still
aloft so she could see. A peony slumped on the asphalt
defeated by the morning dew. A crumpled bird that smacked
a window. Is wine contained like yoke in a broken belly?
My palm is wet. Red drains down my wrist, pastes jeans
to my leg. Dig out the shard. Make blood run like wine.

Link to previous version. I tried to fix some problems. 1. Old title did very very little--making sure the reader knew the wine was red and that the glass was more tapered than, say, a burgundy glass. 2. "More glasses would survive" was trite, and symptomatic of the shock I was in (Jack) at the time. It undercut the point of the poem which was my prayer for rage.

More on songbirds, from Annie Dillard

Nature is vaster than we will ever perceive.

"Our meaningful activity scarcely covers the terrain. We do not use the songbirds for instance. We do not eat many of them; we cannot befriend them; we cannot persuade them to eat more mosquitoes or plant fewer weed seeds.

"[Their] show would play to an empty house, as do falling stars which fall in the daytime.

"That is why I take walks."

From pages 72, 73 of the 1982 edition of Teaching a Stone to Talk.

"When Women Were Birds"

From Terry Tempest Williams, pg 205 of When Women Were Birds,

Once upon a time
when women were birds
there was the simple understanding
that to sing at dawn
and to sing at dusk
was to heal the world with joy.

TTW cites the hermit thrush; the song sparrow.

Eve took the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and is no longer a bird. On pg 89, TTW writes "What I came to appreciate was how the transgression of Eve was an act of courage that led us out of the garden into the wilderness."

The garden is filled with mosquitoes, thorns, predators and prey. We are predators. A wasp stings; poison ivy burns. Biting the apple is revelation. A garden more clearly perceived is a wild place.

TTW concludes "there is comfort in keeping what is sacred inside, not as a secret, but as a prayer. "  The sacred is that which must be kept private.

Pg 92, "The world begins with yes."

The 5 Types of Poems

1. Songs
2. Companion calls
3. Territorial aggression (often male to male)
4. Adolescent begging
5. Alarms

Found in What the Robin Knows by Jon Young.

Reading Heinrich's "A Year in the Maine Woods"

Build a nest-level blind in a maple tree.
Clear shrubs near seep for a pond.
Cut brush for a view of the mountain
or for a grassy bank down by the brook.
These naturalist memoirs seduce us
as the authors themselves are seduced
by a shiny new purpose--an old apple orchard
returned to the sun--brewing coffee on a stove
fueled by hardwood you limbed, hauled, sawed
and split. Honest about midges and horseflies,
but seductive the way washing your car is not.
Unless you don't have a car
and you hear Sheryl Crow and it's sunny
and the hot is softened by a pretty steady breeze
blocks inland but still smelling of Sound.

Bannon's Reading List

Update 4/5/17: Bannon ousted from NSC. (Original post 2/7/17)

Various White House sources are downplaying the significance of his departure. Given my skepticism of anything that comes out of the Trump White House, I'm going to believe this is good news.

Lawmakers of both parties welcomed the reversion to a more traditional NSC structure.

“I'd be very pleased that he would not be on the national security council,” Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Capitol Hill. “My hope is that he would have no role in government at all and would be completely out.”

Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said downgrading Bannon was a "good move" -- and praised the reinstatement of the joint chiefs chairman as a permanent member of the security council. "The chairman of the joint chiefs should be in a permanent position, so I think it's the right thing to do, but it's a decision of the president's," McCain said. "I said at the time that I didn't think a political adviser should be a member of that body because it's never been, so I think it's the right thing to do."

Here are excerpts from reporting on "Bannon's Reading List" by Eliana Johnson and Eli Stokols of Politico:

Bannon’s readings tend to have one thing in common: the view that technocrats have put Western civilization on a downward trajectory, and that only a shock to the system can reverse its decline. And they tend to have a dark, apocalyptic tone that at times echoes Bannon’s own public remarks over the years—a sense that humanity is at a hinge point in history.

“The West is in trouble. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, and Trump’s election was a sign of health,” said a White House aide who was not authorized to speak publicly. “It was a revolt against managerialism, a revolt against expert rule, a revolt against the administrative state. It opens the door to possibilities.”

“They look like the incarnation of ‘antifragile’ people,” Taleb said of the new administration. “The definition of ‘antifragile’ is having more upside than downside. For example, Obama had little upside because everyone thought he was brilliant and would solve the world’s problems, so when he didn’t it was disappointing. Trump has little downside because he’s already been so heavily criticized. He’s heavily vaccinated because of his checkered history. People have to understand: Trump did not run to be Archbishop of Canterbury.”

By the way, I've read several of Nassim Taleb's books, and I, like Bannon it seems, think he is a brilliant writer.

Curtis Yarvin: “nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth.”“To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable [sic] demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army.”

Michael Anton: “[T]he 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.”

Yes, things change. They've been changing since before 1776. Puritans from England, from Holland, later Irish and Italian, ... there have always been immigrants, and there will continue to be long after Trump has faded into the past. (I can't think of the right words for this, but also the enslavement of Africans working Southern plantations, the Chinese immigrants working to complete the transcontinental railroad. My point here is that the vast majority of Trump's voters descended from immigrants, and have benefited immeasurably from the work that slaves and low wage migrant workers have performed since the beginning of America.)

More articles on Bannon:

• DailyKos reporting on Bannon's 2014 presentation to a small conference on poverty at the Vatican
• Foreign Policy “But there is not a lot of infighting right now, because to have infighting, there needs to be a power struggle, and there is no struggle, the intelligence official said.”
• A 2015 article from Bloomberg Joshua Green

“In the 1990s,” [Bannon] told me, “conservative media couldn’t take down [Bill] Clinton because most of what they produced was punditry and opinion, and they always oversold the conclusion: ‘It’s clearly impeachable!’ So they wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber.”

"Bannon realizes that politics is sometimes more effective when it’s subtle. So he’s nurtured a Dr. Jekyll side: In 2012 he became founding chairman of GAI, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) research organization staffed with lawyers, data scientists, and forensic investigators. “What Peter and I noticed is that it’s facts, not rumors, that resonate with the best investigative reporters,” Bannon says, referring to GAI’s president."Evola eventually broke with Mussolini and the Italian Fascists because he considered them overly tame and corrupted by compromise."

Whose Science?

In December, The New York Times's David Hakim reports on Scientists Loved and Loathed by Agrochemical Firm Syngenta; and vice versa, corporate research grants loved and loathed by scientists.

The article goes into the 3 different examples of scientists working in Agrochemical research.

• Pesticide effects on bee health (Dr. James Cresswell)
• Herbicide atrazine effects on prostate cancer & other health issues (Dr. James Simpson)
• GMO corn engineered to kill insect larvae (Dr. Angelika Hilbeck)

Issues covered: It starts with money of course. In UK 15% of university research is funded by private industry.

Scientific findings bound by confidentiality agreements. The funding source has "editorial control."

Partnerships between corporations, researchers and government which include secret patent deals.

Regulators as collaborators not watchdogs.

This pre-dates Trump; it is a good example of why March for Science shouldn't focus just on what is going on in Congress and White House today.

This is the questions I have: "whose science?, and how can an informed citizen know?

I listened to a great podcast this week where David Axelrod interviewed Former HHS Secretary, former Utah governor, and former head of the EPA, Mike Leavitt.

Why @GOP Congress should proceed with caution on Obamacare. Former Bush HHS secy Mike Leavitt on #AxeFiles. https://t.co/uGG6gUgGf5 pic.twitter.com/6XVQrMtlKl

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) February 16, 2017

I've been seeking out podcasts recently which feature thoughtful Republicans. I want to learn where the common ground is. The first half of this podcast is on the Affordable Care Act (good listening too), but at minute 35 the conversation shifts to the EPA. When talking about the environment, Leavitt found political balance between, for example, sustainability and development, almost impossible. The objective of policy makers, Leavitt says, "is to find that balance."

In minute 43, when the conversation shifts to nuclear power, Leavitt asks "whose science?" I've found a transcript for an earlier conversation that captures the same point:

People continue to ask me, "Why is it that you politicians ignore the science in developing public policy?" The frustration I feel is the question: "whose science?" because, as a policymaker, I am constantly having scientists of general, good reputes give me different points of view. I have come to find out that all scientists do not agree; that it's not something that is absolute, and there are people of substantial sincerity and enormous credential who see the world differently. So, when you're in a public policy making role and you follow one science,there is always another science that disputes what you've said.

In Seattle Science March, and the work the group continues long-term, this is a central question.To find the scientific consensus on an issue, where do we go? Who do we ask?  There is always doubt, additional questions, unknowns--that is the nature of scientific pursuit--but we do learn things over time. Our knowledge of how things work does progress.

I'm with @Indivisible

Introductory video:

@Indivisible website

List of upcoming town halls for members of Congress. Staffers say in-person meetings mean most effective. Town Hall Project 2018.

National action calendar.

Locate events.

Trump cabinet hearings.

Environmental Legislation Summary.

A source for MOC Town Hall Meetings

Friday, Feb. 10 Politico article by ELANA SCHOR and RACHAEL BADE.

WHY WE ARE NOT THE TEA PARTY (pg. 10 The Indivisible Guide)
The Tea Party’s ideas were wrong, and their behavior was often horrible. Their members:

• Ignored reality and made up their own facts

• Threatened anyone they considered an enemy

• Physically assaulted and spat on staff

• Shouted obscenities and burned people in effigy

• Targeted their hate not just at Congress, but also at fellow citizens (especially people of color)

We are better than this. We are the majority, and we don’t need petty scare tactics to win.

Some tactics:

Record everything! Assign someone in the group to use their smart phone or video camera to record other advocates asking questions and the Member of Congress’s response. While written transcripts are nice, unfavorable exchanges caught on video can be devastating for MoCs.

Share everything. Post pictures, video, your own thoughts about the event, etc., to social media afterward. Tag the MoC’s office and encourage others to share widely.

From another FB thread about reaching Pat Toomey's office:

2. Letters are the only thing getting through at this point [Note: I've heard that postcards are better because they can impound letters for five weeks to check for contaminants]. Regional offices are a much better mail destination because the compile, sort, and send everything. DC mail is so backed up right now it takes twice as long to send things there.

#Resist Works

Vox's  Matthew Yglesias posted an excellent summary of #Resist successes so far:

The main concrete victories of resistance thus far are:

• House Republicans abandoned a plan to gut the Congressional Ethics Office.
• The Trump administration abandoned a plan to cancel Affordable Care Act enrollment advertising.
• The VA was granted an exemption from Trump’s hiring freeze.
• 500,000 green card holders were granted exemption from Trump’s immigration orders.
• The Department of Defense has secured permission to grant exemptions to the ban for Iraqis who work with the US military.
• Most dual citizens (Germans, most recently) seem to be getting exemptions from the Trump ban.
• A House Republican plan for a massive sell-off of public lands has been canceled.

More diffusely, resistance is already costing Trump politically. A planned trip to Harley-Davidson in Wisconsin was canceled because the company didn’t want to deal with the protests. Disney’s CEO canceled a planned trip to the White House. Maintaining a constant atmosphere of contentiousness has cost Trump the usual honeymoon period and saddled him with approval ratings that are already underwater.

Not listed is getting 2 Republican senators to align with Democrats against DOE nominee DeVos. Hopefully we can add that to the list tomorrow after the vote.

Why the #altgovt movement is important. @Alt_DeptofED @ALT_DOJ @alt_fda @ActualEPAFacts @alt_labor @Alt_NASA @AltHHS @AltForestServ pic.twitter.com/rA0XNOnFc0

— Rogue EPA Staff (@RogueEPAstaff) February 4, 2017

Two other articles:

• Slate's Jamelle Bouie : Protest Works
• Erica Chenoweth, Guardian OpEd, 3.5% of population can stop dictator.

Crucially, nonviolent resistance works not by melting the heart of the opponent but by constraining their options. A leader and his inner circle cannot pass and implement policies alone. They require cooperation and obedience from many people to carry out plans and policies.

 

Speaker Bercow just cancelled Trump visit to parliament. A proud moment for Commons. Racism and sexism not welcome here.

— Harriet Harman (@HarrietHarman) February 6, 2017

The Prisoner's Dilemma: How Obstructionist should the Democrats be?

Minute 26:20 of today's Slate's Political Gabfest. Discussing Democrats' strategy for Judge Gorsuch confirmation hearings.

Dickerson: I'm all for protests. And I think it's as great as the Tea Party protests. Some Democrats worry that (their base is incredibly energized right now and they're very excited about that) but they're worried now that they will face the same problem Republicans faced ... sometimes there's a strategic reason to pick your battles ... and that the call for absolutely full, constant, total, and complete resistance to Trump on every measure is not strategically wise.
Bazelon: ... that purity tests are a problem.

credit: Elyse Singer to ‎Dahlia Lithwick

Later (~min 41), Plotz, rightly, characterizes the choice for Democrats to be rational and grown-up versus Republican's and Tea Party's scorched-earth approach as the Prisoner's Dilemma . I resolve the dilemma by believing we should stay consistent with our values, our identity as Democrats--we believe in government, in liberty and justice, in the rule of law, in democracy, in majority protecting minority rights. We should stay to true to ourselves.

The Tea Party ended with a President Trump. They other guys and gals are the Party of No. They are ok with a scorched earth; I'm not. I want Democrats to think, to remain open-minded, big-tent, liberal and to care for country as much or more than for party. We are the majority. If each of us works hard (knocks on doors, calls, writes letters, shows up at Town Halls, donates, votes) we will win.

The next election, if Price is confirmed, will be GA-6. Let's win that race. Support Jon Ossoff.

Other reporting on Gorsuch:

• America, The Jesuit Review clears up the fascist joke.
• Dahlia Lithwick, Amicus podcast. I look forward to Gorsuch answering the two questions posed: is he independent? does he judge based on the Constitution and precedent or based on his political beliefs? He'll certainly answer yes, but, the Senators will be watching his body language and reading between the lines (mixing metaphors).
• Trump's "so-called judge" tweet raising the bar for Gorsuch

5 Calls

I like 5 calls for facilitating your day's phone calls:

• It knows your senators and representative, and their phone numbers.
• Gives you a choice of issues
• Gives you a short script

Propublica's Politwoops

Propublica has a tool for finding our elected officials' deleted tweets. Politwoops doesn't curate the tweets; it just lists them. Most of them are deleted because of typos, but some deletions are substantive. This morning there was an interesting deletion by Republican Congressman (Michigan 3rd) Justin Amash of this tweet:

I agree with Congressman Amash that Bannon may* require Senate confirmation, but regardless, shouldn't sit on the NSC.

Some fresh articles on Bannon:

• DailyKos reporting on Bannon's 2014 presentation to a small conference on poverty at the Vatican
• Foreign Policy “But there is not a lot of infighting right now, because to have infighting, there needs to be a power struggle, and there is no struggle, the intelligence official said.”
• A 2015 article from Bloomberg Joshua Green
• "We're going to war in the South China Sea"
• Democrat Stephanie Murphy bill to keep Bannon off NSC
• WNYC Brian Lehrer on The Power Behind Trump
• Bannon's reading list, reporting from Johnson and Stokols of Politico

On Congressman Amash: it is a little bit hard to confirm he is a Republican. Ballotpedia says: "Although Amash was classified as voting more often with the Democratic Party according to multiple outside rankings, this stems from his tendency to vote against many Republican-sponsored bills that he views as not conservative or libertarian enough." I do note that he is not on the DCCC's list of 58 targetted Repulicans to unseat in 2018.

Note *: If Bannon is not a permanent (dejure!) member of the NSC (he's on the principals committee) then he doesn't require Senate vetting. And maybe this was the reason Amash deleted the tweet!

#Resist

My definition of resistance includes being smart & discriminating. Picking our fights. There are a lot of us. More of us than them. Be loud. On all fronts. These are my field notes.

Twistance (focus on the more science agencies) & Twistance2 (others like DOE, POTUS, HHS ...). These are maintained twitter lists to follow of Alt federal civil servants. Here is one explanation, by @Alt_FAA, of their motives:



More and more agencies and departments have started AltGov feeds. I use TweetDeck.

A good summary of the brushfire from Politico.

What I'm reading:

• White house leaker, mandatory reading at Daily Kos.
• Politico's Gabriel Debenedetti reporting on the DNC's struggle to take the right stance.
• Naomi Klein on Pence & Katrina and disaster capitalism.
• NYT oped by Gail Collins on Pence's puppet.
• NYT oped by Yael Eisenstat on Trump's self-serving visit to the CIA.
• One person's articulate opinion on Trump imploding. The rejoinder is a faster introduction, because in the snap post, you get personal memoir and context first.
• Slate's Jamelle Bouie : Protest Works
• Erica Chenoweth, Guardian OpEd, 3.5% of population can stop dictator.
• New York's AG has power & jurisdiction to impede Trump by Propublica's David Freelander
• In Atlantic, #nevertrumper & Counselor for Condoleezza Rice, Eliot Cohen takes off his gloves

I'm listening to David Bowie: Under Pressure, Heroes ...

Data wants to be free:

• https://data.giss.nasa.gov/
• https://envirodatagov.org/event-toolkit/
• If you see something, save something.

Federal Worker's protection:

https://www.doi.gov/pmb/eeo/no-fear-act

Go to ACLU website or @ACLU on twitter for more info

Leaking:

• The New York Times
• Propublica Leak to Us
• AP

Phone:

• My representative Adam Smith, DC office 202-225-8901 Renton office 425-793-5180. 

Send a fax.

Whoever you are who are sending faxes to Reps and Congressman. It seems to be working, because they have to archive that shit.

— ALTImmigration🛂 (@ALT_USCIS) January 30, 2017

If the phones are busy at you congressman or woman's office, send a fax. hellofax: Free outgoing faxes with gmail account.

• Paul Ryan:202-225-3393, 608-752-4711, 262-654-2156, 262-637-5689