June 21 Open Thread: Trump Head-Fake Fools Nobody

Filed in National, Open Thread by on June 21, 2018

The family separation controversy cooled off for a few hours yesterday as Trump promised to sign an executive order ending the practice. What he did instead was declare we would now operate what Samantha Bee called “Mommy and Me prisons,” which also sets up a battle with the federal courts.

The separation policy has at least torn away most of the anonymity under which racist Stephen Miller has operated in the White House. Everyone knows he’s the source of this policy and the racist attitude of the administration in general, but the mainstream press has been reluctant to call him by his name, which is Racist Scum. Ironically, he’s also Jewish, making him yet another minority-group member who thinks white people mean it when they call him white. He should check with his buddy Richard Spencer on how “white” Jews are.

For those who think Trump knows what he’s doing, apparently he thought this locking-up-babies idea would work for him just like bashing the NFL did.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing on trade, either, as Mark Sumner lays out in some detail for Daily Kos. Summary: The things we buy from China aren’t made elsewhere, but soybeans grow in lots of countries.

Koko, the gorilla who learned sign language, has died at the age of 46. Here’s a video of her playing with her pet cats.

Finally, this dangerously toxic weed hasn’t shown up in Delaware yet, but Virginia isn’t far away and you don’t want to mistakenly touch a plant that causes severe skin reactions and can cause blindness.

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  1. RE Vanella says:

    Coons and Carper help funnel even greater funding to our already historically enormous military.

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/military-budget-2019-w521788

    Gross.

  2. RE Vanella says:

    “I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

    CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

  3. RE Vanella says:

    “Our criminal law is as out-of-date as the muskets in the Tower… In England people are still hanged by the neck and flogged with a cat o’nine tails. Both of these punishments are obscene as well as cruel, but there has never been any genuinely popular outcry against them. People accept them almost as they accept the weather. They are part of ‘the law’, which is assumed to be unalterable.”

    George Orwell, England Your England

  4. Paul says:

    Steven Miller is genuinely twisted, like everyone’s nightmare imaginings about Nazis. He needs help in a serious way, but, as they say in psychotherapy, “he can only gat better if he really wants to.” Setting him up to be a genuine embodiment of evil is too easy. Had they had assault weapons in his high school days…he’s like the little bespectacled guy in “Indiana Jones”

  5. Mike Dinsmore says:

    Turn and run
    Nothing can stop them
    Around every river and canal their power is growing
    Stamp them out
    We must destroy them
    They infiltrate each city with their thick dark warning odor

    Botanical creature stirs, seeking revenge
    Royal beast did not forget
    Soon they escaped, spreading their seed
    Preparing for an onslaught
    Threatening the human race

    Giant Hogweed lives!

    “Return of the Giant Hogweed” from “Nursery Cryme,” by Genesis

    Okay, I know that this was written in 1971, but is there some sort of parallel between “Return of the Giant Hogweed” and the current antics of the agent orange administration?

  6. Alby says:

    Nice one, Mike!

  7. nathan arizona says:

    C.S. Lewis and Genesis in the same thread! Well done. Orwell too, of course, but he’s been the writer for our time a while now. What did he not like? Totalitarianism. When did he start not liking it? When he got a load of the Communists during the Spanish civil war. Wish he were around to skewer Trump today, but his past writing works just fine. The stuff on misleading language and thought control especially.

  8. Liz Allen says:

    What was Melania thinking wearing jacket to the border that had a logo on the back, “I don’t care, do you”? Why would she do that. Was it a politrick for Trump supporters? It makes no sense!

  9. Alby says:

    What is a politrick?

  10. Liz Allen says:

    Pentagon to come up with 20,000 beds for a military base encampment? So, the kids can stay with their parents on a military base with soldiers w/guns, and this is not INTERNMENT?

    They are hiding these kids, while they create tent jails in the desert? What could possibly go wrong. Putting them on a military base is to prevent the public from seeing the kids and parents. This is how the US under Trump treats children in 2018.

    A reporter stated that she was in one of these places in 2010 (Frontline) where they served food that had expired, had maggots in it, and abuse was rampant…thats what they dont want the public see. She reported this is a “money making scandal” for these PRIVATE providers…think Halliburton in Iraq “feeding our soldiers crap” forcing them to eat locally IN Iraq.

  11. Liberal Elite says:

    For those who say we don’t need or want any military background Dem candidates (ahem REV..), please consider this Democrat:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi6v4CYNSIQ

    Sure, she’s not progressive nor very liberal, but someone like her representing Texas, instead of the ass she’s trying to replace, would be a real step forward.

    Ohh. And I can’t remember ever seeing a better political ad.

  12. jason330 says:

    Pretty great long form ad.

  13. RE Vanella says:

    I”ll take military vets over cops.

    See also Amy McGrath.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/us/politics/amy-mcgrath-kentucky.html

    I guess it helps being a woman, maybe.

    The conventional wisdom is that people like me are hard line litmus testers. This is a very lazy lie.

    Kerri Harris is an Air Force veteran (ahem).

  14. puck says:

    That’s a great ad… smart wordplay matched with slick camera cuts. No telling how Democratic the candidate is, but as an intro it makes her seem very appealing. Probably right for the district.

  15. Liberal Elite says:

    @LA “What was Melania thinking wearing jacket to the border that had a logo on the back, “I don’t care, do you”? Why would she do that.”

    Let’s be generous and consider that she might be taking a good swipe at her jackass husband. He probably told her not to go there, and so she put on that jacket as she left.

  16. jason330 says:

    I doubt that charitable explanation.

    Knowing this crew, it is either malevolent or clueless. Probably malevolent cluelessness. Or clueless malevolence.

  17. puck says:

    Grey’s law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

  18. Liberal Elite says:

    @j “I doubt that charitable explanation.”

    I know where she grew up. I’ve been to that town. I really doubt that she’s as much a part of the malevolent crew as you think she is.

    I also think I know Slovenia and Slovenians better than most Americans do. I’ve traveled there at least a dozen times, and I’ve supervised several advanced Slovenian students.

    I really do think this was a slap at DJT. And I actually feel badly for her for the situation she’s in. She just did it for the money, and now she’s paying the price.