June 22 Open Thread: Do U Care? Well, Do U, Punk?

Filed in National, Open Thread by on June 22, 2018

I have never for a moment thought that Melania Trump cared — her resting face says “bored rich model” better than words ever could — so I can only begin to guess her actual motivation for wearing the now-infamous $39 jacket printed with “I Really Don’t Care. Do U?”

Obviously she knew what she was doing — it’s printed on the back, so it was clearly visible on her heavily covered walk up the stairs to her plane to Texas. Lots of people think it was a comment on the border situation itself and that the message was she didn’t care about the children, but something that blunt isn’t her style. I think it was a comment on this supposedly “humanizing” errand her husband was sending her out on, which would fit right in with the passive-aggressive pouting that seems her default position on life with her husband.

A few pundits have hacked at the roots of the story by pointing out that there is no immigrant crisis. Illegal border crossings are at a 46-year low; immigrants are less likely, not more, to commit crimes; the people who live closest to the border are least supportive of building a wall. But Paul Krugman finds the taproot, pointing out that anti-Semitism was based on lurid myths, not facts. The only crisis at the border is a crisis of white American fear and loathing. That was demonstrated this morning on Fox & Friends when Brian Kilmeade, the Dumbest Man on Television, drew an important distinction: “Like it or not, these are not our kids…. It’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas.”

Zach Beauchamp at Vox, in pointing out that this isn’t a “win” for liberals, gets even deeper, to the roots of America’s Trumpism:

What’s most telling about this episode isn’t Trump stepping back in the face of public outrage. It’s the millions of Republican who were — are — willing to support an obviously cruel immigration policy. And that, in turn, points to perhaps the deepest problem in American politics in the Trump era: The lethal conjunction of white identity politics and partisanship has made the Republican Party willing to sanction injustices that had previously been unthinkable in modern America….[T]hat the separations happened at all, and that millions of Americans were perfectly fine with them, is something that should trouble us all.

I’m still trying to figure out whether the Supreme Court ruling allowing states to collect sales tax on online purchases will hurt or help the state and consumers. Obviously Delaware won’t collect a tax it doesn’t have, but will retailers find an advantage relocating to no-sales-tax states? I’m not sure because I still can’t figure out if I have to pay tax to the state where the online retailer is located even though I live in a no-tax state. What is certain is the disruption this will cause to a half-trillion-dollar stream of purchasing.

Conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer died Thursday, just two weeks after announcing his terminal illness. Though despised on the left, Krauthammer displayed a lot more intellectual honesty than anyone else in the conservative orbit. Fun fact: When he turned from psychiatry to politics, his first job was as a speechwriter for Walter Mondale. He also was a strong supporter of animal rights, so I hope he and Koko can have a conversation at the Pearly Gates.

Can “Roseanne” succeed without Roseanne Barr? ABC sure hopes so after ordering a season of episodes for “The Conners,” the name of the spinoff that will carry on without its missing matriarch.

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  1. jason330 says:

    “The Conners” should open on Rosanne’s funeral, Rosanne having been killed by an illegal immigrant, making her the third person killed by an illegal immigrant in the past 20 years.

  2. puck says:

    It looks like someone spraypainted that on her back when she wasn’t looking. But then I don’t know anything about fashion.

  3. puck says:

    Wage decline for breadwinners has been ripping families apart for decades. But it is in slow motion so nobody marches.

  4. Liberal Elite says:

    @A ” I think it was a comment on this supposedly “humanizing” errand her husband was sending her out…”

    Quite honestly, I think that Trump didn’t want her to go, and she went anyway. She was giving him the finger, and he’s been trying to hide that embarrassing fact with his BS tweets.

    Can you give any reason at all why you think that Trump would be sending her out? …certainly not to please his base!

  5. Alby says:

    @LE: I think you’re discounting how this is being portrayed in the unwitting mainstream media. Viewed neutrally, as most people would, it gives the surface appearance of concern.

    I don’t think it was Trump personally but rather his crack team of political handlers who thought she would help.

  6. Alby says:

    @puck: Digby doesn’t mention Grey’s Law, but she agrees with it in principle: Incompetent or evil, the results are the same.

  7. puck says:

    Crying little girl on TIME cover wasn’t separated from her mother, says dad:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/father-says-little-honduran-girl-time-cover-not-024329900.html

    The TIME cover is still morally true, but the fake-news angle is not a good look for the resistance.

  8. RE Vanella says:

    And Trump wasn’t standing next to her either, probably.

    Didn’t it just say “Welcome to America”?

  9. RE Vanella says:

    You know what… No need to respond. I just realized I don’t care.

  10. Alby says:

    It also doesn’t matter. Once the image is implanted, no amount of explicating is going to change the perception.

  11. RE Vanella says:

    That little Vietnamese girl running naked from her napalmed village at Trảng Bàng in 1972 is actually alive and lives in Canada.

    That photo is also fake news.

    Actually, what’s a really bad look is finding an irrelevant bit of information and calling something fake news.

  12. RE Vanella says:

    “This precisely was the most disheartening thing: that the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.”

    –Albert Camus, The Plague

    Going dark this weekend. After seeing that freak show today whereby President Trump autographed glossy poster-sized head shots of murder victims to smear die Juden… oh, wait, I mean dirt poor families running for their lives, I need a breather.

    I’ll tell you what, folks, after watching that blood libel circus today, and contemplating how these swine are packing the courts with maniacs, we’re going to need to get a lot more courageous and a lot more active.

    What we’re doing so far isn’t good enough.

  13. Liz Allen says:

    https://apnews.com/afc80e51b562462c89907b49ae624e79

    VA Governor investigating horrific abuse in detention center. Beatings, torture, bed bugs, lice etc, etc…this is why this immoral sick bastards don’t want anyone to see what they are doing…how long are we going to just TALK about this? Melania lost all her credibility, she is just Trump light.

  14. Liz Allen says:

    Two of the boys have “left” the country. These detention centers have been open for years, even under Obama? Who was overseeing? State, Federal, anyone. Read it all under AP.

  15. Liz Allen says:

    Crying little girl on TIME cover wasn’t separated from her mother, says dad: Recall: the government SUPPLIED all the pics to the media? Fake news.

  16. Liz Allen says:

    https://www.politicususa.com/2018/06/22/in-age-of-trump-evangelicals-back-self-styled-top-u-s-pimp.html

    Meanwhile, these children are either 1) Catholic, 2) Evangelicals! America’s Top Pimp, supports Trump!

  17. Elaine Smith says:

    About Melania’s jacket…I must be missing something. FLOTUS wearing a $39 jacket? Initially thought message was photo shopped. If not, and the the messaging was deliberate, why? WHAT doesn’t she care about…the migrants, the kids, the brouhaha? And she’s announcing this to the base of racist bigoted ignorami and to the world, why else but to support her husband’s positions? I’m not getting how this can be construed any other way than they don’t care about migrants… she might as well have thumbed her nose at the cameras. Whoever said, LE?, that he knows the town she came from and he knows Slovaks so this makes her a good person seems naive. Or maybe his was a tongue-in-cheek comment.

  18. Liberal Elite says:

    @ES “from and he knows Slovaks so this makes her a good person seems naive. ”

    If you don’t know the difference between a Slovak and a Slovene, then I don’t think you’re qualified to comment.

  19. Alby says:

    Confusing the two is pretty common. The New Yorker, 5/29/17:

    Not everyone is as well informed as the President of the United States. Confusion over the two countries is common. Slovenia and Slovakia are both tiny, Slavic nations, with a combined population smaller than New York City’s. Both acceded to the European Union in 2004. Their flags both have horizontal white, blue, and red stripes, with a coat of arms on the hoist side. In 2002, the first President of independent Slovenia was welcomed to Romania with the Slovakian national anthem. Slovakia beat Italy, 3–2, at the Ice Hockey World Championship, in Germany, and heard the Slovenian national anthem over the loudspeakers. In 2003, in Rome, Silvio Berlusconi introduced his Slovenian counterpart as “the Prime Minister of Slovakia.”

  20. Paul says:

    The DHS is a bad karma agency. Built on establishment propaganda, taken by the SS within the Dear Leader’s administration. We never needed it to correct the deficiencies of the FBI/CIA, and now it has become the agency of dread. FIE on the cruelty and mundane incompetence. (My wife just took our DOG to a Dover vet. The dog’s papers were photographed on an iPad, then the dog was photographed and the papers and the photo were combined onto one document.) Requires us to ask how this was not done before they were separated from their parents. Shipped with our tax dollars, housed with our tax dollars, lost with our tax dollars and God knows WHAT intent for those children, innocents. Very bad juju. Very bad karma. End this twisted sick agency now. Cut off all funding. Arrest Neilson and Miller.

  21. Paul says:

    Alby: those sly Slavs. Hahahahaha.

  22. Paul says:

    Just finished watching season II of Goliath. Near perfect overlay onto current DHS.

  23. Elaine Smith says:

    Yes, LE, I mixed up the countries so no Geography Bees for me. I know next to nothing about either country but that isn’t the point. Whether from Slovakia or Slovenia, saying the Slovenien Melania is a good person because you’ve been to Slovenia a number of times and encountered good people and supervised some Slovenians who were good people is as intellectually sound as discounting anything I say about Melania because I misspoke about her country of origin. And all French are snobs, all Italians hot-tempered, all Irish drunkards, all Poles stupid. My opinion about Melania is as valid as yours and neither matters.

  24. Liz Allen says:

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2018/06/23/melania-trump-jacket-eddie-vedders-wife-stars-respond-own-jackets/728179002/

    This story has gone international! She was a model, her press agent stated she is very attentive to what she wears…this was on purpose. She has no cred.

  25. Liz Allen says:

    We should be praising our Fourth Estate and citizens right now on the border protesting the political Cannibal, Sorry, thats what he is, he eats his own. The truth coming out overwhelms the lies by this fascist regime.
    Childen already adopted out”, parents have no knowledge or permission. It’s truly government sponsored child theft. It’s a whole new ballgame. Is it the elites plan to steal these children on purpose (Betsy Devos), her family sponsored the Family Restoration Act ,housing children in Michigan and Va. These “christian operations
    ban adoptions by gay parents. Devos exposed. We should pay attention whereabouts of infants, small children.,and especially girls, it possible they want these children to endoctrinate into their non christian theories? We, must expose them like our Fourth Estate is doing to day, with fact not alternative facts.

  26. Alby says:

    “…Cannibal, Sorry, thats what he is, he eats his own.”

    Please don’t give him any ideas.