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Tim was the first person invited by John Cole to join him as a writer at Balloon Juice. That was way back in 2005!

Gentle reminder

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Why does torture exist? If you set aside petty sadism, leaders sometimes need things to be true that are not only false but so wrong that no one credible can be persuaded to lie about them. If the threat of losing your job or prison can’t persuade someone to lie then you torture them until they change their mind. That’s it. The whole Jack Bauer mythology is a complete fraud. Nobody ever learns anything useful from torture. Germans and Israelis studied this extensively and came to the same conclusion. Sometimes you get nuggets of truth, but you have no easy way to tell those apart from the mountains of bullshit that someone will throw out to make the pain stop. You get more reliable information a lot faster from a cup of coffee. On the other hand, maybe you don’t want reliable information. If you already know what you want someone to say, and they strenuously object, then torture gets you there.

The CEO of Newsmax Media, known for having a relationship with President Trump, wrote on Sunday that Trump insists he will be proven right regarding his allegation of wiretaps at Trump Tower.

“I spoke with the President twice yesterday about the wiretap story. I haven’t seen him this pissed off in a long time,” Christopher Ruddy wrote in an article for his website.

Now I can think of several reasons why Trump will not put FBI agents to the rack. Sooner or later someone will persuade him to move on and pretend he never brought this up. However, you can expect the same story to happen again and again and again. Trump loves the idea of torture. He carelessly throws out bullshit and he has too fragile an ego to admit he ever made a mistake. Maybe president three year old decided those awful protesters could only say those mean things becasue George Soros paid them. The Attorney General is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Many local PDs, notably but hardly limited to Chicago, have long understood the magical powers of hitting someone until they confess. What could possibly go wrong?

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Huh

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President Donald Trump is considering introducing legislation to provide a pathway to legal status, but not immediately to citizenship, for illegal immigrants in the United States, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing a senior White House official.

Either a senior White House official is about to get fired, or else I will have to revise my odds (currently near zero) that a Republican Congress would ever impeach Trump. Immigration always blows up the GOP. It completely detonated the primary when Trump ran deep into reckless hawk territory, and the long term consequences for the GOP and for American business could well be catastrophic. Running all the way across the grid into amnesty territory is lunatic behavior. Republicans cannot possibly pass an immigration bill, full stop. The base goes absolutely feral at the idea of amnesty. Remember, the GOP coalition is basically a pact to subdue minorities and women in exchange for tax cuts. But the Chamber o’ Commerce crowd gets just as agitated when ICE doorkickers start rounding up their best labor. Tyson does not want to charge twice as much for packaged chicken thighs any more than you want to pay it.

Dubya and Marco Rubio both spent a lot of capital on compromise bills with amnesty provisions. The base ate them both alive. If Trump does try this clever tack to the immigration center, I have little doubt it will cost him massively with the base, embolden many Republicans to start standing up to him, and benefit himself and the GOP not one iota.

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Open thread

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I imagine the National Security Advisor selection process went something like this.

Trump: someone GET ME PETRAEUS
aide: I got Petraeus!
Trump: Daaaavid
Trump: hello?
Trump: all right whatever, run up the flagpole that we might pick John Bolton. See what response we get.
aide: Sir, the red phone’s buzzing.
Putin: NO THE FUCK YOU WON”T
Trump: Maybe Boykin.
aide: the red phone again
Trump: screw it, Oprah’s on. See if mad dog has any ideas.

In other news, here’s a lovely pic from the Saugatuck Dunes on Lake Michigan, taken just before the election by reader MN. I hope to catch up on posting the many great photos sent in by you guys.

Chat about whatever, including but not limited to where and when you would transport yourself if you could escape the present timeline for one blessed moment. I pick Mohenjo-Daro during that civilization’s peak. I have long had a fascination for those guys. They left behind amazing feats of engineering and social organization, and an extensive catalog of art that somehow does not include a single image of war or violence.

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Shit sandwich

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Remember that wave of relief when you saw the credentials of the guy Trump picked to take over Flynn’s job? Looks like he felt a different kind of wave.

President Donald Trump’s choice for national security adviser, retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, has turned down the offer, a senior White House official said on Thursday.

The lucky winner of this job will get to split his time between a demented, sadistic three year old and an intelligence community who hates the guy even more than I do. Whee.

BTW I think the intelligence community basically decided to do to Trump exactly what Russia did to Hillary. If you leak the incriminating evidence all at once the story will flare up and burns out. It’s survivable. If you leak the details out in a thousand small releases spaced out over weeks to months, the story never ends. Each day’s release gives Trump a chance to deny something without knowing whether the next day’s release will prove him a liar. If I am right then the folks coordinating the internal resistance have already gamed out where this is all going.

Look at this a different way. Where is the internal pushback? Imagine the alternative scenario I have heard right wingers toss around, a small faction of intelligence operatives went rogue to undermine the President. That would rightly horrify their levelheaded colleagues. I mean, the stereotypical CIA employee is a conservative, white, ex-military security expert. In other words, a Republican. Langley is full of folks who should be on the phone with the Wall Street Journal in under a millisecond pushing back on this craziness. Not only are many of these guys sentimentally aligned with Trump (in theory), they stand to be rewarded lavishly for exposing a treasonous plot. The fact that nobody has, yet, suggests that the feeling about Trump is pretty damn widespread.

I can’t wait to find out what kind of person would willingly take that job. I hear John Bolton is free.

***Update***

BTW Alex Acosta, Trump’s labor pick, is basically GENERIC REPUBLICAN FIXER in human form. He helped gut the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division under Bush and then organized GOP voter caging in Ohio in 2004. I think we can safely expect him to keep his head down, make as few waves as possible, and quietly string dynamite around the foundation of unions in America.

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Hard out there for a Putzder

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Various sources report that Trump’s pick for Secretary of Labor doesn’t have enough votes and will withdraw. You know what that means? It means he will pick someone worse, and then you’ll all feel REALLY dumb. Like for example…actually I can’t think of anyone worse. Carl’s Jr is pretty much the bottom of the barrel as far as labor practices go. Maybe one of the schlebby mammonites in charge of Wal-Mart wants the job. I don’t see why any of Sam Walton’s professional heirs would bother.

Replacing Putzder will be a fun test. You have to find someone rich and hateful enough to satisfy Trump. If that person survives nomination hell, the reward will be a prime chance to get blamed by Trump for some stupid thing Trump did, purged by Bannon and his right wing media for some petty heterodoxy, hauled in front of a Congressional committee or questioned by a grand jury. I find it hard to believe that anyone still thinks the Trump show ends well. Who would voluntarily join that?

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Adding to Dave

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I doubt there is anything especially unique about Richard Burr. GOP leaders would prefer you did not know this, but Republicans are feeling deeply queasy about Trump right now. His manic behavior is increasingly putting them between an impossible rock and a hard place. If we cannot help having a compromised lunatic at the helm then AT THE VERY LEAST we should insist on cabinet-level officials who can find their own department with a map.

Has your Republican Senator heard from you lately? Check in and encourage him or her to stand up for some basic minimum qualifications in cabinet nominees. Yes I know that evil plus competency gives you Dick Cheney. Maybe that does not seem like much of an upgrade, but Trump goes insane when people tell him no. The Republican party could collapse into bloody infighting. Why not help that along? Also let em know that if they mess with Medicare you will personally drive your grandmother to their local ffice and leave her there until she runs out of things to yell.

You know what else is fun? Getting together with twenty five thousand of your best friends and having a dance party. I found out later that Pittsburgh actually had TWO marches; apparently organizers got in a social media fight with each other and the two camps each held their own march. Did any readers attend the one in East Liberty?

Here is the part where I climbed a lamp pole to get a good crowd shot and almost fell off at the end.

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Reader photos – Dec 3, 2016

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A couple landscape shots for Saturday.

Lake Evans, Victoria, Australia, by Peter Russell:

Lake Fyans (1)

Castlerigg stone circle, Keswick, UK, by Nancy Koprowski:

2015-10-09_09-01-37

If you want to participate, email me a link to a couple of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want and let me know how you want to be identified. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com. There was a good discussion about sharing photos anonymously in another photo thread.

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John Cole, call your office

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Josh Marshall was indispensable reading when George Bush tried to privatize Social Security in 2005, and I think he has it right this year as well. Republicans will not take a wrecking ball to Medicare and Obamacare without Democratic support. This has nothing to do with the filibuster or reconciliation. Mitch McConnell will ditch the filibuster five milliseconds after it gets in the way of something Republicans really want to do. But as much as Republicans really, really, REALLY want to garrot the New Deal and burn its corpse in a ditch they simply cannot message their way around the wreckage that would cause to their core voting constituencies. Even if you could find a majority in the House willing to sit in gasoline and light a match, plenty of Senators know the score. But Paul Ryan can’t do anything to taxes unless he accepts a huge deficit hike or cuts something meaningful, which means either defense (ha) or the safety net.

All of this makes wavering Democrats more valuable to the GOP than the last parachute on a burning plane. That is a lot more reassuring today than eleven years ago – districts represented by blue dogs have Republican leadership now. The liberal Senator with his finger on the zeitgeist is not Joe Lieberman but Bernie Sanders. It will be a hard sell for someone – especially Donald Trump – to lure today’s Democrats into betraying what you could fairly describe as the granite core foundation of the modern Democratic party.

Republicans are already feeling some heat over this. That means you have a chance to make a difference here. Pick up the phone and turn it up some more. They have all the majorities so they have no cover left for crazy political statements. Every vote will count. I guarantee that calls about this particular issue will get noted with an exclamation point.

You can count on most Democrats to defend the party’s core principles, but I would keep a special eye on any Democrat who shows the slightest sign of selling out. For me that list has to start with Joe Manchin. Look, WV went for Trump by thirty points. Manchin would be crazy not to give Republican ideas at least a very polite listen. Before the election he let it slip that he could well defect if the Senate came down to a 50-50 split. I would recommend that anyone living in West by god Virginia pick up the phone early and often until Senator Manchin releases a firm and unambiguous statement against molesting or privatizing our social safety net in any way whatsoever.

Find your Senators here.
Find your Representative here.

House/Senate switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Guide for first-timers here.

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Reader photos – November 22, 2016

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Here are some more great photos taken by readers of the blog. This one took a while because my blogging time is really curtailed right now, but I hope to do two or three of these a week. I thought this time we would go with a couple of critters. Photographers, feel welcome to talk about gear or technique in the comments.

Hoary Marmot

Hoary marmot (William Qually)

IMG_1405.JPG

A rainy and froggy day (Auntie Beak)

If you want to participate, email me a link to a couple of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want and let me know how you want to be identified. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com. There was a good discussion about sharing photos anonymously in our last photo thread.

***Update***

Looks like I got today’s date wrong. That’s what I get for writing this at 6 am to steal some time before the 3 year old wakes up. If this keeps up I might have to reactivate the old coffee habit…

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Bumper sticker wisdom

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In an earlier thread someone suggested that I should make a bumper sticker of that quote from King. That does does not sound like a bad idea at all. Here is a draft of what I have in mind.

king2

I would appreciate the opinion of any readers with graphic design experience. If people like it and nobody thinks there are copyright restrictions to using the image or quote, I can try to add it to the Balloon Juice store.

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Re-inaugurating our reader photo series

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Here are a couple great pics sent in by readers in response to my request a week ago.

darwins_window_4976

A view of Kicker Rock through Darwin’s Window, on San Cristobal Island, Galapagos, by valued commenter Albatrossity.

d98135_4c6ed2178e454ea59489c7a4bb327e87

From the North America series, by Steve Jenks.

If you want to participate, email me a link to a couple of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want and let me know how you want to be identified. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.

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Get some sleep

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The last week has been hard on everyone. I have two ideas that help with that. The first is to get involved in resisting this bullshit. I already put some ideas up, some of which people might have misunderstood. I don’t want you to go hug a Trump voter. Join whatever group you want. Join something. Look for a chance to link up with likeminded groups to defend American values in solidarity. If you are going to those protests, try to make some contacts to build a network. Strengthen your existing networks. The only thing I would add to this general good life advice is to apply some strategic message discipline. Having Steve fucking Bannon work in the White House should horrify my conservative neighbor down the street just as much as my own family. At the same time my neighbor’s reaction will different if I tell him you are horrible and stupid because you voted for this, versus this is NOT you and I know you did NOT vote for this, and I hope you will agree with me that this guy and the behavior he represents is not acceptable in the America we both believe in. Don’t go looking for Trump supporters, but if you can’t avoid it or you meet a reporter or something consider a little message discipline. A little media/communications savvy makes the difference between shouting and tangible progress. This is activism 101, and it basically describes our policy for dealing with restive muslim populations as well (don’t make your problem bigger than it needs to be).

But there’s something even more important – get some sleep. Trump is a chronic problem that we won’t be able to fight without rest. Like a lot of you I had a rough couple of nights last week, until I figured out something that I decided I might as well share. Stress tends to go to my stomach. I already take antacids/antigas once in a while, but this time they were not cutting it. So I tried something that sounds really dumb. I closed my eyes and counted all the things in my bedroom. Then I counted the stuff downstairs. Then I started lumping things into categories. Gradually the panicked thoughts about the end of western civilization gave way to the more important job of naming all the books on my bedstand. After a while my stomach quit turning and I have had decent sleep since. Now a couple times a day I stop and count the random stuff around me. It seems to help me keep a level head. If you think you might need something like this, try it and let me know if it helps.

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Next

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I had something I wanted to say, but this guy said it better.

king-600x147

Once again for emphasis: none of us are free unless all of us are free. You could call it the principle America was founded on. It took us a while to live up to the idea. It took a long while to be honest. But by the late Obama years we got pretty close. I think most 21st century Americans would be hard pressed to disagree with the point if you phrase it that way.

You know what this week looks like to me? All the specters that King banished from polite society have started coming out of the woodwork. White supremacy has always been part of the weft and weave of the American tapestry but it flew far out the Overton window even by the time Nixon met Atwater. Those spirits always hated the closet. Nobody likes hiding or feeling ashamed. Frankly we should meditate on the precipitous fall of the confederate flag after the Roof shootings in Charleston. The speed at which the flag became anathema even shocked me. Wal-Mart ejected it. South Carolina’s legislature (!) ran from it. The haters’ political support abandoned them practically overnight after Roof was arrested. The floor just fell out under them. Trump must feel like water in the desert.

If they want to attack King then maybe we should answer with King. Dust off the old SNCC playbook. Right now the protests I see look more like a haphazard cry of inchoate rage than activism. It seems counterproductive. Hillary had a point about those baskets. You want the decent half to feel embarrassed about the shitheads, not drive them together by tarring every Trump voter as a hater or a nazi. You probably recognize this as our current strategy for dealing with difficult Muslim populations. When possible you want to fight with the reasonable ones against the jihadis.

How to stand up effectively? I have two suggestions, and the first one is easy. As I said before just look out for each other. Don’t bury your grief or deny it, let it drive you to do something productive. If you have some cash Donate to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, SPLC, the ADL, whatever. Look for a chance to make someone’s life better. Wear a safety pin as a reminder to act if you see someone else in trouble. Volunteer for a group that needs it. Maybe just spend more time with your friends, family and neighbors. Ask for help if you need it. Listen to people. Hell, this is good life advice dressed up as a master plan. Growing an activist network that can be flexible, resilient and activate fast when needed is a happy externality.

The second thing I hope to see is smarter protesting. Folks, there is a difference between making change and cathartic release. Non-horrible Trump voters like modern civilization and the general idea of equal protection. Most of them are in denial about the rottens, but that does not mean they like white supremacy or bullying. Really, I am not crazy. The civil rights protests of the 60s would have been hopeless if most Americans were violent supremacists. It turns out that if you make the decision stark enough between equality and hateful, fearful violence, most people will choose equality. I get that leaderless, distributed, bottom-up activism is the thing now but I suggest we look back to some folks who left deep footprints in American history for tips. John Lewis is still around. We could do worse than check out how he did it, and maybe just ask him.

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Morning let’s get our sh*t together thread

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Have the east coasters had their coffee? Good, here are a couple action items to keep us busy while we wait for the shitshow to start.

* I know that a lot of you will not like this, but subscribe to some papers. Choose the Washington Post or the NY Times, and then add a local daily if you have one you can tolerate. The Times especially disgraced itself this year but we need it alive more than dead, and the Post frankly did an excellent job keeping up with Trump. The framers of the Constitution could not have been clearer when they said that our Democracy will survive only as long as we have a free press. Trump already loathes the press, he is a vindictive prick with no moral limits, and he will have the levers of the state in his hands. Do your part to help them survive.

* People have already started with the abuse and xenophobia, and it will get immeasurably worse. Terrible people will try to divide us and make us live individually in fear. Fuck that. Find a vulnerable group and find a way to support them. If you have a gay relative, go with them to their next event if they do that sort of thing. See what the local Muslim or Jewish groups are doing that you might help out with. Volunteer at a women’s shelter or hook up with BLM if they have an event in your area. If you see a case of harassment in the local media, try to find the victim and offer a little support. The 21st century is pretty nice. Let’s stand up for it.

* Finally, this seems like a great time to bring back our old photography series. Email me a link to a few of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.

Here’s one that I took a while ago while walking on a foggy day.

Foggy day

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