Obsidian Wings

American Carnage: Brought to you by Today's GOP

by Ugh

Well here we are not even two months into GOP rule and they've racked up quite a record and they haven't even gotten started!  

Most recently there is the CBO score of the GOP "replacement" for the ACA, and the Trump WH view which is even worse (or, better, depending on your POV I guess).  What do you call 14,000,000 new uninsured by the end of 2018?  You know the answer.  It also cuts addiction funding, at a time when people are dying from it at such a rate that states are running out of funds to bury them. Takers!  Also, too, turn your DNA over to your employer as part of a wellness program or face thousands of dollars being deducted from your salary.  Of course, once your DNA is then in the hands of a third party does that mean the government can get it without a warrant under Smith v. Maryland?  I'm not sure why not.  So exciting.

The bill would also provide almost $600 billion in tax cuts, the overwhelming majority going to...?  You also know the answer to this one.

Then we have the "shackles" coming off ICE and the CBP (and they are the most wonderful agencies already).  Separating children from families at the border? Check.  Sowing fear in children and their families that schools are sending out helpful "know your rights" guides? Check. Massive searches of mobile devices at the border - as many in a month as the entire year of 2015? Check.  Deporting victims of domestic violence after being alerted by their abusers? Check.  But you carry papers with you at all times showing you're a US citizen entitled to remain in this country, right?  Because that might be your only chance to avoid due process-less removal (and even then you better hope you have a well behaved immigration official - it might not be enough).

Then there's the attempt to prevent you from suing people and corporations who have harmed you, or at least limiting what you can recover from them.   Lovely!  

State department? We don't need no stinkin' state department.

And of course the all-american bombs of love approach to foreign policy has been intensified and extended.  Sorry civilians, you shouldn't have been born there.

Decimate net neutrality? Check.  Let ISP's sell your personal internet history? Check.

And so many more I can't even count and look up the links (roll back of EPA regulations, giant budget cuts to everything but the defense department, appointment of cabinet secretaries who oppose the mission of the department they're heading, a straight up racist leading the DOJ, the extension of the GOP's disenfranchisement campaign against African Americans, white supremacists holding top POTUS advisory opinions, the border wall, POTUS hissownself etc. etc. etc.).

And all of this is of course accompanied by straight up lying.  Not carefully worded statements, not answering a different question than what's asked, or filibustering with non-answers, etc. (though there's all that too).  Just straight up lying.  From Trump to Steve Miller to Spicer to Speaker Ryan to Chairman Brady.  All in the service of the above agenda - but if it's so great, why are you lying about it?

America!  By and for rich white people, and fnck the rest of you.

New York Times: Pravda of the west or The USA Today without color graphics?

by liberal japonicus

A very minimal post to discuss whether the NYT is propaganda or not, which popped up in the open thread here and here. To reference my comment, propaganda has to partake of Harry Frankfurt's definition of bullshit. This is not to say that the NYT can be full of crap, but the intentionality that is needed for propaganda is not there. Take it away.

A field guide to #TheResistance

by Doctor Science

If #TheResistance is a parade, some people are trying to jump in front of it and be called "leaders". Michael Moore is the most egregious, but there are others, too.

I'm the equivalent of the third piccolo player in this parade, which means I know enough to say where the movement came from, how it's structured, and who's actually leading. Spoilers: there is no single leader or leadership group, it's a grassroots movement with a whole lot of local leaders. We *do* have a plan, but not an over-arching organization -- more like a bulletin board.

Here's what #TheResistance looks like from my point of view. You can use it to calibrate your bullshit meters when you see articles or videos "explaining" it.

1. This is not a movement of, or led by, white men.

#TheResistance is at least 3/4 women, and in many places the leaders are whoever organized local participation in the Women's March. #BlackLivesMatter, Hispanic groups, Muslim groups, queer groups, Native American groups, Asian groups: all are involved, depending on the area.

Of course there are plenty of straight white men in #TheResistance, but they are not the center, not the dominating element. The media seem to have a lot of trouble with this concept, and keep looking for a man they can talk to.

For instance, when my parents turned on the TV to see what the Women's March on Washington was about, CNN showed clips from two speakers: Ashley Judd, and Michael Moore. When we discussed it the next day, I had to talk them out of the idea that Michael Moore was an important figure in the March, one of the organizers maybe.

No, he is *not*. This is not Michael Moore's movement, he's jumping in front of the parade. The 10 Point Plan he recently put up is a collection of approaches other people have been doing better and longer. This is not the way to go, and even if it were Moore is not the person to take us there.

If you see a piece on #TheResistance that focuses on white men, it is bull.

2. The closest thing to an organization for #TheResistance is Indivisible. Indivisible started as a Google Docs handbook, put together in the 3 weeks after Thanksgiving by a collection of former congressional staffers to tell fellow progressives what works--and doesn't--to influence Congress (besides money). A lot of their advice was based on having seen, first hand, how the Tea Party movement worked to oppose Obama's agenda and to force change in the Republican Party.

There are lots of way #TheResistance in general and Indivisible in particular are *not* like the Tea Party, but any piece that denies that the Tea Party was an important inspiration is bull. And any piece that doesn't mention Indivisible is *extra* bull.

3. The Indivisible Guide acts as an organizing force for #TheResistance by having a database of local action groups. This started to go up in early January, and by now they list thousands of groups, including at least 2 in every Congressional District.

Most of the groups are on Facebook, so the easiest way to find a Resistance group you want to work with is to join the one (or ones) nearest to you, then look at other groups Facebook suggests. Moveon.org and the ACLU are also setting up groups, but Indivisible groups seem to be the most granular. The idea is to be as local as possible, focusing where the power of each vote is most significant.

Here in New Jersey we have to get organized pretty quickly, because the state legislature--including the governorship--is up for election this November. The Indivisible Guide focuses on influencing the US Congress, but we can work at state legislatures using the same principles.

4. No-one is paying us to protest. I have no idea why this plainly preposterous idea keeps being trotted out: I don't see how it passes even the most superficial smell test. C'mon, *pay* Americans for protesting?!? Where have you been?

We call it #TheResistance, but as Sarah Kendzior says:

What is now called resisting is often Americans simply helping others: a concept so alien to the Trump administration that it is labelled as subversive. Lawyers volunteer to aid unjustly detained immigrants; clergy hold interfaith rallies when one religion is attacked; citizens look out for their neighbours and lobby officials on their behalf.

It's about having each others' backs, especially for the people most likely to be hurt by the Trump Regime: immigrants, Muslims, refugees, children, people with disabilities, the poor, people who aren't white or rich. We're Indivisible because we believe we truly are Stronger Together.

A fan vid about the Women's Marches, by lolawaldorf.

Do they not teach ethics in B-School? Part Boogaloo (Open Thread!)

by Ugh

Seriously, WTF?  I understand many businesses seem to think anything that keeps them from making as much $$ as possible is illegitimate and/or a threat to capitalism/apple pie/mom, but ISTM complying with the law/regulation while trying to get things changed - while problematic for many reasons - would be the prudent course for business owners/managers.  Instead, it appears actively violating the law while covering your tracks and/or deceiving authorities is often chosen.  And who are these in-house lawyers blessing all this stuff - although I suppose sometimes they are circumvented.

I wonder if that this case and the VW emissions cheating was done with software somehow makes it less "real."  That is, because it's the software doing the work of deceiving/cheating it seems more okay than if, e.g., the owner/managers had to personally lie to government officials.  

Anyways, I was thinking of drafting a longer post on how anyone who thinks healthcare costs could be brought under control by somehow incentivizing "healthcare consumers" to make choices based on prices is nuts, based on recent personal experience, but that was going to be too much work for a Friday.

Instead - OPEN THREAD!  

Anyone going to see Logan this weekend?

A followup to Janie's cemeteries post

Apologies for recycling this, but Janie's meditation on memory brought to mind my post about my mother who passed away in Oct 2007 that I had put up at hocb. I let the domain lapse, but downloaded the posts (but not the comments). A little poking around and here's the post. 

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(Oct 14, 2007)

My mother passed away early Sunday morning Japan time. She was 71 and had a melanoma recur and it was inoperable. It didn't look so bad 2 weeks ago, but a sudden worsening in her condition took us by surprise. I had been able to talk to her on the phone the night before, though she couldn't reply, and I hope I was able to let her know how much she meant to me.

I've been trying to get on with my doggy life, doing all the things that are required of me, and trying to inform people who need to know what they need to know. One of the things about Japan is, because the majority are Buddhist, people are very understanding when there's a death in the family, because everyone understands that there are a number of specific ceremonies and rituals that take precedence over almost everything else. The university will post a notice informing everyone at the school, so I don't have to tell people individually, there's an accepted mourning leave period of 11 days, though it was difficult to explain that we didn't know when the services were, because in Japan, the preparations for the ceremony begin promptly with death. But living half a world away makes that kind of preparation difficult to imagine.

So we'll keep our plans to return home in a 10 days, when we hoped to see my mom, and spend time with my dad and brother and do the things we need to do. So things seem to run on an auto-pilot that is slightly but noticeably askew and I find myself trying to cast around to find a story about my mother to tell all of you and settled on this one.

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My mother met my father at the University of Wisconsin, and ended up getting married through a series of seemingly random events, the most implausible one being a postcard from my father to my mother rekindling the relationship after a gap of several years from a Goat's Breath Inn in rural Louisiana where my father was working on the US Geodesic Survey. My grandfather on my father's side apparently wasn't happy about the marriage, but Wisconsin was a long way from Kaneoe, and even further away at that time. After the marriage, my father went back to UW to get a second bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering because he found the work he wanted to do required a pretty thorough knowledge of instrumentation and when he was there, he was given an opportunity to participate in surveys of the Earth's magnetic field, conducted from an airplane flown over the Antarctic, and after some discussion of the opportunity with my mother and shortly after my birth, he went off to live at the South Pole for 6 months. It was decided that my dad would return by way of Hawaii and my mom, with me in tow, would meet him there to meet my grandparents and the rest of the family, which was 8 or so other siblings and their families.

At that time, it was prop planes, and unbeknownst to my mother, who had just departed with me from Minneapolis in a winter blizzard, my father's plane was grounded in New Zealand and he would not be able to make it to Hawaii for another week. So, when my mother stepped on the tarmac of Honolulu airport with me in her arms, swaddled in corduroy and screaming my head off, she didn't find my father, but was surrounded by a pack of Japanese and Hawaiian Pidgin speaking family members who surrounded her and whisked me out of her arms. She had never met any of them and they carted her off to someone's place, where she waited for my dad. For a week.

It's hard for me to imagine what it must of been like, expecting someone to be there and finding yourself basically adrift in a different culture. Different food, different customs, different dialect with the simple task of trying to figure out who was who made even more difficult by the fact that all of my father's siblings had an English name and a Japanese name, used interchangeably, depending on who was talking, what they were talking about, and who they were talking to.

There are other stories to tell, like trying to imagine what it was like for my mother to emigrate with her parents from England in 1950 to the US as a 14 year old, or dealing with a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis by going back to work as a medical receptionist, which had her get to know almost everyone in town, so any trip out became a challenge to my memory, or her visiting me in Japan and thinking that each bow from a saleswoman or shopgirl required a bow in return, to which they bowed in return, which always had me turning around to find my mother and a shopgirl involved in a bowing match to the death. But that first story seems to sum up a lot of the things that always amazed me about my mother. She had told me that her first day at an American high school, she entered the cafeteria for lunch and overwhelmed, having never been in one place with so many people before, ran home and proceeded to have lunch at home for her entire high school career. I asked her how she could change from that person to the person who would take on challenges the way she did and she claimed that after I was born, she made a decision to stand up because she was standing up for not just herself, but for me as well. I don't believe that so much, as when we went to Hawaii, I imagine I was pretty much at the level of a slightly intelligent pet. I was simply a catalyst for her to locate a preternatural courage, a courage that often gets called fearlessness, which is stupid, because the truest courage is when it is in the face of fear. And when I think how difficult it is for me to summon up the courage to go into situations much milder than the one she experienced, despite all of the advantages and experiences I've had to help me overcome my fears, I am really in awe.

As I write this post, I wonder why it is so important to tell all of you about her. Anne Tyler, in Accidental Tourist, has the main character Macon, who mourns a son killed in a random robbery, say what is bad about grief is not the pain, but what happens when you realize that for a moment, and then for longer and longer lengths of time, you are experiencing not the grief but the absence of grief, and you realize that for that time, you've forgotten that person. That has to be what has driven man to put headstones or pile up stones or build monuments or engrave names, and later to endow institutes or have buildings named, as a way to have that knowledge outlast our own weak, wilful memories. Perhaps there is a sadness that drives us which is the realization that it is probably impossible for almost all of us to do anything about this. The memories will fade, my daughters might only briefly note a time when their father was too sad for words, just like I remember my grandmother's passing as the time my father sat in front of his chessboard all evening, not saying a word, a book of chess problems open on his lap. So I write this post as an attempt, however vain, to have this story set off a sympathetic vibration inside of you, and keep that tone that is the memory of my mother, alive a little longer.