Economists, reports Politico,
are fleeing the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service. Six
of them resigned on a single day last month. The reason? They are
feeling persecuted for publishing reports that shed an unflattering
light on Trump policies.
But these
reports are just reflecting reality (which has a well-known anti-Trump
bias). Rural America is a key part of Donald Trump’s base. In fact,
rural areas are the only parts of the country in which Trump has a net positive approval rating. But they’re also the biggest losers under his policies.
What,
after all, is Trumpism? In 2016 Trump pretended to be a different kind
of Republican, but in practice almost all of his economic agenda has
been G.O.P. standard: big tax cuts for corporations and the rich while
hacking away at the social safety net. The one big break from orthodoxy
has been his protectionism, his eagerness to start trade wars.
And all of these policies disproportionately hurt farm country.
The Trump tax cut largely passes farmers by, because they aren’t corporations and few of them are rich. One of the studies
by Agriculture Department economists that raised Trumpian ire showed
that to the extent that farmers saw tax reductions, most of the benefits
went to the richest 10 percent, while poor farmers actually saw a
slight tax increase.
At
the same time, the assault on the safety net is especially harmful to
rural America, which relies heavily on safety-net programs. Of the 100
counties with the highest percentage of their population receiving food
stamps, 85 are rural,
and most of the rest are in small metropolitan areas. The expansion of
Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which Trump keeps trying to
kill, had its biggest positive impact on rural areas.
And
these programs are crucial to rural Americans even if they don’t
personally receive government aid. Safety-net programs bring purchasing
power, which helps create rural jobs. Medicaid is also a key factor
keeping rural hospitals alive; without it, access to health care would
be severely curtailed for rural Americans in general.
What
about protectionism? The U.S. farm sector is hugely dependent on access
to world markets, much more so than the economy as a whole. American
soybean growers export half of what they produce; wheat farmers export 46 percent of their crop. China, in particular, has become a key market
for U.S. farm products. That’s why Trump’s recent rage-tweeting over
trade, which raised the prospect of an expanded trade war, sent grain
markets to a 42 year low.
It’s
important to realize, by the way, that the threat to farmers isn’t just
about possible foreign retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. One fundamental
principle in international economics is that in the long run, taxes on
imports end up being taxes on exports
as well, usually because they lead to a higher dollar. If the world
descends into trade war, U.S. imports and exports will both shrink — and
farmers, among our most important exporters, will be the biggest
losers.
Why, then, do rural areas support Trump? A lot of it has to do with cultural factors. In particular, rural voters are far more hostile to immigrants
than urban voters — especially in communities where there are few
immigrants to be found. Lack of familiarity apparently breeds contempt.
Rural
voters also feel disrespected by coastal elites, and Trump has managed
to channel their anger. No doubt many rural voters, if they happened to
read this column, would react with rage, not at Trump, but at me: “So
you think we’re stupid!”
But support
for Trump might nonetheless start to crack if rural voters realized how
much they are being hurt by his policies. What’s a Trumpist to do?
One answer is to repeat zombie lies. A few weeks ago Trump told a cheering rally that his cuts in the estate tax have helped farmers. This claim is, however, totally false; PolitiFact rated it “pants on fire.”
The reality is that in 2017 only about 80
farms and closely held businesses — that’s right, 80 — paid any estate
tax at all. Tales of family farms broken up to pay estate tax are pure
fiction.
Another answer is to try to
suppress the truth. Hence the persecution of Agriculture Department
economists who were just trying to do their jobs.
The
thing is, the assault on truth will have consequences that go beyond
politics. Agriculture’s Economic Research Service isn’t supposed to be a
cheering section for whoever is in power. As its mission statement
says, its role is to conduct “high-quality, objective economic research
to inform and enhance public and private decision making.” And that’s
not an idle boast: Along with the Federal Reserve, the research service
is a prime example of how good economics can serve clear practical
purposes.
Now, however, the service’s
ability to do its job is being rapidly degraded, because the Trump
administration doesn’t believe in fact-based policy. Basically, it
doesn’t believe in facts, period.
Everything is political.
And who will pay the price for this degradation? Rural Americans. Trump’s biggest supporters are his biggest victims.
Yesterday a statement was released (linked below) signed by over 800
former line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States
Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. In this
statement, they assert that Donald Trump, in no uncertain terms, would
be charged with obstruction of justice... if not for the fact that he is
a sitting resident.
Trump lost $1.17 billion between 1985 and 1994, according to tax documents obtained by the New York Times.
Resident Donald Trump Is A Criminal Level Tax Cheat
There’s new reporting by the New York Times that Trump lost $1.17 billion
between 1985 and 1994 according to documents obtained by the Times.
David Cay Johnston says this adds to the mounting evidence against Trump
on tax fraud.
Look, I get why 75% of Americans, according one poll, haven't read any
of the Mueller report. Yeah, part of it is that we're now so fucking
stupid and so easily distracted that the very idea of sitting down and
facing 400 pages of redacted shit with Russian names and banks and more
sounds not just intimidating, but, fate of the nation aside, so goddamn
dull. The Starr report on Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky had
dicks and pussies and cigars in pussies and dicks in mouths. Of course,
people wanted to read that. We're animals, after all.
People like things simple and readily graspable. They don't want your
nuance. They don't want your multi-level conspiracies that are like
jigsaw puzzles where the last piece is lost under the couch and you just
can't reach it. They like it cut and dried, man, easily digestible and
easily spit out.
Donald fuckin' Trump knew that all the way back in 2011
when he started his bat shit crusade against Barack Obama for the crime
of being black while president. We all know the birther nonsense, where
idiots demanded that Obama produce a birth certificate to prove he was
born in Hawaii (and when he did produce one, it wasn't the right one for
them). Trump also hopped on the college records bandwagon, too, saying
that Obama's university applications and such were big secrets. You can
trace the layers and layers of hypocrisy through Trump's Twitter feed, like a mille-feuille of shit.
Like in July 2012, when the dumb orange motherfucker tweeted,
"For the sake of transparency, @BarackObama should release all his
college applications and transcripts--both from Occidental and
Columbia." Or in August of that year, when he implored
that Mitt Romney "shouldn't give additional tax returns until
@BarackObama gives his passport records, college records &
applications."
For the vast majority of us, it was a ludicrous beclowning of the
electoral process. But for those who were starting to pay attention to
this pathetic reality TV host as a viable candidate and thought, "I like
how he sticks it to the Negro," it was fuckin' catnip. And, goddamn,
it's so easy to rally behind: Yeah, why won't that Obama prove to us
where he came from? (Being racists, they never realized how horribly
racist it was.)
Trump even went so far as to say that Obama wouldn't be hiding his
records if nothing bad was in them: "Why would @BarackObama be spending
millions of dollars to hide his records if there was nothing to hide?"
he asked
in 2012. He also tweeted on 9/11, our holiest of holy days, "Why won't
Obama release his college applications? Is there something 'foreign'
about them?"
Obviously, for Donald Trump, refusing to release private information to
the public, or, you know, to him, is akin to being guilty. It's right
there. The dumb orange motherfucker himself said as much.
So, while they should have been doing this since 2016, Democrats now
have a talking point against Trump that is the perfect combination of
simple and deadly. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a man who
definitely has had a gerbil or two inserted in his rectum, declined
to turn over Trump's federal income tax returns to the House Ways and
Means Committee, as required by law. This is on top of Trump suing
to stop Deutsche Bank from cooperating with congressional
investigators, likely because that would involve having his taxes
revealed.
The reason that the birther shit had an effect (no, it didn't stop
Obama, but it helped Trump's rise), the reason that the Hillary email
shit had an effect, the reason why so many aggravatingly simple things
have an effect is because they force you to make a decision. Either you
want to know about Hillary Clinton's emails or you didn't. And Democrats
can use that method to what is inarguably a more noble end: to find out
if the resident of the United States is a goddamn criminal.
Every fucking day, every opportunity they have, every interview, every
speech, Democrats should be demanding that Donald Trump release his
taxes. They should be saying that he must have something to hide. It
should be the only fucking thing that anyone can think of. They should
get people to show up at Republican town halls to ask why the GOP
doesn't care about Trump's taxes.
No, you won't get Trump's idiot hordes or his Republican lickspittles
and ass remoras to turn against him (although you might succeed in
getting a little creeping doubt in there). But you know that 75% who
didn't read the Mueller report ain't just Trump-humpers. There are not
only a lot of voters who are on the Democrats' side who need a rallying
point, but there are those who aren't paying attention at all, who are
disengaged, who might just fucking love the clean and clear either/or on
Trump's taxes.
So many of us on the left want Democrats to get savage. But there has to
be a cohesive message behind the savagery, one that's not complex or
needs more than a bumper-sticker to explain. This idea is a damn start.
Get people paying attention so that when the impeachment hearings start,
they're already on board.
As Jesse Dollemore predicted on February 25th and April 9th, it looks like Robert
Mueller will get his turn in the Congressional witness chair to testify
directly about the report which bears his name!
Over the weekend Donald Trump tweeted the anti-Constitutional and
anti-democratic idea that he should have two extra years tacked on to
the end of this term of office to make up for the 22 months of the
Mueller Probe.
Let's talk about the incontrovertible timeline of sinister behavior
which includes Bill Barr's perjury before Congress about whether or not
he knew of Robert Mueller's frustration with his March 24th 4 page
summary of the 448 page Mueller Report!
Former Clinton Labor secretary Robert Reich says Trump’s Attorney
General Bill Barr should be arrested and put in jail if he refuses to
cooperate with Democrats in Congress. Reich tells The Beat, if Barr
doesn’t comply with a congressional subpoena the public must think of it
as “a constitutional crisis”.
"The American people know that you are no different from Rudy Giuliani
or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once
decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval
Office," says Sen. Hirono to AG Barr in a contentious exchange.
Shortly after Barr released his 4 page summary, Mueller wrote a sharply
worded letter blasting Barr for completely spinning his findings
Mueller and his team are clearly livid at how Bill Barr handled
the roll out of their 448 report. From his bungled 4 page letter,
declaring his client, Donald Trump, cleared of all crimes, to the
heavily redacted 448 page report a month later with Barr's press
conference, Barr has acted to protect Donald Trump and not as the
country's Attorney General.
The Washington Post is reporting
that Mueller wrote a letter in late March to Bill Barr complaining that
the 4 page letter he wrote “did not fully capture the context, nature,
and substance” of the Special Counsel's work. The Washington Post
reports that they have a copy of the letter and were able to review it.
The letter was written immediately after Barr stated that Mueller had
found no conspiracy between Trump and Russia and that Mueller had not
reached a conclusion regarding whether Trump had obstructed justice.
The letter was so out of the ordinary and revealed a "dissatisfaction
with the public discussion of Mueller’s work that it shocked senior
Justice Department officials.".
In the letter, Mueller wrote:
“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the
public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the
context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.
There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of
our investigation.
This threatens to undermine a central purpose for
which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full
public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
The letter also requested that Barr release the entire 448 page report, introductions, and executive summaries.
The Washington Post further reports that DOJ officials were
"taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter" and that they were
surprised he expressed concerns. It is reported that Barr and Mueller
spoke the day after Barr received the letter. Officials say that in the
call, Mueller expressed concern "that news coverage of the obstruction
investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about
the office’s work." Barr reportedly "took issue" with Mueller calling
his letter a "summary" (it clearly was a summary, but Barr didn't like
that word...whatever).
This bombshell could not come at a worse
time. Barr is scheduled to appear tomorrow morning before the Republican
led Senate Judiciary Committee and Thursday in front of the Democratic
led House Judiciary Committee, for what was already going to be a raking
over the coals. This news will add an extra layer of intensity that I
do not think anyone anticipated.
Congress (Democrats) responded:
I note with
interest AG Barr’s 4/10 Senate testimony. “Q: Did Bob Mueller support
your conclusion? A: I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my
conclusion.” Now it appears that Mueller objected in this 3/27 letter. https://t.co/IiK5zJYtAS
This is exactly
why I said Mr. Barr should never have been confirmed in the first
place. At this point he has lost all credibility, and the only way to
clear this up is for Mr. Mueller to testify publicly. https://t.co/kQw9lEmdX6
Major breaking
news. And tomorrow Barr will have to answer for this at our hearing.
Updating my questions! Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not
capture ‘context’ of Trump probe https://t.co/jaACIdGw1R
Why would Bill Barr flush his reputation & credibility down the toilet? I don't care.
What we should care about is that he is still in charge of @TheJusticeDept. Bill Barr should resign and then apply to be the next White House press secretary, where he can lie all he wants. https://t.co/iUQvm4Cymz
The resident on Friday accused Democrats and the intel community of
attempting a coup in the form of the special counsel's investigation and
said he didn't need a gun to fend it off.
Joe Scarborough reacts to
Trump's remarks and to new reporting on the NRA.
Donald Trump has told a lot of lies since becoming resident – he
actually just crossed the 10,000 lie mark according to the Washington
Post fact checkers – but the other day he told what might be one of his
most obvious lies ever.
He told reporters that he is a “young, vibrant
man”, sparking much-deserved ridicule in the media.
Where are all of the Lindsey Grahams at now? Sam Seder and the Majority
Report crew watch old footage of Graham barking for Bill Clinton's
impeachment.
I KNOW THAT I'M LATE TO THE TOPIC,
with this cartoon! It was scheduled to run last week, but was
pre-empted by the release of the redacted Mueller report.
This ginned up
controversy feels like it happened a million years ago, since we're all
living in dog years (or, as I have suggested previously, trapped in the
event horizon of the black hole in the resident's brain).
But these
attacks are by no means over -- Karl Rove just published an op-ed in the
Wall Street Journal last week, decrying Omar's remarks and demanding an
apology.
"Senator Chuck Grassley held a town hall back home in Iowa and he got a
little more than he bargained for when one of his constituents asked
about his repeated votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act. In fact,
Chuck Grassley has voted seven times to repeal the Affordable Care Act
and were it not for John McCain’s heroic thumbs down vote, Grassley and
his party would’ve succeeded in taking away health care from millions.
So how did Chuck Grassley respond? He stammered around saying he didn’t
think the courts were going to rule the Affordable Care Act to be
unconstitutional, even as Republicans and the Trump Department of
Justice are trying to get the courts to do just that.
This Iowa woman did not let up and Grassley seemed at a total loss. He
had no defense whatsoever."
Hosts: Brett Erlich, Aida Rodriguez, Nando Vila
Cast: Brett Erlich, Aida Rodriguez, Nando Vila
You’ve read all the legal insights you can stomach about the not-quite Mueller Report. You’ve argued with your friends and family and trolls about whether or not we should go ahead with impeachment
(note: How is this even a question? You impeach the motherfucker with a
full-court press convincing the American people to rally behind
impeaching the motherfucker). You may have even sat down and pored
through the Barr-damned redacted report, finding every appalling nugget
you can mine out of it, like how the whole White House is just a cheap
1970's Godfather-knockoff film made in Russia.
And now you’ve come to the Rude Pundit, and I’m here to tell you this:
Goddamn, the resident of the United States, Donald Trump, is such a
little whiny bitch all the way through.
We know how much of a whiny bitch he is through his tweets and endless
airings of grievances at his rallies of the damned. He's the kind of
little bitch that sits in the kitchen, just whimpering when its bowl is
empty or whimpering because it shoved its toy under the couch. Just a
whiny, noisy, little bitch and you fuckin' hate whoever in the house
brought that bitch home.
In the not-really Mueller Report, we get to see the Donald Trump in
private, and, holy fuckballs, if anything, he’s even more of a whiny
bitch when his stump-thumbs aren’t tapping away on the Twitter app.
For instance, when meeting with his then-White House counsel Don McGahn,
then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and then-AG Chief of Staff Jody
Hunt, Trump bitched to Sessions about the Russia investigation, “This is
terrible Jeff. It’s all because you recused. AG is supposed to be most
important appointment. Kennedy appointed his brother. Obama appointed
Holder. I appointed you and you recused yourself. You left me on an
island. I can’t do anything.” That line, “You left me on an island,” is
what you say when your online crush has ghosted you and you’re pining
away pathetically into the ether.
Another time, he pissed and moaned to Sessions, “Everyone tells me if
you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It
takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the
worst thing that ever happened to me.” The worst thing to ever happen to
Donald Trump is that someone might hold him to account. You know, I’ve
got no sympathy for Jeff Sessions, American’s most racist elf, so fuck
him even if he did have to be the urinal for Trump’s whine dribbles.
(Trump said his now famous “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end
of my residency. I’m fucked” to Sessions and Hunt, and I wonder if
they immediately thought of him boning Stormy Daniels.)
Over and over, Trump whinged about how he wanted to be “treated fairly,”
that he wanted everyone to make sure he got a “fair” shake. When he
tried to convince Sessions to un-recuse himself from the Russia
investigation and then open an investigation into Hillary Clinton
(which, what the fuck?), he bleated, “Not telling you to do anything.
... I’m not going to get involved. I’m not going to do anything or
direct you to do anything. I just want to be treated fairly.” Being
treated fairly meant, to Trump, an AG who ran interference for him, as
he absolutely believes Eric Holder did for Barack Obama. It never
fucking occurs to this blithering dick face that maybe Obama didn’t do
anything that needed to be interfered with.
Going after Hillary Clinton to win the election wasn’t enough. Several
times, the report mentions how the Trump campaign, including testicle
pimples Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner, sought information that
would “incriminate” her. And Trump’s mad tweets about Clinton’s “crimes”
are also part of the report.
And, most tellingly, Trump thought “it was unfair that he was being
investigated while Hillary Clinton was not.” I guess it also never
occurred to him that he was resident and no one gave a shit about
investigating Clinton when it wouldn’t damage her politically. Trump,
though, is a cruel motherfucker. Trump wanted to hurt her personally by
prosecuting her for...something.
That's a fucked-up area that no one has really touched, but it's an
abuse of power as deep and as wrong as any of the dozens of others.
Look, we all know that the saggy sack of bullshit, drool, and dried
semen that is Donald Trump has long been a pathetic figure. From his
pretending to be a masterful real estate speculator on The Apprentice
to his carnival sideshow of ludicrous products with his name on them,
Trump is like a bloated Elvis impersonator whose girth can't be
contained in the sequined white outfit anymore, although at least that
manque' Elvis had some honor in his life and was probably a whole lot
less racist.
As we await the release of the Mueller report and the desperate spin
that the White House and its subservient Justice Department will put on
it, as we learn
more and more that Attorney General William Barr is just another one of
Trump's ass remoras, the president himself has seemed to grow smaller
and smaller, even as he fluffs himself like a half-mad aging male porn
star who can't get hard when he pops Viagra by the handful and injects
cocaine right into his dick.
He's just so fucking pathetic and not in a sense of "pathos," but more
in a "goddamn, I can't even stand to look at that worthless motherfucker
anymore - it makes me sick" way.
At a "roundtable" discussion
(if by "roundtable," you mean, "Sure, fine, the table was physically
round and that's about it") on Monday in Burnsville, Minnesota, Trump
repeatedly mentioned his 2016 campaign and victory. No, really.
Early on, right after saying something about the fire at Notre Dame
Cathedral that faked concern, Trump immediately veered into how much
better he was than Hillary Clinton in 2016: "I was criticized — coming
up, I was criticized that I didn’t raise as much money as Hillary
Clinton, that I only spent half. It’s actually much less than half. But
I don’t want to tell. And in the old days, if you would spend less and
win, you got credit. Today you have to spend more and win. So if I
would’ve spent more, I would’ve been given a lot more credit. But the
fact is we did spend a lot less money — much, much less money — than the
Democrats. And we won."
We are two-and-a-half years past the election of 2016. Yet this craven,
miserable son of a bitch keeps wanting to relive a moment where maybe
his shitty father would have given him a warm handshake to celebrate.
Trump brought it up again: "There’s a great movement in this country,
and it started with that very special day in November. Remember that
day? Was that a great day? November. November 2016." God, the brain
worms keep whispering this to him.
And then, in a "discussion" that was supposed to be about "the economy
and tax reform," Trump mentally lumbered off like a drunk Frankenstein's
monster, and he talked about North Korea (no shit, he said that people
told him that there were earthquakes going on there, but he knew it was
nuclear testing) and the fuckin' ISIS caliphate and the fuckin' Golan
Heights and the embassy in Jerusalem, which he said cost just $500,000
when it cost at least $21 million. "We’re using all Jerusalem stone," he claimed, which would be fuckin' idiotic.
Seriously, the head of Sergio's Family Restaurants and the general
manager of Liberty Landscape Supply, brought there to massage Trump's
taint and tell him how amazeballs he is, had to wonder what the fuck was
going on.
Trump sounds more and more like a man who is worried that his days are
numbered and that he'd better make sure that his story is told the way
he wants it told, not how the failing news media would tell it, with its
innumerable failures and buffoonery and evil, intentional and
unintentional.
Gird your loins for more fuckery as the report drops. He'll
be screeching like a meth-addicted mongoose if he thinks it says even
one small thing against him. Let's be there to cage him and ship him
away.
Despite what Donald Trump and his cronies would have you believe, the
Mueller Report (IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS) doesn't exonerate Donald Trump on
allegations of obstruction of justice. In fact, the exact opposite is
true.
Reading from the actual redacted report, Jesse Dollemore lays out a case for an
obstruction charge. The only reason it seems charges aren't/can't be
pursued is because of DOJ policies related to indicting a sitting resident.
The on air and backstage talent at MSNBC couldn't help but laugh at the so-called resident's lawyer.
Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, insisted on Thursday that the resident “doesn’t support anyone telling lies.”
During an interview on MSNBC, host Ari Melber asked Sekulow about
people who were found to have lied to special counsel Robert Mueller’s
Russia investigators.
“Does the resident condemn the lies that interfered?” Melber pressed.
“I know which ones I believe you’re talking about,” Sekulow admitted.
“The resident doesn’t support anyone telling lies. Let’s be crystal
clear on that.”
As Sekulow spoke about Trump’s distaste for falsehoods, laughing could be heard on the set.
“In the course of this investigation, if people were under oath and
made inconsistent statements or statements that were material, there’s a
standard that applies under false statements,” he continued.
“I’m
trying to not be that technical. There’s a standard that applies. No one
supports someone talking about perjury or shaping testimony.”
Sekulow also confirmed that he was given the Mueller report two days before Congress was allowed access.
Trump went to Mt. Vernon and embarrassed himself and the entire country
while he was there. Ana Kasparian, Brett Erlich, and Nando Vila, hosts
of The Young Turks, break it down.
Devin Nunes should have stopped when he sued a fake cow for defamation,
but the California Congressman doesn’t know when to take a loss.
He’s
now suing the Fresno Bee newspaper over an article they printed last
year detailing lurid sex parties that happened at a fundraiser for a
winery that Nunes owns a stake in. The paper didn’t implicate Nunes in
the events, but he’s still mad as hell.
And, as Ring of Fire’s Farron
Cousins explains, that’s not even the funniest part of this ridiculous
lawsuit.
Ecudaor, which prides itself on its hospitality and spent almost $1
million a year protecting the WikiLeaks founder, saw his behavior as a
national insult.
By Associated Press
QUITO, Ecuador — The dramatic end to Julian Assange's asylum
has sparked curiosity about his 7-year stay inside Ecuador's Embassy in
London that was marked by his late-night skateboarding, the physical
harassment of his caretakers and even the smearing of his own fecal
matter on the walls of the diplomatic mission.
It
would've tested the patience of any host. But for tiny Ecuador, which
prides itself on its hospitality and spent almost $1 million a year
protecting Assange, it was also seen as a national insult.
"We've
ended the asylum of this spoiled brat," a visibly flustered President
Lenin Moreno said Thursday in a fiery speech explaining his decision to
withdraw protection of Assange and hand him over to British police.
"From now on we'll be more careful in giving asylum to people who are
really worth it, and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to
destabilize governments."
Black
women marry less than others - and the numbers are even lower for
darker skinned black women. Is colorism – favoring lighter skin – to
blame? Dream McClinton puts herself on the line to report
I take a deep breath and ready my fingers. I admonish myself for
being theatrical about something so mundane. Another deep breath.
“Here we go,” I mutter, pressing enter.
My profile has been created. It seems simple enough: swipe left to dismiss, swipe right to express interest.
The first eligible bachelor appears – not my type, I swipe left. Then
another follows – too young, I swipe left again. Ten swipes in, and I
find myself texting my eldest sister this was a bad idea. A feeling of
vexation settles over me.
I didn’t think I would ever have to use a dating app, but men don’t talk to me any other way.
I’ve spent so much time trying to understand what is so unattractive
about me that men shun me. At first, I thought it was because I was
intimidating – a word I’ve heard used to describe me. For a while, I
concluded I was “not that interesting,” a line I subsequently used as my
biography on social media. But those explanations won’t do.
The real issue is staring me right in the face: my deep mahogany skin.
Colorism – the prejudice based on skin tone – has stunted the
romantic lives of millions of dark-skinned black women, including me. We
are not as valued as our lighter-skinned counterparts when seeking
romantic partners, our dating pool constricted because of something as
arbitrary as shoe size.
Like other systems of racial inequality, American colorism was born
out of slavery. As slave masters raped enslaved women, their
lighter-skinned illegitimate offspring were given preferential treatment
over their darker counterparts, often working in the house as opposed
to the fields. This order has since been perpetuated by systemic racism
and internalized by black people. It remains alive even now, insidiously
snaking into my life.
I have many memories of being degraded
because of my complexion, the most piercing is from middle school: two
girls giggled in my Georgia history class during the showing of a
documentary about slavery. As the film explained the origins of skin
tone prejudice, one girl – biracial, hazel-eyed, and the only other
black girl in class – whispered that she would have been a house slave,
but that I would have been a field slave. As the famous image of whipped Peter played on screen, I sank down in my chair, silently greeting the weight of oppression on my 12 year old shoulders.
In many ways, nothing has changed since that day. Dark skin still not
only comes with the expectation of lower class but lessened beauty, not
to mention uncleanliness, lesser intelligence and a diminished
attractiveness. Meanwhile, everywhere we look, women like me see
successful black men coupled with fair-skinned female partners who pass
the paper bag test
– a remnant of the Reconstruction era, where the only black people
worthy of attention had to be lighter than a paper bag. This “test” was
even instituted in places such as historically black colleges and
universities as an informal part of the admissions process.
Today, this gradation discrimination remains. “It’s typical to see
light-skinned black women as representing beauty in the black community
and therefore being highly desirable for high-status spouses,” says Dr
Margaret Hunter, who teaches sociology at Oakland’s Mills College and
has studied the relationship between marriage and colorism for over two
decades. Hunter sums it up like this: “Black women in general marry less
than other races but darker-skinned black women marry men of lower
social status than the lightest-skinned black women.”
How likely people are to want to interact with others on OkCupid? Asian
women are 27% less likely to start a conversation with a black man than
other men. Black women receive the most consistently negative scores.
The lighter the shade, the higher the probability of marriage
Jasmine
Turner, owner of BlackMatchMade, a Chicago-based matchmaking company,
agrees this affects all black women. “Honestly, I think black women tend
to lower their standards because they’re finding challenges in dating.
Now I’m finding that black women are like ‘You know what, as long as he
has a good job and he’s a good person …’ No matter how successful they
are, they’re open to dating him.”
I’ve never been one to settle. I’ve taken this attitude to the app,
only searching for men who are gainfully employed and fairly
decent-looking. But I definitely understand what she means.
Previously,
dating has made me feel like I must drop some of my must-have criteria –
a college education, a steady job, and able and willing to pay for the
first date – in order to find a match. My mother has even scolded me for
it, telling me to raise my standards: “I’ve been on a lot of dates, and
no girl should ever pay for a first date!”
But my feelings of a necessary drop in standards have been validated
by research from Dr Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and
sociology at Ohio State University. Hamilton aggregated information from
the 2003 Multi-City Study of Urban Equality to identify why so many
dark-skinned women who date men remain bachelorettes. His assessment was
designed to show how the imbalance of eligible black males – taking
into account high incarceration rates and a limited labor market –
affects the marriage market.
His research shows that a scarcity in available “high-status”
husbands (defined as higher levels of education, not growing up on
public assistance, coming from neighborhoods that had less crime),
effectively leave black men in control of the dating selection process.
His data concluded 55% of light-skinned women were married while only
23% of dark-skinned women had jumped the broom.
“[Black men] have unnatural power within marriage markets that
enables them to bid up cursory characteristics like skin shade,”
Hamilton told me over the phone. In other words, the lighter the female,
the higher the probability of marriage. “One of the results that we
found was that [darker-complexioned] black women who have ‘higher
status’ faced a greater penalty in marriage markets than those with a
lower socioeconomic status.”
According to his research, I am the epitome of the “high-status”
option. College educated, familial middle class background, age 16-30,
able-bodied. But according to the equation, I haven’t the “social
capital” (read: skin tone) to seek a quality match.
But before even entertaining thoughts of marriage, I have to get past
the dating stage. Turner says she often sees black men pass up
perfectly eligible dark-skinned women. “Black men will say, ‘complexion
doesn’t matter’, but they might give that lighter complexion woman who
is very comparable to a darker-complexion woman a chance, when they
wouldn’t give that darker-skinned woman a chance.”
The
effects play out in the lives of women like me and my friend Larissa.
We usually like to talk about sci-fi books and traveling, but today I
ask her if she’s ever felt diminished by men due to her complexion.
“Sometimes, I can kinda feel their eyes sliding off of me to go the
pretty white girl next to me, or even the fairer-skinned Yara Shahidi
type,” she says, a twinge of sadness in her voice.
While she sees
herself getting married, she doesn’t know if she will end up with a
black man. “I don’t necessarily see myself walking down the aisle with a
black guy. Not because I’ve written them off or because I don’t want
to, but just realistically, based on how the dating life has been
treating me and how I’ve been approached.”
Julia Wadley of North Carolina’s matchmaking service EliSimone, which
caters to a mostly black clientele, has observed this dynamic in her
field. “I’ve had colleagues who were like, ‘Hey, I have a black client
and he’s open to any race’. I’m like ‘Oh, OK, great! I’ll send you a
couple of matches who fit what he’s looking for. Then they’ll come back
and say, ‘She’s too ethnic looking’.”
I know exactly what she means, but I ask anyway: “What would ‘too ethnic’ mean, in terms of look?”
“Dark skin. Someone who is probably brown to dark skin. Someone with
natural hair. Someone who is over the size of six,” she answers. “I
would bet $5,000 every single one of my black colleagues have had that
happen. Where they’ll come back and say, ‘Uh, well, he’s only looking
for someone who is very fair’; or, ‘He’s looking for someone who is
light-skinned’.”
Still, Wadley tells me, she hoped I’m not writing a “woe is me,
nobody wants dark-skinned girls” article. I wince hearing it, hoping for
the same, deep down. But this topic doesn’t lend itself to optimism.
‘It made me feel like I would never be wanted’
Writing this piece, a memory I had long forgotten resurfaces. At
university, on the line for the security check-in for dorms, I bumped
into a friend of my former roommate. I inquired about something someone
had said. Immediately, his face changed from joy to anger. “You’re too
dark to be talking to me like this, Dream,” he sneered. Hurt to the
point of rage, I bristled and walked away. We never had a conversation
again.
I aimlessly skim the app late one night, swiping left, right, right,
left. I’ve only made a few matches since downloading it the week before.
Then, I come across a profile. “I only date light-skinned women…” reads
his bio, even though his skin tone matches mine. I wasn’t going to
swipe right in the first place – he was not cute – but I still feel the
bristle of my sophomore year. I roll my eyes, and swipe to the next one.
I
would like to think I’ve grown up since that 19 year old who was
insulted at the gate of my dorm.
My dark skin is not something to be
ashamed of, even if past lovers made it clear they were ashamed to be
associated with me because of it. I’ve been all of it before – I’m
dating someone but there’s a secrecy to our relationship: hands that
only hold yours in private, a reluctance to present you to family and
friends, kisses that only meet your lips when no one else can see.
I hate that I’ve had to beg for legitimacy in my intimate
relationships. I hate that my friends have had to do so too. I want
love, but my self-esteem is too high a price to pay.
Sharlene and I met at a Kendrick Lamar concert during our freshman
year of college and we’ve stayed in contact ever since. Knowing she’s
shared similar sentiments about dating in the past, I get in touch,
hoping to round out my perspective on the matter. “I feel like
dark-skinned women were just the women that men had behind closed doors.
They weren’t trophy wives enough for you to show to the world. Somebody
wouldn’t want to show me off but, next thing you know, they’ve got
somebody lighter and they’re showing them off … It made me feel like I would never be wanted.”
Deflated, I talk to Elizabeth, my former sophomore-year roommate, who
is now in her third year of law school. I ask if a partner has said
anything rude to her because of her skin tone. She names a man I know,
to my dismay. “There was just a comment that he made one time. [He said]
‘I want a white family’.” She laughs: “It was just so weird to me
because you’re telling me you want a white family. I can’t give you
that! Like, why are you talking to me?”
“I want a white family.” The words stick with me for the rest of the
day, weighing me down like a bale of cotton. It brings tears to my eyes.
I wonder: are dark-skinned women just the placeholders until they meet
their desired match? Do all these men really just want white families?
A few nights into the app, another guy pops up on my screen – decent
looking and seemingly gainfully employed. I’m mildly interested. His
profile bio is just one line: “The darker the berry, the sweeter the
juice.”
My immediate thoughts warn me of a possible fetish. Dating
with dark skin often comes with a double edged sword: we are unwanted,
except by men who want to create an experience out of us, leaving our person hood out of the equation altogether. We become empty objects,
vehicles for pleasure, rather than multi-dimensional beings.
Hunter vocalizes this sentiment. “At the same time, there’s also a
kind of fetishization of darker skin. So sometimes you’ll hear people
say ‘I only like dark-skinned women’ or that ‘dark skin is sexy’ or
something like that,” she tells me. “Not that those things aren’t true
or good, but they also kind of objectifying or sexualizing in a way that
isn’t necessarily the solution to the discrimination. It’s an
inversion, basically.”
The bachelor on my screen shares my mahogany skin tone. But I’m wary
he, like other black men, may fall victim to this form of
objectification. I remember how Sharlene expressed her frustrations with
her beauty being seen as skin deep. “We can’t get just get a regular
compliment,” she laments. “I know that people think that calling me
chocolate all the time, or talking about ‘your skin is beautiful’ is a
compliment. But why can’t I just be beautiful?”
I hear what she and Dr Hunter are saying, but my choices are few. I
feel limited; I was made to feel this way. In the end, I swipe right. My
screen darkens, proclaiming a match has been made. We chat, but the
spark isn’t there.
But three weeks after joining the app, I finally hit a stride and
start having more fun. I’ve matched with someone who seems promising.
He’s smart, we work in the same industry, and our conversations online
have been pleasant. I ask him to meet, and he agrees.
We are meeting at a food hall; for me, it’s a short walk and a train
across town but feels like a world away. A slew of hopes run through me
on the way over. I hope I’ll be just as attracted to him in person as I
am online. I hope he won’t murder me.
I approach the hall, take a deep breath, and ready my fingers to pull the door open. “Here we go,” I whisper to myself.
1. Fuck the spin. We know nothing about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.
What we know is how Attorney General William Barr characterized the
report and its findings. Barr is a Republican sin eater, engorging
himself on a banquet of crimes and betrayals going back decades.
He has no moral or ethical standing here, and his legal standing is
based on how he was going to wolf down the slop trough of sins of the
Trump administration. Unless and until we see the actual report, the
actual evidence, the actual two goddamn years of work that was done and
that, apparently, Barr only needed less than two days digest and shit
out a summary letter, we know nothing.
2. But, hey, for shits and giggles, let's say take the cackling Russia naysayers' perspective and treat Barr's letter like
it's totally legit. Well, look at the second page, where Barr says
explicitly that Mueller showed that Russia tried to interfere in the
2016 election. I mean, call me a crazy conspiracy theorist, but when I
read, "The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors
successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons
affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations,
and publicly disseminated those materials through various
intermediaries, including WikiLeaks," I think that's pretty fucking
serious and damning and deserves action from, oh, hell, let's say the
White House.
2a. Barr writes that "the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S.
person or Trump campaign official or associate" conspired with Russians
to spread disinformation through social media. But when it comes to the
DNC hacks, he writes, " the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump
campaign, or anyone associated with it" conspired on them, leaving out
the more all-encompassing "any U.S. person." Which says to me that
someone in the U.S. sure as shit conspired.
2b. This part is entirely fucked up: apparently, there were "multiple
offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump
campaign." So, just to get this right, Russian operatives told the Trump
campaign, presumably Jared, Junior, and Manafort, "Hey, we're dicking
around on social media and, by the way, we've hacked the shit out of
Hillary's email. Wanna fuck?" And we know that Jared and/or Junior
winked about lifting sanctions while saying out loud, "Oh, no, we'd
never want that." And then they didn't go directly to the FBI and turn
everyone in who contacted them. That inaction gave tacit approval. Put
it this way: If President Hillary Clinton's campaign hadn't turned over
Russian offers of hacked Trump emails to the FBI, DC would be on fire
tonight as enraged Republicans demanded Pennsylvania Avenue run red with
the blood of her administration.
2c. And if this had been written about President Hillary Clinton: "while
this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it
also does not exonerate [her]," the only thing we'd be talking about is
how she wasn't exonerated. The GOP and the media wouldn't let her say
that she was exonerated. They wouldn't allow such an obvious,
demonstrable lie. But with Trump, well, fuck us all, it never matters
that he lies like the rest of us breathe.
2d. Frankly, Mueller's report could exonerate Trump on everything. It
could be everything that Republicans are spinning it to be. But I'm not
gonna buy anything one way or the other until we get to see the thing.
I'd be a credulous idiot to think any other way. Right now, without the
report, this is a cover-up. Of obstruction. Of the extent that our electoral system is at risk. Of what Trump's relationship with Russia actually is.
3. While Trump and his party of religious zealots, miserable racists, child molester enablers, and generally shitty humans are attacking
Democrats savagely, let's not leave out the role Trump played in making
the investigation into Russian meddling in the election all about him.
He saw it as tainting his "Greatest Victory in the History of Everything
Yeah You Heard Me Fuck You," so he sought to discredit the
investigation and the people doing it.
But here's the trouble I have. If you believe the Barr letter, you have
to believe that Russia did meddle in the election. It's right there. It
says so. Yet every time Trump has been given the opportunity to agree
with fucking everyone that such interference occurred, he has dismissed,
demurred, or denied it. He has suggested multiple times that it could
be the Chinese or the mythical 400-lb hacker. And his administration is
doing precious little to prevent that interference again. This is like
the climate change of espionage here: it happened. It's happening.
Everyone knows it's happening. But because a tiny group of tiny dicks
refuse to act, nothing will be done. And it'll just get worse while the
tiny dicks get jacked off on all of us.
So, at best, Trump has such a fragile ego that he fears anyone
questioning his election. Or he wants Russia to interfere. Or he's
utterly compromised. In other words, he sure as shit acts like he's
guilty and we're fucked either way.
4. Democrats did put too many eggs in Mueller's basket. And now they
should kick the investigations into high gear. Get some fuckin'
subpoenas going. Drag some motherfuckers before committees and put 'em
under oath. Get Trump's goddamn tax returns. Some emoluments clause,
motherfuckers. Some bribery.
Look, Trump is buried up to his neck in shit. Sure, it would be nice to
have backed up dump truck of manure and covered his orange deflated yoga
ball of a head. But we can also get our shovels and finish the job with
the shit that's already there.
5. Let's fuck shit up in 2020. I don't buy that concentration on Russia
has hurt Democrats. If anything, it has unified us and pissed us off.
Feel that rage. Embrace it. Use it to fuel you through November 2020
because, without some miracle or dark magic, we're not getting out of
the rest of this Trump term. Gird yer loins, motherfuckers. Gird 'em for
the long fight.
Let's talk about the continued blind allegiance to Donald Trump from
brainwashed Republicans concerning the Mueller Report. Even though no
one knows what is in it, Republicans are claiming it exonerates Donald
Trump. The Amerian people need the full report to be made public as well
as the underlying evidence!
According to new reports, swing voters in pivotal states like Wisconsin
are beginning to turn on Donald Trump after finally coming to the
realization that the man is a con artist and that he lies about
everything. This doesn’t automatically mean that Democrats are going to
win in the Midwest, but it does offer a window for Democrats to make
some serious progress.
Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains how
Democrats can get these swing voters over to their side, but it won’t be
easy.
What are your thoughts about Donald Trump's unresidential behavior and
uncalled for jabs at the late John McCain, wrapping a week of wild
tweeting and bizarre behavior?
resident Trump blasted George Conway, the husband of White House
counselor Kellyanne Conway, as a 'stone cold loser' on Wednesday who is
jealous of his wife's success.
George Conway, who questioned the president's mental fitness for office
this week, is a 'husband from hell,' Trump said in a morning tweet that
took the internal family feud to new heights.
Trump said he barely knows Conway, who has become well-known for his
tweets ripping apart the resident.
Conway once lived in Trump World
Tower in New York with his wife, who served on the condo's board."
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said Monday that he would not support the
Equality Act, which would expand and clarify federal protections for
LGBTQ people, without significant changes.
Manchin, the only Senate Democrat who is not supporting the legislation,
said he wants to provide more control to local officials. Rep. Dan
Lipinski (D-IL) is the only Democrat in the House who does not support
the current legislation.
'I strongly support equality for all people and do not tolerate
discrimination of any kind. No one should be afraid of losing their job
or losing their housing because of their sexual orientation,' Manchin
told the press. 'I am not convinced that the Equality Act as written
provides sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be
responsible for implementing it, particularly with respect to students
transitioning between genders in public schools.'"
"
Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian
Cast: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian
Jeanine
Pirro, the Fox News Channel host and former prosecutor, was absent from
her usual slot in the network’s Saturday night prime-time lineup — and
her most powerful viewer was not happy about it.
Fox News bumped the show a week after it publicly condemned
Pirro’s on-air suggestion that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) did not
support the U.S. Constitution because she is Muslim and wears a hijab.
“Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro,” resident Trump tweeted Sunday morning.
Trump
accused Pirro’s critics of waging “all out campaigns” against Pirro and
fellow Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was widely rebuked after
decade-old racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments resurfaced last
week. Both of their comments prompted some advertisers to boycott the shows.
“Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down,” Trump said in another tweet, before issuing a curiously dire warning to “Be strong & prosper, be weak & die!”
Democrats are doing that thing they always do, that same bullshit of
questioning every step, every word, every gesture to the point of
paralysis in some areas. In just the last few days, we've gotten a
report that some Democrats are feeling skittish
about opening up investigative whoop-ass on Ivanka Trump, the daughter
and fantasy lover of resident Donald Trump, because it might make
Daddy-kins angry. We've had the entirely unnecessary blow-up over Ilhan
Omar's poor choice of words when talking about issues related to Israel.
And now we've got Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declaring, "I’m not for impeachment...because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it."
Welcome back to the same fuckin' pothole-filled road we've been down too many times.
The most important of those is Speaker Pelosi's pronouncement, which is
more definitive than she's ever been on the subject of impeachment with
Trump. For some of us, our stomachs turn and our bowels clench because
it echoes what she said
in 2006, after Democrats won back the House and she was about to become
speaker. "Impeachment is off the table" when it came to George W. Bush,
even though he was a goddamn war criminal, even though we desperately
wanted him punished.
In the course of her new interview with the Washington Post,
Pelosi agrees that this is the most divisive "political climate" since
she's been in Congress because "because of the person who is in the
White House and the enablers that the Republicans in Congress are to
him." She adds, "We have a very serious challenge to the Constitution of
the United States in the president’s unconstitutional assault on the
Constitution, on the first branch of government, the legislative
branch…This is very serious for our country." And, when asked if Trump
is fit to be president, she is very clear: "I don’t think he is. I mean,
ethically unfit. Intellectually unfit. Curiosity-wise unfit. No, I
don’t think he’s fit to be president of the United States."
If the resident is assaulting the Constitution, dividing the nation,
and is unfit to even be president, then impeachment should be the most
important thing that the Congress can do. Fuck the politics. Fuck the
Senate. Fuck waiting for the Mueller report. You fucking do the
investigations in your committees, you write up the articles, and you
vote. You do it because, if you don't, then you're saying, "Yeah, he's a
criminal surrounded by criminals who is actually turning people in the
country violent, but, damn, the Republicans will just be so mean about
it." You do it because history and your goddamn oath of office demand
that you do it.
And don't talk to me about Bill Clinton's approval and the 1998 midterms
as being hugely affected by investigations and his impeachment. As I wrote
last year, that's a garbage argument. Clinton's approval was already
above 50%, heading to 60 after his reelection and his disapproval was
mostly in the 30s. Trump's numbers are the opposite. And the crimes
Clinton was accused of are just a Tuesday morning for Trump while every
other fucking tweet of Trump's is him looking us dead in the eye and
saying, "I did not have collusion relations with that country, Russia."
As for the idea that the Senate won't convict, well, shit, the House
right now is passing all these bills on voting rights, gun control, and
more that the Senate won't touch because Mitch McConnell is a total
cockmite and, you know, it's run by Republicans. That's not stopping the
House from voting on things so that Democrats can run on the
legislation that was stalled (and will have to be passed again in a new
Congress). Besides, the Senate can't just ignore the House on
impeachment. The Constitution requires that the Senate have a trial on
removing the president once the House impeaches (although you can bet
McConnell will try to say he doesn't have to). That trial won't be about
Trump's dick and whose mouth it was in, although it could be. It will
be about how, say, he's getting bribed by Saudi Arabia through his
family business.
While polls right now have impeachment far down the list of shit people
want the Democrats to do, the point is that the majority of Americans think Trump's
a fuckin' crook. They will get on board with taking this corrupt
asshole down. Jesus, kicking out a rich prick? That's a fuckin' movie
ending.
Look, you wanna excite the base for an election? You wanna get people to
rally around you? You wanna bring the left and moderates in the party
together? Then don't fucking do what President Obama did with the GOP
after 2008 and let the bastards slide. Don't let them control the
narrative. Go after every single one of Trump's criminal children (so
far, Tiffany and Barron seem to have blissfully stayed out of the muck).
Anal probe these fuckers until you're up to your elbows in their
colons.
And don't take the goddamn bait every time Republicans start screaming
about something on Fox "news." It's been days since Trump called the
entire Democratic Party "anti-Jewish." And not a single Republican
member of Congress has condemned him saying that. So, really, who the
fuck cares if the GOP is upset about some insult? If you're a Democrat
saying that impeachment should be off the table because it might piss
off Republicans, then you're just doing their jobs for them.
Pelosi could have played it coy and said, "Well, we'll have to see where
things lead." Or she could have said, "The nation is worth it even if
he isn't." She could have said said that the Founders of our nation put
impeachment in the Constitution for a reason, for people like Trump. The
groundswell of support from Democrats (and a good number of
independents) would overwhelm the outrage, and the fence sitters and the
nervous Democrats would have gladly surfed on that wave.
In the most generous reading of her words, Pelosi knows something or has
something up her sleeve. But I don't think so. I think that, for how
great she can be on things like wall funding and other issues, this is
one of those times that she acts like the sadly typical, abashed
Democrat, afraid to use power to its fullest.
1. When Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for resident Donald Trump,
said to the House Oversight Committee at his open hearing yesterday, "I
know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat,"
it didn't budge the needle one bit on Trump's support among his idiot
hordes of voters. They love him because he's a racist, a conman, and a
cheat. They love him because he cheated and conned and got away with it
and they don't give a hairy rat's asshole if they're the mark. And they
love him even more because he's a racist who's rich because it shows
that you can be a racist piece of shit and still make coin and become resident. So put that out of your minds, dear, liberal reader who so
wanted Cohen to burn it all down. Cohen could have shown up with videos
of Trump raping a 12 year-old girl on top of an American flag, laughing
while Vladimir Putin shits on his doughy face and Mohammed bin Salman
shoves rolled up wads of cash into his enormous ass, and his idiot
hordes of followers would say, "Damn, that's livin'."
2. And the Republican Party wouldn't give a goddamn either. Essentially,
the GOP is no longer made up of Americans. It's comprised of Trumpians,
mostly men and a few women who are loyal to the man, not the nation,
and who will allow him to get away with any crimes he wants as long as
he continues to give them tax cuts, savagely conservative judges, and
bullshit bravado for the aforementioned hordes. At no point in the
hearing did a single Republican attempt to defend Trump. In fact, you
could say that on some accounts, Cohen did more to defend Trump on some
specific allegations than the Republicans, when he said he couldn't
absolutely confirm a conspiracy with Russia and didn't believe the piss
tape exists. But Cohen went at Republicans, at times giving looks that
seemed to say that he knows where their bodies are buried, too. When he
was finally sick of all the shit Republicans were throwing at him, Cohen
snarled
at insufferable dickhole Jim Jordan of Ohio, "I just find it
interesting, sir, that between yourself and your colleagues that not one
question so far since I’m here has been asked about resident
Trump...The American people don’t care about my taxes. They want to know
what it is that I know about Mr. Trump. Not one question so far has
been asked about Mr. Trump." That is some baller shit right there.
3. Every Huckleberry Chucklefuck on the GOP side who sounded like they
had a mouthful of chicken-fried balls merely repeated the same shit over
and over about Cohen: that he lied to Congress before; that there were
all these Fox "news"-generated conspiracies going on that involved,
among others, the Clintons; that Cohen might try to make some money on
his tribulations (so I guess we can expect that Newt Gingrich and a
hundred other scummy Republicans drummed out of DC won't be invited to
the cocktail parties and Hannity reacharounds anymore); that he was in
it for himself. After a while, it was hard to tell one white guy with a
Southern accent from another. Oh, shit, was that Jody Hice? Or Ralph
Norman? Or Mark Green? Jesus, when the two white women on the GOP side
spoke, it was a huge relief because at least the pitch of their voices
was different.
3a. Of course, it was easy to tell who Mark Meadows
of North Carolina was. He was designated bitch face for the whole
proceedings, screeching like a banshee that stepped on a Lego piece
whenever he found something the least bit offensive. The racist, birther
son of a bitch who only got elected because of racist gerrymandering
almost cried when Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib accused his racist ass
of doing racist shit. Meadows had brought Trump party planner and now
HUD official for some fucking reason Lynne Patton, a black woman, to
stand behind him in what was obviously a move to prove that racist Trump
isn't racist. "See?" he was essentially saying. "Trump loves black
people so much that he hired one of the only ones he knows to run an
agency he couldn't give a happy monkey fuck about. Not racist!" Cohen
eviscerated Meadows with a simple statement: "Ask Ms. Patton how many
people who are black are executives at the Trump Organization. The
answer is zero."
3b. Special mention
to Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins, who is from my family's district
and is just dumber and more useless than a sack of wet hair. He kept
thinking he had caught Cohen hiding evidence when he brought up boxes
where Cohen found the documents he was presenting. At least twice, Cohen
explained that the boxes were taken from him by the FBI and returned to
him. Higgins is an ex-cop, so maybe he's used to just confiscating shit
and selling it to buy military equipment for his Cajun jackass brigade.
He's another one of those disgraced motherfuckers who a bunch of yahoos
love because he's "straight-talkin'" or some such shit, so they vote
for his Deputy Dawg ass. (And, yeah, I've gotten in vicious arguments
back home over him.)
4. What came through most clearly is that Donald Trump is just a fucking
asshole. I mean, just a horrible, blithering, narcissistic piece of
garbage, and not even quality garbage. Like the garbage that gets stuck
on the bottom of the can and rots and then you have to scrape it out. It
is likely orange. Trump loves to act like a mob boss, doing things with
a wink that his stooges understand. Cohen talked about how the whole
election was just an "infomercial" for Trump's brand, that winning was
never in the cards in Trump's mind. He talked about how Trump evaded the
draft, with Trump saying, "You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to
Vietnam." He talked about how Trump loves dicking over people who owe
him money. He said that Trump had him threaten Trump's schools even
though they are prevented by federal law from releasing his academic
records, and that Trump had him threaten people hundreds of times (which
means that Cohen got a kick out of doing it, like he had some power).
And, c'mon, can we not ignore the fact that the resident of the United
States is paying off porn stars for their silence? Can we all not agree
that that's just so fucking sleazy? Or that he was negotiating for a
Moscow tower while he was running for resident? Mostly, though, Trump
lies and lies like lies are air and food and water. Trump has lied about
everything, every goddamn thing, and he has created a barrier of
lickspittles, sycophants, and lackeys to prevent truth from either
getting out or penetrating in. And right now, Republicans are the
fuckin' Praetorian guard for Trump.
5. Mostly, Democrats did okay. They got Cohen to delve a little bit into
the operation of the Trump Organization, although they didn't dive
nearly as deeply as they could have. They ranted too much about how they
were doing something good for the country by holding the hearing (to
counter the Republicans completely worthless claim that the hearing was
harming the nation). And they dropped the ball a few times, which was as
much due to the limitations of the 5-minute clock as anything. But they
could have dug in to expose more clearly what a ramshackle entity
Trump's business is, how it's just a few people, mostly family, doing
slimy shit to make sure the Trump name stays out there. Kardashians with
real estate and fewer scruples.
5a. However, fucking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not there to fuck
around. She didn't pause to make any statement. Instead, she gave a
goddamn masterclass on how you can take five minutes and break through
the rhetorical bullshit in order to get to the heart of a matter. She focused
in on Trump's deflation of the value of his properties to avoid taxes.
That's a crime, and Trump could face big fines and tax evasion charges
when the Southern District of New York prosecutors get done with it.
Shout out also to Ayanna Pressley, Democrat from Massachusetts, who dug
into more financial crimes, these related to the way the Trump
Foundation was used as a slush fund, often just to stroke Trump's huge
ego. And she emphasized, as did Michigan's Brenda Lawrence, Trump's
racism because he's a fucking racist.
5b. Leave the speeches to the Democratic Chair of the Oversight
Committe, Elijah Cummings, who concluded the hearing with a thunderous attack
on his GOP colleagues and on those who degraded Cohen. It was a cry for
decency that he was making to wholly indecent people, but, tearing up
at Cummings' words, Michael Cohen, an indecent man trying to find
decency and respect again, seemed to really hear them. Cohen was a shit
human who worked for a shittier human, and Cummings offered him a chance
at redemption.
6. What did we gain from yesterday? A sense that we might get at the
truth of what was done to the United States in November 2016. A feeling
of, if not hope, then something hope-adjacent that we might use the
mechanisms of our government to save ourselves.
6a. But the Republicans won't help at all. They are done as anything other than as a subsidiary of the Trump corporation.
6b. And we shall need to heed Cohen's warning about Trump that " I fear
that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a
peaceful transition of power." That's some scary shit right there
because, well, see number 1 up there.
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