Easter Egg Events Are So Complicated! Who Knew?!

An actual president and first lady perform at the Easter Egg Roll. I know. CREDIT: White House/Pete Souza.

Oh, who knew a longstanding white house tradition could be so complicated? It’s just so gosh darn bigly yugely complex and stuff, well, no one said anything about that. It comes as a compleat lack of surprise that the Keystone Regime can’t manage a lightweight easter entertainment. Oh my.

The only thing more ridiculous than the White House Easter Egg Roll is the inability to plan a White House Easter Egg Roll. But as with health care, nobody in the Trump administration knew it could be so complicated to plan this festive spring event that has been going off relatively hitch-free since the Hayes administration. For someone who promised to never allow the blasphemous tidings “happy holidays” to emerge from our irreligious lips again, President Trump is remarkably lax about this Christian-lite rite.

First Lady Melania Trump has yet to fully staff the East Wing. She has no director for the Visitors’ Office, and trying to plan an Easter Egg Roll without one is like trying to pass sweeping bans on immigration without a director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — oh, wait, never mind.

As the New York Times reports, everything about this year’s gathering, scheduled for Monday, appears to be about half the size of President Obama’s 2016 event: The number of guests expected to attend (20,000, down from 37,000 in 2016); the number of volunteers staffing it (just 500); even the number of commemorative eggs (40,000, down from 2016’s 85,000).

Maybe there could have been more eggs if Trump hadn’t waited until the last minute to put in the order. The Trumps apparently ignored a tweet from the company Wells Wood Turning & Finishing, which supplies the commemorative wooden eggs used at our nation’s official Easter Egg Roll. “FYI manufacturing deadlines for the Easter egg roll are near. Please reach out!” The call went unanswered until early March, when the eggs had to be rush ordered.

Oh, that’s how to get Mr. Tweet to ignore a tweet. Wells Wood should have mentioned ratings.

In an echo of Trump’s inauguration, celebrities who have performed at this event in the past — Ariana Grande, Idina Menzel, and the like — are opting out; instead, musical entertainment will be provided by military bands. And many of the groups that typically get blocks of tickets, including military families and public schools in Washington and its sprawl, haven’t yet heard anything from the Trump administration.

Usually, PBS sends along a whole fleet from Sesame Street. This year, only one character will be there, and I’m sure it won’t be awkward at all, what with Trump recently proposing that funding for PBS be eliminated entirely from the federal budget.

You can be sure though, that the Tiny Tyrant will find time to twitbrag about how bigly and yuuge and star-studded the event was though, in spite of all evidence pointing to the contrary.

The Times also notes that, while the Easter Egg Roll is “typically a heavily and enthusiastically promoted affair,” no one from the White House responded to “several weeks’ worth of inquiries,” nor did they deign to “provide basic information such as how many people are expected to attend.”

Awww, look, the Tiny Tyrant is dissing the Easter Bunny and Jesus! Oh no.

Think Progress has the full farce coverage.

Trying to Kill Planned Parenthood.

In this Sept. 9, 2015, file photo, Planned Parenthood supporters rally for women’s access to reproductive health care on “National Pink Out Day’’ at Los Angeles City Hall. CREDIT: AP Photo/Nick Ut, File.

Yesterday, the Tiny Tyrant made a move to allow states to punish Planned Parenthood, and people at large, by allowing them to withhold federal funds. This is going to do a great deal of harm, especially in the more regressive states, of which there are too many. This is a direct hit on Title X, which is a devastating blow to healthcare, which the rethugs are all happy about, as they couldn’t come out and just repeal. As usual, poorer people and women will be suffering the most under this new move.

President Donald Trump signed a bill into law on Thursday that would allow states to withhold federal money for family planning services, such as birth control, from Planned Parenthood clinics and other women’s health centers.

The bill is a repeal of an Obama-era regulation that said states couldn’t withhold Title X funding, which covers family planning and preventative care, from organizations just because those organizations also provide abortion care. This bill would roll back that protection, emboldening states to try to restrict such funding.

The Senate passed the bill 51–50 in March, with Vice President Pence casting the tie breaking vote.

Four million people with low incomes rely on Title X for preventative health care. Roughly 1.5 million receive their Title X care at Planned Parenthood.

In practice, what this bill does is open the door for states to restrict these people from choosing certain health care providers — which may be, in many cases, the only health care provider nearby, the one they trust, or the only one that they can afford.

While the bill does not defund Planned Parenthood directly, it is part of a wider GOP attack on the women’s health provider — and will likely encourage further efforts to cut federal funding off from Planned Parenthood.

It is already legally prohibited to use federal funds for abortion care, thanks to the Hyde Amendment. Currently, Planned Parenthood gets federal funding through programs like Title X and Medicaid, which cover STD testing, cancer screenings, birth control access, and other health needs for people who wouldn’t be able to afford them.

In reality, federally defunding Planned Parenthood — as the GOP proposed to do in their failed health care bill  — actually means preventing people who rely on it from accessing health care. And while anti-Planned Parenthood politicians argue that people can go elsewhere, for many low-income and rural women and men, Planned Parenthood clinics are their only option.

Think Progress has the full story.

BOOM.

CREDIT: Screenshot/CNN.

The United States dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan, known as the “Massive Ordnance Air Blast” or the “Mother of All Bombs,” on Thursday. This is the first-ever combat use of the bomb, which weighs 21,000 pounds.

[…]

The Trump administration’s foreign policy has been completely incoherent. Also on Thursday, the U.S.-led coalition in Syria accidentally bombed and killed Syrian forces fighting ISIS. The Washington Post called it “the worst confirmed friendly-fire incident” in the almost three-year war against ISIS.

This administration has also killed an astonishing number of civilians abroad in a short amount of time. Last month, a U.S. airstrike in Mosul killed 200 civilians, and it took almost a week for the government to acknowledge it was responsible. U.S.-led attacks in Syria in the span of two weeks last month also killed at least 79 people. And Trump authorized a deadly U.S. raid in Yemen just five days into office, which killed at least 23 Yemeni civilians, including children.

[…]

After Spicer refused to comment on whether the president authorized the bombing, a reporter asked Trump whether or not he did so.

“Everybody knows exactly what happened,” Trump said later Thursday afternoon. “What I do is I authorize my military. We have the greatest military in the world and they’ve done a job, as usual.”

“My military.” The maniac is playing with big bombs now. People are dying. Most likely those people include “beautiful babies”.  Jesus Fuck. I’m out, I’m going to go pretend things are fine.

Full story at Think Progress.

U.S. Was Warned. Didn’t Matter.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Alastair Grant.

Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said.

Another source suggested the Dutch and the French spy agency, the General Directorate for External Security or DGSE, were contributors.

It is understood that GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information. The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.

I have to wonder, just how much damage is it going to take? How much bigger do all the illegalities have to get? Some people are still hopeful of impeachment, but I have serious doubts on that score. Seems the U.S. has just given up on giving a shit, and there isn’t even much of a sham of an investigation going on. This is beyond disgraceful.

The Guardian has the full story.

Flight Pattern.

A ballet about the plight of refugees, commissioned for the Royal Opera House, has been showered with five star reviews and described with words like potent and sombre. It’s the work of the Canadian Crystal Pite who has built a reputation as one of the most respected choreographers of her generation – and who is the first woman to have created a new work for the Royal Ballet in almost two decades. It’s titled ‘Flight Pattern’ and Kirsty Wark went to speak to her about using dance to engage in a difficult harrowing subject.

Beautiful and so very poignant. I wish I could see this in person.

The Problem of Prettifying Trump for Children’s Books.

Michael Ian Black and Marc Rosenthal, A Child’s First Book of Trump.

Unfortunately, when it comes to history, there’s a long, ugly history in the U.S. of lying to children. Books are filled with euphemisms and omissions, desperate to find any way to praise past politicians and their acts. This is quite the problem with presidential bios, going all the way back. People were considered courageous to mention that the oh so holy Saint Jefferson was a slaveholder. They omitted the rapes, subsequent pregnancies, and those inconvenient little slaves Jefferson fathered. You don’t find sections or books on just how genocidal presidents were when it came to Indians, or how they spent time and money on being devious bastards, making promises they fully intended to break. Nothing about the rapes, murders, and stealing of children, no. There’s very little action across uStates to undo all the whitewash. That much has not changed, but even in an industry well practiced in the art of whitewash, Trump is presenting special problems.

…Rosman catches the Scholastic folks red-handed as they rewrite history to try to prettify Trump for their audience. In a prepublication draft of the book, under the heading “Troubling Statements,” its authors initially explained: “Some of Trump’s biggest supporters were white nationalists. Their comments and actions during and after the campaign were racist and often dangerous. Trump did little to speak against them.” But in the final version, we get, instead, a page called “Campaign Statements,” which explains that, “Some of Trump’s critics felt he did not speak out against prejudicial people and groups strongly enough.”

[…]

The problem with Trump is not that he did not denounce the racism, much less the fact that some people might have felt this way. It’s that he actively encouraged not merely racism but a particularly violent strain of it; one that helped create an atmosphere of menace toward almost all people of color among his most virulent supporters. What’s more, this racism, according to the best data we can find, was central to his appeal both in the Republican primaries and in the general election. The fact that he is now president of the United States presents an additional ideological problem for children’s book publishers. Not only must they find a way around the fact that their subject is a racist, sexist, ethnocentric, McCarthyite, lying con man, but also that nearly half the country’s voters knew all this and picked him anyway.

To be honest about Trump is to be honest about America, and right now, that is just not the kind of thing children’s publishers are set up to do. It’s not even the kind of thing The New York Times or The Washington Post is set up to do — at least not without blaming “both sides” for whatever crime against democracy, decency or common sense Trump has most recently committed. Joana Costa Knufinke, group editor for nonfiction books in Scholastic’s library publishing division, uses this time-honored excuse when she explains to Rosman, “We make an effort to show both points of view.”

[…]

The challenge regarding Trump, however, is not that he has flaws, as men and all presidents do. The problem is that he is all flaws and that it was these flaws that got him elected president. Without those flaws — the racism, sexism, jingoism, dishonesty, incompetence, ignorance and belligerence — there is nothing left to say about Trump… except perhaps to make fun of his hair. This puts the nice people in the children’s book business in the uncomfortable position of either ignoring the new president or running interference of his destructive qualities and teaching our children to, at best, ignore them, or at worst, emulate them.

An incisive look at how the children’s publishing industry is going to be very busy orange-washing and filtering all information about the current unpresident of uStates. Highly recommended reading.

Full article here.

You Can Get An Ignorant Unpresident To Do Anything.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney (R) listens as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with members of the Republican Study Committee at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 17, 2017.

John Harwood at CNBC has an enlightening interview with Mick Mulvaney, the person who is going to decide just how many programs and people can be screwed over by the regime.

MULVANEY: I’ll tell how I wrote it. And then you can decide for yourself. We looked at the speeches to try and figure out where he wanted to spend more money. And then we also had instructions not to add to the deficit. I laid to him the options that Mick Mulvaney would put on a piece of paper. And he looked at one and said, “What is that?” And I said, “Well, that’s a change to part of Social Security.” He said, “No. No.” He said, “I told people I wouldn’t change that when I ran. And I’m not going to change that. Take that off the list.” So I get a chance to be Mick Mulvaney. I get a chance to have those same principles. And I give ’em to the president, and he makes the final decisions.

HARWOOD: He over and over went to West Virginia, went to rural parts of Kentucky and Ohio, said, “I’m going to take care of you guys.” He didn’t say, “I’m going to get rid of the Appalachian Regional Commission.”

MULVANEY: Yeah, and my guess is he probably didn’t know what the Appalachian Regional Commission did. I was able to convince him, “Mr. President, this is not an efficient use of the taxpayer dollars. This is not the best way to help the people in West Virginia.” He goes, “Okay, that’s great. Is there a way to get those folks the money in a more efficient way?” And the answer is yes. And that’s what’s we’re going focus on doing.

“More efficient.” In the current regime, that equals nothing at all.

HARWOOD: How cognizant is he of the fact that many of the people who supported him would be hurt by cuts that you proposed in the budget?

MULVANEY: The president is certainly conscious of the people who voted for him, right. But he cares about more than just the Trump voters. So when you say you know, people that voted for him are hurt, that’s not the issue. He wants to know, “Are the folks in Appalachia, are the coal miners in West Virginia going to be better off under my presidency whether or not they voted for me?” He doesn’t care if they voted for him. I think what the president will tell you is, “The best thing I can do for those folks, whether or not they voted for me, is to figure out a way to get 3.5 percent economic growth.”

Well, there was a lot of Newspeak, translating to “nope, no one gives a shit about them, because hey, they aren’t the issue!”

HARWOOD: I’ve had interviews with Republicans from Paul Ryan to John Thune who have been making the case that, “We are going to persuade the president that we have to do something about entitlements.” How are you going to manage that?

MULVANEY: We’re working on it right now. He went through the list and said, “No, that’s Social Security. That violates my promise. Take that off. That’s Medicare. That violates my promise. Take that off.”

HARWOOD: Is Social Security Disability on that list?

MULVANEY: I don’t think we’ve settled yet. But I continue to look forward to talking to the president about ways to fix that program. Because that is one of the fastest growing programs that we have. It’s become effectively a long-term unemployment, permanent unemployment program.

Oh look, about the last social safety net, going to be shredded. There’s much more at CNBC, along with the requisite “oh hey, we all golf together, we’re great cronies, everyone is happy, happy, happy, no KAOS* regime at all, nope!

*My current image of the U.S. “Government”:

Conrad Siegfried, Head of KAOS, Get Smart.

NC: Gay Marriage Ban.

North Carolina is going after a gay marriage ban now. I expect we’re going to be seeing this move all over the place, as a lot of rethugs and Christians are now convinced they can kill same sex marriage everywhere now that they broke all the rules to get Gorsuch on the court. Right now, it doesn’t look it did much good to oust McCrory.

Raleigh, N.C. — A bill filed Tuesday in the state House would outlaw same-sex marriage in North Carolina and refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

According to House Bill 780, the state would declare that the federal government is not legally authorized to regulate marriage. Therefore, the state’s 2012 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage would remain in effect.

The proposal presumes that the state could simply refuse to recognize the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. According to the bill, that ruling “exceeds the authority of the Court relative to the decree of Almighty God that ‘a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24, ESV) and abrogates the clear meaning and understanding of marriage in all societies throughout prior history.”

The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus, is a Christian minister. He refused to comment on the legislation he filed.

The bill’s second sponsor, Rep. Michael Speciale, R-Craven, first denied that the bill would outlaw same-sex marriage in the state, then said that, since the constitutional amendment remains on the books despite the Supreme Court ruling, state lawmakers should “do something about it.” He declined to say what action that should be, and he turned down an interview request, accusing reporters of misrepresenting his positions in earlier stories.

Well, there’s rabid Christians for you – their uptight view of things, based on their particular book of psychopathic myths, everyone must comply! I have one simple answer to that one: Fuck No. It would be past nice if Christians would figure out, once and for all, that not everyone believes the same shit they do.

Full story at WRAL.

“Even Hitler Didn’t Sink To Using Chemical Weapons”

Tucker Viemeister.

“Someone as despicable as Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,”

So said one Sean Spicer. To date, the stupidity has already been excruciatingly difficult to bear, but this? Really? When asked for clarification, Spicer stated that Hitler never used gas on his own citizens, so y’know, all those German Jews? Guess they weren’t German. Or citizens. Jesus Fuck. The internet at large is already busy tearing Spicer apart.

Initial Story, Spicer Gets Eaten Alive.

Practicing Unprotected Politics.

Goodness me, one of the Tiny Tyrant’s spawn had a thoughtless spill of arrogance, and a bit of truth tumbled out. Ooops. I’m sure there are some Trumpholes out there who believe that Donnie has “separated” himself from his business, but believing that requires quite a conscious effort of reality distancing. I expect most of them don’t care, and don’t see anything wrong the Tiny Tyrant treating the government like another overblown hotel or golf course.

…Because Trump hasn’t divested from his businesses, his separation from the vast conflicts of interest they pose is already shaky — and any separation at all rests wholly on his promise not to talk to his sons about them. None of the parties involved have provided any way to verify that this promise has been kept — and now, reports keep leaking out from Trump Jr. and Eric Trump themselves that President Trump is much more informed on his businesses than he alleges.

It’s just one more piece of evidence that Trump’s separation from his businesses is no more than a corporate shell game, and that there is little to stop him from making decisions as president that enrich him personally.

“He is breaking down one of the few barriers he claimed to be establishing between him and his businesses, and those barriers themselves were weak to begin with. But if he is now going to get reports from his son about the businesses, then he really isn’t separate in any real way,” Larry Noble, general counsel of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and a former chief ethics officer at the Federal Election Commission, told Forbes.

Think Progress has the full story.

Acts of Defiance.

Image: Charlotte Cooper, CC-BY.

Maryland is leading an action which is poised to be picked up by lawmakers across the country. The federal de-funding of Planned Parenthood clinics is not sitting well with constituents far and wide, and they are making their voices known.

Every dollar that the Trump administration takes away from Planned Parenthood in Maryland will be replaced by state funds (about $2.7M), which will save about $6 for every dollar it puts in, because when women are in charge of their own fertility, they don’t end up raising kids they can’t afford.

State lawmakers across the USA are planning to follow suit. Maryland’s Republican state governor Larry Hogan didn’t even try to veto the bill, having seen what happened when federal Republicans tried to take away health care — and women are disproportionately willing to rise up to fight for their rights.

Boing Boing has the story.

“ I feel it’s important to have hydrocarbons equally represented.”

CREDIT: Independence Institute.

I, uh, uh, oh gods, there’s so much wrong here, that it … oh, wrong, wrong, wrong. Along with the wrong, the co-opting of phrases expressing specific concepts has been turned into a rotten, fermenting word salad crawling with maggots. I, oh. I sincerely hope that no artists participate in this travesty.

One thing Earth Day celebrations have been lacking is a recognition of fossil fuels — at least according to the Independence Institute, a self-described “action tank” based in Colorado that receives funding from a litany of prominent conservative dark money groups.

“Enviros celebrate by planting trees but they never celebrate the trucks that deliver the trees, or the gas that powers that truck, or the plastic handles of the shovels they use,” an email from the organization reads. “Shouldn’t Mother Earth be thanked for making Earth Day events possible?”

Budding artists are encouraged to send their original works in by April 21 with the main requirement that it “should showcase the awesomeness of fossil fuels.”

I can’t even. Just can’t. Think Progress has a full breakdown on the monies backing this monstrous reality denial.

Amy Cooke, executive vice president and director of the Energy Policy Center at the Independence Institute, has been critical of Colorado’s renewable energy standard, arguing that clean energy sources should be expanded to include clean coal, natural gas, hydroelectric power, and nuclear. Late last year, Cooke was named to the Trump administration’s EPA “landing team,” and wrote of her excitement for the future of the EPA under Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt (both have been clear about their intent to cripple the agency, slashing its budget and immediately gutting policies to fight climate change).

Cooke told ThinkProgress that the organization’s fossil fuels art contest is rooted in inclusivity. “Fossil fuels seem to get left out of the Earth Day celebration,” she said via email. “As an energy feminist — pro-choice in energy sources — I feel it’s important to have hydrocarbons equally represented.”

Fossil fuels get left out of Earth Day celebrations because they have a lot to do with destroying the earth, habitats, species, poisoning water and so forth, you godsawful excuse for a person. “Energy feminist.” “Pro-choice in energy sources.” Okay, I have to get past my overwhelming desire to smack her.

In regard to Independence Institute’s donors — and their history of working against climate action — Cooke avoided specifics. “In general, people and organizations support us because of the work we do including being energy agnostic,” she said. “We encourage innovation instead of over regulation. It’s actually kind of liberating because we aren’t boxed in by an either-or cynical choice paradigm.”

“Energy agnostic”. Uh huh. Oh you’re boxed in, alright – all you want is destruction. Jesus Fuck.

Full story at Think Progress.