Ethics & Team Trump: Never the Twain Shall Meet.

ethics

The Office of Government Ethics has been attempting to chase down Team Trump, who are doing everything in their power to evade, so far, successfully. Is “people who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear” still a thing? If so, it would appear that Team Trump has everything to fear.

New emails reveal that the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) reportedly “lost contact” with President-elect Donald Trump’s team during the ongoing transition to power, despite efforts to warn officials about ethical issues posed by nominees and “blind trusts.”

According to emails uncovered by MSNBC, OGE director Director Walter Shaub contacted Trump aides in November expressing deep frustration with the lack of cooperation between his organization and the president-elect’s team. Shaub reportedly cautioned Trump against creating a blind trust of his business holdings without speaking to the OGE first, noting that the ethics office only considers something a blind trust if its assets have “been sold off”—a very different standard that the “half-blind” trust floated by Trump’s own team. (To date, Trump has not suggested that he will sell off his assets.)

MSNBC noted that the emails, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, included few details regarding any efforts by the president-elect to divest from assets that could result in potential conflicts of interest during his presidency.

[…]

Shaub also argued that Trump’s staff was risking “embarrassment” by refusing to allow the ethics office to review the financial records of potential cabinet selections before they were announced, saying some could potentially violate federal law.

“They run the risk of having inadvertently violated the criminal conflicts of interest restriction at 18 USC 208,” Shaub wrote. “If we don’t get involved early to prevent problems, we won’t be able to help them after the fact.”

The tension may explain the OGE’s effort to troll Trump on Twitter in late November.

Look, a bonus Sunday Facepalm! The only way to maybe get the Pendejo-elect’s attention is to troll him on Twitter. For fuck’s sake. Even some conservatives are appalled:

Yes. And not only that, but McConnell’s deep hypocrisy is on show as well:

The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate plans to rush forward this week with confirmation hearings for many of Donald Trump’s nominees for cabinet and other key executive positions. Though many of the picks have not yet completed the customarily required ethics clearances and background checks, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has shown no willingness to delay.

[…]

But back in 2009, McConnell took the exact opposite view. A letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), posted on Twitter by Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington co-founder and former Obama administration ethics adviser Norm Eisen on Sunday, shows he demanded that “financial disclosures must be complete” before any confirmation hearings be scheduled.

How things change, eh?

Think Progress has the full stories: Government Ethics and McConnell.

Whitesplaining Apologies.

censored_1

Lawrence Ware at Fusion addresses the massive facepalming wrong of whitesplaining apologies by people caught doing things which are racist as hell. Mr. Ware lists the 5 worst whitesplaining strategies, which also apply to other types of notpologies.

1. “I apologize to anyone who may have been offended.”

This is the classic non-apology. To say that these words have meaning at all is pushing it. The person in the wrong isn’t expressing remorse over what they’ve said or done; they’re merely acknowledging the response of the offended. This statement is but a logical step away from saying, “Y’all just need to stop being so damn sensitive.”

2. “I have black friends.”

Somehow a white person caught doing something racially problematic thinks having a black person as a favorite in their iPhone absolves them of racism. Someone should tell them it just doesn’t work that way. Put succinctly, we don’t give a damn if a white racist has a black friend.

3. “I know MLK quotes.”
Some white people have a tendency to take MLK’s words out of context. When King wrote in Where Do We Go From Here, “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn,” he was probably talking about the same white folks who are misusing his words, like Seattle Mariners backup catcher Steve Clevenger, who apologized for his offensive comments about the Charlotte, North Carolina, protests by harkening back to MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech: “I am also proud that my inner circle of friends has never been defined by race but by the content of their character.”

4. “You misunderstood.”

This is insulting. The statement implies that what the offended party heard was not actually what the offensive person said. A slightly more authentic, yet just as problematic, approach is the “that’s not what I meant” defense. In that case, one owns that what they said might have been distasteful, but insists that they didn’t intend for it to offend. It’s similar to a 5-year-old who accidentally hits their sibling, but thinks screaming “I didn’t mean to do it” will sufficiently solve the problem. Just because a person didn’t mean for something to be racist, doesn’t mean that they didn’t do something hella racist. Just ask the folks who believe that the Confederate flag is all about heritage. Yeah, white folks who say this sound about as dumb as them.

5. “I don’t see race.”
Aside from the fact that it is nearly impossible, this is a statement centered in white privilege. In Racism Without Racists, Edwardo Bonilla-Silva argues that pretending that race doesn’t exist only perpetuates white privilege because it doesn’t force us to address the systemic nature of oppression. Racism is not just interpersonal—it’s also institutional.

A few words of advice to white folks caught being racist: Just own it. It’s not cool, but admit it and learn from your mistake. Your attempts to whitesplain your way out of having said something racist is coming off about as ridiculous as Shaggy’s attempts to prove his fidelity in “It Wasn’t Me.”

Full article at Fusion.

Missing Out On $50 Trillion and Millions of High Wage Jobs.

chart

CREDIT: Department of Energy (DOE).

Clean energy. It’s the only possible way to go right now, and there’s more promise in clean energy than anything else, but Pendejo-elect Trump is making sure that America will not only miss out on all the money clean energy can bring, but the millions of jobs which go with it. No, much better to commit to filthy energy, which can stuff a few select, already overflowing pockets with more money, making sure that the environment gets destroyed, and to keep on denying climate change. Oh yes, that’s just so much better, by golly, that will make America great again, you betcha. :insert near-fatal eyeroll here.:

A few days ago, Joe Romm at Think Progress had an article up about the clean energy, and how it will be a $50 trillion industry, and how Trump has determined that the U.S. will not be a part of it.

The best charts of 2016 reveal the clean energy revolution is unstoppable. At least, it is unstoppable globally.

But if the United States makes a historic blunder and shifts its focus back toward dirty energy just when the rest of the world has made a $50 trillion (or higher) commitment to a carbon-free future, then it won’t reap the vast job-creating benefits of the remarkable ongoing cost reductions shown in chart above.

That article is here.

Today, there’s an article about all the jobs created by clean energy.

Renewable energy jobs in select countries (excluding large hydropower). CREDIT: IRENA.

Renewable energy jobs in select countries (excluding large hydropower). CREDIT: IRENA.

China is preparing to go big on the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades.

Beijing’s newest 5-year energy development plan invests a stunning 2.5 trillion yuan ($360 billion) in renewable generation by 2020. Of that, $144 billion will go to solar, about $100 billion to wind, $70 billion to hydropower, and the rest to sources like tidal and geothermal power.

The Chinese National Energy Administration said in a statement Thursday the resulting “employment will be more than 13 million people.”

China is already doing way better than the U.S. in this regard, and President-elect Trump’s commitment to opposing clean energy will not make things any better. As the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reported last year, China already has over 40 percent of all jobs in renewables, globally, while the U.S. has under 10 percent (see chart above).

We know clean energy jobs are the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades for several reasons.

If you’re one of those Americans who fell for Trump’s “jobs!” bullshit, perhaps you should look into moving to China, I hear they are hiring. The full article is at Think Progress.

The Conservative Rally Cry: No More Porn!

Todd Weiler (Facebook).

Todd Weiler (Facebook).

The attempt to legislate a pre-loaded porn nanny is here. Now we move on to the anti-porn crusade being spear-headed by Utah republicans, alarmed over the porn consumption stats of Utah, which are very high indeed. A couple of decades ago, I live in Utah, SLC specifically. It’s not difficult to understand why porn consumption is so very high there, it’s a state based on serious repression, and a deliberate suppression of knowledge. Naturally, Utah is going with the “won’t anyone think about the children!” whine to defend their latest draconian measures. You could seriously counter the importance of porn among children by providing proper sex education. Demystifying goes a long way in making something a whole lot less interesting. It helps if you aren’t always muttering “forbidden!” too, but I expect that’s a road too far for Utah. All that said, the majority of porn consumers in Utah are not children. They are adult, hetero men.

Now that he’s successfully declared pornography to be a public health crisis in his state, a Utah Republican wants to allow lawsuits against companies that put explicit content online.

State Sen. Todd Weiler (R-Woods Cross) sponsored a resolution that passed last year to declare the public health crisis, and he said the new bill would focus mainly on underage children and teens who become addicted to online pornography, reported the Salt Lake Tribune.

“I’m trying to kind of track the same path that was taken against tobacco 70 years ago,” Weiler told KSL-TV. “It’s not government coming in and saying what you can and can’t watch. It’s just basically a message to the pornography industry that if someone in Utah can prove damages from the product, that they may be held liable financially.”

That’s not likely, given that the whole notion of porn ‘addiction’ is a false one.

The lawmaker is working on a second bill that would close a loophole requiring public libraries to filter out adult content on wireless internet connections, and not just wired connections, and he also wants internet service providers to filter explicit content for all users, although they may opt out.

Intransitive has the best, simplest idea about the filtering question, which means it would never be implemented.

Weiler, who is an attorney, admits the first two or three dozen cases against pornographers would most likely be dismissed, but he believes they would eventually gain traction.

“I’m looking at where we can push the envelope as a state of Utah,” Weiler said. “To pretend that this is not having any impact on our youth, on children’s’ minds as they’re developing, as their attitudes towards sex and the opposite sex are being formed, I think, is foolish.”

Lawmakers in Tennessee and Virginia are considering measures that would declare pornography a public health crisis in their states, as well, and the Republican National Committee issued a warning in its 2016 platform about health concerns related to pornographic materials.

The new rallying cry of repubs everywhere, oh gods, porn! Perhaps if all republicans stopped their porn consumption, I’d bet the reduction in numbers would seriously impress them.

Via Raw Story.

The Wall Street Journal: We Will Not Call A Lie A Lie.

Credit: Screenshot

Credit: Screenshot.

Since President-elect Donald Trump won the election, he has continued his campaign habit of making inconsistent, unverifiable, or even just obviously false statements. The American public is left to rely on the media to learn the truth and make sense of his proclamations.

That’s exactly what the media is supposed to do with any politician—when the President lies, it is the press’ obligation to tell the public. But it’s doubly important with a politician like Trump, whose entire political career has often been punctuated by flagrant lies.

But when Trump lies, the Wall Street Journal—the second largest paper by circulation in the country—will not call it a lie, according to the its editor-in-chief Gerard Baker.

“I’d be careful about using the word, ‘lie.’ ‘Lie’ implies much more than just saying something that’s false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead,” Baker told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on Sunday.

Well no shit, Sherlock. A lie is a deliberate intent to mislead. That would be why it’s called a lie. A falsehood. A fabrication. For fuck’s sake, it truly is Nineteen Eighty Four, and Doublespeak is here.

Instead, Baker said the paper would investigate the claim, and then present both sides: What Trump said, and what the paper found. Then, the readers will be left to decide which account is correct.

As an example, Baker cited one of Trump’s more outrageous lies: When he claimed that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey gathered on rooftops to celebrate 9/11. Baker noted that the WSJ investigated his claim and found it baseless.

Right. That’s an excellent example of a lie, a deliberate intent to mislead people into thinking this made up bullshit was true. So, it’s a LIE. Big, yuuuuge LIE. It’s okay to say so.

“I think it’s then up to the reader to make up their own mind to say, ‘This is what Donald Trump says. This is what a reliable, trustworthy news organization reports. And you know what? I don’t think that’s true.’ I think if you start ascribing a moral intent, as it were, to someone by saying that they’ve lied, I think you run the risk that you look like you are, like you’re not being objective,” he said.

Oh fuck you, with bells on. You can leave it up to people to decide whether or not they are okay with someone lying, you can’t prevent that anyway. What you can do is call a LIE a LIE.  That’s not a moral judgement, it’s reporting the truth. Idiot. And fuck all this “both sides” bullshit, too. I’m not interested in being fair to tyrants, facsists, compulsive liars, or nazis, among others.

The full story is at Think Progress.

Phobie of the Year: Pat McCrory.

00_pat-mccrory_phobie-treatement

The competition for Phobie of the Year was devilish in 2016, but one man out-hated all the rest. Pat McCrory, the outgoing governor of North Carolina, even outdid Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

At least in Indiana, where Pence was governor, he backed down when business representing millions of dollars threatened to leave the state over its Religious Freedom Restoration Act — also known as a “license to discriminate.” Pence signed a fix to the law so discriminating against LGBT people wasn’t allowed under the RFRA’s protections. In North Carolina, though, even as jobs left the state and performers canceled concerts and millions piled up in lost revenue, McCrory and Republicans refused to rethink what they passed in House Bill 2.

Lawmakers hadn’t approved a RFRA exactly. Instead, they passed a law banning any locality from including LGBT people in antidiscrimination ordinances. In other words, they wanted to ensure that discrimination against LGBT people remains legal no matter where you go in North Carolina. They also barred transgender people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity in any government building, without citing a single incident caused in North Carolina by letting transgender people use the bathroom of their choice.

There’s much more at The Advocate, including the Phobie Finalists:

[Read more…]

A Pre-Loaded Porn Nanny.

Chris Sevier (WZTV).

Chris Sevier (WZTV).

There is a state-by-state campaign underway in the United States to pass legislation that would require laptops and all internet-connected devices to come preloaded with an unspecified porn blocking mechanism.

It’s a mission led by Chris Sevier, a Tennessee man and Christian music producer who previously sued Apple for his alleged porn “addiction” and fought marriage equality by filing a stunt lawsuit asking for the right to marry his laptop. He’s an attorney who was disbarred in his state for “mental infirmity or illness” — and, despite the outrageousness of Sevier’s back story, let alone the nature of the legislation itself, the push to block porn across the country appears to be gaining some traction.

A bill of this kind has been pre-filed in South Carolina — but Sevier says that North Dakota and Indiana will soon pre-file a version of the bill ahead of the next legislative session. He claims that, in total, sponsors from 27 states have agreed to introduce a version of the bill, which Sevier drafted. The text varies somewhat state by state, but the overall aim is largely the same: to force manufacturers of “products that distribute the internet” to sell their devices with technology that broadly blocks pornography as well as websites that facilitate the sale of sex. Consumers can opt out of the block if they are over the age of 18 and pay a $20 fee to the state.

Oh, North Dakota, always eager to be regressive. I thought repubs didn’t care for the whole “nanny government” they constantly whined about over the last eight years. Oh right, that’s whenever there was any sort of program meant to help people. I guess nannyism is just dandy if you’re using it for oppressive measures.

“The reason why this bill is constitutionally sound, this isn’t like a prohibition. It just makes it by default, it’s blocked,” Sevier told Vocativ. “There are a lot of adults who don’t want access to that stuff.”

The push behind the bill — which is titled, the “Human Trafficking Prevention Act” — is largely being done in the name of fighting human trafficking. What, you might ask, does human trafficking have to do with pornography? Sevier argues that “pornography is an advertisement for prostitution,” and that it “erodes consent,” “promotes sexual voyeurism,” and “cultivates female objectification.”

The big ol’ fly in the legislative ointment is that Sevier makes no distinction between those who have been forced into sex work, and those who are consensual sex workers. For the conservative minded, yes, there is a difference, a very big difference.

The bill also gestures toward the alleged social harms of pornography and the need to protect children from obscene materials. (As for the harm of pornography, several studies have contradicted the common anti-pornography claim that adult content is linked to domestic violence and sexual abuse. There isn’t reliable evidence to support the existence of “porn addiction.”) In addition to blocking regular porn, Sevier highlights that it would also filter out “revenge porn” and child porn, which is already illegal. Despite a lack of evidence, Sevier sees consensual adult pornography as a gateway to child porn and abuse. “It sends them down a slippery slope where before you know it, they’re starting to get more and more into hardcore forms, like worse and worse, like grosser and grosser, and the next thing you know they’re on a plane flying to Thailand to molest a child,” he said.

There’s no stupid quite like conservative stupid. If you find the idea of fucking a child repugnant, all the porn consumption in the world is not going to cause you to suddenly decide to do that. Also, a whole lot of hetero couples find sharing porn increases their fun and intimacy, many of them conservative. Regardless of orientation, who gives a shit if people enjoy porn? I don’t care. Then again, unlike the majority of christian conservatives, I don’t spend my time with my nose in other people’s crotches.

Sevier’s text relies on state obscenity laws regarding the display of adult or “girlie” magazines. Commonly, states require brick-and-mortar vendors to place “obscene” material behind blinders. Sevier argues that the manufacturers of digital devices should be held to the same standards. (Although, it’s worth noting that if you want access to an adult magazine at a 7-11, all you have to do is buy the magazine — you don’t have to pay an additional fee to uncensor the product that you’re purchasing.)

[…]

Apply these same standards to all of the internet, and it’s easy to imagine not just hardcore pornography being filtered out, but also art and sex education materials. It’s a critique Sevier has anticipated. “There’s a lot of scenarios where a parent, a grownup, or a minor could possibly be okay without having access to that content,” he said. “If they really want access and they’re over 18 they have to go get the filter removed. There are a lot of people that are gonna say, ‘Yes, there might be a few things I’m going to miss out on, but I really don’t need that stuff.’”

You know what stuff I can do without? Prudish assholes so afraid of human bodies and sexuality that they attempt to legislate everyone else’s choices. Yet another reason to get the fuck out of this country.

There’s more at Vocativ.

Sunday Facepalm.

Shutterstock.

Shutterstock.

Pendejo-elect Trump, who at one point said hacking may have been the work of someone sitting on their bed weighing 400 pounds, and more recently said it was time to let it go and move on, has now declared himself an expert in hacking, and in a move already seen too many times to have become boring, promised a secret which will be revealed on Tuesday or Wednesday. If there’s one thing we know already, it’s that Trump doesn’t know jack shit about computers, and there’s no juicy secret with special sauce waiting in the wings to be revealed.

He added: “And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”

Sigh. No, you don’t know anything about hacking, Donny, not one teeny, tiny thing. No, hacking is not hard to prove. Also, proving hacking and proving exactly who did the hacking, not the same thing, your dipshittedness. Of course, clarity isn’t exactly Donny’s middle name. As for this whole “I know things other people don’t know”, oh, grow the fuck up already. This childish isht is already beyond annoying, I cannot cope with the thought of years of this “I know something you don’t know, na na na!” garbage, especially when it isn’t so. Donny keeps saying this, and every time, it turns out there’s no there there. In the earlier post, linked above, he didn’t know about the imposed sanctions, because he never knows about anything.

Mr. Trump, who does not use email, also advised people to avoid computers when dealing with delicate material. “It’s very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way, because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe,” Mr. Trump said.

“I don’t care what they say, no computer is safe,” he added. “I have a boy who’s 10 years old; he can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier.”

:Laughs: Oh, I just can’t wait to see how that one is going to turn out after Jan. 20th. This fucking idiot is going to be in charge of some very complex systems indeed, and doesn’t know one thing about them, but hey, he can tweet! The idiot knows more than all the intelligence agencies (not that there’s much boasting to be done there, but still), and doesn’t understand that hacking isn’t something done solely by the so-called bad guys. Hacking is not dependent on someone using email, either. There is every possibility that in the coming years, an eyeroll will actually prove fatal.

Trump also said “I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge,” which is beyond laughable, given his penchant for spreading baseless bullshit and lies all over the place, insisting they are true, such as insisting President Obama’s birth certificate was a fake, and that thousands of American Muslim people in NJ celebrated the 9/11 attack. Pretty much everything Donny says is unsubstantiated at the least, and an outright lie at the worst.

Via The NY Times.

Sean Spicer is also sprinkling his stupidity all over:

“Why aren’t we talking about the other influences on the election? Why aren’t we talking about Hillary Clinton getting debate questions ahead of time?” Spicer said in response.

Y’know, just because someone is intelligent enough to perform well in a debate, and did things like prepare, doesn’t mean it was cheating.

“No one is asking those questions. The fact is that everyone wants to make Donald Trump admit to certain things. When do we talk about the other side, which is what did Hillary Clinton do to influence the election? Is she being punished?”

Yes, Donny does need to admit to things, people tend to hold presidents accountable, so best get used to it. So, Clinton tried to influence the election, but Donny didn’t do that at all, no. FFS, couldn’t they at least get someone with a modicum of intelligence in their team? This level of stupid is too close to fatal.

Via Think Progress.

More Jobs? No, More Lies.

President-elect Donald Trump speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

President-elect Donald Trump speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump made a huge announcement: because of his presidency, Sprint has decided to bring back or create 5,000 jobs in the United States, while satellite startup OneWeb will create another 3,000.

The claim, however, was false. Those jobs are part of a $50 billion investment from SoftBank, which owns 80 percent of Sprint and has made a large investment in OneWeb, that was previously announced as part of a deal with a Saudi investment fund before Trump won the presidency. Meanwhile, not all of the jobs promised by Sprint will be at the company itself, but instead at contractors.

But it’s in both the company’s interests and Trump’s to create glowing, if misleading, headlines about cooperation between the administration and the corporation.

For Sprint, cozying up to Trump is almost certainly related to the hope that it can get approval of its previously failed attempt to merge with T-Mobile. Sprint was in the process of making a bid to buy T-Mobile in 2014, and thus combining the third and fourth largest wireless carriers in the country, but ended up abandoning the plan in the face of regulatory opposition from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Both agencies have stated an intent to keep four major carriers in the country, rather than let them combine, under current leadership.

While Sprint has been able to remain solvent since then, it hasn’t turned an annual profit since 2006 and has more than $30 billion in total debt. SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son, who personally met with Trump after the election and re-announced his company’s intents to invest in the United States from Trump Tower, has made it clear that he sees consolidation as a must for getting the company to profitability. “We need scale,” he told Bloomberg in 2014. And he still reportedly has his eyes on T-Mobile.

If the FCC and DOJ become more friendly to mega-mergers under Trump, that would be an enormous win for the company. And even before Sprint started currying favor with Trump, his administration has been shaping up to be just what the company is looking for. One of the president-elect’s top policy advisers on technology has suggested abolishing the FCC altogether and is a proponent of industry mergers, writing, “Telecommunications network providers and ISPs are rarely, if ever, monopolies.” Other advisers are staunchly against net neutrality regulations that aim to keep the internet a level playing field but have been opposed by giants like AT&T and Verizon.

Rarely monopolies. Right. In what fucking universe? Have people forgotten Ma Bell already? It wasn’t that bloody long ago.  Living rural, I already get screwed royally when it comes to net access, and I’m capped, too. No streaming for me, I can’t afford it. Whether or not I’ll be able to afford net access at all once the incoming administration guts everything, who knows? I really hate interesting times.

There’s much more at Think Progress.

Aw Hell.

bookdates

I have months worth of release dates for books in one of my calendars, and now I find out that Simon & Schuster have made a $250,000 book deal with Milo Yiannopoulos. I won’t punish an author (or myself) by refusing to buy a book I had planned to purchase if published by them, but that will also have to be an end to any more books put out by them. I hope that authors flee them in droves for doing this. Not only is Yiannopoulos a person singularly without talent, he’s a known hack and plagiarist, which are yet more black marks against Simon & Schuster.

Not only is Yiannopoulos a well-known member of white supremacist circles, but he’s also a renowned plagiarist. As the Houston Press reported last year, his 2007 self-published book of poetry is actually composed of plagiarized Tori Amos lyrics. Earlier this year, BuzzFeed reported that most of Yiannopoulos’ work is written by interns. While denying the accusations, Yiannopoulos confirmed with BuzzFeed that he had 44 interns helping him with writing and research.

If Yiannopoulos wants to pretend to write a book, he could always peddle it to Sad Puppy Beale, who started his own publishing house. I rather doubt the money would be quite so staggering though.

The full story, along with a host of reactions, is at Think Progress.

Ah, Heresy.

Donald Trump with Pastor Paula White (Photo: Facebook).

Donald Trump with Pastor Paula White (Photo: Facebook).

Oh, the evangelical crowd is happily crying “Heresy!” over the choice of prosperity gospel huckster Paula White being chosen to perform the inauguration prayer.

“I’d rather a Hindu pray on Inauguration Day and not risk the souls of men, than one whose heresy lures in souls with promises of comfort only to damn them in eternity,” wrote Erick Erickson, an outspoken Trump critic on the right. “At least no one would mistake a Hindu, a Buddhist, or an atheist with being a representative of Christ’s kingdom.”

Oooh, look, someone actually said even an atheist would be better. Sort of.

“Paula White is a charlatan and recognized as a heretic by every orthodox Christian, of whatever tribe,” said Russell Moore, of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and an outspoken Trump critic.

White, who is the third wife of Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain — also her third spouse — takes in up to $80,000 a week, according to a 2007 report by the Tampa Tribune, and owns multimillion-dollar homes in Trump Tower and Florida.

“Paula White has a long history of bankruptcies, failed business ventures, and unsuccessful marriages, which makes her the perfect choice to deliver a prayer on behalf a president-elect who has proudly proclaimed that he’s never felt the need to ask forgiveness from God for anything,” wrote Paula Bolyard, a conservative Christian blogger for PJ Media.

Trump and White do seem to be a perfect match. And they are neighbours, so cozy.

Erickson was particularly troubled by a video, which he posted, that shows White speaking to a man who says he’s a son of God, and that Jesus Christ was “not the only begotten son of God” — to which the pastor agreed, “He’s the first fruit.”

“Paula White is a trinity denying heretic,” Erickson wrote. “She rejects the Council of Nicaea’s creed that every Christian accepts. To reject the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed is to reject Christianity itself.”

Oh, theology wars, the meat and drink of Christianity. First fruit, eh? So Yahweh has been busy raping young women and producing more magical sons for centuries? Eeeuw.

Via Raw Story.

Jobs! Wages! Workers! Yeah, No.

Andy Puzder (YouTube).

Andy Puzder (YouTube).

All those people who thought Trump would be just ever so dandy for jobs, and the rights and wages of workers? Yeah, you can go screw yourself, because it will be much more gentle than what the incoming administration has in mind. I’ve posted about the new Labor Secretary before, and it was quite clear that he doesn’t think much of workers. Just in case that wasn’t quite plain enough, a bit of background on Puzder’s attitudes towards those worthless workers has surfaced.

The Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s parent company CEO has already come out against a $15-an-hour minimum wage on a recent radio interview with the horrible Hugh Hewitt. An op-ed in the Orange County Register  found a way to applaud the Puzder pick as someone who will somehow bring about wage growth. If you believe the Trumpbros, not only are you getting a businessman, but you’re getting a good, God-fearing man.

But a better, more revealing look into his views comes courtesy of a December 2009 interview stored in Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Oral and Public History (COPH). Allison Varzally spoke with Puzder at Carl Karcher Enterprises in Carpinteria for COPH’s Southern California Food Culture and Visionaries project.

[…]

Trump’s labor man also had choice words for Carl’s Jr.’s home state. “I think the big change in California, it’s really become a kind of socialist state,” Puzder opined. “You can’t be a capitalist in this state, and Carl was at heart a capitalist who created a company that to this day bears his initials.” The would-be Labor Secretary complained about regulations and overtime laws, claiming workers are overprotected.

“Have you ever been to a fast food restaurant and the employees are sitting and you’re wondering, ‘Why are they sitting?'” Puzder asked. “They are on what is called a mandatory break [emphasis his].” He shared a laugh with the interviewer, saying the so-called nanny state is why Carl’s Jr. doesn’t open up any new restaurants in California anymore.

Having been one of those workers who could, on occasion, be found sitting, resting screaming feet for a few moments, no, I have never wondered about why employees are sitting. Employees, they are human beings, who should be treated with respect, if nothing else. It’s not like a 10 or 15 minute break is a sudden luxury trip to the Bahamas. It’s barely time to slurp down a coffee or two, and just maybe, cram some sort of food in your mouth, as you frantically chew, trying not to choke, as you have to be back at station, now. I guess people with billions at their back just aren’t terribly empathetic. Golly, there’s a shock.

The above is from Gabriel San Roman’s article at OC Weekly. I’m going to adopt Mr. San Roman’s use of Pendejo-elect, and Pendejo after 1/20/17. Pendejo Trump. Sounds about right.

Add that to the existing list of problematic values for someone who is poised to head the U.S. Department of Labor, which as Mother Jones reports, “exists to ‘foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers,’ as well as to ‘improve working conditions’ and ‘assure work-related benefits and rights.’”

Even before the release of this 2009 interview, Puzder was on record as an opponent of raising the minimum wage. He suggested in 2014 that increasing the minimum wage would hurt low-wage workers. At that time, he was earning 291 times more than minimum-wage employees working for his fast-food chains.

Puzder’s company was also hit with a class-action lawsuit in 2013 for “allegedly failing to pay its general managers overtime, even while requiring them to be on call 24 hours a day,” according to Law 360.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich slammed Puzder as “anti-worker” during a CNN panel earlier this month. He pointed to the fact that “The Department of Labor came into his restaurants and found that half his restaurants had wage and labor violations that violated the law of the United States.”

Via Raw Story.

The Inauguration Huckster.

Donald Trump with Pastor Paula White (Photo: Facebook).

Donald Trump with Pastor Paula White (Photo: Facebook).

Take a good look at the background in that photo.

In 2007, TV preacher Paula White got investigated by the U.S. Senate for her shady fundraising practices.

Ten years later, she will pray at Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Yes, really.

White is a televangelist with a huge audience and a knack for stirring controversy. She’s been a Trump booster for years, and she helped organize a summit for him in the early days of his presidential campaign with other televangelists. Her presence at the inauguration is a very strong indicator that Trump’s White House will be a safe space for the Christian right’s most controversial characters.

Think of Paula White’s ministry as the church version of Trump University. She preaches the prosperity gospel, an approach to Christianity that is, shall we say, unorthodox. Prosperity-gospel preachers teach that God wants people to be rich, and that he makes them wealthy as a sign of his blessing and favor; the richer you are, the more God loves you.

[…]

While Grassley was investigating White, Trump was praising her. CNN quoted him in a broadcast aired Nov. 26, 2007, describing her in glowing terms.

“Paula White is not only a beautiful person, both inside and out, she has a significant message to offer anyone who will tune in and pay attention,” Trump said. “She has amazing insight, the ability to deliver that message clearly, as well as powerfully.”

White has expressed similar sentiments about Trump, once describing him as “a diamond that reveals a new facet each time it is turned in the light.”

And during Trump’s campaign, she vouched for his saintliness.

[…]

As The Daily Beast detailed last year, the overlap between Trump’s and White’s message is glaring. One of the sermons for sale on her website is called “Why God Wants You Wealthy.” Trump, meanwhile, wrote a book titled Why We Want You to Be Rich. Trump and God both. Why aren’t you rich already?

Via The Daily Beast.