Chapter 65

What?

You needn't be a philosopher to be happy?

Amazing.

Oh, but you do need a large inheritance.

In a pinch, it can settle on your intended, or your wife.

But you must marry for love, all the same, as do all the good folks at the end of this book.

A happy ending.

Nickleby.

John Bowdie's rescue

From Squeers's school, is to feed the boys and turn them loose in the fields of winter.

It is, after all, 1839, and the world is such hell that that seems like rescue.

Nickleby, chapter 64.

Defending himself or defending Russia?

Who or what is Trump defending by obstructing the Russiagate investigation?

Himself and his cronies, sure.

But Russia, too.

Ari Velshi just now said this is the quid pro quo with which Trump repays Russia for their election help, and that makes it collusion.

White House to Congress: Russia sanctions not needed now

Who denied there was any Russian interference in the election, and for how long?

Who opposed new sanctions on Russia for interference in the elections?

And so on.

The current and uncharacteristic wave of Republican concern for Americans' civil liberties and privacy, their opposition to the surveillance state they strengthened to combat terrorism and crime, is only part of their effort to impede investigations of Trump and his gang, as well as anyone colluding with the Russians.

Men with brooms

Curling in Tampa

The lemmings run to the other side of the boat

The Dow is down 251 points right now.

Do I hear Trump taking responsibility?

An equal and opposite reaction

Poland’s Holocaust Blame Bill

The Times editorial board is not happy.

Neither is the Israeli government, though both Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post insist that, while Poles certainly participated in the Holoaust, that does not mean Poland did.

All the same, anti-Semitism remains rife in Poland, and it seems highly unlikely to me that there is much support for this law except among anti-Semites.

It is a sort of mini Holocaust denial, a feature of the rise of ethnic nationalism all over Europe.

And it is backlash provoked and inspired by the hate speech legislation of the cultural left all over Europe, itself begun by criminalization of Holocaust denial.

Nobody is saying it, but this is part of the worldwide decay of popular, and even elite, support for liberal democratic norms of government, the purest expressions of which were and are Enlightenment republicanism and the states that remain most shaped by it.

As is contemporary authoritarian leftism, to which the hateful, shocking, and profoundly anti-liberal concept of Political Correctness is absolutely essential, with its favored victim groups, its weaponizations of history, its guilt-trip politics, and its blatantly biased definitions of racism and sexism.

The fate of humanity

Reading Nickleby, I have been stricken with admiration for the enormous talent and sympathetic knowledge of humanity in an author so young.

And then I thought of novels written by machines, by computers, by AIs.

And I thought mankind might die of despair, humiliated by its inferiority to its own creations.

No need for any "rise of the machines" or Cylon wars.

How democracies perish

We are seeing one way in Venezuela and Bolivia, where ruling parties are, to hold onto power and defend their agendas, piecemeal dismantling popular republics, erecting in their stead one party states.

Think of it as the spread of the African model.

And in our own country it looks like the Republicans will travel this road with Trump as far as they need to to preserve his presidency and his shot at a second term.

Taunted by Trump and Pressured From Above, McCabe Steps Down as F.B.I. Deputy

Nixon was already well into his second term and ineligible for another by the time Republicans joined with Democrats to force him out.

And the party of that time was far less ideologically uniform and far less bloody-minded.

They are the party of the Second Amendment solution, led by a man who insisted he would fail to win the White House only if the Democrats stole the election and his followers should, in that case, take to the streets to seize their rightful victory.

Perhaps we are already a banana republic, but we just don't know it, yet.

Dead man walking.

What has experience?

Commander Adama says Cylons lack souls and so lack experiences.

Well, that is how I put it, having read Dewey.

They are mere imitations of life.

No materialist, he.

Battlestar Galactica, The Miniseries, on Amazon Prime Video.

Some say anything that has your beliefs and desires, and especially your memories, is you, provided only one thing does that.

That is the view taken by the Cylons, themselves.

So says one of them, in fact, before Adama kills him.

If that is the right verb.

The rejoinder may be that they are not your memories unless you are doing the remembering.

Otherwise they are merely eerie duplicates of your memories, had by another.

Nicholas Nickleby, Chapter 55

What?

No one has murdered Mrs. Nickleby?

Oh, in a book chock full of fortune hunters of all kinds, including Miss Bray, Nicholas seems the first, maybe the only, person to feel this is shameful.

He overdoes it to the point of being a barrier to natural happiness.

So much so that he urges his mother not to encourage the feelings of Kate and Frank Cheeryble for each other, she being poor and he being so rich.

Even the idea of such a marriage, brought to the attention of the C brothers, would expose them to only too understandable suspicion of fortune hunting, he thinks, he and Kate and their mother.

And the shame he feels at the bare thought of that suspicion is too much for him.

Reading Nickleby.

Chapter 53

Madeleine is absurd and unbelievable.

Dickens' Nicholas begins the chapter deploring the indifference of the rich, powerful, and safe to the lifelong sufferings of the rest, especially those of children abandoned in ignorance to horrible toil and in many cases to no future but crime.

Not the least doubt he speaks for Dickens, who nevertheless never was a socialist.

Reading Nickleby.

The Lockian Proviso?

But the actual convictions of most Americans, as they relate to this and to future generations, are "first come, first served" and "while supplies last".

Otherwise, the actual moral and political convictions of Americans line up best, overall, with libertarianism, possibly limited in varying degrees by traditional Christian sexual morality.

And leaving aside matters to do with race.

Challenges to democracy?

Yes, but more directly to modern republicanism's central feature, meaningful separation of powers enabling effective checks and balances, especially as they limit the power of the executive.

And leaders of the left who have been highly applauded by American supporters of Bernie, many of whom have not been in the least shy voicing their contemptuous rejection of our "corrupt and rigged system", are doing at least as much damage as the likes of Duterte and Erdogan.

Bolivia Tells President His Time Is Up. He Isn’t Listening.

Venezuela Calls for Early Elections, and Maduro Aims to Retain Control

Writers in The Times examine the problem in our own country, seeing the emergence of a "win at any cost" mentality spreading among pols of both parties and their popular supporters.

How Wobbly Is Our Democracy?

They seem less aware of or concerned with the spreading conviction that Washington is "a swamp", that "the system" - that is, the actual government in DC, the actual republic in being - "is rigged."

A conviction shouted out to and echoed by millions, by candidates Trump and Sanders, equally.

And that this does or would justify not only lawful action hyperbolically labeled "resistance" but real political violence aimed at overturning the results of election.

A further claim supported only, as I recall, by The Duce and, rather shockingly, a number of long-time DC pundits and pols, among them Pat Buchanan.

The Times reports both the wobbliness of the state in America and the rise of authoritarianism, chiefly abroad, with dismay.

Buchanan, reporting the same in a number of his columns, has nearly said "good riddance".

PS.

I see nothing in this piece about the spread of open acceptance of outright infidelity to our actual constitution, by the government and even the courts, among partisans of the left, and how it has shocked the right and nourished the conviction of many rightists that the left, its politics, and its agenda are unconstitutional and illegitimate.

PPS.

To be fair, so far as I know, only The Duce, and not Bernie, has urged illegal police brutality and both the torture of prisoners of war and the intentional murder of the families of terrorists by US military forces.

The latest attacks on Hillary

Hillary Clinton Chose to Shield a Top Adviser Accused of Harassment in 2008

 A senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign who was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a young subordinate was kept on the campaign at Mrs. Clinton’s request, according to four people familiar with what took place.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager at the time recommended that she fire the adviser, Burns Strider. 

But Mrs. Clinton did not. 

Instead, Mr. Strider was docked several weeks of pay and ordered to undergo counseling, and the young woman was moved to a new job.

Mr. Strider, who was Mrs. Clinton’s faith adviser, was a founder of the American Values Network and sent the candidate scripture readings every morning for months during the campaign, was hired five years later to lead an independent group that supported Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 candidacy, Correct the Record, which was created by a close Clinton ally, David Brock.

Did she read them?

Is she truly a liberal Christian, the sort of person who reads scripture as a daily devotion but insists on the legality and even social acceptability of abortion and all forms of what Christian scripture defines as sexual outlawry hated by God but pedophilia?

He was fired after several months for workplace issues, including allegations that he harassed a young female aide, according to three people close to Correct the Record’s management.

Mr. Strider did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Those familiar with the accounts said that, over the years, a number of advisers urged Mrs. Clinton to sever ties with Mr. Strider, and people familiar with what took place did not want to see Mrs. Clinton blamed for the misconduct of men she was close to.

. . . .

The complaint against Mr. Strider was made by a 30-year-old woman who shared an office with him. 

She told a campaign official that Mr. Strider had rubbed her shoulders inappropriately, kissed her on the forehead and sent her a string of suggestive emails, including at least one during the night, according to three former campaign officials familiar with what took place.

The complaint was taken to Ms. Doyle, the campaign manager, who approached Mrs. Clinton and urged that Mr. Strider, who was married at the time, be fired, according to the officials familiar with what took place. 

Mrs. Clinton said she did not want to, and instead he remained on her staff.

Ms. Doyle was fired shortly after that in a staff shake-up in response to Mrs. Clinton’s third-place finish in the 2008 Iowa caucuses. 

And Mr. Strider never attended the mandated counseling, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The incident raises an interesting question.

It's pretty clear this guy was and likely remains an incorrigible horn-dog whose offense is that of constantly pestering women for sex, rather like Hillary's frat-boy husband.

And it appears his "inappropriate touching" went no further than putting unwanted hands on shoulders.

It seems right that no single incident of that sort deserves firing, but it's not about a single incident, is it?

It's about a chronic behavior that shows and has shown no sign of abating.

And what does that do to the work atmosphere for all the women of the workplace?

And everybody else, really?

That is not an acceptable pollution of the workplace.

Why Did Hillary Clinton Let This Happen?

Mrs. Clinton has been inhibited in addressing the issue of sexual harassment, during her most recent campaign and afterward, both because of her husband’s behavior and her own response to the accusations against him. 

As a betrayed wife, those close to her said she believed his denials and thought his accusers were lying for political purposes. 

His campaign hired investigators to discredit the women.

. . . .

In the end, as with so much about Mrs. Clinton, it depends whether you see her as somehow emblematic of women or this particular woman, marked and marred by her own history. 

“We can see looking in her biography how she may have developed this blind spot,” Professor Saguy said. 

“It was maybe a coping mechanism in her own life, maybe to get up in the morning.”

"Because you could."

In a recent episode of Taken, that is why a man rich far beyond anybody's ability to any longer gain from further riches keeps on unlawfully wrecking companies and stealing pension funds, destroying thousands of lives.

In 8 millimeter,  that was why the deceased rich and powerful one caused to be made a genuine snuff film.

From Plato to Conrad, the wise have warned what those would do, who found that they could.

That wasn't funny

Verisopht opposes Hawk's plan to harm Nicholas.

They fight a duel and Hawk kills him.

Chapter 50, Nicholas Nickleby.

Is obstruction enough?

The idea is in the air that Mueller might well be able to prove obstruction of justice against the president and perhaps others, while not being able to prove any underlying crime such as any sort of unlawful collusion between Trump or his Trumpists and the Russians in the 2016 campaign.

And what then, if you can't rebut the defense that Bozo was only trying to end a politically driven witch hunt?

At least half the country will think that a legally unsophisticated president and crew had been goaded into blundering into the crime of obstruction, goaded in a measure deliberately, by their Democratic enemies.

Morning Joe Crew Has A Belly Laugh Over Hannity's Mueller Denial

Mueller Needs More Than Obstruction

Nixon was demonstrably seeking to conceal and obstruct investigation of an actual crime, the Watergate burglary.

Obstruction of Justice?

Wikipedia

Some presidential defenders argue that it is really, really hard to prove intent.

That you have to be a mindreader.

As though nobody ever had or ever could convince a jury, beyond reasonable doubt, that officials or others had intended to impede, obstruct, stop, or hinder an investigation, and took steps to do so.

As though it was not perfectly clear that a number of people in and around the White House, up to and including President Nixon, had done exactly that.

As though anyone in the country could possibly doubt the intentions of President Trump in connection with the Russiagate investigations, or his motives in firing Comey and ordering the White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller.

As for me, I lost my faith in the integrity of the classe politique when that boob Ford pardoned Nixon.

President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.

The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. 

Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

Amid the first wave of news media reports that Mr. Mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said.

First, he claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director at the time, to resign his membership. 

The president also said Mr. Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. 

Finally, the president said, Mr. Mueller had been interviewed to return as the F.B.I. director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May.

After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. 

They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.

Trump denies he called for Mueller's firing

But who would believe him at this late date?

The Other America is still with us

Poverty never goes away in any state of human society, under any form of economic system, unless it is accepted that dealing with it is a permanent responsibility of the state.

For some people - for many people - the need is lifelong.

These are people for whom welfare is not a temporary solution, some sort of stepping stone to a job and self-support.

Not a chance in the world.

About time somebody noticed that the War on Poverty, inspired in part by Michael Harrington and launched under Lyndon Johnson, is as necessary and permanent a feature of society as schools and fire departments.

And we should be fighting it a lot harder.

The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem

The Oxford economist Robert Allen recently estimated needs-based absolute poverty lines for rich countries that are designed to match more accurately the $1.90 line for poor countries, and $4 a day is around the middle of his estimates.

When we compare absolute poverty in the United States with absolute poverty in India, or other poor countries, we should be using $4 in the United States and $1.90 in India.

Once we do this, there are 5.3 million Americans who are absolutely poor by global standards.

This is a small number compared with the one for India, for example, but it is more than in Sierra Leone (3.2 million) or Nepal (2.5 million), about the same as in Senegal (5.3 million) and only one-third less than in Angola (7.4 million).

Pakistan (12.7 million) has twice as many poor people as the United States, and Ethiopia about four times as many.

This evidence supports on-the-ground observation in the United States. Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer have documented the daily horrors of life for the several million people in the United States who actually do live on $2 a day, in both urban and rural America.

Matthew Desmond’s ethnography of Milwaukee explores the nightmare of finding urban shelter among the American poor.

It is hard to imagine poverty that is worse than this, anywhere in the world.

. . . .

Even for the whole population, life expectancy in the United States is lower than we would expect given its national income, and there are places — the Mississippi Delta and much of Appalachia — where life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

. . . .

For years, in determining this spending, the needs of poor Americans (or poor Europeans) have received little priority relative to the needs of Africans or Asians.

As an economist concerned with global poverty, I have long accepted this practical and ethical framework.

In my own giving, I have prioritized the faraway poor over the poor at home.

Recently, and especially with these insightful new data, I have come to doubt both the reasoning and the empirical support.

There are millions of Americans whose suffering, through material poverty and poor health, is as bad or worse than that of the people in Africa or in Asia.

. . . .

[I]t is time to stop thinking that only non-Americans are truly poor.

Trade, migration and modern communications have given us networks of friends and associates in other countries.

We owe them much, but the social contract with our fellow citizens at home brings unique rights and responsibilities that must sometimes take precedence, especially when they are as destitute as the world’s poorest people.

"Fortitude" on Amazon prime

Very nicely done.

But how could that awful wasp have never affected humans before, given it was around 23,000 years ago, though it's gone extinct since?

Humans have been around much longer.

Season 1.

The Times protests Trump's tariffs on solar and washing machines

This may provide some small help to a few thousand American workers, but it will seriously hurt far more American workers, as well as others, who buy these products.

The Times editorial.

The judge says she's lady justice

Larry Nassar sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison -- live updates

A former Michigan sports doctor who parlayed his reputation and personal charm into years of sexual abuse of Olympic gymnasts and other young women was sentenced Wednesday following the riveting statements of more than 150 victims.

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced Larry Nassar to 40 to 175 years in prison on Wednesday -- the seventh day of a remarkable hearing that has given the girls, young women and their parents a chance to confront Nassar in court.

"I just signed your death warrant," Aquilina said, after saying earlier that Nassar will "be in darkness the rest of his life."

"I find that you don't get it -- that you're a danger. You remain a danger," she said.

Aquilina said it was her "honor and privilege" to sentence Nassar.

"Inaction is an action. Silence is indifference. Justice requires action and a voice -- and that is what has happened here in this court," Aquilina said, before announcing the sentence.

More than 20 minutes of babbling about herself, her family, her children, her dogs, and a bit about our wonderful justice system, with a little vindictive berating of the defendant sprinkled in from time to time.

She's bragging and droning on and on, live on MSNBC.

She's really dragging out her fifteen minutes of fame, talking far more about herself than anyone or anything else.

She sentenced him to 175 years, she said.

And she's still babbling about herself.

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina.

Judging by her and Ray Moore, they're all clowns.

How did he get away with doing this for so very, very long?

What exactly did he do that the victims, though young, could have believed, and their parents could have believed, that it was all somehow medical stuff or part of their training?

It seems some of them complained to adults of abuse and it was the adults who believed the nonsense about it all being medical or training, or rejected the kids' tales as lies.

But others actually believed that stuff, themselves.

Andrea Mitchell just said the abuse occurred when the victims were pre-pubescent girls.

Reports elsewhere on the web indicate he inserted his fingers in vaginas and anuses, falsely claiming it was part of medical examination, in some cases when the girls' parents were actually in the room.

Who, of whatever age, that is not a medical professional, is in a position to judge what is or is not a legitimate medical exam thing?

God, what a joke

Common era.

Dickens goes off

Nickleby, chapter 48.

Nicholas by now has been a sometime actor and playwright, penning unauthorized translations and adaptations of the works of original authors for a provincial troop.

In this chapter he angrily attacks playwrights who do unauthorized adaptations for the stage of novels of living English authors, running wholly out of character to vent Dickens' own spleen.

They don't make them like that anymore

The Commuter is just excellent.

Felt like Hitchcock in lots of ways, but faster and better.

Really, really excellent.

Liam Neeson.

Pennsylvania Supremes to PA GOP legislature: You suck

Pennsylvania supreme court rejects GOP-drawn congressional districts

The Pennsylvania supreme court on Monday struck down the boundaries of the state’s 18 congressional districts, granting a major victory to plaintiffs who contended that they were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to benefit Republicans.

Republicans who controlled the legislature and governor’s office following the 2010 census broke decades of geographical precedent when redrawing the map, producing contorted shapes including one that critics said resembled “Goofy kicking Donald Duck”.

They shifted whole counties and cities into different districts in an effort to protect a Republican advantage in the congressional delegation.

They succeeded, securing 13 of 18 seats in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans five to four.

The Democratic-controlled court said the boundaries “clearly, plainly and palpably” violated the state’s constitution, and blocked the map from remaining in effect for the 2018 elections.

The deadline to file paperwork to run in primaries for the seats is 6 March.

The court order gives the Republican-controlled state legislature until 9 February to pass a replacement and the Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, until 15 February to submit that replacement to the court.

Looks like emerging criteria of acceptability may include geometric constraints, fidelity to history, and - openly or not - that the proposed district map ground an expectation that representation of the parties would reflect the parties' shares of the statewide vote.

Pennsylvania Congressional District Map Is Ruled Unconstitutional

Pennsylvania’s congressional district map is a partisan gerrymander that “clearly, plainly and palpably” violates the state’s constitution, the state’s Supreme Court said on Monday, joining a string of court decisions that have struck down political maps that unduly favor one political party.

The court banned the current map of 18 House districts from being used again, and ordered that a proposed new map be submitted to the court by Feb. 15.

But the state’s Republican-dominated legislature, which approved the current district map in 2011, has already said it would seek to overturn such a decision in federal court.

That would set up another legal battle over gerrymanders in a year already filled with them.

Senate votes to fund the government

Senate votes to pay up

The Senate voted 81-18 on Monday to end the three-day old government shutdown, with Democrats joining Republicans to clear the way for the passage of a short-term spending package that would fund the government through February 8 in exchange for a promise from Republican leaders to address the fate of young, undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

“In a few hours, the government will reopen,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “We have a lot to do.”

Actually, they still need the House to pass the bill and then the president to sign it.

So it could be we really are not there, yet.

The Democrats have accepted today the same deal they rejected Friday, in return for a more vigorous promise from Mitch McConnell to do a DACA debate and vote in the senate by March, accompanied by personal assurances from a lot of Republican senators to help the Democrats get a DACA bill passed, coupled with border security stuff the Democrats are OK with.

None of that, of course, means the fire engine red House will ever accept any DACA bill.

Or that the president would actually sign any such bill, despite his entirely hypocritical blather about "a bill of love" and how much he loves the Dreamers.

And it remains highly unlikely the House or the president would buy any immigration overhaul bill that could get past a Democrat filibuster in the senate.

Why not?

Do you hear those chants of "No amnesty!" in the background?

And bear in mind that The Duce has never actually backed off deporting the 11 million illegals who are not covered by DACA, which would protect only some 800 thousand people brought here illegally as children.

Anyway, McConnell and the others had already made such promises and assurances on Friday.

Formally, to avoid too great offense to their base, the Dems still filibustered, but lots of them voted with the Republicans to overcome the filibuster.

There is already talk of the disappointed Democratic base mumbling about trying to unseat Democratic senators who voted with the GOP today to reopen the government in primaries.

And they needed to do this because though the country supports DACA it also prioritized keeping the government open, saw this as a Schumer shutdown, and didn't like it at all.

Miss Bray

In the work of any 19th Century continental or American novelist, she would have been forced to prostitute herself for her worthless father, and in some he would have beaten her.

But not in Dickens.

And I don't think in any he would have sexually abused her.

Not even Zola.

Nicholas Nickleby.

And the Hastert Rule?

Rand Paul proposes guaranteed immigration vote to end shutdown

Why would Ryan refuse?

Could a too immigration-friendly result come in violation of the Hastert Rule (aka the "majority of the majority rule"), named after Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert and requiring that a Speaker of the House never allow anything to come to a vote unless it has the support of a majority of his own party?

Ryan would be unseated by the hard right of his own caucus if that happened.

“It's gamesmanship and partisanship.

I gave them the answer how you solve this today:

Promise, guarantee in writing to the Democrats that there will be one week's debate on immigration and a vote on an immigration bill some time in the next month in the House and the Senate,” Paul said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The Duce again calls for abolition of the filibuster

White House targets filibuster, calls for 'nuclear option' as shutdown enters day 2

The best argument in favor of the filibuster is that it allows passage only of bills supported by more than a bare majority of Americans and of senators.

But under current circumstances it often prevents even that.

Why?

The senate is often closely divided by party so that the majority party cannot alone overcome a filibuster.

And the parties are internally so ideologically uniform and so ideologically opposite to each other than on few important matters can the senate majority party expect enough crossovers from the minority to overcome a minority filibuster.

Where are the pro-life Democrats?

Where are the pro-Social Security or pro-Medicare Republicans?

And on most matters important enough to have a vote at all the minority will want to filibuster in the senate, for the same reasons.

A perfect recipe for gridlock.

Senate rules impose a threshold of 60 votes to break a filibuster, and Senate Republicans currently hold a slim majority of 51 votes, meaning even if they can unite their members, they need nine more votes to end debate.

The White House is calling for the Senate to change its rules and move the threshold to a simple majority of 51 votes.

Eliminating the 60-vote threshold to break a legislative filibuster would remove significant powers for the minority party in the Senate, and party leaders have been reluctant to do so in the past because of the consequences it would pose when their party returns to the minority.

. . . .

Trump has called repeatedly for McConnell to move the Senate to simple-majority rule, and despite some backing from the House Republicans, the rules have remained.

McConnell said in April that the "core of the Senate is the legislative filibuster" and that he was opposed to going "nuclear."

A fairly tame Willy Horton ad

Trump blows up shutdown talks, releases unhinged new ad linking Democrats to murder

On Saturday, Trump released an ad through his campaign accusing Democrats that stand in Trump’s way of building a wall along the southern border “will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.”

Dems have repeatedly pointed out that there is net outmigration right now between us and Mexico.

Republicans reply with the apt cliché, you don't wait until it rains to fix the roof.

Well, fuck you very much, Tammy

Sen. Tammy Duckworth Drags Trump

Red Painter is thrilled to report.

Senator Tammy Duckworth absolutely dragged President Trump on the Senate floor Saturday afternoon regarding his inability to keep the federal government operational, giving him a fantastic nickname -- and we all know he LOVES a good nickname.

She called him a “five-deferment draft dodger” and "Cadet Bone Spurs".

YES.

Does RP recall Bill Clinton?

Did Barack Obama serve?

Any stick is good enough to beat a dog with.

An hilarious blockhead

Kate's and Nicholas's mother, infatuated and flattered by the importunate madman making love to her across the back garden wall.

Reading Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens.

Chapter 41.

Put that man in prison

For a while, anyway.

And this is a crime of violence, not a white collar crime.

Neighbor to Plead Guilty to Federal Charge in Attack on Rand Paul, Lawyer Says

A neighbor of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky intends to plead guilty to a federal felony charge after he tackled the senator in November in an assault set off by the placement of a pile of brush, the man’s lawyer said on Friday.

The neighbor, Rene A. Boucher, 58, of Bowling Green, Ky., was charged on Friday with assaulting a member of Congress resulting in personal injury, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, Josh J. Minkler, said in a news release.

. . . .

The episode happened on Nov. 3, 2017, when Mr. Paul was mowing his yard while wearing headphones, officials said.

Mr. Boucher saw Mr. Paul stack brush in a pile near their property line, and Mr. Boucher “had enough,” according to the release.

He ran onto Mr. Paul’s property and tackled him.

He suffered several broken ribs and bruises to his lungs.

One of Mr. Paul’s advisers, Doug Stafford, told The New York Times in November that Mr. Paul had cuts to his nose and mouth and had trouble breathing.

He attributed the injuries to “high-velocity severe force.”

Mr. Paul later contracted pneumonia and had to seek medical treatment.

He returned to work 10 days after the attack.

Authoritarianism in the Philippines

To Criticize Duterte in Public, ‘Inhale Courage and Exhale Fear’

Both frightening and ugly, it's Trump talk plus actual criminal violence, sometimes orchestrated by the army.

A Democratic shutdown

The Democrats filibustered and the GOP couldn't overcome that.

How they voted

Senate Democrats blocked a spending bill on Friday night that would have prevented a government shutdown.

The procedural motion to advance the bill needed 60 votes to pass.

Trading Blame for the Shutdown, Lawmakers Search for a Deal to End It

They're still in DC, today, trying to work something out.

The Dems want DACA, and didn't get it.

And from his tweets this morning it seems Bozo won't offer DACA, nor will the GOP, to get this fixed.

Ryan is going wild in the House, blasting the Democrats with the same accusations of hostage taking and such that the Democrats used against the Republicans when they initiated the wave of shutdowns and near shutdowns in the days of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich.

On MSNBC.

Social Security and Medicare will continue to operate.

Time to stop this

Donald Trump vs. Guantánamo’s Forever Prisoners

POWs get released, unless convicted of an actual crime, and it doesn't take 16 years.

And if they're not POWs they are criminals, and have an unquestionable right to habeas corpus of which our government has utterly cheated them.

Sound fishy to you?

We have a Detecto glass bathroom scale that we have used for several years.

It displays your weight to one decimal place.

I weigh myself daily, and sometimes more than once a day, though I record my weight in a spreadsheet only on Saturdays.

In my experience, if I weigh myself more than once on the same day, even no more than a few minutes apart, I never get the same weight on each try.

In my daily experience I have never got an odd digit after the decimal place, and rarely have I got one in the last digit before the decimal place.

Less, notably less, than 1 % of the time.

Krugman on the Nativist wave

Know-Nothings for the 21st Century

These days calling someone a “know-nothing” could mean one of two things.

If you’re a student of history, you might be comparing that person to a member of the Know Nothing party of the 1850s, a bigoted, xenophobic, anti-immigrant group that at its peak included more than a hundred members of Congress and eight governors.

More likely, however, you’re suggesting that said person is willfully ignorant, someone who rejects facts that might conflict with his or her prejudices.

The sad thing is that America is currently ruled by people who fit both definitions.

And the know-nothings in power are doing all they can to undermine the very foundations of American greatness.

The parallels between anti-immigrant agitation in the mid-19th century and Trumpism are obvious.

Only the identities of the maligned nationalities have changed.

After all, Ireland and Germany, the main sources of that era’s immigration wave, were the shithole countries of the day.

Half of Ireland’s population emigrated in the face of famine, while Germans were fleeing both economic and political turmoil.

Immigrants from both countries, but the Irish in particular, were portrayed as drunken criminals if not subhuman.

They were also seen as subversives: Catholics whose first loyalty was to the pope.

A few decades later, the next great immigration wave — of Italians, Jews and many other peoples — inspired similar prejudice.

Read the whole piece in the Times.

By the way, the waves of immigrants greeted by The Statue of Liberty were pretty heavily low wage types, many of whom did not speak English.

And criminals were more common among them than in the native population.

Immigrants from Italy, for example, brought us the Mafia.

Letterman's new show

Letterman has a monthly interview show on Netflix.

The first show is a good interview with Barack Obama.

The ex-president displayed his usual good humor, decency, well-informed intelligence, dignity, sensitivity, tact, and gravity.

The contrast with the ignorant, boorish thug in The White House could not be more stark.

An MLK Day assault on Bozo

Donald Trump is a racist, says Charles Blow in the Times.

He begins with a definition pointing to one specific and common meaning of the term.

Racism is simply the belief that race is an inherent and determining factor in a person’s or a people’s character and capabilities, rendering some inferior and others superior. 

I think we can read "or" for that "and".

As to capabilities, anyone who accepts both that IQ is highly heritable and heavily dependent on genetic endowment and that the average IQs of blacks and whites are about 15 points apart is a racist in that sense.

Likewise, anyone who accepts that blacks are taller and heavier than Japanese, on average, and that this difference, assuming equally favorable environmental factors, is a matter of genetic endowment, and that being taller and heavier are advantages in many sports, is a racist in that sense.

As to character, I suppose we can take that as a reference to behavioral dispositions.

So anyone who thinks both that there are heritable differences in the behavioral dispositions of the races, making some superior to others in relevant respects, would be a racist on this definition.

In the past, for instance, it was commonly alleged that blacks were lazier, more promiscuous, and more thuggish than whites or others, and that these traits are heritable and these differences due to differing genetic endowment.

Blow does not, in defining "racism", allude to such things as hostility, contempt, or dislike.

Nor does he allude to any notion that such racial differences do or would call for or justify any form of racial discrimination or any particular political arrangements.

But he does say, quite accurately, this.

These beliefs are racial prejudices.

He does not say they are the only racial prejudices, nor does he say (and it would be untrue to say) that prejudices are always or necessarily unfavorable, injurious, regrettable, to be condemned, or even false.

And he says this.

The history of America is one in which white people used racism and white supremacy to develop a racial caste system that advantaged them and disadvantaged others.

I would have thought the racial caste system was the institutional shape of white supremacy in America rather than something white supremacy had been used to develop, but never mind.

He goes on,

Understanding this, it is not a stretch to understand that Donald Trump’s words and deeds over the course of his life have demonstrated a pattern of expressing racial prejudices that demean people who are black and brown and that play to the racial hostilities of other white people.

But his particular definition of racism and his remarks about prejudice and white supremacy are equally irrelevant to this "understanding" concerning Trump's words and deeds.

And with no more than that he makes the following claims, to which also the given definition and history lesson do not seem at all relevant.

It is not a stretch to say that Trump is racist. 

It’s not a stretch to say that he is a white supremacist. 

It’s not a stretch to say that Trump is a bigot.

Those are just facts, supported by the proof of the words that keep coming directly from him. 

But I am not aware of anything he has said that supports the claim Trump is a racist in the sense that Blow has specified.

Nor that he is a white supremacist.

Nor even that he is a bigot.

Which is not to deny he is a racist in the sense defined, or that there is considerable evidence that he is.

And the evidence is even better that he has often and deliberately invited the support of whites who include but are not limited to racists, Nativists, white nationalists, and white supremacists.

Which in turn of course is part of the evidence that he personally is racist in the sense defined and that he himself wants some of the things he wants, as president, because of that racism.

Here is a bit more in the general propaganda assault on The Duce for racism, in celebration of MLK Day, in liberal media, proving everywhere it is entirely possible to use false, immaterial, or merely pretended claims to convict a man of something of which he is actually guilty.

Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List

The Duce embraces Martin Luther King

He gave a televised, brief, and perfectly orthodox liberal speech applauding King and endorsing his vision and values.

The usual MLK day thing.

The main stream media broadcast it accompanied by live commentary from black and other opinion leaders and network talking heads, insisting he is a racist.

Which, when asked recently by a newsie for the TV, he denied, insisting he is the least racist person you would ever meet.

"Je ne suis pas raciste. Je suis la personne la moins raciste que vous ayez jamais interviewée", a déclaré dimanche soir à des journalistes le président américain depuis son club de golf de West Palm Beach, en Floride, où il dînait dimanche avec le chef de la majorité de la Chambre des représentants Kevin McCarthy.

Trump "legitimates" language that "was previously not acceptable"

Trump’s Immigration Remarks Outrage Many, but Others Quietly Agree

What is meant in this piece by "was not acceptable"?

And it matters to whom, and where.

The article, otherwise intelligent and accurate in many respects, misleadingly ignores the fact that speech subject to legal punishment in many parts of Europe is completely legal in the US, where PC speech codes are not enforced by the government but only by fierce social pressure, including punishment by employers.

There is pushing back both in Europe and America, but there is more to push back against, and the cost is much higher, in Europe.

So when President Trump said he did not want immigrants from “shithole” countries, there was ringing silence across broad parts of the European Union, especially in the east, and certainly no chorus of condemnation.

In fact, some analysts saw the remarks as fitting a pattern of crude, dehumanizing and racist language to describe migrants and asylum seekers that has steadily edged its way into the mainstream. 

Coming from the White House, such words may be taken by some as a broader signal that racism is now an acceptable part of political discourse.

“What we see now is a conscious policy to reintroduce language that was previously not acceptable in debate,” said Gerald Knaus, the director of the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based research organization that has played a leading role in forming recent European migration policy.

To be sure, Mr. Trump’s choice of words drew condemnation from around the world. 

Botswana and Haiti asked for meetings with American diplomats to clarify what Mr. Trump said and what he believes. 

The president of Senegal, Macky Sall, was one of many who saw racism in the remarks. “Africa and black people deserve the respect and consideration of all,” he wrote on Twitter.

Even the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, weighed in, declaring Mr. Trump’s comments “particularly harsh and offensive.”

But the political reality is that migration has become a salient issue — and not only for right-wing, populist and nativist politicians. 

Across many affluent societies, people are anxious about technological change, rising inequality and stagnant wages, and they have focused their ire at the global flows of capital and, especially, labor. 

There are also concerns about demographic change, as the world becomes less white and as western societies age.

The Duce, throughout his campaign and since, has defiantly insisted he will not comply with PC speech codes.

As for his merely salty and derogatory but not clearly racist language, it has never been unacceptable in private to anyone but the hypersensitive and the hopelessly anti-profane.

Certainly its use was not unacceptable to those in the White House who have privately called him a moron, and worse.

For that matter, even much more plainly racist talk in non-public settings has never been unacceptable to all - the Klan and the Aryan Brotherhood have always been with us, it seems, recently cheek by jowl with the Black Muslims and the Black Panthers - and has been rigidly unacceptable "in polite company" maybe only for ten minutes in 1975.

All the same, it is absolutely beyond question that the attitudes, speech, and conduct of the anti-immigrant right, both in Europe and in America, sometimes feature a degree of scorn for the countries from which immigrants come, for their cultures, for their customs, for their non-Christian or non-Protestant religions, for their languages, or for being economically and politically failed states and nearly failed states.

And at the same time it is beyond question that rejection -  some with but also some without scorn or contempt - of immigrants is driven in part by their being racially, or even merely ethnically (think of the opposition in the western countries to immigrants from the eastern ones, within the EU), different from the peoples of the states to which they come.

What we are seeing among Europeans and Americans is a widespread Nativism, a determination to prevent significant changes to the cultural, linguistic, religious, ethnic, or racial compositions of their countries by people who, in those countries, believe they are threatened by such changes to the demographic status quo, often having an exaggerated idea of its homogeneity to begin with, much as the hostility to multiculturalism often rests on such error.

For example, it has always been more accurate to speak of America as a cultural, ethnic, religious, and racial salad bowl than a melting pot, anyway - and three cheers for the Statue of Liberty.

Now as in earlier times, we are all of us "hyphenated Americans," though very, very few of us have or have had the seriously divided loyalties so feared by Wilson and both the earlier and later Roosevelts.

But it is only the pro-immigration folks, always aware their policies do and will upset existing demographics and sometimes pursuing this precisely as a goal, who have insisted on outright criminalization of the speech, the aims, or the values of their political opponents.

Perhaps because our discourse does not much damn them as anti-white racists, Christianophobes, anti-Brits or French or Italians, or anti-Catholics - or anti-Semites, when we consider their opposition to Israel's specifically Jewish character - some or all of which they not infrequently are.

He deserved prison, but his treatment was shamefully harsh and the sentence draconian

If he wins the nomination from Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and a solid Democrat, Maryland may get its first Republican senator in a while.

The too far left and single issue sexual radicals will like him.

But the bulk of Democrats?

Chelsea [Bradley] Manning Files for Senate Run in Maryland

Chelsea Manning, the former Army private convicted of disclosing classified information, has filed to run for Senate in Maryland, according to federal election filings.

Ms. Manning, who was found guilty of leaking more than 700,000 government files to WikiLeaks in 2013, would face Senator Benjamin L. Cardin in the Democratic primary race this year. 

Mr. Cardin is Maryland’s senior senator and the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In 2012, the senator cruised to victory in the general election after winning the Democratic primary race with nearly 75 percent of the vote.

Ms. Manning, a transgender woman formerly known as Bradley Manning, received a 35-year prison term for disseminating a vast trove of government documents that included incident reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and dossiers on detainees being imprisoned without trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The sentence was the longest ever imposed in a leak case. 

President Barack Obama commuted it in the final days of his presidency, calling it “very disproportionate.”

Trump 1, WSJ 0

MSNBC just played the tape, and he said "I'd probably have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un."

Trump vs. the Wall Street Journal: What did he say about his relationship with Kim Jong Un?

People have regularly misquoted him on this one, even sometimes leaving out the word "probably," a word that surely is good evidence what he said was "I'd", a contraction for "I would", and not "I probably have . . . ."

He has been attacked for asserting he already had such a relationship with Kim before he ever met or spoke to him.

DACA resuccitated

DACA Participants Can Again Apply for Renewal, Immigration Agency Says

But does this put them in only partial compliance with the court ruling?

The federal government said on Saturday that it would resume accepting renewal requests for a program that shields from deportation young immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children.

In a statement, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services said that “until further notice,” the Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, “will be operated on the terms in place before it was rescinded” in September, when President Trump moved to end it.

The decision came after a federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction on Tuesday ordering the Trump administration to resume the DACA program.

The agency said on Saturday that people who were previously granted deferred action under the program could request a renewal if it had expired on or after Sept. 5, 2016. 

People who had previously received DACA, but whose deferred action had expired before Sept. 5, 2016, cannot renew, but can instead file a new request, the agency said. 

It noted that the same instructions apply to anyone whose deferred action had been terminated.

But officials also said they were not accepting requests from individuals who have never been granted deferred action under DACA.

Notorious among bored and ignorant newsfreaks

Is There Life After Liberalism?

Hitler? Stalin? Abimael Guzman?

After what, exactly?

Bullshit sells well, maybe especially in academia.

Bullshit about history, ideology, contemporary politics, and the future, all in one place.

Not quite true

A Senior Republican Senator Admonishes Trump: ‘America Is an Idea, Not a Race’

Actually, it's a continent or a country, depending on which is meant.

Anyway.

Mr. Trump’s racially charged comments in front of more than half a dozen lawmakers, which also extended to immigrants from Haiti — followed by a day in which members of Congress denounced the president, defended him or stayed silent — now threaten what had been an emerging agreement to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Several people with knowledge of the conversation said the president had also demanded to know whether Haitian immigrants could be left out of any deal. 

The White House has not disputed the account of the exchange.

The collapse of negotiations on an immigration deal would raise the risk of a government shutdown next week, given that many Democrats have said such an agreement must be included in any measure to continue funding the government past a Jan. 19 deadline.

Actually, it's the reports of the remarks, the press handling of them, and the reactions to them.

A President Who Fans, Rather Than Douses, the Nation’s Racial Fires

Sometimes, it seems he does intentionally do just that.

But most of the time it is the media and the grievance industry of both sides belching politically motivated provocations and propaganda.

False dichotomy

Smerconish has a poll at his website asking whether Trump's shithole remark was about race or economic factors.

On CNN just now he misdescribed the website question as asking whether it was about people or about economic factors.

Either way, false dichotomy.

Is that true?

Rome, season 1 episode 12, Caesar admits Lucius Vorenus, a pleb, to the senate and plans to admit 100 Celts and Gauls, noble leaders of tribes settled in Italy.

He says he wants a senate composed of the best men in Italy and not just the richest men in the city of Rome.

It is true he expanded the senate.

But in that way, and with that intention?

He has said repeatedly in this series he plans to give up power once he has finished reforming the republic and making it secure and stable.

The show portrays the conspiracy to kill him as based on personal hatred of Caesar by Brutus' mother, Servillia, opposition to his constitutional reforms by a city oligarchy jealous of its power, and loathing by the same plutocrats of his economic reforms that much favored the plebs, the poor of Rome, and the common soldiers.

It represents Brutus as pushed into participation by his mother and by his friendship with the far more committed Cassius, as well as others of the group.

He is show almost unwilling to strike a blow when Caesar is slaughtered at the foot of Pompey's statue, and then fallen to the floor by the realization of the enormity of what they have all done.

Class war and hatred by the rich of the rest

The Trump plan to hurt the poor.

When Ohio and Michigan expanded their Medicaid programs to broaden coverage, residents who became eligible found it easier to look for work, according to studies by the Ohio Department of Medicaid and the University of Michigan. 

That’s because having Medicaid gave them access to primary care doctors and prescription medicine that helped them live normal lives and get jobs.

That’s how you help people in the real world. 

The Trump administration said Thursday that it would get poor people to work by letting state governments deny them Medicaid if they don’t have a job.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services argues that this draconian step will encourage more Medicaid beneficiaries to get a job and thus “promote better mental, physical and emotional health.”

There’s no evidence that this is true, and the data from Michigan and Ohio shows that it contradicts the truth. 

There is good reason to worry that fewer people will have a job in states that adopt this cruel policy.

. . . .

Republican lawmakers who have demonized the program as welfare for “able-bodied adults” have long sought to require Medicaid beneficiaries to work. 

Those lawmakers have been particularly angry about the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which they have been trying to repeal since it was passed in 2010.

. . . .

Maybe Americans shouldn’t be surprised that this administration wants to take health care away from the poor, given that it has spent so much time trying to wreck the A.C.A. 

But they should be angry.

Republican Sadism.

Democrats want to strengthen the social safety net; Republicans want to weaken it. 

But why?

G.O.P. opposition to programs helping the less fortunate, from food stamps to Medicaid, is usually framed in monetary terms. 

For example, Senator Orrin Hatch, challenged about Congress’s failure to take action on the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a part of Medicaid that covers nearly nine million children — and whose federal funding expired back in September — declared that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.”

And whose fault would that be?

But is it really about the money? 

No, it’s about the cruelty. 

Over the past few years it has become increasingly clear that the suffering imposed by Republican opposition to safety-net programs isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. 

Inflicting pain is the point.

. . . .

So Republican foot-dragging on CHIP, like opposition to Medicaid expansion and the demand for work requirements, isn’t about the money, it’s about the cruelty. 

Making lower-income Americans worse off has become a goal in itself for the modern G.O.P., a goal the party is actually willing to spend money and increase deficits to achieve.

Malevolence and politics

Now consider the crusade of the American billionaires to destroy the great legacy of progressivism, doing all they can to plunge the working class once again into the worst horrors of 19th Century wage slavery.

They are too rich already for this to be about self-interest or their own well-being.

Nor, obviously, can it be about jealousy or envy of the masses.

It could be, but it is not likely, pathological greed.

Might the motive of Koch style, radical Republican politics not be a fierce malevolence, a real and definite desire to greatly and grievously harm the low and the weak, out of sheer hate?

As to ethnicity

The US government use of "ethnicity" refers to an affair entirely of language, culture, religion, history, and in part shared, mutual, and reciprocated acceptance of and in a common identity.

Hence the Census Bureau is quite clear to use "Hispanic" as an ethnicity in just that sense of the word, in such wise that persons of any race may be Hispanic.

But the word is also commonly used in a manner that includes not only all of the above but also community of blood, descent on both sides from the same long-standing and genetically relatively isolated breeding population, as definitive of being of the same ethnicity, in such wise that persons of the same ethnicity are necessarily of the same race, though persons of the same race may be of different ethnicities.

It is in this latter sense that news reports have lately noted that Norway's people are eighty-some percent ethnic Norwegian and hence (rather the point, actually) white.

And it is in this latter sense that immigrants to Norway from Africa or the Middle East are not, nor will their descendants - at least their near descendants - be, ethnic Norwegians.

But what about in the former sense?

Certainly their children or their children's children will be Norwegian, as those of Nicolas Sarkozy and Manuel Valls will be French.

Or they would be, were there not a doubt raised by a single point, that on some and perhaps most understandings persons can be of the same ethnicity only if there is among them reciprocated acceptance of and in the relevant shared identity.

How is that likely to go?

PS, the blood and genes interpretation of ethnicity gets a big boost from the popularity of such sites and services as Ancestry.com.

Oh, the very shock of it!

I recall that years ago in a workplace setting something so angered me that I carpet bombed the room with repetitions of the f-word.

A fat, elderly, annoyingly Christian woman castigated me for my language.

I replied that it was not her place to censor my choice of words.

Her prim but firm riposte, in a tone that unmistakably ended the matter, was "My ears are not garbage cans."

When you are done laughing, consider the maidenly protestations of shock, alarm, disgust, and even horror, emanating from experienced and worldly newsies and politicians, at the president's far less salty speech in that immigration meeting, and in particular his use - his entirely correct and apt use - of "shithole".

Truman, still a Democrat's hero, was reportedly far more, and generally more angrily, profane.

And racist, I would guess.

Could that be a swastika tattoo? Maybe. Maybe not.

Background facts.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants a global but merit based immigration system, cutting out not only criminals but the unskilled, untalented, and uneducated, admitting only people capable at least of supporting themselves but by preference of making significant contributions to our culture, economy, and society.

A random Norwegian is far more likely to satisfy those criteria than a random Haitian, Nigerian, or other person from a chronically impoverished country more or less permanently wavering on the edge of being a failed state.

Come to that, more likely than a random Guatemalan, Mexican, or Brazilian.

So immigration law or policy so conceived would very likely have a significantly disparate impact, as regards admission to the US, on persons and communities of different races (Haitians versus Norwegians), and perhaps even ethnicities as defined by blood within races (Serbs versus Scots).

A bug or a feature?

One for Ann Coulter, the Klan, and a lot of white people including, no doubt, some Democrats, but quite the other for Dick Durbin, The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, and the Congressional Black Caucus.

And if that remark about disparate impact suggests the possibility of an eventual legal challenge from the latter group to you, I think you may be onto something.

And now for the flap.

Trump Alarms Lawmakers With Disparaging Words for Haiti and Africa

President Trump on Thursday balked at an immigration deal that would include protections for people from Haiti and some nations in Africa, demanding to know at a White House meeting why he should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” rather than from places like Norway, according to people with direct knowledge of the conversation.

Mr. Trump’s remarks, the latest example of his penchant for racially tinged remarks denigrating immigrants, left members of Congress from both parties attending the meeting in the Cabinet Room alarmed and mystified. 

He made them during a discussion of an emerging bipartisan deal to give legal status to immigrants illegally brought to the United States as children, those with knowledge of the conversation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting.

When Mr. Trump heard that Haitians were among those who would benefit from the proposed deal, he asked whether they could be left out of the plan, asking, “Why do we want people from Haiti here?”

. . . .

The episode at the White House, first reported by The Washington Post, unfolded as Mr. Trump was hosting a meeting with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who are working to codify the protections in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, the Obama-era initiative that provided temporary work permits and reprieves from deportation to immigrants brought to the United States as children by their parents.

Also present were Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the majority leader; Senator David Perdue, Republican of Georgia; Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas; and Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

None of the lawmakers would comment on Mr. Trump’s remarks.

Senator Insists Trump Used ‘Vile and Racist’ Language

President Trump on Friday offered a vague denial about the language he chose to use about immigrants during a private meeting with lawmakers at the White House on Thursday, when he reportedly referred to African nations as “shithole countries.”

But Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said on Friday that the president did use the term “shithole,” repeatedly, during the course of the meeting on immigration — which Mr. Durbin attended. 

The senator described Mr. Trump as saying “things which were hate-filled, vile and racist.”

. . . .

In a discussion about immigration from African nations, Mr. Trump asked why he would want “all these people from shithole countries,” according to people with direct knowledge of the conversation. 

Mr. Trump also said the United States should admit more people from places like Norway, an overwhelmingly white country.

“Why do we need more Haitians?” Mr. Trump said, according to several news accounts, including The Washington Post. “Take them out.”

The White House has not denied his use of racially charged rhetoric.

Still, this Durbin remark about the history of the White House is an absolute howler.

“I cannot believe that, in the history of the White House in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday,” Mr. Durbin said on Friday.

Maybe not those exact words, but surely far worse have been said in that room, and by its principle occupants, too.

And while Trump's remarks admit of being interpreted as racist they are not, so to speak, facially racist.

But what adult in the least familiar with American history can doubt that past occupants of the Oval Office have made and laughed at the most egregiously racist remarks imaginable?

Even Lincoln, who fought a war to release black Americans from bondage, did not think they were up to it, and urged that belief in that office, at least briefly thinking they should all be sent back to Africa.