Originally shared by +Doyce Testerman
Time to get to work.
Hamilton's "One Last Time" at the White House
I've said it before, and I'll say it the rest of my life: I will probably look back at Hamilton as the greatest piece of art created in my lifetime.
And this song, performed during a private concert at the White House, is one of my favorites within the show.
Why I Quit Twitter
Surprising No One, Cable Companies Immediately Start Pushing to Repeal Privacy Rules
Information such as your Web browsing history, your geolocation logs and even the content of your emails offer service providers a rich source of potential advertising revenue. That data, along with your health and financial information, can also be sold to marketers and data brokers interested in building a profile of you as a consumer. The FCC's rules restricted Internet providers' ability to use and share this information, in what privacy advocates hailed as a historic victory.
But now the fate of those regulations lies in question as Republicans prepare to take control of the nation's top telecom watchdog. Consumer advocacy groups vowed Wednesday to oppose the cable industry's petition.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN REVISITING THIS ARTICLE ON IMPROVING YOUR ONLINE PRIVACY AND SECURITY
The industry argues the rules are illegal and unconstitutional.
Republicans Gut Ethics Body
This is the sort of headline people will look back on in thirty years and say "How very stupid people must have been, back then. How could they not have seen what was going on? Everything was so blatant, so obvious; those senators were acting like villains in really bad b-movie espionage scripts – the kind people poke holes in for being unrealistic."
I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's optimism.
I think it's a misplaced faith in the good of elected leadership (and, come to that, people); a too-strong conviction of "Surely not now, surely not here, when we've come so very far."
This is happening. Yes, now. Yes, here.
House Republicans have gutted an independent ethics watchdog, putting it under their own control, in a secret ballot hours before the new Congress convened for the first time.
The unheralded vote severely weakens the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which was set up after a lobbying scandal in 2008 to investigate corruption allegations against members of Congress. The move, led by the head of the House judiciary committee, defied the Republican congressional leadership and was reportedly supported by several legislators currently under OCE scrutiny.
Trump is a Liar. His Transition Team is Composed of Liars.
This is not “news”, but it must still be noted, every time, in part because they base their decisions on those same lies.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team was dismissive of the CIA in a response to a Washington Post report that the agency had found in a secret assessment that Russian actors sought to boost Trump in the election.
“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” read the statement. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.'”
Okay, you swarmy, smarmy fuckers: let’s break this down, because literally everything you said is a lie, and I’m in a bad mood.
- It was George W. Bush’s White House that claimed to be convinced that Iraq had WMDs, not CIA intelligence officers.
- The election was a month ago — we’re still closer to election day than we are to Trump’s first day in office.
- Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.
- His Electoral College win ranks 46th out of 58 in American history.
Also, if you read their statement (that single paragraph is literally the entire response to a foreign state successfully acting to alter our country’s presidential election) you’ll notice they don’t even claim the report is false — it’s that is doesn’t matter.
And the best part: One of the people who actually did claim Iraq had WMDs was John Bolton, then the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.
Trump’s team is considering Bolton for Deputy Secretary of State, serving directly behind an Exxon exec with ties to Russia so flagrant even Republicans are shaking their heads.
So:
- Trump’s team says the people who claimed Iraq had WMDs in 2002 have no credibility on matters of foreign intelligence.
- … and are considering one of the people who actually said that as second-in-command at the State Department.
Top. Notch. Thinking.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team was dismissive of the CIA in a response to a Washington Post report that the agency had found in a secret assessment that Russian actors sought to boost Trump in the election.
“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on…
When Fact Checking is Secondary
This relates back to a conversation I had with +Kate Testerman this weekend – about how people would get so wound up in fact-checking the Nazis in Germany in the early days, and missed that fact checking wasn't accomplishing anything.
What then, we'd ask, should we do. Fact check, sure, but more than that. But what?
I stumbled around that question for awhile, and my answer wasn't nearly as well-put as this: (emphasis mine)
I don’t think journalists should give up on, or refrain from, fact-checking when the president-elect of the United States says something that is false. It’s critical to set the record straight, especially when it’s about a consequential policy issue.
At the same time, journalists obviously run the risk of being manipulated to chase various shiny objects and steer the debate towards topics that the president-elect would like to focus on and away from ones he would like to avoid. Trump’s Twitter can’t become the assignment desk of the national media.
The burden of proof can’t be on the media to disprove every crazy claim that the president-elect makes. The story here is the president-elect yet again made a baseless claim. That is the story. The story is that the president-elect is more factually irresponsible than any political leader in the United States in memory. That’s the story. The details of exactly how this particular claim is false are really, at some point, a second-order concern.
These stories have to de-emphasize the claim itself, emphasize the president-elect being so widely irresponsible.
Podcast: We spoke with political science professor Brendan Nyhan about president-elect Donald Trump’s lies and how reporters should handle them.
I Had a Great Year – You May Have, Also – and 2016 Was Still Terrible
I posted on Facebook about the Standing Rock action by the Corps of Engineers and, as I did here, noted it as a sliver of good news in an otherwise shit year.
Someone commented:
“I know you are talking about the election when you say “shit year” – or at least I hope you are saying that just for dramatic affect. Because from my perspective- It isn’t a shit year- So… I get where you are coming from- but for me- in the entire grand scheme of things- any day that I have healthy kids, any day or year that my parents are still alive and any year that Bryan and I are healthy, alive and working at jobs we like- well- I call that a pretty damn good year!!
Here’s the thing: if you’re saying “based on my healthy kids, my still-living parents, and the health of my spouse and myself, it was a great year,” then by definition it is not “in the entire grand scheme of things.”
The Grand Scheme of things includes MORE than just you and your family.
2016, even without the election, is like the montage at the start of an apocalypse movie, explaining how things got as bad as they are when the movie opens. To pick only ONE topic, the backwards steps combating climate change and the accelerating heating trends at the poles, far ahead of predictions, mean we have a lifetime of work to give our GRANDkids even a moderate chance to turn things around.
Don’t get me wrong. I have lots of good days, and by any measure, every day has good things in it, even if it’s bad on-balance.
But when I say it’s a bad year, I mean more than just how the year itself turned out, from January 1 to December 31. I mean the impact the events in that year will have on our lives going forward. I look at lasting harm, and what I then need to do.
In other words, when I talk about the year, I’m not just talking about how things went inside my house, and with my immediate family. If I did that, then yeah, 2016 was a banner year. Of course it was. I’m a straight white dude and my family is financially well off. I’m great.
But that point of view is dangerously myopic, and makes it too easy to think everything is going to be fine.
When I have a good day with my daughters, I fight harder to have women’s rights and health defended.
When I have a good weekend with my son, I fight harder for fair and well-funded education systems, with counseling backed by science, led by people earning a good wage, who can help kids when they struggle to succeed (or even make it through a day).
If I have a great Thanksgiving with my family, it means I’m going to fight harder to ensure all of my family have the same rights, and the same protections, everywhere in the country.
Good things don’t make me say “Y’know, over all, I have my health, and things aren’t that bad, and hey WE are having a great year, so why worry about what’s going on over there?”
Good things strengthen my resolve.
One of the best parts of my weekend was when I saw the breaking news on Standing Rock while I was with Sean. Not because of the news itself (which was great), but because it gave me the chance to explain how someone can be happy and crying at the same time, even if they’re guys. Especially if.
I’m not an optimist. That’s established.
I plan for the worst, and most of the time, when it’s not THAT bad, I enjoy myself all the more because I’ve seriously considered how it might have turned out badly.
And when it is just as bad as I thought, I’m prepared.
This year, I’ve been adequately prepared far more than pleasantly surprised.
I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.