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Trump taps anti-abortion leader for top health agency post

(CNN) US President Donald Trump has appointed one of the country's leading anti-abortion crusaders to a senior communications post in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Conservative author and commentator Charmaine Yoest will serve as assistant secretary of public affairs at HHS, the White House said in a statement Friday.

Yoest, who campaigned actively for Trump, is a senior fellow at American Values, a conservative nonprofit that supports "traditional family values." But she's best known as former president of Americans United for Life, which promotes anti-abortion legislation at the state and federal level.

Under Yoest's leadership from 2008 to 2016 the group helped states adopt numerous abortion restrictions, including a ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

She has been known to cite medically dubious claims, including that abortion increases a woman's risk of breast cancer. (Yoest herself is a breast cancer survivor).
In a 2012 interview, she told a New York Times reporter that the scientific establishment "is under the control of the abortion lobby."

The assistant secretary of public affairs shapes the agency's communications strategy. Yoest replaces Kevin Griffis, who joined Planned Parenthood earlier this month as vice president of communications.

Observers on both sides of the political aisle saw the appointment as a clear win for the anti-abortion movement.

Speaker Paul Ryan said the appointment demonstrated "yet again" the administration's "commitment to the pro-life cause."

Anti-abortion leader Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, praised Yoest as "one of the pro-life movement's most articulate and powerful communicators."

Abortion supporters criticized the appointment as dangerous.

"It is unacceptable that someone with a history of promoting myths and false information about women's health is appointed to a government position whose main responsibility is to provide the public with accurate and factual information," Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement.

"Ms. Yoest has a long record of seeking to undermine women's access to health care and safe, legal abortion by distorting the facts, and her selection shows yet again that this administration is pandering to extreme conservatives and ignoring the millions of men and women nationwide who support women's constitutionally protected health care rights and don't want to go backward," Democratic Sen. Patty Murray said in a statement.

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Alt-Right: A Dangerous Euphamism

When I use the term “alt-right”, I know that it means “neo-Nazi”, but most people do not. The media uses the term “alt-right”, and in general, people seem to think of an extreme wing of conservatism – sort of like the Tea Party on steroids. It is not.

The alt-right is a white supremacist, neo-Nazi movement. The term was appropriated by Richard Spencer – a white supremacist who quotes Hitler – to make white-nationalism more palatable. Spencer advocates creating an all-white state in North America. He is anti-Semitic. He is racist. When challenged, Spencer has publicly refused to disclaim Nazi beliefs.

White nationalist views are an extreme form of racism that advocate violence, massive discrimination, and mass deportation of American citizens who are not white and Christian. They quote and often idolize Hitler. Let me say that again, they draw inspiration from a man who murdered six million people because of their religion, ethnicity, orientation, or disability.

We need to fight against neo-Nazism being normalized. If it is normalized, their more horrific views will bleed into the ideology of less extreme racists and even non-racist conservatives. To a degree, the euphemism was already been successful. I doubt even Trump could get people to accept putting "a leader of the neo-fascist movement" on the National Security Council, but for a time he had a leader of the alt-right – and that is the same thing.

The simplest part of the fight is: stop helping Richard Spencer’s goal by using alt-right as a euphemism for neo-Nazis. Call them what they are: white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, or fascists; or clarify the term, such as “the neo-Nazi alt-right”. Call out journalists who perpetuate the terms without clarifying what it means.

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Making America White Again

"This is a serious project. All immigrants to the United States know (and knew) that if they want to become real, authentic Americans they must reduce their fealty to their native country and regard it as secondary, subordinate, in order to emphasize their whiteness. Unlike any nation in Europe, the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force. Here, for many people, the definition of “Americanness” is color.

Under slave laws, the necessity for color rankings was obvious, but in America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost. There are “people of color” everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.

In order to limit the possibility of this untenable change, and restore whiteness to its former status as a marker of national identity, a number of white Americans are sacrificing themselves. They have begun to do things they clearly don’t really want to be doing, and, to do so, they are (1) abandoning their sense of human dignity and (2) risking the appearance of cowardice. Much as they may hate their behavior, and know full well how craven it is, they are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a white boy to pray. Embarrassing as the obvious display of cowardice must be, they are willing to set fire to churches, and to start firing in them while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as such demonstrations of weakness are, they are willing to shoot black children in the street.

To keep alive the perception of white superiority, these white Americans tuck their heads under cone-shaped hats and American flags and deny themselves the dignity of face-to-face confrontation, training their guns on the unarmed, the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are running away, exposing their unthreatening backs to bullets. Surely, shooting a fleeing man in the back hurts the presumption of white strength? The sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops, to push black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only the frightened would do that. Right?

These sacrifices, made by supposedly tough white men, who are prepared to abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the true horror of lost status.

It may be hard to feel pity for the men who are making these bizarre sacrifices in the name of white power and supremacy. Personal debasement is not easy for white people (especially for white men), but to retain the conviction of their superiority to others—especially to black people—they are willing to risk contempt, and to be reviled by the mature, the sophisticated, and the strong. If it weren’t so ignorant and pitiful, one could mourn this collapse of dignity in service to an evil cause.

The comfort of being “naturally better than,” of not having to struggle or demand civil treatment, is hard to give up. The confidence that you will not be watched in a department store, that you are the preferred customer in high-end restaurants—these social inflections, belonging to whiteness, are greedily relished.

So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

William Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer. In “Absalom, Absalom,” incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness” (once again), the family chooses murder."

Toni Morrison
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Loyalty Day - Cutting Through the Hype

Trump proclaimed May 1, 2017 to be Loyalty Day. Fox News is using this as some sort of a cattle call for patriotism. In truth, every President since Eisenhower has issued a Loyalty Day proclamation every year for May 1.

Traditionally, May 1 was the pagan spring festival of May Day. In 1886, May 1 was adopted as International Workers Day by communists and socialists, in response to the Haymarket Massacre (where pro-union protesters were bombed in Chicago). After the Russia revolution, the United States began celebrations of Americanization Day and then Loyalty Day on May 1st as an anti-communist (at best) and anti-labor (at worst) distraction from the worker's holiday. During the fifties, when fears of Soviet communism were at a peak, the day was made an official celebration, and it has been every year since then. I suspect embarrassment over McCarthy-era anti-communism is part of why the annual event has been largely unobserved in much of the country.

The Fox News hype that this is something special that Trump is doing is nonsense. It just shows that Fox isn't smart enough to Google for 30 seconds before calling something news. Similarly, the liberal backlash is also needless hype. This isn't some weird Orwellian Trump step. He is just doing what every liberal and conservative President has, without much notice, for decades.

What is ironic about the Trump proclamation is that this is a holiday setup to fight Soviet communism, and Trump has likely colluded with Putin -- the man most like a Soviet dictator since before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I am sure Trump supports undermining workers rights and unions, which was also part of the goal of taking over the May 1 holiday.

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Revised RNC Logo

The RNC logo overlaid on the Russian flag. I am guessing most Republicans will think the added red, white, and blue makes it look extra patriotic. A metaphor for the Republican party today.

March for Science

Crowds massed in the US capital and around the world Saturday to support science and evidence-based research -- a protest partly fueled by opposition to President Donald Trump's threats of budget cuts to agencies funding scientists' work.

Right Wing Nut Job Strikes Again...

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - Ohio State Representative Candice Keller's official Facebook page was put into unpublished status following a post on Thursday night that compared Planned Parenthood to Nazis.

Alabama Governor Discards Republican Values Taking Cues from Bill Clinton

A Republican insider said, “We have a name for men we who have an affair with a consenting adult woman; we call them Democrats. We prefer our sex scandals to involve molestation and homosexuality. That way, the sanctity of the relationship between man and woman is not corrupted by sin. It’s like he took a page from Bill Clinton’s playbook. He should have taken a cue from Larry Craig. When a real Republican is feeling weak and lonely, he heads to a public restroom reputed to be a hot spot for gay sex, not a hotel with his female advisor!”

Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda

The 2016 Presidential election shook the foundations of American politics. Media reports immediately looked for external disruption to explain the unanticipated victory-with theories ranging from Russian hacking to "fake news." We have a less exotic, but perhaps more disconcerting explanation: Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and...

Reclaiming Words: Values

The values that made this country a free country known opportunity and innovation had nothing to do with religion or who people choose to sleep with. They were about what is required to create a society protected from tyranny and corruption as much as possible, that would encourage as much freedom as possible without imposing upon other people’s freedoms.

Reclaiming Words: Patriot

Liberals have allowed conservatives to steal the word “patriot”. In the Trump era, liberals are the ones standing up for the constitution, the rule of law, freedom, and protecting democracy from foreign tampering – while conservatives are cheering as core American institutions are attacked.

Syria Airstrikes Add Nearly $5 Billion to Missile Stock Value, Guess Who Owns a Chunk of it...

"Raytheon stock surged Friday morning, after 59 of the company's Tomahawk missiles were used to strike Syria in Donald Trump's first major military operation as President. Trump ordered the airstrike on the Syrian government Thursday night in retaliation for a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians earlier this week that killed as many as 100 people."

Unity?!

Trump talks about coming together and healing, continues his divisive power plays

Images Illegal in Russia, Not Here Yet

#gayclownputin images are now illegal in Russia. We can still have images of Trump as a clown in drag. I am not going with #gayclowntrump, because unless you are dealing with the dictator of a anti-gay country, it seems offensive to gay people. But here is #dragracist and #clowntrump. We can also still post these offensive pictures of Steve Bannon as a devil, and of Milo Yanapoulos as not a "gay clown", maybe just an "evil clown". The later images didn't even require edits.

Liberals and Media Lose Credibility on Syria

It was an expensive, ineffective, and ill-thought attack without congressional approval or international support, but the media are praising Trump as "Presidential" and major Democrats fail to criticize the attack.

Trump's Troll Army Isn't Ready for War in Syria

This is a series of philosophical conflicts in which it is impossible to take sides. The alt-right attacking Trump? Trump versus Assad and Putin? It's easy to want to take a side against terrible people. In this case, they are all wrong. Don't get tricked into taking sides. Resist Trump. Resist the alt-right. Stand against murderous dictators and Russian imperialism.

It's now illegal in Russia to share an image of Putin as a gay clown

Russia has banned a picture depicting President Vladimir Putin as a potentially gay clown. Russian news outlets are having trouble reporting exactly which image of the Internet's many Putin-gay-clown memes is now illegal to share. Because, you know, it's been banned. But the picture was described last week on the Russian government's list of things that constitute "extremism."

In the infamous words of Cheech and Chong, "Bye bye lardass!"

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been removed from the National Security Council, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Bloomberg reports the move was part of a larger shake-up within the NSC. In January, Trump released a memo on the organization of his National Security Council, which listed Bannon as a member of the principals committee.

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