John Cassidy at the New Yorker also somehow managed not to be so overwhelmed by Trump’s ability to read a speech aloud that he took that to be A New And Better Trump.

If there was anything fresh about what Trump said to Congress, it was largely stylistic. He didn’t pivot; he merely pirouetted, and then he dug into the same political ground he has already claimed.

About all that happened was that Trump, perhaps feeling saddled by low approval ratings, caved to the normal conventions of political communication. These rules dictate that, on august occasions such as a speech to Congress, Presidents talk politely and try to avoid giving offense. They leaven the heavy fare they are bearing with moments of optimism and humanity, promise the viewers some goodies, and offer up some notes of inclusion. Trump did all these things, and he even deployed some uplifting prose. If his Inauguration speech sounded like it had been written by Steve Bannon suffering from a migraine, Tuesday’s appeared to have been the work of a professional speechwriter.

And all that is just normal, not to say minimal. It’s not remotely a reason to decide Trump is not the malevolent bullying ignoramus he seemed on Tuesday afternoon. Trump is still that malevolent bullying ignoramus with the undisclosed tax returns.

This tone was markedly different from the one Trump had struck as recently as last week, at the cpac conference, and the television pundits swallowed it whole. In substantive terms, however, Trump didn’t give an inch, or even a millimetre. The soft opening quickly transitioned into a reiteration of Trump’s harsh “America First” agenda, and once he got there his language got considerably darker.

Take immigration, an issue to which Trump returned repeatedly on Tuesday. After pointing out that he has already ordered the rounding up and deportation of large numbers of undocumented aliens, he boasted, “Bad ones are going out as I speak.” Further promoting the myth that America is bedevilled by an immigrant crime wave, he said that he had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to set up a new office to support the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.

Now why would he do that? Because it’s a chance to foment hatred against a powerless set of Others. He likes that kind of thing. What does that say about him? That he’s a terrible human being. His ability to read a speech aloud doesn’t alter that.

As Will Wilkinson, the policy analyst and blogger, pointed out during the speech, “The point of Trump’s lies is to create a widespread sense that an open, pluralistic, multicultural society is dangerous.” To justify his many illiberal proposals, as well as his authoritarian instincts, Trump needs to persuade people that everything is going to hell, and that only he can save things. Nowhere in his speech did he depart from this doleful and deceptive script.

What would Trump want with pluralism? He doesn’t admire anyone or anything except himself, so pluralism is never going to be his kind of thing.

NPR, predictably, takes the bait.

Donald Trump’s first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was the occasion for his most presidential performance to date, balancing a reprise of his angry campaign themes with a recitation of hopes and dreams for the nation.

It was his most successful, if not his first, effort at assuming the public persona and personal demeanor associated with his new office. He stuck to the script on his teleprompter, spoke graciously to individuals in the audience and refrained from attacks on critics, rivals or adversaries.

In other words it was his least worst performance so far – but that’s a very low hurdle. He for once didn’t act like an angry toddler; big deal.

The president began with words of condemnation for the hate crimes lately unleashed on religious and ethnic minorities around the country, including the fatal shooting of an immigrant from India in a suburb of Kansas City.

“Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.”

It’s good that he mentioned them, very belatedly, but again that’s a low hurdle – but even more, how dare he claim that we are “a country that stands united in condemning hate” when he spent the last two years doing everything he could to stoke and foment and inflame hate? How fucking dare he.

The president, however, did not respond to critics who say these recent acts have been encouraged by some of his own rhetoric or apparent signs of disrespect for targeted groups. Rather, he turned to strikingly poetic sentiments.

Fuck poetic sentiments. He has speechwriters; we know that. He incites hatred and he himself persecutes some of the groups he targets for hatred.

The success of the big speech strategy seemed immediately apparent. Media coverage was largely positive, even laudatory. Snap polls showed big majorities found the speech optimistic and uplifting. The president’s approval rating, which had been at historic lows for a president in his first month in office, is expected to pop back up in the next few soundings.

I hope people are not that stupid.

There was the monstrous thing Trump said to the war widow:

Carryn Owens was honored by a standing ovation by everyone visible in the vast House chamber, regardless of party or position. She wept openly, clasped her hands and looked upward as the ovation continued for several minutes. When it finally subsided, the president said, “Ryan is looking down right now and he’s happy because I think you broke a record.”

Huh. So Ryan is dead, and his widow is unhappy, but it’s cool because he’s actually just perched up there “looking down” and feeling awesome about the applause his widow got for crying because he’s dead. So he’s not dead and she has nothing to cry about so what was the standing ovation about?

Meanwhile Trump is still Trump. The fact that he can read a speech doesn’t change that.

My Freethinker column.

Barry Duke illustrated it with cartoons, including this very pointed one by Matt Bors:

Matt Bors

Meanwhile back at the ordinary everyday White House – they’re still confused (or, more likely, pretending they’re confused). They think corruption is all about intent.

President Trump’s top adviser, Kellyanne Conway, acted “without nefarious motive” when she promoted Ivanka Trump’s clothing line during an interview last month, the White House said.

CNNMoney reported Wednesday that a letter from the White House to the Office of Government Ethics said a White House lawyer met with Conway to discuss the rules regarding endorsements by government employees.

“Upon completion of our inquiry, we concluded that Ms. Conway acted inadvertently and is highly unlikely to do so again,” says the letter, signed by Stefan C. Passantino, a White House deputy counsel for compliance and ethics, according to CNN.

“It is noted that Ms. Conway made the statement in question in a light, off-hand manner while attempting to stand up for a person she believed had been unfairly treated and did so without nefarious motive or intent to benefit personally.”

The letter did not note any plans for disciplinary action against Conway.

I hear Trump did a talk last night, and did a fair job of reading the script. I hear that a surprising number of people are announcing that this means he is “presidential” and that we should “give him a chance.”

This makes no sense to me. He’s had hundreds of thousands of chances, his whole life. People give him a chance all the time. He’s had nothing but chances. He had chances after the election, and more chances after the inauguration. Why should we be giving him more of them now? It’s not as if he’s left us in any doubt about what kind of person he is. He barfs out evidence every day. Why would his ability to do something children learn to do in first grade be a reason to give him yet more chances? Especially when he already has those chances anyway – he’ll have them for four years, unless he’s impeached or otherwise expelled.

Also – that whole thing with the war widow? I haven’t watched it and hope to be able to avoid watching it forever, but anyway – how revolting can you get.

Trump was asked about that whole anti-Semitism thing today. He said it’s bad, but, BUT – watch out, because it could be people trying to make Someone look bad. (I think Someone might=Trump.) Osita Nwanevu at Slate tells the story:

On Tuesday, President Trump responded to the recent wave of anti-Semitic threats around the country in comments to a group of state attorneys general that suggested they had been orchestrated by unknown parties to make him look bad. From BuzzFeed:

“He just said, ‘Sometimes it’s the reverse, to make people — or to make others — look bad,’ and he used the word ‘reverse’ I would say two to three times in his comments,” [Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh] Shapiro said. “He did correctly say at the top that it was reprehensible.”

Asked for further information about the purpose of the president’s comments, Shapiro only said, “I really don’t know what he means, or why he said that,” adding that Trump said he would be speaking about the issue in his remarks on Tuesday night.

The Anti-Defamation League swiftly responded to Trump’s comment in a statement. “We are astonished by what the President reportedly said,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote. “It is incumbent upon the White House to immediately clarify these remarks. In light of the ongoing attacks on the Jewish community, it is also incumbent upon the President to lay out in his speech tonight his plans for what the federal government will do to address this rash of anti-Semitic incidents.”

Adam Purinton was in court yesterday. It appears he thought those two Indian guys he shot were Iranian.

Less than five hours after a man shot up a Kansas bar, killing one Indian man and wounding two other people in an apparently racially motivated attack, an Applebee’s bartender 70 miles away made a 911 call.

The woman on the phone told the dispatcher that a man had come into her bar and told her he “had done something really bad and he was on the run from the police.”

The man wouldn’t tell her what he did but kept asking her to allow him to stay at her house. The bartender persisted, persuading him to tell her what happened. “He said he shot and killed two Iranian people in Olathe,” the bartender said.

Indian, Iranian – Yemeni, Sudanese – whatever. They’re all bad hombres, right?

This is another one Trump hasn’t bothered to say anything about, as the Kansas City Star observes.

Nearly a week has passed since two India-born engineers were singled out and shot at an Olathe bar, presumably because they were immigrants, darker in skin tone and possibly viewed by the shooter as unwanted foreigners.

People around the world were immediately and rightfully horrified.

But our president?

Mum. Not a word has been spoken, tweeted or prepped for Trump’s teleprompter.

Trump has offered no words of condolence for the grieving widow of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who died from his gunshot wounds.

The president has expressed no sympathy for Kuchibhotla’s best friend, Alok Madasani, who continues to recover from bullet wounds and the trauma.

Trump usually loves to celebrate all-American heroes. But he’s passed on commending Ian Grillot, a bystander who leapt to take the gunman down before anyone else was harmed. Grillot was shot, too.

I guess complaining about “fake news” and sucking up the flattery of Fox and Friends takes up all his time.

During such moments of crisis, people look to the president for strength and guidance.

They need to hear their moral outrage articulated, the condemnation of a possible hate crime and the affirmation that the U.S. values everyone’s contributions, whether you’re an immigrant or native-born.

Ordinarily I don’t, really, but I guess that turns out to be because I take it for granted. Now? It’s impossible to take it for granted, so the silence is deafening.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer has faced questions about the president’s response to the Olathe shootings. Spicer termed the murder “tragic.”

But when Spicer was asked about any correlation between the shootings and Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, the White House press secretary proclaimed the assertion “absurd,” shutting down further discussion.

Those are your bad hombres right there.

Not so funny. From the same conversation with Fox & Weasels:

KILMEADE:   Let’s talk about you Tweeting, if we could.  You’ve attacked, recently, McCain, the FBI, Democrats. Is there a method to the attacks or is it just venting?

TRUMP:  No method, really.  It’s just — it’s not venting either.  But, you know, I felt badly when a young man dies and John McCain said that was a failed mission.  According to General Mattis, it was a very successful mission.  They get a lot of information, a lot of — a lot of different things that they really wanted to get.  And I thought it was inappropriate and I thought it was inappropriate that he goes to foreign soil and he criticizes our government.  I just think that’s just inappropriate. And, you know, people have to be careful with that.

This is the guy who spent years insisting that Obama was not a US citizen. While Obama was president, Trump insisted that. Very publicly, very noisily, very adamantly. I don’t know if he did it on “foreign soil” or not, but he did it. Is that “inappropriate”?

Is it “fake”?

Now for a little humor. Donnie from Queens talked to Fox & Friends this morning, to tell them how awesome he is and how awesome his chat to Congress tonight will be. It’s all funny but this bit is hilarious:

DOOCY:  Mr. President, you announced via Twitter the other day you’re not going to go to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

How come?

TRUMP:  Well, I am not a hypocrite.  And I haven’t been treated properly.  And that’s OK, which is fine.  You know, let…

DOOCY:  Well, some…

TRUMP:  — everybody treat me…

DOOCY:  — some of the left say you just can’t take a joke.

TRUMP:  Maybe we’ll have a small — oh, no.

Do they say that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:   Yes.

TRUMP:  Well, I’ve taken it.

You know, one of the great misconceptions, when President Obama was up — was — now, a long time ago, five years ago or whatever, I loved that evening.  I had the greatest time…

DOOCY:   You were there.

TRUMP:  I was there.

KILMEADE:   You were there — you were there target of the hit.

TRUMP:  I was the target.

DOOCY:   You were the pinata.

TRUMP:  And can I be honest?

I had the greatest time.  Now, I can’t act like I’m thrilled because they’re telling jokes.  I mean he was telling jokes I’m going to change (INAUDIBLE) the White House, the Trump House and other things.

And he was very — I thought he did a good job.  And he was very respectful and it was fun.  And I enjoyed it.  And I left and I told the press, they were all said, did you have a good time?

And I said it was fantastic.

The next day I read Donald Trump felt terrible about the evening.  I loved the evening.  I had a great time.

KILMEADE:  You said before, I can take hits when it’s justified.

TRUMP:  Correct.

KILMEADE:   Right.

TRUMP:  One hundred percent.

KILMEADE:  Can you give me an example of a time when someone was critical of you and you thought to yourself, I deserved that hit, I deserved that column, I deserved…

TRUMP:  No, probably I could never do that.

Comedy gold.

Trump yesterday told Breitbart that the New York Times is evil.

Well he would, wouldn’t he. It’s like Hitler and Mussolini getting together to agree that Roosevelt is evil. It’s like Dylann Roof and Elliott Rodger calling their victims evil.

President Donald Trump lashed out at The New York Times on Monday, claiming it reports with “evil” intentions and publishes lies.

“If you read the New York Times, it’s — the intent is so evil and so bad,” the president told Breitbart News in an interview Monday. “The stories are wrong in many cases, but it’s the overall intent.”

I wonder what Trump’s intent is in constantly demonizing the press.

While Trump largely focused his fire on a familiar foe in The New York Times, he also blasted what he called “fake media” at large.

“There’s a difference,” the president said. “The fake media is the opposition party. The fake media is the enemy of the American people. There’s tremendous fake media out there. Tremendous fake stories. The problem is the people that aren’t involved in the story don’t know that.”

Trump didn’t identify what differentiates real media from fake media — he frequently highlights organizations and stories that are either critical of him or that he disagrees with as fake news — but White House aide Hope Hicks agreed with her boss. “Just the fact that they didn’t report that accurately proves your point,” she said during the interview, adding that reporters simply said the press, not fake news media, was the enemy of the American people, as he tweeted last week.

But it’s her boss who calls major mainstream news outlets “fake,” and doing that does pretty much amount to saying that the (mainstream) news media in general are fake. If he’s calling the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN “fake” then he’s broadly hinting that all media outlets are fake except the ones that fawn on him. So yes: he is busily engaged in demonizing the press in general, except for the extreme right-wing press such as Breitbart and Fox.

Oh for god’s sake. Somebody explain to Donnie what insurance is.

Great meeting with CEOs of leading U.S. health insurance companies who provide great healthcare to the American people. pic.twitter.com/s2NMVMvQq3

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2017

Today in Trump’s Great America –

Bomb threats forced evacuations at Jewish schools and community centers in 11 states Monday, with the Jewish Community Center Association confirming threats in states ranging from Florida to Michigan. In Ann Arbor, Mich., police gave the all-clear after a Hebrew day school was threatened, forcing students to leave.

“Today, bomb threats were called into schools and/or JCCs in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” the JCC Association of North America says. “Many affected institutions have already been declared clear and have returned to regular operations. All previous bomb threats to JCCs this year were determined to be hoaxes.”

…

The Anti-Defamation League says there have been reports of bomb threats at a wide range of locations in and around New York, including “three in Staten Island, one in New Jersey, one on Long Island, one in Westchester.”

The ADL confirms threats were made Monday against a Jewish day school in Miami, a JCC in Asheville, N.C., and the upper school of Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md. It also says there are unconfirmed reports of a threat in Birmingham, Ala.

The threats come after a weekend in which vandals damaged approximately 100 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia — an act that came less than a week after a similar attack on a Jewish cemetery near St. Louis, where more than 150 graves were targeted.

Since the start of 2017, dozens of bomb threats have been made against Jewish community centers; this is at least the fifth wave of threats in the past two months.

Remember Trump’s response to the reporter who tried to ask him about the wave of anti-Semitic threats in recent weeks?

Watch his face while he listens.

https://youtu.be/wa1s2rIoefc

Doing federal budgets the E-Z way: increase spending on all things military, and decrease spending on everything else. Boom, job done, let’s go play golf.

President Trump will propose a federal budget that dramatically increases defense-related spending by $54 billion while cutting other federal agencies by the same amount, according to an administration official.

The proposal represents a massive increase in federal spending related to national security, while other priorities, especially foreign aid, will see significant reductions.

According to the White House, the defense budget will increase by 10 percent. But without providing any specifics, the administration said that most other discretionary spending programs will be slashed to pay for it. Officials singled out foreign aid, one of the smallest parts of the federal budget, saying it would see “large reductions” in spending.

That’s like saying you’re going to increase spending on luxury cars, and decrease spending on salt.

“We are going to do more with less and make the government lean and accountable to the people,” Trump said. “We can do so much more with the money we spend.”

Accountable? That’s got to be the biggest lie he’s told yet. He’s the least accountable president in our history. He refuses to be bound by any ethical rules whatsoever, he refuses to release his tax returns, he shuts out news organizations he dislikes, he abuses federal judges and anyone else who annoys him, he barfs out executive orders without consulting any legal experts, he shouts “Quiet, quiet, quiet” and “Sit down” at people who ask questions at his press conferences, he fires people who dispute him, he incites mobs to attack people who dispute him – he is not making the government more accountable.