I have never for a moment thought that Melania Trump cared — her resting face says “bored rich model” better than words ever could — so I can only begin to guess her actual motivation for wearing the now-infamous $39 jacket printed with “I Really Don’t Care. Do U?”
Obviously she knew what she was doing — it’s printed on the back, so it was clearly visible on her heavily covered walk up the stairs to her plane to Texas. Lots of people think it was a comment on the border situation itself and that the message was she didn’t care about the children, but something that blunt isn’t her style. I think it was a comment on this supposedly “humanizing” errand her husband was sending her out on, which would fit right in with the passive-aggressive pouting that seems her default position on life with her husband.
A few pundits have hacked at the roots of the story by pointing out that there is no immigrant crisis. Illegal border crossings are at a 46-year low; immigrants are less likely, not more, to commit crimes; the people who live closest to the border are least supportive of building a wall. But Paul Krugman finds the taproot, pointing out that anti-Semitism was based on lurid myths, not facts. The only crisis at the border is a crisis of white American fear and loathing. That was demonstrated this morning on Fox & Friends when Brian Kilmeade, the Dumbest Man on Television, drew an important distinction: “Like it or not, these are not our kids…. It’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas.”
Zach Beauchamp at Vox, in pointing out that this isn’t a “win” for liberals, gets even deeper, to the roots of America’s Trumpism:
What’s most telling about this episode isn’t Trump stepping back in the face of public outrage. It’s the millions of Republican who were — are — willing to support an obviously cruel immigration policy. And that, in turn, points to perhaps the deepest problem in American politics in the Trump era: The lethal conjunction of white identity politics and partisanship has made the Republican Party willing to sanction injustices that had previously been unthinkable in modern America….[T]hat the separations happened at all, and that millions of Americans were perfectly fine with them, is something that should trouble us all.
I’m still trying to figure out whether the Supreme Court ruling allowing states to collect sales tax on online purchases will hurt or help the state and consumers. Obviously Delaware won’t collect a tax it doesn’t have, but will retailers find an advantage relocating to no-sales-tax states? I’m not sure because I still can’t figure out if I have to pay tax to the state where the online retailer is located even though I live in a no-tax state. What is certain is the disruption this will cause to a half-trillion-dollar stream of purchasing.
Conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer died Thursday, just two weeks after announcing his terminal illness. Though despised on the left, Krauthammer displayed a lot more intellectual honesty than anyone else in the conservative orbit. Fun fact: When he turned from psychiatry to politics, his first job was as a speechwriter for Walter Mondale. He also was a strong supporter of animal rights, so I hope he and Koko can have a conversation at the Pearly Gates.
Can “Roseanne” succeed without Roseanne Barr? ABC sure hopes so after ordering a season of episodes for “The Conners,” the name of the spinoff that will carry on without its missing matriarch.