Oh whew, Trump says Obama is completely wrong about racism, the US doesn’t have any and Obama is a dirty rotten scoundrel for saying it does. Obviously Trump would know way more about that than Obama does.

The Republican president, in an interview on Fox News, criticized President Barack Obama’s speech last week, in which the Democrat urged Americans to protect democracy and outlined a list of needed reforms such as making election day a national holiday, expanding early voting and increasing polling sites.

“There is an attack on our democratic freedoms and we should treat it as such,” Obama said in a eulogy for the late U.S. Representative John Lewis, a Black civil rights icon.

…

Trump, who

Uh oh, Don is pissed off again.

.@CNN has no sources on the Task Force. Their “sources” are made up, pure fiction! Jim Acosta is a Fake reporter!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2020

Nah, he’s not. So let’s see what his source told him.

President Donald Trump was still struggling to fully grasp the severity of the coronavirus pandemic during a task force meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday, a source familiar with the meeting told CNN.

“He still doesn’t get it,” the source said. “He does not get it.”

No, we know. We saw that interview with Jonathan Swan yesterday. We know anyway – he doesn’t get much of anything.

Trump’s meeting with

Benjamin Wittes says this collecting intel on journalists caper is stupid.

… contemplating the Washington Post’s revelation that the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis (DHS I&A) issued two intelligence reports about tweets I had written, I can’t help but think that this is what J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses of power might have looked like had Twitter existed in Hoover’s time—and had Hoover been a total idiot.

On the one hand, DHS I&A was preparing intelligence reports on American journalists—on me and on Mike Baker of the New York Times—based on activity indisputably protected by the First Amendment: reporting unclassified information about the conduct of government. That’s toxic stuff. And DHS knows it. No sooner had

Oh hey, look at that, the Trump security people have been investigating journalists.

The Department of Homeland Security has compiled “intelligence reports” about the work of American journalists covering protests in Portland, Ore., in what current and former officials called an alarming use of a government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors.

“Alarming” is putting it very mildly.

Over the past week, the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports to federal law enforcement agencies and others, summarizing tweets written by two journalists — a reporter for theNew York Times and the editor in chief of the blog Lawfare — and noting they had published leaked, unclassified documents

REPORTER: You called the Beirut explosion an "attack." Are you confident it wasn't an accident?

TRUMP: "Well, it would seem like it."

(This, in case it needs to be pointed out, is totally irresponsible.) pic.twitter.com/7LYYq1dWFr

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 4, 2020

Little bit, seeing as how reporting is that it was a warehouse full of explosives rather than an attack, so let’s not go to war.

The thing is…if you take New York out then the US hasn’t done quite so badly.

Daniel Dale lists some of Trump’s lies in the Axios interview – some because they’re still reviewing it at CNN and there could be more, because, you know, Trump.

Many of Trump’s interviewers are right-wing sycophants who have no interest in challenging him. But Trump has defeated even his other interviewers by employing a strategy we can call the hit-and-run — saying dishonest stuff, then darting ahead to other dishonest stuff before the interviewer reacts.

Aka not letting other people get a word in. I just watched a 15 minute clip of the Swan interview, coronavirus section, and it’s maybe Trump’s one actual talent – the ability to keep the flow going no matter what nonsense he has to talk. … Read the rest

He’s bumpity-bumping down the stairs.

Donald Trump stumbled through his second damaging interview in as many weeks, floundering in a conversation with the news website Axios over key issues he is tasked with responding to as president.

…

In a lengthy discussion about the US’s poor response to coronavirus, Trump described the pandemic as “under control”.

Swan responded: “How? A thousand Americans are dying a day.”

“They are dying. That’s true. And you – it is what it is,” Trump said. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.”

Ohhhhhhhhhh I see, “under control” means “as under control as we can get it, which is zero, … Read the rest

More on the apparent “tragic death of non-existent person” hoax from Ed Cara at Gizmodo:

A bizarre saga of events played out on social media over the weekend, embroiling much of the close-knit world of scientists, academics, and researchers on Twitter. It started with accusations that Arizona State University’s actions had exposed one of their faculty members, an Indigenous woman and anthropologist, to an ultimately fatal case of covid-19. But it ended with allegations that the death was a hoax, carried out by someone who also faked the supposed professor’s entire existence.

Given that many colleges and schools are debating if and how it’s possible to reopen physically this fall in the midst of the pandemic, the accusations of negligence

How that went:

Interviewer: John Lewis is lying in state in the US Capitol, how do you think history will remember John Lewis?

Trump: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He chose, uh – I never met John Lewis, actually, I don’t believe.

Interviewer: Do you find him impressive?

Trump: [pause with mouth open and disdainful “tsk” sound] Uhhh…I can’t say one way or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive – but – [shrug] no – but I didn’t uh – [hands come up in accordion gesture; meanwhile interviewer is asking “Do you find his story … Read the rest

An ego that blots out the sun and an empathy that can’t be found with any tool of human inquiry.

.@jonathanvswan: "How do you think history will remember John Lewis?"

President Trump to #AxiosOnHBO: "I don't know…I don't know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration." pic.twitter.com/LDv76rrIFc

— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020

… Read the rest

Trump has been shouting at us again.

Donald Trump used his White House coronavirus press conference on Monday to repeat his opposition to lockdowns as a means of bringing the contagion under control, claiming falsely that under his leadership the US has done “as well as any nation”.

If by “as well as” he means “worse than” he’s right on the money.

On a day that the US had surpassed 4.7m confirmed cases of infection – more than a quarter of the global total – Trump tried to deflect criticism of his administration’s handling of the pandemic on to other countries.

Finland! Blame Finland! Also Senegal – why not? And how about Peru? Blame Peru!

He cited Spain, Germany,

Sir about those tax returns sir.

A New York City prosecutor fighting to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns told a judge Monday he was justified in demanding them because of public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”

In other words we have a hardened criminal as president of the US. Ain’t life grand.

Manhattan District Attorney District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. is seeking eight years of the Republican president’s personal and corporate tax records, but has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records, other than part of the investigation related to payoffs to two women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Trump.

Probably a thousand newspaper articles … Read the rest

Weird occurrences on social media.

There’s an advocacy person called BethAnn McLaughlin who founded MeTooSTEM.

MeTooSTEM has accomplished much since it was founded in 2018 to fight sexual harassment in academic science. Since November alone, according to the group’s accounting, it has engaged with more than 750 individuals requesting assistance, filed hundreds of open-records requests about harassment cases and made dozens of complaints to funding agencies regarding researchers’ conduct.

The group has visited some 20 campuses to discuss federal laws governing gender-based discrimination and sexual misconduct in education, put on webinars and awarded $12,000 to advocates for women in science. Its founder BethAnn McLaughlin, also received the Disobedience Award from Massachusetts Institute of Techonolgy’s Media Lab last year, alongside

Transwoman Dawn Ennis summons allies to bully the women who don’t want to include men in women’s sports:

Outsports has obtained the names of more than 300 women athletes who signed a letter sent to the Board of Governors of the National College Athletic Association last week, expressing their opposition to transgender inclusion.

No, not to “transgender inclusion”; to the inclusion of men in women’s sports. Include trans women by all means, but not competing against women.

The anti-trans group, Save Women’s Sports, collected the 309 names in the interest of pressuring the NCAA leadership ahead of its meeting this week.

The group is not anti-trans. It’s in the name – the group is pro-women’s sports.

In June, the NCAA

Originally a comment by Claire on Losing sight of women’s rights.

If you have not witnessed these kind of shenanigans, then you are lucky. I am aware of several, including stories about the infamous Wakefield autism paper that should have gotten the editor fired, although in this case it was the other way around.

Two people I know were reviewers, who roundly rejected the paper citing grave concerns about methodology, result and conclusions. One said to me that they didn’t even think the introduction was good, failing to cite some seminal work that would have rather undermined his central premise. Two bad reviews from respected authors in the field should have been enough to kill it. Instead the editor … Read the rest

Over 300 female athletes send a private letter to the organisation that regulates sporting opportunities for students in the US asking for a fair playing field for women and girls.

The private letter is leaked by trans activists. /1https://t.co/o7GA6I44ka

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 3, 2020

These bullying tactics are plain for all to see. These transgender activists care little for fairness or safety. They strong arm their way into women’s sports excluding women as they go. This is why women are scared to speak up. This is why we do what we do. /3

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) August 3, 2020

The courage of women who do speak up in this hostile environment must be celebrated and not condemned /5

From the Department of New Milestones for Women –

A transgender female prisoner received her gender confirmation surgery after three years of legal battles, her attorney Lori Rifkin confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

Adree Edmo has been in custody of the Idaho Department of Correction since 2012 and petitioned for her gender confirmation surgery in 2017.

She was convicted of sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy while he was sleeping, according to court records.

That is, he was convicted of sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy while he (the boy) was sleeping. That isn’t something a woman did, it’s something a man did. Statistics on crime need to be accurate. Women are much less likely to rape teenage boys than men … Read the rest

Goodness, he is cross.

Radical right-wing pastor Greg Locke is apoplectic after being told by the manager that he needs to wear a mask when getting his coffee at Dunkin Donuts. pic.twitter.com/tiFrNGRc83

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 30, 2020

… Read the rest

Barr’s performance on Capitol Hill last week underlined how thoroughly he works for Trump and not for us.

During the five-hour session on Capitol Hill in Washington this week, Barr made clear why he has been dubbed Donald Trump’s faithful protector and personal henchman. He defended using federal forces in US cities, denied giving Trump’s allies favorable treatment and demurred on issues such as foreign election interference or whether November’s poll can be postponed.

For critics, it was proof positive that Barr’s unswerving loyalty to the president has torn down the wall that separates the White House and justice department and ensures law enforcement operates independent of politics. Some believe he now poses an existential threat to democracy itself.

Oh look, how funny, haha.

Navy SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce used “Colin Kaepernick stand-in" for K-9 demonstration at fundraiser last year #BecauseFlorida https://t.co/COHFCeJ3GN pic.twitter.com/EpcELHxrSe

— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) August 2, 2020

K-9 demonstration of dogs attacking a guy in a Kaepernick shirt.

The Guardian reports the Navy says it’s sorry.

The US Naval Special Warfare Command said Sunday it is investigating a video that showed military working dogs attacking a stand-in wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey during a demonstration at the Navy Seal Museum last year.

The video, first posted to Instagram in January 2019, resurfaced on social media on Sunday morning. The caption read: “Colin Kaepernick stand in Josh gets attacked by 5 Navy SEAL dogs for