The law and order party, let’s not forget.

Ah yes, disdain for the idea that slavery was something of a mistake on the part of the people who colonized what became the US. (The forcible colonization also a mistake btw.)

“New” – it’s not new. As many wiser heads pointed out.

Journalist Garrett Graff on Fresh Air yesterday:

GROSS: Let’s start with a couple of the – what you consider most norm-breaking things President Trump has done so far to interfere with the transfer of power.

GRAFF: The biggest one has to just be the simple fact that he has not yet accepted the projected winner of the election being Joe Biden. This is a very different situation than we faced in 2000 with the Florida recount. The state victories across the country are definitive. They are decisive. And Joe Biden looks like he’s actually on his way to a comfortable victory in the Electoral College. And the fact that now, more than a week after the election, Donald Trump has not yet accepted that – he’s not yet given permission for Republican leaders to accept that and not yet given permission for the U.S. government to accept that – is deeply worrisome. There’s a second level of his norm-breaking that we are already beginning to see, which is one of the things that I had speculated about before the election, which is widespread firings of senior government officials, a housecleaning, if you will, among top national security and intelligence leaders in a way that is worrisome from the – a national security perspective amid a transition. We’ve never seen a president in a lame-duck period like this fire, for instance, the defense secretary.

And this is injecting a lot of uncertainty and instability into some very key American institutions at a moment where you are already facing uncertainty and instability amid a presidential transition.

They talk about Trump’s firing of Mark Esper, and the possibility that he did it because Esper said it was illegal and anti-democratic to use the military to quell protests the way Trump wanted to last summer. Trump may think Esper’s replacement will be willing to do what Esper rebuked Trump for wanting to do…which raises the interesting possibility of the US military protecting a full-blown coup by Trump.

GROSS: One of the things you speculate about, which may already be happening, is that President Trump can take revenge on the deep state in his lame-duck weeks. What do you mean by that?

GRAFF: Yeah. I mean, we have seen Donald Trump sort of rail against the government bureaucracy, the career civil servants in the military, in the intelligence community, across the rest of the federal government. And there are sort of two areas to be particularly concerned about in the final weeks of the Trump presidency. The first is, you know, the outright firings that he might make to try to corrupt decision-making in these final weeks, some of which we may already be seeing taking place at places like the Pentagon and the Defense Department.

The second is, basically, Donald Trump creating his own deep state opposition within the federal government. There’s a process that’s technically known in Washington jargon as burrowing in – when you have political appointees shift over into civil service roles, where people who would sort of ordinarily leave with an administration then are now sort of permanently part of the federal government. And we are beginning to see this take place in potentially some very worrisome positions.

I didn’t know they could do that. I thought civil service jobs had to be competitive.

GROSS: So the administrator of the General Services Administration, Emily Murphy – who’s a Trump appointee – she has to formally recognize Biden as the president-elect before the transfer of power can actually begin. She’s declined to do that so far. So that’s what is blocking all the transition funding. That’s what’s blocking Biden’s ability to get the presidential daily briefing. It’s what’s blocking his ability to get the funding to launch his new administration. How unprecedented is this?

GRAFF: Totally unprecedented. We’re already calling Joe Biden the president-elect, but there are really two moments where a president officially and legally becomes president-elect. And the first is when he is designated by the GSA administrator as the president-elect in a process that’s known as ascertainment, that the GSA administrator has to ascertain that he is the likely winner of the Electoral College vote and sends him a letter basically saying, Dear Joe Biden, it looks like you are going to be the next president of the United States; you are now officially the president-elect.

And as you said, that unlocks millions of dollars in transition funding for him. It unlocks government office space for his transition staff, government email addresses, government cellphones – I mean, sort of all of the information that agencies and departments have prepared for the transition. It gives his staff the legal authority to show up at agencies and departments and begin to talk with government officials. And it unlocks their ability to receive classified information, including, as you said, the president’s daily brief, the daily intelligence briefing prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In other words Trump is sabotaging everything – sabotaging in the literal sense.

GROSS: Now, I think you said that the head of the General Service Administration, Emily Murphy, is waiting for Trump to concede before she certifies Joe Biden as the president-elect. But does she legally have to wait for Trump to concede before certifying Biden?

GRAFF: Not at all. This is a decision that she alone can make at any time. She can ascertain, officially, Joe Biden as the president-elect whenever she wants, and the fact that she has not is troubling and worrisome and goes against, you know, decades of normal practice of the federal government.

Populism in action.

This is nuts.

[O]ne thing Biden cannot do at this point is move into any government office space or receive government funding for the transition.

A key, if little-known Trump administration official has yet to determine formally that Biden won the election, holding up some crucial resources traditionally available to the president-elect.

Under the 1963 Presidential Transition Act, it’s up to the General Services Administration, or GSA, to determine or “ascertain” the winner of the presidential election, at least as far as starting the process of turning over the keys to the new administration goes.

…

In a statement, the GSA said its administrator “ascertains the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.”

Spoiler: the winner is clear.

The Associated Press and other news organizations reported that Biden gained the electoral votes needed to win the election on Saturday, but President Trump has so far refused to concede and has falsely claimed widespread voter fraud. His team has launched a wave of lawsuits challenging various aspects of the election.

…

Being ascertained as the winner means the president-elect gets office space in each government agency to begin the transition process, along with computers and $9.9 million to begin hiring transition personnel.

In other words being able to get started on the actual work, as opposed to standing around wasting time and falling behind.

David Marchick, who directs the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, said there are important real-world implications for a delayed transition. Marchick points to the delay in the transition to the George W. Bush administration after the Supreme Court ruling.

“That slowed the process of the Bush administration getting their national security team in place. Eight months later, we had 9/11,” Marchick said. “When the 9/11 Commission did their autopsy on what went wrong, one of the things they pointed to was the slow pace of the Bush administration getting their national security team in place. And they said it impaired our ability to react.”

But what does that matter compared to Trump’s ego?

How about that.

Here’s the full statement:

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result. 

“When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.

“Other security measures like pre-election testing, state certification of voting equipment, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) certification of voting equipment help to build additional confidence in the voting systems used in 2020.

“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”

Axios on Trump’s big plans:

President Trump has told friends he wants to start a digital media company to clobber Fox News and undermine the conservative-friendly network, sources tell Axios.

Which is interesting, since he wouldn’t be where he is if it weren’t for Fox.

Some Trump advisers think Fox News made a mistake with an early call (seconded by AP) of President-elect Biden’s win in Arizona. That enraged Trump, and gave him something tangible to use in his attacks on the network.

“Tangible”? I’m not seeing the tangibility. Or the merit, or the reasonability, or anything of that type.

“He plans to wreck Fox. No doubt about it,” said a source with detailed knowledge of Trump’s intentions.

What a guy.

The Age (the Australian paper) has more:

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp shares tumbled with speculation ramping up that President Donald Trump might back or launch a rival news service after he leaves office.

American news site Axios reported on Thursday, citing unidentified sources, that Trump is planning a subscription-based streaming platform similar to Fox Nation, a $US6-a-month service launched two years ago.

Fox shares declined from the start of trading, and the drop deepened after Trump amplified a series of Twitter posts from users criticising Fox News as insufficiently loyal to the president and urging conservatives to switch to rivals such as Newsmax

Nice of him to spend his time trying to create a new career when he’s supposed to be working for us.

H/t Omar

But…who on earth would want to go on a cruise now? And what cruise line would want to risk it?

These people and this cruise line:

One of the first cruise ships to ply through Caribbean waters since the pandemic began ended its trip early after one passenger fell ill and is believed to have Covid-19, officials said on Thursday.

The SeaDream is carrying 53 passengers and 66 crew, with the majority of passengers hailing from the US, according to Sue Bryant, a cruise ship reporter who is aboard the ship.

She told the Associated Press that one passenger became sick on Wednesday and forced the ship to turn back to Barbados, where it had departed from on Saturday. However, the ship had yet to dock in Barbados as local authorities tested those on board.

Gee maybe they’ll get to be quarantined for weeks on the ship.

Bryant said passengers were required to have a negative PCR test to enter Barbados and underwent another test on the dock administered by the ship’s doctor.

“We all felt very safe,” she said, adding that the ship had been implementing strict hygiene protocols. “Yet somehow, Covid appears to have got on board.”

The fact that they all felt safe is not relevant. A virus doesn’t ask if people feel safe or not, it just does what it does.

Waters around the Caribbean have been largely bereft of cruise ships this year, with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspending cruise ship operations at US ports in mid-March. The no-sail order expired on 31 October.

And some fools rushed to take the risk.

That’s not good.

It drives me kind of nuts that Paltrow does this. It’s the same kind of abuse of “celebrity” and money and the power they bring that Trump indulges in. She has no medical training, but she sets herself up as a purveyor of “health”-bestowing consumer goods, based on…nothing. Flowery language, hype, psychobabble, bullshit, vague unpindownable claims. Fraud, in short.

Goop is all excited about goop press.

While we spend a lot of our reading time online, we’re book fans. And some content simply merits a book cover. At the end of 2015, we launched a book imprint because we wanted to share the perspectives of the incredible scientists, healers, and teachers we meet in our pursuit of individual and collective well-being.

What is “well-being”? It’s whatever Gwyneth Paltrow says it is, I suppose. Fasting! Let’s have some “intuitive” fasting! Nothing at all dangerous about that.

It’s too late.

]A]ccording to a new modeling study published in Scientific Reports today, even if we made such drastic reductions permanent, it would still not be enough. The study shows that if we stopped all human-made greenhouse gas emissions immediately, the Earth’s temperatures would continue to rise because of self-sustaining melting ice and permafrost. These “feedback loops” — in which melting ice causes less sunlight to be reflected back into space, which in turn raises temperatures and causes more ice melt — have already been set into motion, the researchers argue.

I read something about it a couple of days ago – the melting tundra. It’s melting so fast and there’s so much of it that it’s going to dump more carbon than we can possibly compensate for even at zero emissions – aka it’s too late.

Humanity “is beyond the point-of-no-return when it comes to halt the melting of the permafrost using greenhouse gas cuts as the single tool,” Jørgen Randers, PhD, professor emeritus of climate strategy at BI Norwegian Business School and lead author of the study, tells Future Human.

For decades, climate scientists have tried to predict the so-called tipping point at which it would be too late to stop global warming — too late to limit the amount the temperature rises, the amount of sea level rise, and the number of lives claimed by both and other climate-induced ecological disasters — through reducing carbon emissions alone. Climate scientists point to either 2030 or 2050 as deadlines for the world to get to zero emissions before runaway climate change kicks in. But according to the new study, no matter how much we reduce emissions now, he says, warming will continue, and the self-sustained melting of Arctic ice and permafrost that has already begun could continue for 500 years.

It’s not 2050 or 2030 or even 2020; we passed it some time ago.

Will carbon sequestration save the day? Well…

To stop self-sustained melting — and the expected rise in temperature and sea level after emissions cease — Randers says the world must undertake a massive effort to capture carbon out of the atmosphere and store it back underground, a technology known as carbon sequestration. And we would have to start sucking at least 33 gigatons out of the air every year, starting this year. For comparison, all animal life on Earth collectively weighs an estimated two gigatons.

It’s kind of a big job.

Trump is “dejected.” Also sulky, whiny, petulant, lazy, irresponsible, stupid, and self-absorbed.

Trump himself was waffling by the hour and day between a pugilistic desire to keep fighting and a more resigned attitude that his efforts will ultimately fail, people who spoke to him said.

Pugilistic? No. Bullying, self-indulgent, narcissistic, piggy, unreasonable, obstinate, dumb, bratty.

But surveyed by CNN, nearly everyone close to Trump said they believed it was only a matter of time before he finds some way to acknowledge he will not be president come January 20 — and said he was likely to pin blame on his baseless claims of a rigged election.

He’s never going to concede, he’s just (at best) going to say he was driven out. It’ll be post-Versailles Germany all over again.

Inside the White House, the current period has taken on the feeling of interregnum, as staffers feel obliged to continue their work and even celebrate Trump’s perceived victory while the President largely discontinues his own official tasks.

Which being translated means “while Trump does zero work.”

His adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are encouraging him to continue waging battle, arguing his supporters want to see him keeping up the pressure and that he has little to lose. But others, including their sister Ivanka, have sent a more calibrated message, asking whether it was worth damaging his legacy and potentially his businesses to continue his refusal to concede.

“Calibrated.” Please. The princess is not better than the rest of them.

Trump has spent ample time in front of the TV watching coverage of Biden’s transition, including his public remarks describing Trump’s reluctance to concede an “embarrassment.” He was thrilled when he saw Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mention a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration” during a news conference on Tuesday, one person who spoke to him said.

But he has been dismayed to see foreign leaders, including those he considered friends such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, move swiftly toward congratulating Biden.

He thought they were “friends.” He doesn’t have any friends.

I guess I’d better never go to Norway.

Bi, trans, and nonbinary folks in Norway are celebrating a huge win after the country recently expanded its penal code that previously only protected lesbian and gay people from hate speech to include gender identity and all forms of “sexual orientation.”

…

The penal code states that those who are guilty of hate speech face a fine or up to a year in jail for private comments, and a maximum of three years in jail for public remarks. Furthermore, those charged with violent crimes that are motivated by a victim’s orientation or gender identity will receive harsher sentences.

Since all disputing the dogma around what “trans” means is treated as “transphobic” that means gender critical feminists will be forced to shut up, even in private.

Or will it.

Still, not everyone is happy about the aggressive approach Norway is taking when it comes to LGBTQ+ protections. Some opponents believes the amendments threaten free speech. But as Anine Kierulf, an assistant professor of law at the University of Oslo, explained to Reuters, the statements have to hit a lot of benchmarks to be prosecuted.

“There are a lot of very hateful things you can say about the protected groups,” she said. For prosecution comments must be direct attacks against LGBTQ+ people or include language that intentionally dehumanizes them to the public.

How can remarks in private include language that intentionally dehumanizes people to the public? And who decides what “direct attacks against LGBTQ+ people” means?

THE great delusion of our time –

Nope.

(Also the reminder isn’t “friendly” but that’s another subject.)

Sure, in lots of ways we know more about ourselves than anyone else does, not least because we care more than anyone else does. But by the same token we also distort what we think we know about ourselves, also because we care more than anyone else does.

And there are some things – important things – we can’t know about ourselves as well as other people do. We can’t know how we come across to other people as well as other people do.

A second point: even if we are unusually good at self-knowledge, even if we do make every effort to correct for ego and vanity and self-protection, there is still nothing magic about knowledge-of-self that means we can be something impossible if we believe it fiercely enough. We can fantasize, but we can’t do magic. We can’t become the Chrysler building or a typhoon or a cheeseburger by thinking or believing.

Remember kids – most of the money goes right into Trump’s pocket.

As President Donald Trump seeks to discredit last week’s election with baseless claims of voter fraud, his team has bombarded his supporters with requests for money to help pay for legal challenges to the results: “The Left will try to STEAL this election!” reads one text.

But any small-dollar donations from Trump’s grassroots donors won’t be going to legal expenses at all, according to a Reuters review of the legal language in the solicitations.

A donor would have to give more than $8,000 before any money goes to the “recount account” established to finance election challenges, including recounts and lawsuits over alleged improprieties, the fundraising disclosures show.

Where does it go when it’s under 8 grand?

A large portion of the money goes to “Save America,” a Trump leadership PAC, or political action committee, set up on Monday, and the Republican National Committee (RNC). Under Federal Election Commission rules, both groups have broad leeway in how they can use the funds.

In other words it goes to a slush fund for Trump.

Leadership PACs such as Save America are often set up by prominent political figures to spend money on other candidates, while also paying for personal expenses, such as travel and hotel stays.

And we know Trump. He’ll be using it to pay for all his personal expenses.

Scrolling down the page would take a donor to the fine print, which shows that donations are split between “Save America,” which gets 60% of the money, and the RNC, which gets the other 40%. None of the money flows to Trump’s official “recount” committee fund until Trump’s Save America share reaches the legal contribution limit of $5,000, according to the disclosures.

That means that, before a dollar goes into the recount fund, Save America would receive $5,000 and the RNC around $3,300. Donations to the recount committee are legally limited to $2,800.

In short they’re promoting it for one thing but using it for another. This was already reported but I for one didn’t know that none of the money goes to the purported goal unless the donation is more than 8k.

Darrell Scott, an Ohio pastor who helped found the National Diversity Coalition for Trump and served on the president’s 2016 transition team, says he sees no problems with diverting the money to the leadership PAC or the RNC.

“I see this as two pockets on the same pair of pants. It doesn’t matter if it goes into the left or the right pocket,” Scott said. “In the end, the money will be used for a legitimate purpose that his supporters will get behind.”

The loose morals of the clergy; it’s a sad thing to see.

Bill Kristol’s view:

Dying days of a personality cult.

Now about this coup at the Defense Department and how scared we should be…

Politico finds it pretty alarming:

The firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper kicked off a rapid-fire series of high-level departures at the Pentagon on Tuesday, setting off alarms on Capitol Hill that the White House was installing loyalists to carry out President Donald Trump’s wishes during an already tense transition.

In quick succession, top officials overseeing policy, intelligence and the defense secretary’s staff all had resigned by the end of the day Tuesday, replaced by political operatives who are fiercely loyal to Trump and have trafficked in “deep state” conspiracy theories.

Anybody who’s “fiercely loyal” to Trump is a danger in government.

Fears continue to swirl over what these newly installed leaders will do as Trump fights the results of last week’s election, and after he has shown he is willing to use troops to solve political problems.

Tuesday’s exodus led one top Democrat to accuse the administration of gutting the Pentagon in a way that could be “devastating” for national security.“It is hard to overstate just how dangerous high-level turnover at the Department of Defense is during a period of presidential transition,” said House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith.

“If this is the beginning of a trend — the President either firing or forcing out national security professionals in order to replace them with people perceived as more loyal to him — then the next 70 days will be precarious at best and downright dangerous at worst.”

Well, great. Do we just sit and watch, or what?

All told, the moves are stoking concerns that those who would serve as guardrails against rash Trump decisions have left the building, even though Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley has said repeatedly that politics holds no place in the military. Milley, for his part, has been able to push back on Trump’s threats to deploy active troops to deal with unrest, and demands from the White House to accelerate the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, all while keeping his job.

Julian Borger in the Guardian:

Extreme Republican partisans have been installed in important roles in the Pentagon, following the summary dismissal of the defense secretary, Mark Esper, at a time Donald Trump is refusing to accept his election defeat.

Democrats immediately demanded explanations for the eleventh-hour personnel changes and warned that the US was entering dangerous “uncharted territory” with the reshuffling of key national security roles during a presidential transition.

I think it’s considered, at a minimum, bad manners for the lame duck to make big changes after the election. With Trump of course the problem is never minimal.

However defence experts argued there was little the new Trump appointees could do to use their positions to the president’s advantage, given the firm refusal of the uniformed armed services to get involved in domestic politics.

There; that’s what I wanted to know. He’s making messes but there’s a limit to what he can do.

The fate of CIA director, Gina Haspel, was also in question. In a show of support, Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell invited Haspel to his office on Tuesday and Republican Senator John Cornyn tweeted: “Intelligence should not be partisan”. But he was attacked on Twitter by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, who asked if he or other Republicans backing Haspel had “actually discussed this with anyone in the Admin[istration] who actually works with her … or are you just taking a trained liar’s word for it on everything?”

What does the president’s idiot son on Twitter have to do with anything?

Former officials and military analysts argued that the post-election changes, while highly unusual, were not a reason to fear that the Pentagon would be weaponised in Trump’s desperate efforts to hold on to power.

“Remember all the senior military officers are still there,” said Mark Cancian, a retired US marine colonel and former senior defence official. “Their attitudes remain the same. They’ve been quite emphatic that the role of the military is very limited in civilian civil disturbances.”

Eugene Gholz, a former senior adviser in the Pentagon and the author of US Defense Politics: The Origins of Security Policy, agreed: “Among military officers at all ranks it is deeply, deeply ingrained that the military is not used for settling politics.”

Gonna be a long 70 days.

Trump is sulking.

President Trump made his first official public appearance since Election Day on Wednesday, observing Veterans Day in a traditional wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

Trump, who is defying declarations that he lost his reelection bid, did not speak at the event.

The president and his entourage – including first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Pence and second lady Karen Pence – did not arrive at the tomb until well after the scheduled start time of 11 a.m. ET.

The motorcade was still driving when the gun salute to veterans went off. It seems just a tad disrespectful, especially when we know he’s not doing anything other than trying to undo the election.

It wasn’t until nearly 11:25 that the president appeared on a walkway in front of the tomb, where he stood alongside Pence in a steady rain. Trump walked toward the wreath, laid a hand on it, paused and then returned to his spot. The ceremony was over soon afterwards. It was the only event listed on the president’s public schedule for Wednesday.

And he couldn’t be bothered to show up on time for it, or do much of anything when he got there.

Trump and several other administration officials did not wear face masks, despite Arlington National Cemetery requirements that state, “All visitors are to follow social distancing requirements and wear face coverings while on cemetery grounds. Anyone not having a face covering in their possession at cemetery entry points will not be granted access to the cemetery.”

He’s thorough in his negligence.

More and more people are telling Trump to stop being a whiny bratty fool.

Pressure is mounting on Donald Trump to accept the results of the presidential election, after every major news outlet called the race for Joe Biden. The Democratic presidential-elect’s lead in the popular vote also continues to grow, now surpassing 5 million votes.

A number of world leaders have called Biden to congratulate him on his victory, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson referred to Trump as the “previous president” while speaking in Parliament today.

Biden leads by tens of thousands of votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

The Post reports:

[E]ven some of the president’s most publicly pugilistic aides, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, and informal adviser Corey Lewandowski, have said privately that they are concerned about the lawsuits’ chances for success unless more evidence surfaces, according to people familiar with their views.

Trump met with advisers again Tuesday afternoon to discuss whether there is a path forward, said a person with knowledge of the discussions, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. The person said Trump plans to keep fighting but understands it is going to be difficult. ‘He is all over the place. It changes from hour to hour,’ the person said. …

Give it up, Don. You’re toast.

Princess Ivanka is celebrating!

Oooooh! Exciting!

See also:

I guess she missed that one.

More hot air and confusion:

Hambling told PA Media that the statue was every woman and clothes would have restricted her to a time and place. “It’s not a conventional heroic or heroinic likeness of Mary Wollstonecraft. It’s a sculpture about now, in her spirit,” she said.

Bee Rowlatt, a writer who has been a central figure in the fight to have a statue of Wollstonecraft, said the statue represented “an idea of collaboration” and the birth of feminism.

How? How does it represent that? Who would look at it and see that? And anyway it’s supposed to be about Mary Wollstonecraft, not collaboration or generalized feminism. It’s so classic, in a way – this falling into the trap of agreeing that women must not stand out, women must support the group and never the self. By all means create monuments to collaboration and solidarity and the birth of movements. The more the better! But don’t hijack a monument to a specific woman for the purpose. That’s just yet another erasure, and erasure is what we’re trying to end.