Trump is attacking California, again, for being on fire.

“I see again the forest fires are starting,” he said at a rally in swing-state Pennsylvania. “They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”

“Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us,” he added.

He wants to make “them” pay for it because California votes for Democrats plus it’s full of Those people – you know the ones.

“I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen,” Trump said on Thursday. “‘The environment, the environment,’ but they have massive fires again.”

Because of an extended drought and a heatwave and lightning strikes – and, yes, because of long-term patterns of development and agriculture that turn out to be unworkable in an arid state, but that’s not what Trump is talking about.

Trump’s suggestions have prompted head-scratching from experts who say his prescriptions — more raking, less water released into the ocean for environmental purposes — suggest he does not understand the science of wildfires.

Gee, ya think?

Proud to demand the end of women’s sport.

Navalny needs to get out of Russia. Putin has nailed the doors shut.

The Berlin-based Cinema for Peace Foundation organised an air ambulance to pick up Mr Navalny and bring him back to Berlin, where it said the Charite hospital was ready to treat him.

…

At a news conference in Berlin, Mr Navalny’s aide Leonid Volkov said at first doctors at the hospital had been helping to facilitate his transfer but abruptly stopped doing so.

“[It was] like something was switched off – like medicine mode off, cover-up operation mode on – and the doctors refused to co-operate any more, refused to give any information even to Alexei’s wife,” he said.

“The doctors who were helping to do the paperwork to make the transportation of Alexei to Charite possible started to say that he’s not any more transportable, he’s not any more stable, contradicting themselves.”

…

Yulia Navalnaya said she thought the Russian authorities were stalling so that evidence of any chemical substance would be lost.

Chemical substance? What chemical substance?

Ari Berman is reporting on DeJoy’s testimony.

Embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before the US Senate on Friday that he will not reinstall more than 600 mail sorting machines that have been removed under his leadership. Postal workers say the removal of these machines has contributed to major mail delays that could affect whether mail ballots are counted in the 2020 election.

He’s said he’ll stop taking any more out for now, since he got caught, but that’s all he’ll concede. It’s as if someone breaks into your house and the police show up and the intruder says “well ok I’ll leave now but all that stuff I stashed in my car before you got here? I’m keeping it.”

“Will you be bringing back any mail sorting machines that have been removed?” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) asked DeJoy during a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee.

“There is no intention to do that,” DeJoy testified. “They are not needed.”

They’re not needed if you have no desire to get the mail out in a timely fashion. Otherwise…they are.

Many of the machines have been removed in critical swing states: 59 in Florida, 58 in Texas, 34 in Ohio, 30 in Pennsylvania, 26 in Michigan, 15 in North Carolina, 12 in Virginia, 12 in Wisconsin, and 11 in Georgia. (This data was provided to Mother Jones by Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post, who have detailed removal of the machines.)

While some of the removals have been described as routine, many more machines have been removed this year compared to years past. “In 2018, for instance, the agency decommissioned about 3 percent of its Delivery Bar Code Sorters, or 125 machines,” the Post reported. “In 2019, it was 5 percent, or 186 machines. The 671 on this year’s list amounted to about 13 percent.”

Trump of course has come right out and said he wants to kneecap the mail in order to steal the election.

The BBC a couple of weeks ago:

Twelve months into her gender transition, Grace McKenzie was recruited out of the blue to join the Golden Gate Women’s rugby club in San Francisco.

Cue Rebecca Solnit to remind us how awesome and accepting San Francisco is.

McKenzie says playing rugby has given her a platform to “just focus on living and enjoying myself” – but a new proposal to ban trans women from women’s contact rugby could bring that to an end.

Because, oddly enough, women’s safety and right to fair competition is more important than one trans woman’s “platform to enjoy herself.”

“There’s a lot of rhetoric out there about where trans people fit into sports overall, and it really makes you question whether you have a place, especially as a trans woman playing women’s sports,” McKenzie told BBC Sport.

That’s because men are a danger to women in rugby and so should not play on women’s teams. It’s also because letting men play on women’s teams results in unfair competition. Women’s sport is for women, it’s not for giving men the happy. Men can get the happy in other ways.

“I think the fear of losing rugby as a community and supportive space has been weighing on me quite heavily,” said McKenzie. “There isn’t a moment I don’t worry about losing that access.”

Apparently the safety of the women on the team hasn’t been weighing on McKenzie at all. He worries about his access to the women’s team, but not about the women’s access to the women’s team. Let’s not forget that his presence on the team means there’s a woman who missed out. What about her access? Not his problem, apparently.

“I worry that other sporting federations will look at World Rugby and begin to second-guess the existing science that supports trans women’s inclusion in sport, and begin to make policies based out of a place of fear instead of a place of logic and reason,” said McKenzie.

What “existing science” would that be? Anyway the issue isn’t inclusion of trans women in sport, it’s inclusion of trans women in women’s sport. What is the logic and reason that concludes it’s a good idea to add men who identify as women in women’s sports?

“I would ask them to think about what it would be like to have something that you love, cared about and that brought meaning and happiness into your life taken away from you, and you had been told that that you weren’t able to access that based on who you are as a person,” said McKenzie.

Says the guy who is blithely ignoring the woman he is displacing. What if she loved it and cared about it and it brought meaning and happiness into her life? Where is McKenzie’s empathy for her?

Oh and let’s not forget Trump’s tax returns.

A federal judge on Thursday cleared the way for Manhattan’s top prosecutor to get Donald Trump’s tax returns, rejecting a last-ditch attempt by his lawyers to block a subpoena issued to his accounting firm.

US district judge Victor Marrero’s ruling echoes his prior decision in the case, which was upheld by the US supreme court last month. The high court returned the case to Marrero so Trump’s lawyers could get another chance to challenge the subpoena issued by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr.

Trump, through his lawyers, has argued that the subpoena was issued in bad faith, might have been politically motivated and amounted to harassment of him, especially since the wording mimicked the language in congressional subpoenas.

It’s an interesting way to try to shield yourself from the law – get elected president so that you can pretend any attention from the cops is “politically motivated.” Trump is a filthy crook no matter what the Manhattan DA’s motivation is.

What’s the deal with Stephen Miller? How did he get to be a racist fanatic?

Jean Guerrero’s new book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda follows Miller through a conservative media landscape where key figures — including right-wing radio talk-show host Larry Elder; David Horowitz, who founded the David Horowitz Freedom Center; and former Breitbart chief Steve Bannon — propelled the rise of a man who now influences who gets to be an American.

…

“I just became all the more fascinated with trying to understand how a descendant of Jewish refugees who grew up in Southern California — how does that person become the person crafting Trump’s harshest rhetoric and policies, targeting people fleeing violence and persecution, people like his own great-grandparents?” Guerrero tells NPR.

Because he’d rather be doing the violence and persecution than fleeing it?

Guerrero has found that while Miller and Trump seem to work well together, they are different: “Stephen Miller is a true ideologue. He’s a fanatic. He believes this stuff, whereas Trump is a lot more motivated by self-interest. But you do see that these two men coming together … they’ve been able to mutually benefit each other in a very unique way. In part, because Stephen Miller gets Donald Trump.”

Trump is more motivated by self-interest but at the same time he does enjoy the racist taunting for its own sake. He hasn’t done all the Deep Reading Miller has, but he’s all about the contempt and bullying and general trashiness. For him it’s fun, for Miller it’s ideology.

David Horowitz was a big influence.

[It’s] apparent from private correspondence that David Horowitz shared with me for the book, where you could see for years, David Horowitz shaping Stephen Miller’s career throughout college, getting him his first job on Capitol Hill, shaping [Donald] Trump’s rhetoric and policies through Miller. And he introduces him from a very young age to this idea that everything that we hold dear as Americans — you know, equality and freedom — that all of these things are thanks to white men and that there’s this unfair war on whiteness. … Stephen Miller was really taken with this idea.

Equality and freedom like for instance Mississippi in, say, 1850? That kind of equality and freedom? Like the Fugitive Slave Act? Like the Dred Scott ruling? Like the Trail of Tears?

Steve Bannon, he remembers when he met Stephen Miller, he remembered listening to his voice on the Larry Elder show in Los Angeles. You know, like so many other key figures who played a key role in shaping Trumpism, he had heard Stephen Miller. So he decides to help Stephen Miller get a platform for his ideas through the right-wing blog Breitbart, which Bannon was the head of at the time. And so, initially Stephen Miller had had some trouble on Capitol Hill getting his ideas through to journalists. Like, at first, he had been trying to derail the nomination to the Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor — the first woman of Latin American heritage to be nominated — by saying that her Latin American heritage would interfere with her ability to be an unbiased judge. 

Oh? Why would Latin American heritage do that when Euro American heritage apparently wouldn’t? How about Jewish American heritage – does that interfere with people’s ability to be unbiased? How about Japanese American? African American? Russian American? It’s a puzzle.

Miller and Trump both love violence – fantasy violence, but they’re now in positions to translate that into real violence toward other people.

Stephen Miller and Donald Trump really share this morbid fascination with violence. And that’s why you see Stephen Miller contributing these very vivid descriptions of demonizing violence into Trump’s rhetoric, you know, talking about migrants slaughtering little girls and just stuff that is supposed to make you feel afraid, and hatred towards migrants. And the other thing about their relationship is Stephen Miller consistently pushes Trump in the most aggressive direction when it comes to immigration policy and when it comes to his rhetoric. And Trump has learned to appreciate that, because whenever he has listened to a more moderate adviser, he ends up getting ridiculed by his base as — by his very hard-core base — as weak. And Trump hates that. He wants to be seen as a killer. You see him talking about this throughout his life, the importance of being a killer.

In reality he’s a giant marshmallow, but he’s also a sadist. It’s what makes him so intensely repulsive.

It’s saad, saad, he never hurdovum, never hurdovum, showboating, they were showboating, saad, he never hurdovum.

A tweet yesterday:

What proposal? You may think they said what proposal in a preceding tweet but they didn’t. Maybe they deleted something, maybe they’re just sloppy. I searched and found a BBC story from July 20.

World Rugby could ban transgender athletes from playing women’s rugby because of safety concerns.

It would be the first international sports federation to prohibit transgender women from competing.

World Rugby said it had undertaken a review of its “rugby-specific transgender guidelines” in light of the “latest peer reviewed research”.

It said it was committed to “ensuring a safe and inclusive playing environment at all levels of the game”.

You know, it shouldn’t be just safety. There should be zero argument about the safety aspect but safety is not the only reason men should not be allowed to play on women’s teams or compete against women. It should be about fairness as well as safety.

In a statement to BBC Sport, it added: “The latest peer reviewed research confirms that a reduction of testosterone does not lead to a proportionate reduction in mass, muscle mass, strength or power. These important determinants of injury risk and performance remain significantly elevated after testosterone suppression.”

Which is exactly why it should be about fairness as well as safety, but apparently that’s too much to ask.

A World Rugby transgender workshop in February sought a “comprehensive review” for the sport, bringing together experts from across the globe to look at a “rugby-specific framework for all, prioritising athlete welfare, inclusion and fairness”.

One of the experts to attend the workshop was Dr Nicola Williams, director of women’s rights advocacy group Fair Play for Women, who described World Rugby’s position as “trailblazing” if it goes ahead with the decision.

“The sensitivity around this issue around transgender issues, and the fear that people would be called transphobic for raising concerns has meant that most sporting bodies have buried their head in the sand on this,” she told BBC Sport.

In other words it’s not necessarily genuine agreement with the view that trans women should be “included” in everything related to women no matter what, but rather a desire not to be bullied and demonized, that causes so many organizations to jump when trans women say jump.

However, Loughborough University medical physicist and transgender woman Joanna Harper, who also attended the workshop, said she doesn’t feel a ban would be right.

Well it’s not Harper’s safety that’s at stake, is it, just as it’s not Harper’s right to fair competition that’s at stake.

“I certainly understand all of that and I think putting restrictions on trans-women is a reasonable thing to do but I certainly don’t agree with this idea of an outright ban,” she told BBC Sport.

Because hey it’s only the safety of women, and that obviously doesn’t matter enough.

So, International Gay Rugby says it “stands with our Trans & Non-Binary players in solidarity to protect their #RightToPlay” and the hell with women’s right to safety and fairness. Stonewall UK is right there in solidarity with them.

Proud. Stonewall is proud. Stonewall is proud to stand with International Gay Rugby to say fuck women’s safety, fuck fairness to women, let the men trample them into the mud if that’s what they want. Funny thing to be proud of.

Life under a dictator:

The Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny is in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit after a suspected poisoning.

“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into his tea,” his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, tweeted. “That was the only thing he drank this morning. The doctors say that the toxin was absorbed more quickly because of the hot liquid. Right now Alexei is unconscious.”

An outspoken critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Navalny was returning to Moscow by plane from Tomsk in Siberia when he began to feel ill. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk and he was taken to hospital. A mobile video shot on the plane showed medical personnel rushing onboard as a man screamed in agony.

Putin the Poisoner strikes again.

Several opposition figures have been targeted with poison since Putin came to power in 2000. Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer who defected to the UK, died in 2006 of radiation sickness after ingesting a lethal dose of polonium-210 slipped into his tea. One of the men accused in his poisoning is now an MP in Russia’s parliament. The opposition activist Petr Verzilov recently revealed a poisoning attempt against his life in Moscow in 2018.

Not to mention Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Seems to be a busy morning. Steve Bannon has been arrested for fraud, and a breaking news banner at the top of that story says a judge has thrown out Trump’s challenge to the Manhattan DA’s subpoena of his tax records. Also Trump melted down the rest of the way while watching the Dem convention last night.

So, Bannon.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been arrested after being charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through their campaign “We Build the Wall.” 

Bannon, along with three of his associates, w[as] indicted by investigators at the U.S. Southern District of New York on Thursday. They allege that the group of conservative leaders defrauded donors and that led to raising “more than $25 million to build a wall along the southern border of the United States,” according to the press release. 

This must have been written at top speed, because it’s full of mistakes and confusions, but I think we can get the drift.

The campaign was intended to raise money to help President Donald Trump fulfill a campaign promise of building a border wall along the border. Instead, prosecutors allege, that Bannon and his team profited off of the arrangement. 

Jeez, I don’t write that sloppily even when I’m in a hurry. Anyway, upshot is, prosecutors allege that Bannon and co skimmed a lot of the $$ and gave it to themselves, which is not permitted.

“The defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, said in a statement. “While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.

I suppose Trump has already posted the tweet that says he barely knows Bannon and fired him the very instant he realized what a Loser he is.

Philip Bump at the Post says why Trump’s failure to disavow QAnon is so dangerous:

The FBI was concerned enough about the emergence of “anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories” last May that it issued a formal intelligence bulletin to American law enforcement agencies. It warned of people being inspired to engage in “criminal and sometimes violent activity” by such philosophies, given that they “tacitly support or legitimize violent action.”

So Trump thinks they sound nice.

The spread of QAnon is seen by federal law enforcement as a threat to the public. There are obvious cases in which QAnon is used by disturbed individuals as a rationale for their action, as in the murder of a reputed Mob boss on Staten Island last year. This is the central concern, that fostering a belief that there exists a particularly evil group — its members defined by individual observers — will lead to some of those observers taking steps to confront the presumed evil. That some QAnon adherent will decide that some other person is part of the cabal Q is discussing. That is allegedly what happened on Staten Island.

Trump could have said that the theory was obviously not true and itself stood as a danger. He could have fervently denied that he or anyone in his administration was involved in any action like that Q describes. He could have indicated that his government was taking steps to contain the theory. But he didn’t. QAnon adherents like him and, hey, what’s wrong with being seen as a guy who wants to take on Satanic pedophiles?

Somebody has to, right? If they’re there. Anon says they are, and who is Trump to contradict them? They like him. He has no conceivable reason to contradict them.

Axios has more on Trump’s playdate with QAnon.

QAnon is a sprawling internet conspiracy theory that baselessly alleges that a powerful cabal of sex traffickers within the “deep state” is engaged in a global fight to take down Trump. The FBI identified fringe conspiracy theories, like QAnon, as domestic terrorist threats in 2019.

Why would sex traffickers want to take down Trump though? It’s not as if he’s a vocal opponent of sex trafficking or any other form of sexual exploitation.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a vocal supporter of QAnon, won the Republican nomination in Georgia’s deep-red 14th Congressional District runoff last week. Trump tweeted his congratulations and called her a “future Republican Star.”

Well he had to say something, and his vocabulary is small.

“I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much. Which I appreciate. But I don’t know much about the movement,” Trump said.

“I have heard that it is gaining in popularity and from what I hear … these are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on in places like Portland, and places like Chicago and New York and other cities and states.

“I’ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don’t like seeing it. So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me and they also would like to see problems in these areas, like especially in the areas that we’re talking about, go away.”

He’s got the intellect of a child, but all the greed and malice and venom and belligerence of an angry self-obsessed adult man. It’s not a good combination.

When informed that the crux of the theory is a belief that he is “secretly saving the world from this Satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals,” Trump responded, “Well I haven’t heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?”

It’s supposed to be a made-up thing, sir. It’s supposed to be a laughably silly conspiracy theory that makes no sense and is supported by no evidence, sir.

“If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there.”

Hahahaha no he’s not. He’s willing to flap his lips, that’s all. He’s “willing to put himself out there” to the extent of walking a few hundred yards with a heavy escort after gassing civilians to get them out of his way. That’s not what the rest of us call willingness to put oneself out there. He’s willing to tweet, sure, he’s willing to call names and bully and ridicule, but genuinely put himself out there, no.

Q maintains President Trump is secretly fighting a child-selling cabal in the U.S., though the conspiracy has spiraled to cover a vast array of claims, from JFK Jr. having faked his death to help Trump behind the scenes to the coronavirus being a hoax or a biological weapon engineered in either case by sinister elites.

The sinister elites is Trump.

Others are not quite so cheery about QAnon as Trump is.

I read some of that West Point one. It’s interesting.

Anyway it’s ok, a reporter explained it to Trump and he caught on perfectly.

And he says we are akshally, we’re saving the world, we’re saving the world from a radical left philosuffy that will destroy this country, an when this country is gonn, the rest of the world would follow – the rest of the world would follow. He gives that “uh huh yup it would” look that he gives when he’s pulling it out of his ass.

Trump is asked about QANON. His response is that they like him.

What else does he need to know? Nazis? “They like me very muccchh.” Mass murderers? “They like me very muccchh.” Pedophile rings? “They like me very muccchh.” Putin? “He likes me very muccchh.” Jeffrey Epstein? “He liked me very muccchh.” Michael Flynn? “He likes me very muccchh.”

Trump:

Jim Wright:

Guy who wanted you to inject bleach now wants you to buy shitty cheap tires made in a foreign country to own the libs.

Also, his MAGA hats are made in China.Remember when Republicans got mad and started throwing their Keurigs off balconies before they figured out they didn’t actually know how to make coffee for themselves?

Looking forward to Republican Pinterest where they offer tips on making your own tires from MAGA hats, MyPillows, and Alex Jones Yak Piss Boner Juice.

Also looking forward to responding to the next Republican who complains about “Cancel Culture.”

Doesn’t Trump usually try to present himself as the friend of the working stiff? Lot of jobs at Goodyear…

The verbal re-engineering continues. A self-described “Trans & Queer Centered Full-Spectrum Doula & Childbirth Educator” wants to know what you and you and YOU call that thing where you give a baby milk that your body produces and the baby derives nourishment thereby.

While we’re working to dispel stigma around feeding babies from our bodies this month, I just want to pipe up with a little reminder that this practice goes by many names for many different people! For some of us, it’s chestfeeding, for some of us it’s bodyfeeding, and for some of us it’s something else! What words do you use to talk about feeding your baby the milk that your body makes?

I gotta say, “bodyfeeding” sounds pretty gross. Too many options.

It’s a clothing line. Of course it is.

Amazon has removed a clothing line emblazoned with an offensive slogan referring to Kamala Harris from its website after complaints from Twitter users who branded it “unacceptable”.

The T-shirts, tank tops and hoodies which had the words “Joe and the hoe” written in red, white and blue in the style of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Harris’s campaign logo, were on sale for between $24.99 and $42.99.

Ok but you can’t seriously expect people to ignore the opportunity of a great rhyme can you? I mean it cries out for product placement. His name is Joe, and she is – ? Right? Come on. You know it’s what you were thinking too.

Meghan Murphy was also unimpressed by Solnit’s rhapsody on her own hippitude. (Do I like to beat everything to death? Yes, I do, why do you ask?) Meghan Murphy does excellent unimpressed.

The increasing banality of Solnit’s writing might explain why she published a 1700 word letter in The Guardian, in response to nothing and no one, never making clear why this and why now. Perhaps she has a hat from which she can pull hot takes, or perhaps a predictable and dull editor requested the polemic for clicks. A writer myself, it strikes me that these kinds of pieces are what happens when one runs out of things to say.

“Dear ladies who are fearful and hostile to trans women,” she begins. Which ladies, we will never know. One presumes Solnit has never encountered said ladies, personally, as she declines to offer examples. But that’s not the point. The point was to offer herself a way to launch into an advertisement of her own perceived Cool Girl-ness — the “I have black friends” version of queer politics. Much of the piece documents Solnit’s humble participation in San Fransisco’s LGBTQ scene, where everyone was kind, which I suppose is meant to comfort women who have concerns about, say, violent men raping women in prison and the complete dissolution of female sport.

While also at the same time making them feel small and pathetic for not being as hip and San Franciscoish as Rebecca Solnit. The whole piece simply reeked of that “I’m better than you” just barely not spelled out implication.

She claims, “Transphobes are always warning us that if trans people live in peace and legal recognition and even have rights, there will be terrible consequences,” which has never been true, not even once.

That was one of the major faults of the piece: the outright falsehoods. Murphy then tackles the bit where Solnit says we’re all fine, and asks if “Jessica” Yaniv’s victims are fine, if the girls losing out on scholarships because boys are taking their places in sport are fine, if women in prison with violent men are fine.

It’s not only the fact Solnit seems to believe we should just take her word for it, but that she seems not to believe in listening to any woman who might like her word considered fairly and accurately as well. To refuse to seek out evidence to support your own claims is bad enough for someone of Solnit’s stature, but to actively misrepresent and lie about what other women say and believe is worse.

It’s all too typical though.

That’s nice.

DeAnna Lorraine ran for Congress in Pelosi’s district; she lost the primary in March. She’s a self-employed “life and relationship coach.”

There was this the other day too:

What is wrong with people?