Pompeo is talking to the Senate foreign relations committee.

Mike Pompeo has been questioned on the decision announced yesterday to pull nearly 12,000 US troops out of Germany, bringing 6,400 of them back to the US, and how that squared with Pompeo’s claims to be leading a tough policy towards Russia. He confirmed the state department was “very involved at the strategic level” but argued that bringing the troops home did not mean they were “off the field.”

Uh…that’s exactly what it means.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked him whether the impact on relations with Germany had been taken into account, to which Pompeo replied: “This is personal for me I fought on the border of East Germany when I was a young soldier I was stationed there.”

Pompeo was stationed in West Germany as an army lieutenant in the late eighties. There was no fighting there.

Hey it was a moral fight! A political fight. A spiritual fight.

Mitt Romney, who continues to be the only Republican senator to seriously challenge the administration, picked up the issue in his own remarks, saying: “I have heard from the highest levels of the German government that this is seen by them as an insult to Germany, and I can’t imagine, at a time when we need to be drawing in our friends and allies so that we can collectively confront China, we want to insult them.”

We don’t, maybe, but Trump does. Trump threw a handful of candies at Angela Merkel; I think it’s safe to say he’s happy to offend Germany.

Rape is basically not a crime except in very rare cases.

The number of people prosecuted and convicted for rape has fallen to the lowest level since records began, prompting outrage and concern from campaigners, who say the crime is being decriminalised.

People? They mean men. Women can’t rape. It’s men who are being allowed to rape with impunity, not people.

Prosecutions and convictions more than halved in three years while rapes increased. Fewer rape cases were referred by police and in turn the Crown Prosecution Service took an even smaller number of those cases to court.

Police recorded 55,130 rapes but there were only 2,102 prosecutions and 1,439 convictions in England and Wales in 2019-20. Three years earlier, 41,616 rapes were recorded, a third less than currently, and there were 5,190 prosecutions and 2,991 convictions.

…

Sarah Green, the director of the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition, said: “Today’s figures show starkly that we are right to say rape has been effectively decriminalised. What else can you call a 1 in 70 chance of prosecution?

“The DPP’s constant exhortation to victims that they must come forward is frankly too much to take. How can he say that in any sincerity when the outcomes are so disastrous and when he is casting doubt on previous prosecutions?”

Thursday’s figures also show the highest conviction rate on record, at 68.5%. The data prompted critics to argue that the high conviction rate is a clear result of a covert policy change in how rape cases are treated.

In other words they’ve become more risk-averse: they’re upping their conviction rate by prosecuting fewer cases. If the result is that rapists feel pretty confident that they’ll get away with it, well, that’s just the price someone has to pay.

Maybe now they will pay attention?

Herman Cain, a onetime Republican presidential candidate and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, has died from coronavirus, according to an obituary sent from his verified Twitter account and Newsmax, where he was launching a television show.

I wonder how he caught it.

As a co-chair of Black Voices for Trump, Cain was one of the surrogates at President Donald Trump’s June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma — which saw at least eight Trump advance team staffers in attendance test positive for coronavirus. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh has told CNN that Cain did not meet with Trump at the Tulsa rally.

Trump was out face to facing with people in Texas yesterday, not wearing a mask.

Oh no, it turns out Kamala Harris is too ambitious to be Vice President. So unlike Biden, who thinks he’s just the right guy to be president even though he’s 78 years old and has a scary shiny facelift.

… reporting on deliberations inside the campaign suggests their decision-making is being shaped by the same sexist concerns about women in leadership that helped keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House four years ago. While it’s unclear if the accounts are accurate or present a complete picture, the story they tell is deflating, familiar, and harmful—that the campaign is distrustful of women who are ambitious or who otherwise display leadership traits that somehow don’t seem to bother people when exhibited by men. They want a woman, just not that kind of woman. Sound familiar? 

The issue seems to mainly come up in talk of Kamala Harris, the California senator and former presidential contender. Harris has been the most obvious choice for months because she checks so many boxes; she has plenty of experience, she’s endured the national spotlight, and she’s a woman of color just like the base of the Democratic Party.

But uh oh, uh oh – she’s ambitious. (How can you do a job like that if you’re not ambitious? It’s not a slacker kind of thing.)

Ambition, campaign insiders fret, might drive her somehow to be disloyal to Biden, meaning she can’t be trusted. In one Politico article, someone described as a “close Biden ally” explained that the problem with Harris (and, for that matter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren) is that she is not a team player. The story does not attempt to explain why she isn’t a team player, and instead just takes for granted that the junior senator from California, who has co-sponsored lots of legislation alongside other senators, is somehow not a team player. This designation, without any explanation, sounds a lot like a euphemism for female ambition and the fears tied up in it.

Besides, being a “team player” isn’t really part of the job description, is it? Isn’t that part of the point? It’s not the Congress, it’s the presidency. (The whole thing is turning out to be a mistake, given the havoc a narcissistic moron can create with it, but until we change it that’s what it is.)

Biden is one of the most ambitious politicians alive; he served in the Senate for decades, ran for president twice, served as vice president, and then in his seventh decade decided to run for president again. Now, somehow, he reportedly thinks that an ambitious woman won’t support him even as he desires—as his confidants whisper to the press—a vice president like he was to President Barack Obama…

… It seems like the ultimate insult to a woman vice presidential pick that in order to clinch the post she has to convince the campaign that she possesses just the right amount of ambition—enough to rise to the top tier of American politics but not so much that she cannot be trusted to actually do the vice president’s job of putting the president first.

Well let’s face it, women just can’t be trusted.

Chase Strangio is not an honest interlocutor.

That’s not honest. He’s telling a lie. (Sue me, Chase!) We don’t want trans people to die, and what would be the point of wanting them to “disappear”? People don’t “disappear.” We want trans people to stop trying to force us to share or agree with or endorse or celebrate or act in accordance with their magical claims about themselves. That’s all. We want trans women to stop trying to take over women’s spaces, prizes, shortlists, awards, firsts, and the like. We want trans women to stop trying to appropriate the category “woman.” That’s all.

ACLU publicists should not tell lies, and they should especially not tell lies about a category of people that has had to struggle to get the civil liberties that are seen as the birthright of men.

More on Trump’s “you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood” tweet.

Because he didn’t want to bother his tenants by making them live among people who were not white.

All those perfectly good babies going to waste in a Kyiv hotel because the borders are closed.

In a cash-strapped economy however, where the average wage is £300 a month and the war with Russia and its proxies continues, many impoverished women, especially in small towns and rural areas, are still lining up to carry babies for money, even if they are paying a heavy health and psychological price, as campaigners believe.

And people who want babies are lining up to pay those impoverished women to do it.

There are no official statistics, but it is estimated that several thousand children are born to surrogate mothers in Ukraine each year. Eighty per cent of these babies are for foreign couples, who choose Ukraine because the process is legal and cheap.

And women are machines for making babies.

I think trans women should take over this kind of work.

Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose.

Sometimes it can seem as if Trump almost gets it…is sort of kind of paying attention…is managing to look as if he’s doing his job for a few minutes – but then he always talks to someone else and it all falls apart again.

Midday [on Monday], Fauci and others gathered in the Oval Office to update Trump on the 30,000-person Phase 3 trial launched by Moderna. Trump later told reporters it was a “great meeting” and participants walked away believing the President was sincere in his efforts to convey more leadership on the outbreak.

“We had a lot of our wonderful doctors and researchers with me,” Trump said. “I think the meeting went really well.”

While the meeting focused almost exclusively on the vaccine trial, and not on Trump’s response to the virus more broadly, it seemed to participants like the President was engaged — unlike some previous meetings that became derailed with unrelated topics and complaints.

Hold your breath…tiptoe…nobody say anything – oops no it didn’t work.

But as the day progressed, Trump heard from several others who reinforced a different message than the one being offered by the administration’s health experts. His hawkish trade adviser Peter Navarro — who recently published an op-ed in USA Today trashing Fauci without running it past the White House but was never formally reprimanded — traveled alongside Trump to North Carolina, where the President broke with health experts by calling on governors to reopen.

“I really do believe a lot of the governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening,” Trump said, countering the advice being offered by Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx for states to rethink how they are lifting restrictions.

So the midday meeting might as well not have happened.

The same day, Trump spoke with Robert Herring, the chief executive of far-right OANN, about an unproven anti-malarial that Trump has long touted and even took himself, despite a lack of clear evidence on its efficacy in preventing or treating Covid.

“Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to President Trump about hydroxychloroquine,” Herring later wrote on Twitter. “I gave him a list of doctors we have interviewed. I know he wants to help & put people back to work. Hope he talks to real doctors & not Dr. ‘Farci.’ ”

Yes, it’s Fauci who’s not a real doctor and people who promote random medications for no clear reason who really know their medical stuff.

An item in the latest Week in the War on Women made my hair stand on end:

Twitter user, Sarah Stuart, shared her experience of an online gender workshop she attended.

Wait what? A workshop on “gender identity” for KIDS 6 TO 12???

That’s not a “workshop,” that’s indoctrination. That’s brainwashing. That’s grooming.

Participants received a Zoom meeting link, without password, and an email warning that adults must ‘remain silent observers’. Sarah Stuart reports that most of the children onscreen were without supervision and only one had an adult present.

The workshop trainer was a trans identified female and trans rights activist called Joshua Jernigan. Based in North Carolina, Jernigan founded the Gender Education Network, an organization with “A goal to educate everyone about gender diversity”.

I wonder how Josh feels about the receding hairline.

Jernigan told the watching children that JK Rowling’s recent statements were “harmful” and “wrong” and the ensuing workshop was full of ideological rhetoric; sex is a spectrum, “same-gender attraction” supplants homosexuality, being a woman is not defined by biology, “deadnaming” and “misgendering” are verboten etc. Jernigan also discussed hormones, surgery and social transitioning and told children that they can change their pronouns as often as they like; ‘Try it on and see if it fits’.

I read the whole thread. It’s creepy as fuck.

All bluster and no mask.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, has tested positive for coronavirus, a person familiar with the situation told CNN on Wednesday.

Gohmert has frequently refused to wear a mask while at the Capitol amid the pandemic. He has spent ample time on the House floor during votes speaking to aides and lawmakers — without a mask or social distancing.

Well he’s a Republican you see. Republicans are for statues of pro-slavery generals and federal agents beating up non-violent protesters, and against environmental protections and masks during a pandemic. Principle first!

Gohmert had been scheduled to fly aboard Air Force One on Wednesday with President Donald Trump to Midland, Texas, where the President is fundraising and touring an oil rig. He tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday morning during a pre-flight screening at the White House, a person familiar with the situation told CNN. Because of the positive test, Gohmert is not traveling with the President.

A senior Republican aide told CNN the test results have caused issues on the Hill where “a lot of staffers” were ordered to get tests before they can go to meetings and resume activity. Some are sequestering in their offices until they can get tested. Gohmert’s office notified Republican leaders, who notified House medical staff and the protocol kicked in for further notification, the GOP aide said.

Made all the more urgent by the fact that Gohmert mostly didn’t wear a mask.

Gohmert told CNN last month that he didn’t wear a mask because he had been tested and he didn’t yet have the virus. “But if I get it, you’ll never see me without a mask,” he said.

Which is idiotic, because you can spread it before you test positive, and you can also spread it after you test negative but before you get another test. It’s not the case that a negative test means “there is no chance that you will spread the virus before the next time we test you.”

He is just one of several conservative Republicans who have pushed back on mask-wearing, sometimes causing tension during committee meetings.

During Tuesday’s hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler urged a handful of Republican members to keep their masks on.

“I would remind Mr. Jordan, Mr. Biggs and Mr. Johnson to stop violating the rules of the committee, to stop violating the safety of the members of the committee, to stop holding themselves out as not caring by refusing to wear their masks,” the New York Democrat said, referring to GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

But freedom.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, also responded to the news. “I’m concerned about the irresponsible behavior of many of the Republicans who have chosen to consistently flout well-established public health guidance, perhaps out of fealty to their boss, Donald Trump, who is the head of the anti-mask movement in America,” Jeffries said at a news conference. “That’s a concern.”

But freedom. Freedom freedom freedom. Our ancestors didn’t fight for freedom for white people only to be shackled by a damn face mask. Freedom freedom.

It’s time to beeeeeeeeeeeee

INSPIRED

Then you can return to earth.

Trump did a press conference of sorts.

That’s just what I thought when he said it. It’s such typical minimization. “They just don’t like my hair.” No no no Don it’s not your “personality” – repellent though that is. It’s you. It’s your hideous emptiness, your smallness, your self-obsession, your bluster, your lies, your lust for revenge, your brutality, your contempt for the law, your contempt for everyone who isn’t you – any one of us could go on this way for hundreds of words. You’re bad. You’re a bad bad human being. We can’t stand you because you’re so terrible in every way. That’s why we hate you.

“The woman you said is a great doctor…she says doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens.” “I thought she was very impressive.”

Just another normal day.

The lions don’t care

.

Wales’ first gay rugby team has criticised plans to ban trans women from playing women’s rugby.

That is, plans to ban men from playing women’s rugby. Men can have whatever fantasies about their own identities they like, but that doesn’t mean they can impose their fantasies on everyone else no matter what, and it especially doesn’t mean that when it’s a matter of the relative safety of women rugby players.

The sport’s governing body World Rugby is considering the move over “safety concerns” – claiming a female player is at a higher risk of being injured by a player that has gone through male puberty.

Because she is. Obviously. It’s not a mere “claim” and there’s no call for scare quotes on safety concerns – the concerns are real, and women’s safety does matter, believe it or not.

And in its report, published by the Guardian newspaper, it says trans women have significant physical advantages over biological women even after they take medication to lower testosterone.

However, if these proposals get the go-ahead then doubts surround where and where trans women are able to play competitive rugby.

Why do those doubts matter more than the fact that allowing men to play on women’s teams will inevitably cause injury to the women? Why don’t women matter?

Cardiff Lions, Wales’ first gay inclusive rugby team, have slammed the proposals – and said the plans effectively amount to a ban on trans women playing the sport – because they would not be able to play men’s rugby either.

Why does that matter more than women’s safety? Why don’t the Cardiff Lions care about that?

World Rugby’s 38-page draft document, produced by its transgender working group, said there is likely to be “at least a 20-30% greater risk” of injury when a female player is tackled by someone who has gone through male puberty. It argues the advantage is so great – and the potential consequences for the safety of participants in tackles, scrums and mauls [also so great] – it should mean that welfare concerns should be prioritised. And the document claims those advantages are not reduced when a trans women takes testosterone-suppressing medication- “with only small reductions in strength and no loss in bone mass or muscle volume or size after testosterone suppression”.

But the Cardiff Lions don’t care about all that. Not their problem.

Trump in 1993. He was a horrible shit then too.

Indian Country Today wrote about it in 2016:

In 1993, Donald Trump appeared before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources to offer testimony on Indian gaming. 1993 Donald Trump bears a striking resemblance to Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, in terms of demeanor and language – Trump’s oral testimony is consistent with the language he has used throughout his campaign for President.

He really does. He’s rude and confident and belligerent, just as he is now. He’s less dull-witted, but every bit as snotty.

Most of Trump’s testimony focused on Indian gaming itself, and his perception that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act granted tribes an unfair advantage over his own gaming enterprises.

But, it was another part of Trump’s testimony that caught my attention. He questioned the legitimacy of Indian tribes based upon the physical appearance of their members. Here is an exchange he had with Rep. Miller of California:

Mr. Miller*. Is this you discussing Indian blood: “We are going to judge people by whether they have Indian blood,” whether they are qualified to run a gaming casino or not?*

Mr. Trump*. That probably is me, absolutely, because I’ll tell you what, if you look—if you look at some of the reservations that you have approved—you, sir, in your great wisdom, have approved— will tell you right now, they don’t look like Indians to me, and they don’t look like Indians. Now maybe we say politically correct or not politically correct. They don’t look like Indians to me, and they don’t look like Indians to Indians, and a lot of people are laughing at it, and you are telling how tough it is, how rough it is, to get approved. Well, you go up to Connecticut, and you look. Now, they don’t look like Indians to me, sir.*

He was such a shit as a child that his parents had to send him to military school. He was this kind of shit in 1993. He’s that kind of shit now.

The Daily Beast has more on Stella Immanuel.

Immanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. 

She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens.

Immanuel gave her viral speech on the steps of the Supreme Court at the “White Coat Summit,” a gathering of a handful of doctors who call themselves America’s Frontline Doctors and dispute the medical consensus on the novel coronavirus. The event was organized by the right-wing group Tea Party Patriots, which is backed by wealthy Republican donors.

Ok why? I still don’t get it. How is this a Republican thing or a rich people thing? How does it benefit them? How does it tickle their right-wing pleasure center? How is this political in the first place?

Unless…is it as simple as: Donald Trump is ignorant and stupid, therefore we need to big up things that are stupid and rooted in ignorance, so that he won’t look so out on a limb with his stupid ignorance? Is that it?

Immanuel said in her speech that the supposed potency of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment means that protective face masks aren’t necessary, claiming that she and her staff had avoided contracting COVID-19 despite wearing medical masks instead of the more secure N95 masks.

“Hello, you don’t need a mask. There is a cure,” Immanuel said. 

Toward the end of Immanuel’s speech, the event’s organizer and other participants can be seen trying to get her away from the microphone. But footage of the speech captured by Breitbart was a hit online, becoming a top video on Facebook and amassing roughly 13 million views…

And getting Don Junior suspended from Twitter.

Immanuel is a registered physician in Texas, according to a Texas Medical Board database, and operates a medical clinic out of a strip mall next to her church, Firepower Ministries. 

Ah, a strip mall clinic. That sounds confidence-inspiring.

In sermons posted on YouTube and articles on her website, Immanuel claims that medical issues like endometriosis, cysts, infertility, and impotence are caused by sex with “spirit husbands” and “spirit wives”—a phenomenon Immanuel describes essentially as witches and demons having sex with people in a dreamworld. 

“They are responsible for serious gynecological problems,” Immanuel said. “We call them all kinds of names—endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband,” Immanuel said of the medical issues in a 2013 sermon.

Definitely want to take medical advice from that doctor.

Guess who’s back!

President Donald Trump’s attempt to project a more serious tone about the coronavirus lasted for about a week.

On Tuesday, he resumed spreading misinformation about how to fight the virus and amplifying criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who said he’d keep his head down and do his job.

Social media platforms worked to remove multiple versions of a video promoted by Trump that included unproven claims about treating people who test positive for the virus, but only after more than 17 million people had seen one version of it.

What’s the point of being president if you can’t con millions of people into poisoning themselves with an off-label medication?

Trump retweeted a series of tweets advocating for the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to be used in COVID-19 patients, including a video of a doctor claiming to have successfully used the drug on hundreds of patients.

…

Trump also shared a post from the Twitter account for a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, a former top White House adviser to Trump, accusing Fauci of misleading the public over hydroxychloroquine.

He’s helping, ok? You’ve got your medical people giving medical-type advice and then you’ve got your inspirational leader people giving wacko advice. Put the two together and you’ve got yourself a real fix!

Fauci had to go on “Good Morning America” to say trials have indicated Trump’s quack remedy doesn’t work for the virus.

Trump shared a tweet of a video that’s circulating on social media pushing misleading claims about hydroxychloroquine. Earlier in the pandemic, Trump advocated vigorously for hydroxychloroquine to be used as a treatment, or even a preventative, telling people, “What have you got to lose?”

Which is another sign of his cognitive poverty: if you think about it for even a second you can figure out what we’ve got to lose. It’s not good advice to tell people to chug random medications because “what have you got to lose?”

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube began scrubbing their sites of the video Monday because it includes misleading claims about hydroxychloroquine, and glosses over the dangers of taking it. But dozens of versions of the video remain live on their platforms, with conservative news outlets, groups and internet personalities sharing it on their pages, where users have viewed them millions of times.

…

Twitter also said it is working to remove the video. A tweet from the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., describing one version of the video as a “must watch!!!” Monday night was also taken down by the platform. Twitter put Trump Jr.’s account on a 12-hour timeout, meaning he cannot tweet or retweet during that period. He’s also required to delete the tweet before he will be reinstated. Twitter declined to say when the timeout began.

…

In the video, Dr. Stella Immanuel, a physician from Houston, Texas, promotes hydroxychloroquine as a sure-fire cure for the coronavirus. She claims to have successfully treated 350 people “and counting,” including some with underlying medical conditions.

Some with no heads, even.

Joy Reid is live-tweeting the Barr hearing. It’s as sinister as you’d expect.

Then Jim Jordan is yelling something, and she wonders why he’s always yelling.

Well you see when they do it it’s Law Norder.

What a prince.

Oh does he.

Awwww, ‘doreable indeed.

The Daily Mail (sorry) reviews Abigail Shrier’s book on the fad for girls to decide they are boys:

The picture that emerges is something much more complex than the familiar narrative of ‘born in the wrong body’. None of these girls appeared to be trans until their teenage years. Some are lesbians – but as one young woman explains to Shrier, being a lesbian is ‘just not very cool… it’s a porn category’, whereas being trans is celebrated. Others have eating disorders or issues with self-harm: for them, taking male hormones and having surgery to remove their breasts seems like another way to attack the body.

Lesbian is a porn category? Says it all, doesn’t it.

Shrier argues that this is being driven by social contagion. Trans identification spreads through schools, through friendship groups, through ‘influencer’ videos that offer a rose-tinted take on transition. But the medical pathway is not something to be taken lightly. Hormone treatments lead to lifelong infertility alongside other health problems. What’s euphemistically called ‘top surgery’ is actually an elective double mastectomy, while ‘bottom surgery’ to masculinise genitals is rarely undertaken and subject to heinous complications.

Not to mention all the rest of it. It just seems so much more trouble than simply being yourself without worrying about gender rules.