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.

That Statue continues to rile the pesky women. This is a point I hadn’t thought of:

Livia Gershon at Smithsonian Magazine:

Hambling, for her part, tells the Evening Standard’s Robert Dex that the nude figure is not meant to depict Wollstonecraft, but women of all eras.

Really. If the naked figure is meant to depict women of all eras, why is it so extremely young, thin, fit, muscular, Aryan, tiny-breasted, and deformed in the genital region? Why is it a Hitleresque flawless specimen with a basketball where the crotch should be?

But also…why in hell would an artist commissioned to honor Mary Wollstonecraft decide to leave Mary Wollstonecraft out of it? It’s so…how we still think of women if we’re unwary. “Women must not seek the limelight, women must not stand out, women must serve everyone else, women must Be Kind, a good woman never appears in public.” Even when it’s a statue to honor a particular woman!

“She’s [an] everywoman and clothes would have restricted her,” the artist says. “Statues in historic costume look like they belong to history because of their clothes.”

Sure, and that’s why there are all these statues of naked Lincoln, naked Churchill, naked Einstein, naked Marx.

Regarding the slim, muscular body of the woman depicted in the statue, Hambling says, “As far as I know, she’s more or less the shape we’d all like to be.”

Well we wouldn’t all like to have a fat protruding blob between our legs instead of the normal pubic hair. (It occurred to me to wonder if waxing has become so universal that Hambling has never actually seen a woman with pubic hair. There’s some deep misogyny right there, I tell you what.)

“Mary Wollstonecraft was a rebel and a pioneer, and she deserves a pioneering work of art,” Mary on the Green campaign chair Bee Rowlatt tells BBC News. “This work is an attempt to celebrate her contribution to society with something that goes beyond the Victorian traditions of putting people on pedestals.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Rowlatt adds, “We could have done something really, really boring and ordinary, and, and very Victorian and old fashioned. And, you know, I would be having a slightly easier day today.”

Oh please. Fine, don’t put her on a pedestal; put her at a desk, or in a chair, or on a bridge over the Thames. Portray her in action, doing her work, by all means. But don’t ignore her altogether and swap in a tiny naked athlete with deformed genitalia.

Many people on social media pointed to the contrast between the Wollstonecraft statue and those honoring significant male historical figures.

“Imagine if there was a statue of a hot young naked guy ‘in tribute’ to eg Churchill,” wrote columnist and author Caitlin Moran on Twitter. “It would look mad. This, also, looks mad.”

Well you see it’s like this: men are real people, and stand for themselves. Women are general peopleish types, and they can all be swapped for each other, and summed up by One Perfect Hotty (with bizarro pubic hair).

Astonishing.

Trump is suing Michigan.

The campaign of President Donald Trump said Tuesday  it is suing Michigan in federal court in an effort to prevent final certification of the state’s election results, as Trump continues to refuse to concede to Joe Biden or accept the outcome of the race for the presidency. 

He’s suing Michigan for not voting for him. That’s totally a thing you can do.

Attorneys for the Trump campaign said late afternoon the new lawsuit would be filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Although the bulk of the allegations appear to focus on Detroit, located on the other side of the state, the seat of state government in Lansing is located in the Western District. 

Ahhhh yes Detroit. We all know about Detroit, don’t we. Motown. It has too many [whispers] black people. Trump is suing Michigan for counting votes from not-white people.

Trump trails Biden by more than 146,000 votes in Michigan, according to unofficial vote totals. There is no evidence or proof of widespread election fraud, and campaign leaders have not outlined any strategy that would result in a change in the outcome of the race, either in Michigan or nationally.

That has not stopped Trump from lying about election proceedings in Michigan, going so far as to recently claim on national television that he won the state. 

146 thousand votes. That’s kind of a lot.

It’s ok though, this is his way of assuring onlookers that he’ll be an awesome business partner once this is all over.

Lying liars working hard to force Trump on us:

Facebook has taken down a network of pages linked to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

The seven pages were spreading false claims and conspiracy theories about voter fraud. They collectively had amassed more than 2.45 million followers, according to the activist group Avaaz, which alerted Facebook to the network on Friday.

One group was called “Stop the Steal” (and then “Gay Communists for Socialism”).

“Stop the steal” has become a rallying cry for supporters of President Donald Trump who baselessly allege cheating in the election and the vote-counting process. Last week, Facebook removed a large group called “Stop the Steal” that had gained more than 360,000 followers within a day of being created. The Washington Post was the first to report the latest removals of the Bannon-linked pages.

Social media is a gift to professional liars.

Oh whaddya know.

A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to three officials briefed on the investigation and a statement from a House congressional committee.

Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy.

But on Monday, Hopkins, 32, told investigators from the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General that the allegations were not true, and he signed an affidavit recanting his claims…

Hopkins didn’t feel like chatting to the Washington Post.

The reversal comes as Trump has refused to concede to President-elect Joe Biden (D), citing unproven allegations about widespread voter fraud in an attempt to swing the results in his favor. Republicans held up Hopkins’s claims as among the most credible because he signed an affidavit swearing that he overheard a supervisor instructing colleagues to backdate ballots mailed after Nov. 3.

So much for that.

Hopkins’s allegations, without his name, were first aired last week by Project Veritas, an organization that uses deceptive tactics to expose what it says is bias and corruption in the mainstream media. Hopkins agreed to attach his name to the allegations late last week. He was instantly celebrated by Trump supporters.

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe on Saturday hailed Hopkins as “an American hero” on Twitter. A GoFundMe page created under Hopkins’s name had raised more than $136,000 by Tuesday evening, with donors praising him as a patriot and whistleblower.

I’m so tired of these people.

Via KBPlayer – some other statues of women:

About this Mary Wollstonecraft statue…not a statue of her, mind, a statue for her, whatever that means. Anyway, it’s been unveiled. Entirely unveiled. It’s not universally popular.

See, the statue is buck naked, and along with that, it’s…weird.

It reminds me of seeing naked classical statues in museums as child; for quite a long time I thought those leaf-things were what men actually had. (Yes, I must have been very dim.) I thought they looked deeply weird. It’s the same with this. It’s as if the statue has half a coconut shell pasted over her crotch. Pubic hair doesn’t look like that. (Anyway women aren’t allowed to have pubic hair any more. Shouldn’t the statue have the naked labia of an infant? Since it’s Everywoman and all.)

What do you mean “cannot”?

Sen. Chris Coons has been on CNN this morning, suggesting that in private Republican senators are asking him to convey best wishes to president-elect Joe Biden while stating that they cannot yet say that in public because of Trump’s insistence on not conceding defeat.

I’m not seeing the insurmountable obstacle.

Of course they can say that in public despite Trump’s grotesque rude authoritarian disruptive refusal to concede – they can and they absolutely should, in order to shine a harsher light on Trump’s authoritarian flouting of the norms. What they mean is that they don’t want to, and that’s contemptible.

Coons also said “This is an uncertain time these next 71 days. I think it is past time for Republican leaders to stand up and say we should accept the results of this election.”

I’ll say. Way past time.

Trump’s lawyers are starting to sweat.

Jones Day is the most prominent firm representing President Trump and the Republican Party as they prepare to wage a legal war challenging the results of the election. The work is intensifying concerns inside the firm about the propriety and wisdom of working for Mr. Trump, according to lawyers at the firm.

Doing business with Mr. Trump — with his history of inflammatory rhetoric, meritless lawsuits and refusal to pay what he owes — has long induced heartburn among lawyers, contractors, suppliers and lenders. But the concerns are taking on new urgency as the president seeks to raise doubts about the election results.

Aka “do we really want to be the lawyers who enable this crook to stage a successful coup?”

Some senior lawyers at Jones Day, one of the country’s largest law firms, are worried that it is advancing arguments that lack evidence and may be helping Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the integrity of American elections, according to interviews with nine partners and associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.

There’s another big firm in Ohio that’s doing the same thing and having the same issues.

Already, the two firms have filed at least four lawsuits challenging aspects of the election in Pennsylvania. The cases are pending.

The latest salvo came on Monday evening, when the Trump campaign filed a suit in federal court in Pennsylvania against the Pennsylvania secretary of state and a number of county election boards. The suit — filed by lawyers at Porter Wright — alleged that there were “irregularities” in voting across the state.

The allegations are based on nothing much, and the law firms know it; the target is public opinion. Trump is doing everything he can to poison the well.

A lawyer in Jones Day’s Washington office felt that the firm risked hurting itself by taking on work that undermined the rule of law. “To me, it seems extremely shortsighted,” the lawyer said.

Of course, lawyers and law firms work for people who defy the rule of law all the time. In an adversarial legal system everyone is entitled to a defense. But…when it’s the capo di tutti capi, who is trying to kneecap the rule of law itself, in his own self-interest…you can see the difficulty.