Fences. Fences fences fences. Trump wants ALL the fences, to keep the scary hordes away from him and his plastic fantastic daughter-wife.

Protesters arriving in the nation’s capital for the ninth consecutive day of demonstrations found the White House encircled by more than a mile of tall metal fencing.

The previous day, work crews had erected enough fencing — reinforced by white concrete barriers — to bar entry to Lafayette Square and to outline half of the Ellipse, the sloping green lawn that abuts the executive residence. But between Friday night and Saturday afternoon — on a day expected to draw tens of thousands to protest in the District — they added enough fencing to block the rest of the Ellipse.

In total, Google Maps analysis suggests, roughly 1.7 miles of fencing now surrounds the White House, forming a gigantic metal cocoon. There are only two portions of the White House perimeter, on the northeast and northwest corners, that do not have additional fencing and concrete barriers.

Fine, let’s lock it from the outside.

The security perimeter around the executive complex started to expand early this week after nighttime demonstrations in Lafayette Square turned violent last weekend. The eight-foot tall black chain-link fence first materialized outside the White House on Tuesday, barring demonstrators from the square.

The square is public land, as far as I know. It’s a park. It’s across the street from the White House, but it’s still a public park.

This happened today.

Bristol was the biggest slave trade port in Britain.

There are many cries of “Disgraceful!”

The thing is, toppling statues of tyrants has a long history. It’s just silly to call it “vandalism” as if there were nothing more to it.

Does selling slaves count as tyranny? I think the question answers itself.

The Times (NY) is more circumspect…thus I suppose living up to its reputation for establishment conservatism, but that buys into the absurd new arrangement whereby thinking men become women by saying so is left-wing while thinking women and only women are women is right-wing. To be clear: thinking women and only women are women is not right-wing. It’s tautological, but it’s not right-wing.

J.K. Rowling, the creator of the popular “Harry Potter” series, came under fire from L.G.B.T.Q. groups after she took aim at an article that referred to “people who menstruate.”

The online op-ed article posted last month, with the title “Creating a More Equal Post-Covid-19 World for People Who Menstruate,” highlighted some of the risks faced by primary caretakers, “particularly women in the household and health care workers,” during the coronavirus pandemic.

…

On Saturday, Ms. Rowling wrote on Twitter, where she has 14.5 million followers: “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”Her Twitter post appeared to be responding to a line that described the “menstrual health and hygiene needs of girls, women and all people who menstruate.”

And or to the stupid title. Talking about “people who menstruate” is, among other things, just another way to erase women from public consciousness, which we already get quite enough of thanks to the use of “men” to mean “people” and “he” in general statements and all the rest of it. One of the things feminism has been doing for the past half century is simply reminding all of us that women exist and are not a minority and should not be hidden or forgotten or ignored. Headlines and articles that substitute “people” for “women” are not helpful.

The backlash was swift, with users calling out her comments as being anti-transgender people.

One user wrote on Twitter: “I decided not to kill myself because I wanted to know how Harry’s story ended. For a long time, that was all that kept me alive. Until I met my husband who helped me learn to love myself and to want to live. You just insulted him to my face.”

Snort. That’s so typical of the level of discourse. “To my face”? It could hardly be less to anyone’s face, since it’s on Twitter. The whole point of “to my face” is that it’s not general, not public, not abstract, but entirely personal. “Nononono it’s all about meeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

What do we want? Narcissism! When do we want it? Always!

Talk about ideological capture…

One of the headlines on Google News led to this alluring sample under Further Coverage:

TERF tweets; Anti-Trans Tweets; transphobic comments. It’s only Fox that doesn’t poison the well. This isn’t The Nation or Mother Jones, it’s USA Today and Variety – not exactly hotbeds of lefty thought. They all just take it for granted that her tweets were “transphobic.” What did she say again?

If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.

The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women – ie, to male violence – ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences – is a nonsense.

I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.

None of it is “transphobic” or “anti-trans.” None of it.

Nobody thinks it’s ok for white people to order black people to be “inclusive” of white people who say they identify as black; nobody thinks white people get to tell black people to move over and shut up and let white people come in and take over. But when it’s men doing it to women? Oh that’s fine, that’s the ultimate in progressivosity, and women who push back get monstered and shunned.

Uh huh. Man who roleplays as stereotypical HOTTTT woman tells feminists they’re not feminists.

Also – nobody knew the difference between women and men until colonialists made it all up.

Imagine white people laying down the law about BLM. Imagine white people who roleplay as black people – a crowd of Dolezals – laying down the law about BLM. Imagine thinking that was progressive.

This is brilliant.

Ok I’m going to have to inflict on you a transcript of that slice of Princess Daughter’s pretend commencement speech she bestowed on us this morning. If you can’t bear to listen to her yourself for even a second, you should bear in mind that she deploys a weird zombie-like whispery voice and that she accompanies it with much head and face and mouth work.

I am confident [flashing of shiny white teeth] that even if your path is different from the one you imagined, ultimately [seductive turn of the head], it can be better than we [sic] could ever have planned. In my own life I’ve found that my greatest personal growth has arisen from times of discomfort and uncernty [sic] that [head toss] one can only really appreciate in hindsight. [slight pause; new thought] Joseph Campbell, a philosopher, who [twinkly smile] also helped inspire the creation of Star Wars [big flash of shiny white teeth to underline how hip she is] once said that [very serious look] the achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for. [pause, new toss of the head] It’s really a manifestation of his character. The landscape and conditions of the environment match the readiness [tiny shake of the head] of the hero. The adventure that he’s ready for is the one that he gets.

[pause long enough to suggest new paragraph] Throughout our history brave men and women have faced daunting challenges, and they have embraced the adventure. America’s fate is never dictated by fear. Our future is ridden [sic] by the love and the courage of our citizens. [very serious look] No person will be unchanged from [sic] living through this present hardship, but I’m confident that the bonds between us will be stronger; our admiration for each other will be deeper; our gratitude for the gift of life will be ever new; and our resolve to build an even greater future, will be greater than ever before.

Ok so…have you ever read anything more vacuous? It’s got that “Oh I haven’t done my homework I haven’t done the reading I’m supposed to do a composition about the reading oh dear I’ll just say a lot of generalities and hope that will get me a C” vibe. She has nothing to say and no brain to think of something with so she just talks meaningless flannel.

Remember when this happened?

And this?

CRINGE

Another Trump Derangement Syndrome incident Monday:

NPR reports:

A 60-year-old man has been arrested in Maryland following allegations that he assaulted a group of three young adults who were hanging flyers in support of George Floyd and an end to racial injustice.

The confrontation drew widespread outrage when video of the encounter was posted online. Authorities with the Maryland-National Capital Park Police said Friday that Anthony Brennan III of Kensingston, Md., has been charged with second-degree assault in relation to the Monday incident.

…

Police say the incident occurred along the Capital Crescent Trail, which runs from the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C. through Bethesda, Md., a nearby affluent suburb.

Authorities in Maryland began asking for help identifying the cyclist on Tuesday, leading to hundreds of tips.

Brennan has since expressed remorse for the attack through his attorneys, according to media reports. The website DCist reports that Brennan says he is “sick with remorse for the pain and fear I caused the victims.”

Not sure I believe the remorse, but anyway – the Trump poison spreads day in and day out. Princess Ivanka should dedicate herself to fixing that problem instead of giving vacuous pep talks while impersonating a dress dummy.

Princess Ivanka is having an angry.

Oh no, did somebody cancel her? From what? Who wants to hear her in the first place?

The people of Wichita, maybe.

Ivanka Trump has hit out at complained about “cancel culture and viewpoint discrimination” after plans for her to give a virtual commencement speech to students in Kansas were canceled amid criticism of Donald Trump’s response to anti-police brutality protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

The really interesting question here is why was she asked in the first place? Really, why?

She’s a talentless ignorant opportunist. She sells clothes and jewelry, and profits off her criminal father’s presidency. How is any of that a reason to invite her to say things to students?

Meanwhile she has an absolutely stomach-turning InspirAtional talk of some kind, in which she tries to come across as serious and thoughtful not at all like a Barbie doll and instead…

…well, doesn’t.

Notice there’s a god damn White House logo in the top right corner, so this is some kind of official White House something or other – this pontificating robot in 5 pounds of makeup and snowy white princess dress is speaking in her capacity as a ???? in the current administration.

Notice that the man she works for is not all that dedicated to “listening to one another” – and neither is the man she’s married to, who also has an illegal and corrupt “job” in the White House.

She cites “the philosopher Joseph Campbell” – except he wasn’t a philosopher, he was a professor of comparative literature. He talked a lot of deepities, but deepities don’t a philosopher make.

Now Barr is trying to pretend he wasn’t actually involved in that whole thing. He was there and all, but he wasn’t, like, saying go spray that person and that one and that one. He did ask who will rid him of this turbulent crowd, but he didn’t say how. He was just musing aloud, really. Expressing the wistful hopes and dreams of a loyal public servant.

Attorney General William P. Barr sought to dissociate himself Friday from police’s move earlier this week to push back a crowd of largely peaceful demonstrators using horses and gas, claiming that he did not give the “tactical” order for law enforcement on the scene to move in.

He’s a civilian, ok? He doesn’t give the tactical orders. None of it was his fault!

“I’m not involved in giving tactical commands like that,” Barr told the Associated Press. “I was frustrated and I was also worried that as the crowd grew, it was going to be harder and harder to do. So my attitude was get it done, but I didn’t say, ‘Go do it.’ ”

Mmmmm. His attitude was – what does that mean? He had a look on his face that meant “get it done”? Or he actually said “get it done” but did not say “go do it”? His body posture said “get it done” but his clothes did not say “go do it”?

At his own news conference Thursday, Barr said he had decided to extend the perimeter early Monday morning, and later, around 2 p.m., met with law enforcement agencies to lay out a plan for doing so. He said that officials could not get units in place soon enough to execute the plan before demonstrators arrived, but he did not address what happened in the minutes before police made their move.

And none of that in any way suggests “Go do it.” Obviously. It’s all just a general expression of mood, with no trace of orders or instructions or commands.

A video of the incident shows Barr conferring with officials on the ground, and about 24 minutes later, police making an aggressive move on the crowd. The Associated Press reported that Barr “said it was a Park Police tactical commander — an official he never spoke to — who gave the order for the law enforcement agencies to move in and clear the protesters.

And the two were completely unconnected! Barr was talking to the officials about golf, and not at all about violently pushing protesters out of Lafayette Park.

“They told me they were about to make the announcement and I think they stretched the announcements over 20 minutes. During the time I was there, I would periodically hear announcements,” Barr told the Associated Press. “They had the Park Police mounted unit ready, so it was just a matter of execution. So, I didn’t just say to them, ‘Go.’ ”

Oh thank god. Thank god thank god thank god. Barr didn’t just say to them, “Go.” That changes everything.

Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, claimed there was “no contradiction” between Barr’s and other officials’ comments — though her statement did not address McEnany and the Justice Department official saying specifically that Barr had told those on scene to take action.

“Earlier in the day, the Attorney General had approved and adopted a plan to move the perimeter in response to the violence that had occurred over the weekend. Subsequently, he checked in with federal law enforcement officials on the ground in Lafayette Square to see how it was proceeding,” Kupec said.

So, in other words, he said to remove the protesters in the morning, but he didn’t say it again in the afternoon. He is OFF THE HOOK.

Trump took a little jaunt to Maine yesterday.

President Donald Trump traveled to Maine Friday to tour a facility that makes medical swabs used for coronavirus testing, but the swabs manufactured in the background during his visit will ultimately be thrown in the trash, the company said.   

So they’re Potemkin swabs? What’s the point?

Puritan Medical Products said it will have to discard the swabs, a company spokeswoman told USA TODAY in response to questions about the visit.   

It is not clear why the swabs will be scrapped, or how many.The company described its manufacturing plans for Friday as “limited” – but the disruption comes as public health officials in Maine and other states have complained that a shortage of swabs has hampered their ability to massively scale up coronavirus testing.

Workers in white lab coats, hair nets and plastic booties worked at machines making swabs while the president walked through the room. Trump, who did not wear a mask for the visit, stopped at one point to talk with some of the workers. 

Ah. Trump did not wear a mask. Perhaps that’s why all the swabs will be thrown out.

Nearly a third of Maine nursing homes reported last month they had no nasal swabs to collect specimens, the Portland Press Herald reported. Nearly 61% of those that responded to a Maine Medical Directors Association survey said they had seven or fewer at their disposal.

National shortages of swabs was part of what severely hampered early coronavirus testing efforts. The Trump administration used the Korean War-era Defense Production Act to increase production, which Trump is expected to tout on Friday. Puritan, which received millions of dollars from the federal government to double production, is one of only two companies that make the kind of swabs needed in coronavirus testing.

So naturally Trump went there and disrupted production. Helpful.

Trump decided today would be an awesome day to forbid kneeling.

You can protest some things, but not the flag – Trump forbids it.

Too bad there’s a Supreme Court ruling saying yes you can.

But also…kneeling? Really, dude? Now?

Well, remember, it’s George Floyd’s great day.

So unidentified unidentifiable heavily armed soldiers are in the streets in Washington DC, the seat of the US government. Nothing to worry about there, for sure.

On Trump’s order, about 4,500 national guard troops from around the country were flown to Washington early this week, and a wide assortment of special units from the Bureau of Prisons, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI and the US Marshal’s Service. 

In total, 7,600 soldiers and officers were deployed in Washington, including 1,700 active duty troops in reserve in bases around the capital, according to Bloomberg News.

7,600. That’s rather a lot.

Several of those units – including military police, United States park police and Secret Service – were involved in violent scenes on Tuesday when officers fired teargas and rubber bullets to clear peaceful protesters from outside the White House.

So that the pussy-grabber could walk up the road a piece and wave a bible around.

Since then, groups of uniformed officers in helmets and body armour – often without identifying insignia – have appeared in Washington, expanding a security perimeter around the White House into the city’s commercial district – and prompting questions about who was in control of the streets and the public right of way.

And why the capital city was being occupied by troops.

When reporters asked one group about their affiliation, an officer replied “DoJ”, the Department of Justice, but would not be more specific. All the federal law enforcement agencies deployed in Washington are reporting to the attorney general, William Barr, who has been the architect of the heavy military presence and who told state governors on Monday: “Law enforcement response is not going to work unless we dominate the streets.”

So the Attorney General can declare war on the citizens? I didn’t know that.

The presence of elite units such as the Green Berets has raised concern because of the symbolism of sending combat troops, and the unsuitability of their training for responding to protests.

And the fact that the government isn’t supposed to go to war with us. That’s a military takeover.

Other units sent on to Washington streets included the FBI’s hostage rescue team and prison riot control officers. The Bureau of Prisons director, Michael Carvajal, argued that federal prison guards were “often called upon to assist during crisis situations within our communities”. 

Are they? That’s bad news.

But Deborah Golden, a Washington lawyer specialising in prisoners’ rights said that correctional officers are trained in a completely different environment from public demonstrations. Protests are restricted in prisons and officers are entitled to use much greater force.

Golden said on Twitter: “They aren’t trained for the job they’ve been put in. And it’s a set up for disaster.”

We’re not prisoners and we’re not an invading army.

The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Pentagon had ordered to national guard units not to carry firearms, a decision made without consulting the White House. The president had wanted the soldiers to carry guns, in a show of force.

Of course he did, the chickenshit little pig. He wants to terrorize people who don’t agree with him George Floyd is having a great day.

The mayor underlined her defiance of the president by giving permission for the words “Black Lives Matter” to be painted in giant yellow letters on the road leading to the White House. The painting began in the early hours of Friday morning and was finished before noon.

Fascist president issues official fascist threats via his official presidential fascist Twitter.

Kelly says Trump is telling whoppers about Mattis.

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said Thursday that President Donald Trump “has clearly forgotten” the circumstances of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s departure from the administration, breaking with his former boss to side with a fellow retired Marine Corps general.

Aka is telling whoppers.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Kelly contradicted Trump’s claim that he had fired Mattis. Kelly called Mattis “an honorable man” and described Trump’s Twitter attack on the former Defense secretary as “nasty.”

…

“The president did not fire him. He did not ask for his resignation,” Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff when Mattis departed the administration, told the Washington Post. “The president has clearly forgotten how it actually happened or is confused.”

Uh huh.

Sure, Don, sure.

Another portent:

The US has been downgraded from a “medium risk” to a “high risk” country in a civil unrest index by the global risk analysis company Verik Maplecroft.

As nationwide protests continue over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the firm finds that the “marginalisation of racial and religious minorities” is the single biggest driver of the unrest “because of the profound impact on the living standards of entire communities.” The conditions mean that direct acts of violence to express discontent “appeal to a broad range of community members.”

This is what I was just saying (or ranting) – George Floyd is not a one-off, George Floyd is part of the whole big picture of this country from the beginning. He’s part of the history of a former slave-owning nation that never did what it had to do after the formal ending of slavery. Slavery continued in all but name and we’ve never fully dealt with that fact, and the prison system is perpetuating it to this day.

The Guardian reports on Trump’s “press conference,” at which Trump took no questions, which makes it not a press conference but an announcement.

Trump has started his White House press conference, and the president opened the event by quickly veering from the jobs numbers to the George Floyd protests then back to the jobs numbers…However, the president unexpectedly shifted from the jobs numbers to the protests, bragging about the progress seen in Minneapolis this week after demonstrations last week turned violent.

Veering unexpectedly is what he does. He doesn’t do joined-up thinking, he does blurts.

He said we are “largely through” the coronavirus, which of course is not even slightly true.

Then the Guardian kind of threw up its hands in defeat.

Trump appears to have abandoned his prepared remarks, assuming he had any to begin with. The president has celebrated the jobs report, while mocking his critics.

Oh he had some, you can tell, because when he’s reading them he stares down and talks in a slow monotone. When he veers he looks up and babbles very fast and very disconnectedly. There’s always the impulse to take his elbow and guide him back to his room.

Trump described those who have criticized his response to the coronavirus pandemic as his “enemies,” and he characterized the policy goals of the Green New Deal as “baby talk.”

The president also enocuraged governors to allow him to send National Guard troops amid the George Floyd protests, saying he would send troops “so fast it’ll make their heads spin.”

Then he said the headline thing.

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying, ‘This is a great thing happening for our country,” Trump said of Floyd, who was killed in police custody last week. “A great day for him, a great day for everybody. This is great day for everybody.”

Not sure we can agree with you there, Don.

His campaign, on the other hand, thinks it was a gem.

What he said while staring down at the written speech:

Equal justice under the law must mean every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race, color, gender or creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement.

What he said when he looked up from the written speech to ad lib:

We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying, ‘This is a great thing that’s happening for our country.’ This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everbody. This is a great day for everybody. This a great, great day in terms of equality.

Then he babbled about the economy.

Golly.

It’s all much too familiar, and not in a good way.

The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.

In interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S. intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations.

“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

And others too.

Marc Polymeropoulos, who formerly ran CIA operations in Europe and Asia, was among several former agency officials who recoiled at images of Trump hoisting a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington after authorities fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the president’s path of protesters.

“It reminded me of what I reported on for years in the third world,” Polymeropoulos said on Twitter. Referring to the despotic leaders of Iraq, Syria and Libya, he said: “Saddam. Bashar. Qaddafi. They all did this.”

The impression Trump created was only reinforced by others in the administration. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper urged governors to “dominate the battlespace” surrounding protesters, as if describing U.S. cities as a foreign war zone. Later, as military helicopters hovered menacingly over protesters, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, toured the streets of the nation’s capital in his battle fatigue uniform.

So I’m not the only one who found the image of Milley in battle fatigues sinister.

Former intelligence officials said the unrest and the administration’s militaristic response are among many measures of decay they would flag if writing assessments about the United States for another country’s intelligence service.

But but but we’re special.

About that unrest…the thing is, the problem has always been there. Racism, white supremacy, generation after generation of suppression and oppression and neglect and ferocious separation and revenge have always been there. We never made any reparations for two centuries of slavery. We never made any serious effort to compensate for two centuries of slavery. Instead we blamed the descendants of slaves for the poverty that the slave-owning race had imposed on them, and we used that blame as justification for continuing the oppression and neglect and ferocious revenge. That monstrous deformation has always been there, all this time, so we’ve never actually been the city on the hill we like to boast of being. We talked a good game and it worked out well for a lot of people but there was always this huge festering wrong that we just fucking ignored.

So, yeah, it’s not actually all that surprising that now at last the curtain is pulled back and we see how rotten the whole thing has been all along.

Even this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lectured China about its efforts to prevent citizens of Hong Kong from holding a vigil to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

“If there is any doubt about Beijing’s intent, it is to deny Hong Kongers a voice and a choice,” Pompeo said in a statement that was met with derision on Twitter because it coincided with crackdowns urged by Trump in the United States.

I wonder how much attention Pompeo has paid to the effects of generations of state-enforced segregation over his career. I’m guessing zero.

That scamp Bari Weiss has been mixing it up again.

Hmmmyes that’s not at all oversimplified or crude.

But her colleagues say that’s not how it is.