Less than a week but still too long.

Less than a week after George Washington University announced Jessica Krug would not resume teaching this semester after the professor revealed she had been lying for years about being Black, the school announced she has resigned.

“Dr. Krug has resigned her position, effective immediately. Her classes for this semester will be taught by other faculty members, and students in those courses will receive additional information this week,” the university said in a statement obtained by CNN on Wednesday.

We need a word for this move – this form of fraud in which a person with more social privilege pretends to be a person with less social privilege. Maybe we already have the word, maybe “appropriation” is good enough, but it doesn’t capture the more/less aspect, or at least it doesn’t explicitly name it.

We don’t feel the same kind of repulsion at the idea of someone with less privilege pretending to be someone with more. Why? Because that’s the natural direction of flow, the reasons are obvious, and privilege is a form of injustice. Stealing other people’s disprivilege is gross. It’s a kind of mockery as well as a kind of theft.

It might make an interesting academic discussion, but let’s not invite Jessica Krug to participate.

The Guardian has some more details on Trump’s compassionate and patriotic desire to shield the American people from the truth about COVID-19.

Specifically asked whether he downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump told reporters, “In order to reduce panic, perhaps that’s so.”

As one does. If the house is on fire, you tell the people in it that it’s not serious, because you don’t want them to panic.

The president insisted his strategy was focused on encouraging Americans to remain calm, as the virus spread across the country.

“You have to show leadership, and leadership is confidence in our country,” Trump said.

Well, see, here’s the thing – the danger is a contagious disease that is lethal to many and permanently debilitating to many more. There are things people can do to try to avoid the contagion, so the first job of a leader showing leadership should be to amplify the messages of health officials on how to do that. It should not be to play down the danger and refuse to do the very things that help us avoid the contagion. That’s where Trump went wrong – not in being cheerful or reassuring or strengthy, but in refusing to wear a mask and refusing to distance and continuing to gather crowds. He also went wrong by constantly telling us it’s no big deal and will disappear any minute now.

Also…

“I’m a cheerleader for this country,” the president said. “I don’t want people to be frightened; I don’t want to create panic.”

Oreally?

That comment would seem to clash with Trump’s repeated warnings about the recent protests against racism and police brutality.

The protests have been mostly peaceful, the president has repeatedly claimed that Democratic-controlled cities are being overrun by “violent anarchists”.

Highly contagious deadly virus, no biggy; people protesting police violence against Black people, AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH be afraid.

A bizarre item this morning.

Penis masks! How creative! But…back to school gifts?

No no, that’s not what they meant, they said.

Whatever. I became curious about who and what “esteem acet UK” even is, so I looked for more. Their Twitter profile says:

We deliver relationships and sex education training, equipping youth workers, teachers and parents to talk to young people about relationships and sex.

United Kingdom acet-uk.com Joined August 2011

What does that mean? Who are they? What is their expertise? So I clicked on the link, and then the About page. You’ll never guess.

acet UK is a Christian charity with a mission to equip and inspire individuals, schools, churches and organisations, in the UK and internationally, to transform culture by promoting healthy self-esteem, positive relationships and good sexual health.

A Christian charity!

I don’t understand how any of this works. Can random groups “equip and inspire” schools just by offering? Is this just another “Catholic League” aka one person and a laptop trying to sound important? It certainly could be – an obscure Twitter account and a website don’t necessarily add up to a real organization really shoving its way into schools to “equip and inspire” them for the greater glory of Jesus and penis masks. But who knows, maybe there are schools that take them seriously and pay them for inspiration?

There was so much stuff yesterday that I never got to the DHS whistleblower. About that:

A senior Department of Homeland Security official alleges that he was told to stop providing intelligence reports on the threat of Russian interference in the 2020 election, in part because it “made the President look bad,” an instruction he believed would jeopardize national security.

Gee, what a wacky belief.

The official, Brian Murphy, who until recently was in charge of intelligence and analysis at DHS, said in a whistleblower complaint that on two occasions he was told to stand down on reporting about the Russian threat and alleged that senior officials told him to modify other intelligence reports, including about white supremacists, to bring them in line with President Trump’s public comments, directions he said he refused.

Brilliant. “Senior officials” told an intel official to manipulate intel reports to fit President Narcissist’s manic tweets. That’s definitely what we want intel officials to be doing. Russia’s fucking with the election in order to stick us with Trump again? We don’t want to hear that, make the reports say that Biden has a scary antifa squad in the basement of a falafel bar in Georgetown.

On July 8, Murphy said in the complaint, acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf told him that an “intelligence notification” regarding Russian disinformation efforts should be “held” because it was unflattering to Trump, who has long derided the Kremlin’s interference as a “hoax” that was concocted by his opponents to delegitimize his victory in 2016.

Mister Wolf? Sir? Intelligence reports aren’t supposed to be “flattering” to Donald Trump. That’s not their purpose. That’s not their purpose at all. Quite the reverse. The state of Donald Trump’s flattery-receptor is of no relevance whatsoever to the need to know how Putin is manipulating this election.

It’s not clear who would have seen the notification, but DHS’s intelligence reports are routinely shared with the FBI, other federal law enforcement agencies, and state and local governments.

People in a position to do something about the information, in short.

Murphy objected to Wolf’s instruction, “stating that it was improper to hold a vetted intelligence product for reasons [of] political embarrassment,” according to a copy of his whistleblower complaint that was obtained by The Washington Post.

“Improper” is a nicely subdued way of putting it.

The president’s political interests were often of greater concern to senior leaders at the department than reporting the facts based on evidence, Murphy alleges. He claims that Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, the department’s second-in-command, on various occasions instructed him to massage the language in intelligence reports “to ensure they matched up with the public comments by Trump on the subject of ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups,” according to the complaint.

We can almost hear it. “Change this so that it makes Trump’s rants about antifa and the Democrats sound true.”

Murphy’s claims that Trump officials tried to downplay the threat from Russia will add to a chorus of complaints on Capitol Hill that administration officials are withholding vital information about election interference from lawmakers and voters. The administration has limited the number of lawmakers who may be briefed on the subject.

Murphy alleges an ongoing effort by senior officials to obfuscate the threat from Russia in particular. He claimed that in May, Wolf told him to stop producing intelligence assessments on Russia and shift the focus on election interference to China and Iran.

As Barr did just the other day.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Murphy’s complaint “outlines grave and disturbing allegations that senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials improperly sought to politicize, manipulate, and censor intelligence in order to benefit President Trump politically. This puts our nation and its security at grave risk.”

And makes it more likely that Putin will succeed in getting Trump re-elected, thus putting us even more at risk.

Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated publicly that Russia, China and Iran were engaged in interference campaigns, an assessment that drew sharp rebukes from Democratic lawmakers, who said the administration was trying to equate the efforts of all three countries, when in fact Russia is the only one actively trying to help Trump by attacking Biden.

Bad.

Golly, there was a big ol’ to-do about a religious fanatic who wanted to throw a religious super-spreader event in a Seattle park on Labor Day (this past Monday) but the Parks Department said no you can’t and closed the park.

A prayer rally was planned for Seattle’s Gas Works Park on Labor Day, prior to the city announcing the park’s temporary closure.

On Friday, Sept. 4, Seattle Parks and Recreation issued a notice that Gas Works Park would be closed Sept. 7 “due to anticipated crowding that could impact affect the public health of residents.”

On Saturday, Sept. 5, worship leader Sean Feucht released a statement on his Facebook page, saying the city announced the temporary closure to “prevent ‘anticipated crowding’ from worship rally organized by local churches.”

“The City of Seattle acknowledged that parks ‘provide critical physical and mental health supports to our community,’ and reiterated their policy guidelines for facilitating ‘first amendment gatherings”, but still chose to temporarily shut down the entire park rather than risk Christians gathering for an open-air worship service,” Feucht wrote. 

Bzzzzt, wrong. The Parks Department has been limiting gatherings in parks all along. There are signs in the parks saying this, and saying that crowded parks lead to closed parks. Those signs are still in place. This is nothing special to self-admiring preacher guy, it’s public health policy and has been since March.

“Seattle Parks and Recreation does not allow unpermitted public events to take place in Seattle parks and asks the public to continue to adhere to current public health guidelines so that we can keep our parks open,” the city said in a statement.  

See, if preacher guy hadn’t pulled his stunt, people could have enjoyed the park (as long as not too many of them did) that day; preacher guy took it away from them.

So, he did his super-spreader event in the street instead.

Gee, thanks, preacher guy.

About these awesome book deals that do nothing to save anyone: Dahlia Lithwick last November:

These books are not necessarily about saving the country. Take, for example, Bolton, Trump’s hawkish former national security adviser, who reportedly just reached a $2 million deal with Simon & Schuster for a book to come out next year. Now, Bolton could certainly serve his nation right now by confirming what Fiona Hill has testified to regarding the effort to extort Ukrainian assistance in cooking up oppo research for Trump in advance of the 2020 election. Hill has said that when the plot unwound around Bolton, he told her, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” and asked her to convey that to a White House lawyer. Bolton could surely testify to these and other facts as part of a time-sensitive impeachment inquiry that starts this week. Bolton’s lawyer said in a letter to House Democrats Friday that Bolton “was personally involved in many of the events, meetings, and conversations about which you have already received testimony, as well as many relevant meetings and conversations that have not yet been discussed in the testimonies thus far.” Which sounds like an elevator pitch for an awesome book-to-movie deal. But it’s also a reason he should appear before Congress. Except he has declined to testify, and presumably will not until a federal judge reaches a decision compelling him to do so, a decision that will be appealed and then appealed again and may come long after the impeachment trial has wrapped. For Bolton, the constitutional imperative lies in locking down the book deal.

And Bob Woodward did the same thing – kept vital life-or-death information to himself until the book was ready.

Now John Kelly has not gotten a book deal yet, but he reportedly uses the threat of his future book deal to ensure that Donald Trump doesn’t go after him personally. Apparently the former chief of staff assured his boss that while he would eventually write a book about his time in the White House, he’d wait until Trump was out of office. So long as Trump doesn’t denigrate him first. Some use books to ease the conscience. Others use them to keep Trump at bay. You know, party before Country. Brand above All.

(Fun fact: Trump did denigrate him the other day, over the story about Trump’s callous questions to Kelly when they went to Arlington Cemetery together. Maybe that book is being typed even now.)

In spite of all of this, “books” have somehow retained their vestigial illusion of seriousness and sobriety and adherence to truth and higher values. But these books aren’t penned to make us a better polity, to bring us face to face with our better angels, or to illuminate and elucidate democratic values. They’re branding opportunities for an age of media personalities. This is George Orwell, if Orwell had slowly built an international luxury bedding empire, with 1984 as just one rung on the ladder.

Woodward put his book ahead of a lot of lives.

Siva has a point.

I don’t know why I overlooked that this morning. Why the hell (obvious selfish reasons aside) did Woodward not report the story at the time instead of saving it for his book launch?

I suppose a likely answer is that Trump agreed to the interviews for a book, not a Washington Post story. But maybe in a life or death situation you ought to break a deal of that kind? Just maybe?

Interesting.

When Northwestern University psychologist Dan P. McAdams first wrote about Donald Trump’s psyche for “The Atlantic” in 2016, he knew his subject was not your average politician. He just couldn’t nail down why. 

His new book, “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning” (Oxford University Press, March 2020), provides some surprising answers. Trump, McAdams asserts, may be the rare person who lacks any inner story, something most people develop to give their lives unity, meaning and purpose.

McAdams is something called a “narrative psychologist.”

Trump, McAdams argues, can’t form a meaningful life story because he is the “episodic man” who sees life as a series of battles to be won. There is no connection between the moments, no reflection and no potential for growth when one is compulsively in the present.

It has certainly seemed to me all along that Trump is your classic “just one thing after another” guy. It’s all random, all disjointed, all arbitrary; nothing leads anywhere.

Donald Trump is a “truly authentic fake,” writes McAdams, professor of human development and social policy at the School of Education and Social Policy. “Trump is always acting, always on stage — but that is who he really is, and that is all he really is. He is not introspective, retrospective or prospective. He does not go deep into his mind; he does not travel back to the past; he does not project far into the future. He is always on the surface, always right now.”

Shorter: he doesn’t think.

“Truth for Donald Trump is whatever works to win in the moment,” McAdams writes. “He moves through life episode by episode, from one battle to the next, striving in turn, to win each one. The episodes don’t add up or form a narrative arc.”

It’s no wonder he’s so bored, then; no wonder he does little but watch Fox and blurt tweets.

“The features of Trump’s strange personality — his orientation to love, his proclivity for untruth, his narcissistic goal agenda, his authoritarian sentiments — can be fully appreciated and understood only if we realize that they revolve around the empty narrative core, the hollow inner space where the story should be, but never was,” McAdams says.

“Empty” is one of the best words for him.

The American Humanist Association is apparently captive. Rachel Deitch, their Director of Policy and Social Justice, ardently defends the “right” of men who identify as women to compete against women in sport. Women have to take a back seat to men who identify as women.

A few weeks ago this story was shared on the Facebook page of the American Humanist Association (AHA) to celebrate a preliminary injunction by a federal judge against Idaho’s backwards Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. The comments thread quickly devolved into a malicious and transphobic free-for-all. Faced with an onslaught of posts that violated our social media guidelines, our social media coordinator brought the social justice department in to assist. It took nearly three hours for all of us to properly moderate the conversation, and we’re still actively monitoring the post because the vitriol hasn’t stopped.

She doesn’t include a link to the Facebook post though. That’s disobliging, since according to her it was weeks ago. There are a lot of posts on their account so it’s too much trouble to scroll and scroll and scroll trying to find the right one. Normal etiquette would be to link to the post, since it’s what she’s talking about. It’s only fair to give readers links to the subject under discussion. Also it kind of looks like bad faith not to. Why not link to it? Is she hiding something?

As a team, we did a post mortem: What could we have done differently to stem the harm early? Should we have taken the post down? What can we do better next time? But this exercise doesn’t change the fact that our social media platforms, which are intended to be a positive space where humanists from all over the country can share perspectives and build community, fostered harm with that post.

If their social media platforms are intended to be a positive space where humanists from all over the country can share perspectives, then why couldn’t people share their perspectives on that post? Why did the AHA have to “moderate” the conversation? Why is “men are women if they say they are” the only perspective allowed? Especially when the subject is women’s sport?

So, while elsewhere we’re working on repairing that harm, I’d like to use this space to lay out our perspective. To be clear, as a cisgender heterosexual woman, I am not writing on behalf of transgender athletes. And I encourage people who haven’t already taken in perspectives from transgender athletes to do so now. I also will not attempt to debunk every harmful, transphobic, and transmisogynist myth shared on our page about transgender athletes. Others have already done that more thoroughly than I could.

What about perspectives from female athletes though? Why do we have to take in perspectives from trans athletes but not from female ones? Why are women being told, yet again, to step back and Be Kind and do what we’re told?

But we also have to ask: What are we protecting students from? With the scientific evidence available, sporting bodies have determined that transgender athletes do not have an unfair advantage over cisgender athletes.

The issue isn’t generic “transgender athletes,” it’s male athletes who claim they identify as female. Lumping it all into “transgender athletes” is one of the many evasive dishonest ploys that people use to try to make this shit smell like roses. It’s not true that all sporting bodies have determined that transgender athletes do not have an unfair advantage over cisgender athletes, and the reality is that of course some of them do: specifically, males do.

School athletics teach young people about teamwork, goal setting, self-esteem, and, yes, they also teach about healthy competition. Shouldn’t all students get the opportunity to participate in that learning, and shouldn’t they be able to do that authentically?

Yes, which means female students should not be forced to compete against male students simply because the latter say they are girls. There’s nothing particularly “authentic” about claiming to be whatever you say you are. Saying isn’t magic.

Let’s not mince words. Laws that try to prevent trans athletes from participating in sports or prevent trans students from using the bathroom most suitable for them aren’t about protecting women and girls. They’re about shaming and controlling transgender bodies.

If that’s what we get when we don’t mince words then let’s mince words, because that right there is some stupid crap. I can promise you I have zero interest in shaming and controlling transgender bodies. My interest is in retaining and expanding the rights of women and girls as opposed to handing those rights over to men and boys who claim to identify as female.

As humanists, what kind of society do we want? I would hope it’s one guided by scientific evidence but founded on the dignity and worth of every human being. Personally, I was ashamed of how our community represented itself on Facebook that day. While I’m sure a fair number of commenters were trolls, we also must consider that vitriolic and harmful comments also came from humanists. That’s something we will continue to reckon with.

And by “reckon with” we mean ignore or demonize the actual arguments the putative “trolls” were making. Very humanist, much dignity and worth.

For this humanist, and for the American Humanist Association as an organization, bone density and femur-to-hip angles—major points of contention from our Facebook comments—do not make a person, do not make an athlete, and do not make a woman.

So let those female bones be broken on the rugby field and in the boxing ring! It’s the humanist thing to do!

H/t Sackbut

Updating to add: the first Facebook post is here. Thanks Your Name’s not Bruce?

How interesting. Trump told Bob Woodward on February 7 how very dangerous the coronavirus is. February 7.

President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book “Rage.”

“This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Woodward on February 7.

In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. “Pretty amazing,” Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times “more deadly” than the flu.

So it’s not manslaughter, it’s first degree murder – of many thousands.

I figured he’d been told all that of course, but I didn’t assume he’d listened or grasped it. Interesting to learn that he did and did.

Trump’s admissions are in stark contrast to his frequent public comments at the time insisting that the virus was “going to disappear” and “all work out fine.”

No kidding; that’s why it’s murder.

The book, using Trump’s own words, depicts a President who has betrayed the public trust and the most fundamental responsibilities of his office. In “Rage,” Trump says the job of a president is “to keep our country safe.” But in early February, Trump told Woodward he knew how deadly the virus was, and in March, admitted he kept that knowledge hidden from the public.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

In which “to create a panic=to lose the election.”

If instead of playing down what he knew, Trump had acted decisively in early February with a strict shutdown and a consistent message to wear masks, social distance and wash hands, experts believe that thousands of American lives could have been saved.

And he knew that and did it anyway.

Captain Clinch is gloating.

What is “vilify”? How is it defined? What’s the standard? What’s the threshold? How is the tension between “it is a crime to vilify” and the value of free speech resolved?

Exactly, to the minute, 24 hours between the two.

But the new one is getting piled on too.

Don’t “vilify” this huge threatening man or he will make you pay him $10,000 for the vilifitude.

Brilliant way of putting it; I wish I’d thought of it.

Women?? Hahaha don’t be silly; of course not. Women are the dominant privileged group, they don’t need protection.

Wait…isn’t that vilification?

It gets more and more sinister.

ACT is Australian Capital Territory, so that’s the Twitter account of the Australian Capital Territory Human Rights Commission – which is disturbing. Apparently it’s against the law to “vilify” people in the ACT, but the ACTHRC doesn’t bother to tell us what “vilify” means. It’s hard to believe that liking Facebook posts amounts to “vilification” under Australian law but who the fuck knows at this point. But don’t worry, folks, just don’t “vilify” anyone and you’ll be fine. (Am I “vilifying” the ACTHRC by writing this post? Probably. Fortunately I don’t live in their jurisdiction.)

Their tweet gloating over the $10,000 that Beth Rep was told to give that former Army captain got ratioed, so this new tweet is apparently a response to the ratio. How dare you disagree with our gloating, laws against vilification of trans people are there for a reason! Of course liking Facebook comments is vilification!

And it applies to other groups too! See?

No tweet for “on the basis of sex” though. I guess vilification of women is fine. Don’t bother giving them a call for a confidential chat about boring dreary probably transphobic women.

Kolesnikova tore up her passport rather than let her kidnappers force her to leave Belarus.

“She was pushed into the back seat (of the car), she yelled that she wasn’t going anywhere,” Ms Kolesnikova’s colleague Anton Rodnenkov told a news conference in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday.

Mr Rodnenkov said he and another colleague had been kidnapped on Monday, driven between buildings, and interrogated with hoods over their heads and their hands tied.

They accepted an offer to leave Belarus with Ms Kolesnikova but when the car reached the border she refused to cross. The two men told journalists they did not know where she was now.

She’s a brave woman.

Oh no, another huge bruiser of a man victimized by a woman who Liked comments on Facebook. That will be ten thousand dollars madam, pay the cashier.

A dispute over a post on Canberra radio newsreader Beth Rep’s Facebook page was meant to end with an apology to transgender activist Bridget Clinch.

Instead, the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal yesterday found Ms Rep breached discrimination laws when she ‘liked’ offensive comments on the post, and ordered she pay Ms Clinch $10,000 in compensation.

Ms Clinch — an Australian Army captain who medically transitioned from life as a male to female in 2010 — first came into contact with Ms Rep after the newsreader made online comments about her after International Women’s Day in March 2018.

Here is the former Army captain:

After Ms Clinch complained to the ACT Human Rights Commission about the comments, Ms Rep posted about it on social media, and was subsequently banned from Twitter.

Mediation led to Ms Rep posting an apology on her Facebook page in mid-2018 and paying Ms Clinch $700, but the post attracted 304 comments, many of which were offensive, and some of which were ‘liked’ by Ms Rep.

So the dainty fragile vulnerable ex-captain sued Beth Rep.

Ms Rep, who works for local radio station 2CC, wrote the posts and liked the comments on her personal Facebook page.

The tribunal heard Ms Rep, who works for 2CC, had described herself as a radical feminist who believed in resisting what she called aggressive trans activism.

She told the tribunal that while she was supportive of gender non-conformity, she was concerned about the impact of trans activism on women’s spaces, services and opportunities.

Also, whether the tribunal grasped this or not, gender non-conformity is the opposite of trans, not a synonym for it.

Ms Rep said the online exchange in March 2018 had become heated after a number of provocative and anti-feminist comments were posted.

She argued she did not invite the comments nor coordinate them, and was not an active participant, other than hitting the ‘like’ button.

The comments ranged from “Bridget Clinch is a male bully” to “I hate Bridget and I don’t even know who he is” and the use of the hashtag #istandwithbeth.

It’s possible that I left one or more critical comment. I’m Facebook friends with Beth (or was, she seems to have left it now, understandably) and have commented on her posts and even Liked them.

In addition to paying compensation, the tribunal told Ms Rep to delete “all posts, statements, information, suggestions or implications” on the matter and refrain from the same or similar posts in future.

No wonder I can’t find her on Facebook now.

The bully won. They usually do.

Trump is getting the Justice Department to defend him in that E. Jean Carrol defamation suit.

Not long after the ruling, Trump was given deadlines to produce his DNA. Carroll is a former Elle columnist who alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store. Carroll has claimed that the “Donna Karan coat-dress” she was wearing at the time of the alleged rape has been hanging on the back of her closet door and remained “unworn and unlaundered since that evening.” Carroll and her lawyers have requested a DNA swab so that Trump’s DNA can be compared to sample of unidentified male DNA found on the dress. In February, Trump responded to demands that he provide a DNA sample in Carroll’s defamation lawsuit by claiming that her requests were “burdensome.”

This from a guy who spends most of his time watching Fox, tweeting, and playing golf. Burdensome shmurdensome.

Law&Crime reached out to Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan for comment. She said that timing of the DOJ’s intervention was telling.

“Almost exactly one month ago today, a New York state court rejected Donald Trump’s argument that he is immune from a private lawsuit concerning defamatory statements he made about a sexual assault he committed in the 1990s. As a result of that decision, Trump was soon going to be required to produce documents, provide a DNA sample, and sit for a deposition,” Kaplan said. “Realizing that there was no valid basis to appeal that decision in the New York courts, on the very day that he would have been required to appeal, Trump instead enlisted the U.S. Department of Justice to replace his private lawyers and argue that when he lied about sexually assaulting our client, explaining that she ‘wasn’t his type,’  he was acting in his official capacity as President of the United States.”

I don’t think we ever asked him to do that, did we? Kaplan said the argument is shocking.

“It offends me as a lawyer, and offends me even more as a citizen. Trump’s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent, and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out,” she said.

As far as it takes.

About that Sturgis Motorcycle Rally…

According to a new study, which tracked anonymized cellphone data from the rally, over 250,000 coronavirus cases have now been tied to the 10-day event, one of the largest to be held since the start of the pandemic. It drew motorcycle enthusiasts from around the country, many of whom were seen without face coverings inside crowded bars, restaurants, and other indoor establishments. 

The explosion in cases, the study from the Germany-based IZA Institute of Labor Economics finds, is expected to reach $12 billion in public health costs.

Gee. You could build a lot of good public housing with $12 billion.

“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the ‘worst-case scenarios’ for super-spreading occurred simultaneously,” the researchers wrote, “the event was prolonged, included individuals packed closely together, involved a large out-of-town population, and had low compliance with recommended infection countermeasures such as the use of masks.”

…“Screw COVID. I went to Sturgis,” read one t-shirt from the rally, where overwhelming support for President Trump was the norm.   

It’s not COVID who got screwed.

This in the Atlantic is from last November:

At least one human life has already been lost as a direct result of the widespread obsession with turning the sex of one’s unborn child into an explosive (often literally) spectacle. In October, an Iowa woman was killed when her family inadvertently built a pipe bomb as part of their gender-reveal party—a gathering at which expectant parents dramatically and colorfully announce the sex of their baby.

The methods for doing so seem to have started out as benign, if stereotypical—cutting into a cake to reveal either blue or pink frosting, say. But in the past couple of years, some kind of communal madness has taken hold, and many of these feats of gender performance have gotten more elaborate, more public, and more dangerous—putting lives and entire ecosystems at risk. Last year, a father-to-be started a 47,000-acre wildfire in Arizona when he shot a rifle at an explosive target full of blue powder (It’s a boy!), causing $8.2 million of damage, according to the Arizona Daily Star.

Causing $8.2 million in damage and god only knows how many animals their lives, not to mention the general damage to the environment. But hey, I guess it seemed well worth it to those self-absorbed idiots who started the El Dorado fire last weekend. It’s now burned more than 10,000 acres.

Aw, Mister Nice Guy.

Speaking in Jupiter, Florida, Trump announced he was signing an order to expand a moratorium on offshore drilling to include Florida’s Atlantic coast, Georgia and South Carolina.

Well that’s eccentric. Normally he’s in there yelling “Drill drill drill!” and tearing up laws protecting pesky things like shorelines.

The Trump administration has generally been enthusiastic about oil and gas drilling, but some Florida officials had expressed fear that the state’s tourism industry would be negatively impacted if the moratorium was allowed to expire.

Oh well that explains it then. Mar-a-Lago and Doral.

Trump’s announcement seems to be an attempt to curry favor with voters in a key swing state that could determine the winner of the presidential election.

See above. No further motivation required.

Oh does it really.

Why why why why WHY does the word “women” need to be “more inclusive”? Should we start spelling “Black” in some funny new way to be more “inclusive”? The suggestion would be seen, rightly, as incredibly insulting. Should we start talking about wxrkers instead of workers? In order to be more inclusive by including plutocrats and bosses and exploiters of every stripe?

What on earth is progressive about changing the spelling of the word for a subordinated group in order to be “inclusive” of people who are not in that subordinated group? Looks like the opposite of progressive to me.

The word “womxn” sheds absolutely NO light on the prejudice, discrimination, and institutional barriers women have faced; on the contrary, it obscures them in favor of talking about the very people who are NOT women – i.e. men.

Nobody knows how to left any more.