The Trump campaign is actually sending out mailings shouting “Kamala is HARRIBLE!!!” just like Trump.

Childish enough?

He should up the stakes and fold the tent and go the fuck home.

So pathetic.

I think loads of people are intimidated by this new generation of people that are…somehow makin up these genders.

Oh no no no honey. Not intimidated. Bored and irritated.

People hear the words non-binary and they’re like “well that doesn’t exist, that’s not a thing” – even in the LGBT community there are people who don’t think that we are real and there’s people who think that we are attention-seekers.

Well let’s tease this apart. Yes, I am like “that doesn’t exist, that’s not a thing.” That’s because it doesn’t, and it isn’t. It’s just words. On the other hand I certainly don’t think that people who call themselves non-binary are not real – it’s the word they use to describe themselves that I think names a non-reality. People can call themselves angels, gods, flying horses; they go on being real people but what they say about themselves is fictional. And finally – yes, I think people who call themselves non-binary are attention-seekers. I think they’re declaring themselves more important than mere “binary” people.

But hey, you might grow out of it.

Ya that’s not good.

Now, this happened in my neighborhood years ago – suddenly there were a lot fewer mailboxes and one had to hike to drop something in the mail. I had to hike last week to drop my vote in the mail. I was very annoyed by it at the time, and still am, but back then it wasn’t part of a vote suppression move. Now is not a good time to be removing mail boxes, even if these were on some kind of long-term schedule for removal.

Also –

Not good.

People who love feet is it?

The what conspiracy theory?

CNN explains:

QAnon is a virtual cult that celebrates President Trump and casts Democratic politicians and other elites as evil child abusers. Aspects of the cult are downright delusional. Last year an FBI office warned that Q adherents are a domestic terrorism threat.

Plus it’s been gaining in popularity. Thousands of closed Facebook groups, with millions of members.

Numerous Republican congressional candidates “have embraced” QAnon, as CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi reported earlier this week.

At the top of the list is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is all but certain to win her House race in Georgia this fall. Trump praised Greene for winning her primary. As Stracqualursi wrote, candidates like Greene are “espousing and promoting QAnon theories and phrases as they seek political office on a major party ticket.”

It’s a cult and a story.

There are storytelling components to this virtual cult, as Adrienne LaFrance explained so thoroughly in this article for The Atlantic.

“QAnon is emblematic of modern America’s susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and its enthusiasm for them,” she wrote. “But it is also already much more than a loose collection of conspiracy-minded chat-room inhabitants. It is a movement united in mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values. And we are likely closer to the beginning of its story than the end. The group harnesses paranoia to fervent hope and a deep sense of belonging. The way it breathes life into an ancient preoccupation with end-times is also radically new. To look at QAnon is to see not just a conspiracy theory but the birth of a new religion.”

It sounds a little bit like the trans madness – not the content, but the mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values.

How we do political persuasion now.

That’s it! That’s all it takes. Just say these four words, and tell everyone else to say them too. Paradise on earth will ensue!

So, Don, do you regret all the lying? Well do you?

SV Dáte had waited five long years to ask Donald Trump one question: “Mr President, after three and a half years [of Trump’s presidency], do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”

Confronted with Dáte’s question at Thursday’s White House briefing, Trump responded with a question of his own. “All the what?” he said.

Dáte: “All the lying, all the dishonesties.”

Trump: “That who has done?”

“You have done,” said Dáte, who is the Huffington Post’s White House correspondent.

It’s hilarious – best straight man ever. “That who has done?” “YOU. You, bro, we’re talking about you, you’re the one who has done all the lying, you, you, you, you.” “The what?” “THE LYING. The lying, the dishonesty, the untruth, the mendacity, the falsehood-purveying, THE LYING.” “Uh…you there, you ask your question, yes go ahead, go ahead, ASK A QUESTION, ANY QUESTION.”

Curtain.

The Guardian on the A-levels mess:

Pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have been worst hit by the controversial standardisation process used to award A-level grades in England this year, while pupils at private schools benefited the most.

What are A-levels? They’re national exams in the UK that function like a turnstile for admission to higher education. They were canceled this year because of the virus, so instead teacher evaluations were used, but with the Authorities applying a “controversial standardisation process” to the evaluations with the result that a lot of students were downgraded, which amounts to saying “Soz no higher ed for you, off to the factory you go.” There’s a lot of anger.

Private schools increased the proportion of students achieving top grades – A* and A – twice as much as pupils at comprehensives, official data showed.

Gee, what a funny coincidence.

According to detailed analysis published by exam regulator Ofqual, the pattern in England has been similar to but less dramatic than in Scotland, where pupils and schools in disadvantaged areas were marked down the most harshly by the statistical model used to replace exams.

Pupils in lower socioeconomic backgrounds were most likely to have the grades proposed by their teachers overruled, while those in wealthier areas were less likely to be downgraded, according to the analysis.

I don’t know, maybe they have stats that indicate pupils in lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to mess up in those final months, but then maybe that should tell them something about the finality of that turnstile.

For students from disadvantaged backgrounds on the cusp of attending higher education, more than one in 10 of those assessed as receiving C grades by their teachers had their final result lowered by at least one grade, compared with 8% for those from non-disadvantaged backgrounds.

Which translates to a lot of students abruptly shut out of higher education without having had the chance to try. It’s a gruesome situation.

Headteachers and pupils reacted with anger and disappointment, while the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said “something has obviously gone horribly wrong with this year’s exam results” and suggested a Scotland-style U-turn – accepting all teachers’ recommended grades – should not be ruled out.

Thursday’s results confirm that 39% of teacher recommendations in England were downgraded.

“Parents, teachers and young people are rightly upset, frustrated and angry about this injustice. The system has fundamentally failed them. The government needs to urgently rethink,” Starmer said.

If you’re going to slam the door in people’s faces at least give them the chance to say their piece first.

Oh fabulous, we get to have the birther thing all over again.

Axios has more:

Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis on Thursday shared a Newsweek op-ed that baselessly claims Sen. Kamala Harris may be ineligible for the vice presidency because both of her parents were not naturalized citizens at her birth.

Harris was born in Oakland, Calif. She is an American citizen and is eligible for the office. Critics, including many Republicans, denounced the piece as a new attempt at “birtherism” — the conspiracy theory that President Obama was not actually born in the U.S. — targeting the first woman of color on a presidential ticket.

Not that it looks the slightest bit racist to keep saying black Americans are not citizens.

The op-ed, penned by conservative law professor John Eastman and published Wednesday, argues that Harris might not be considered a natural-born citizen because a clause in the 14th Amendment — “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof [the U.S.]” — could preclude her given her parents’ citizenship.

Eastman’s view on birthright citizenship and presidential eligibility is not accepted by constitutional law scholars.

But hey let’s just throw it out there anyway because this kind of thing is such fun.

Ellis doubled down on her retweet, telling ABC News’ Will Steakin that she believes Harris’ citizenship is “an open question, and one I think Harris should answer so the American people know for sure she is eligible.”

Right because that’s how it worked for Obama, he produced his birth certificate because Trump was doing such a bang-up job of promoting the Not Borrn Heer bullshit and Trump went right on promoting the Not Borrn Heer bullshit just the same.

Trump is cheering himself up by talking sexist shit about women.

In an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, Trump referred to Harris as “sort of a mad woman”, criticizing her questioning of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his heated confirmation hearing in September 2018. “She was the angriest of the group and they were all angry,” he said of the Democrats.

Earlier this morning, Trump tweeted that the media has given Harris a “free pass”, saying there was “nobody meaner or more condescending” to Biden during the primaries.

Trump’s tirade on Fox Business also including US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saying that she “is not even a smart person” and that she “goes out and yaps”. Trump also described House speaker Nancy Pelosi as “stone-cold crazy”.

About that “Whiteness” chart again…

One thing to note is that it was compiled by Judith Katz in 1990, and it’s copyrighted by a “consulting group.”

JudithH.Katz © 1990. The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The thing that’s so bizarre and stupid about it is that it’s not about “whiteness” at all, it’s just about a grab bag of tastes, habits, practices, beliefs, ideas, ideologies, fashions and the like, few if any of which are genuinely specific and exclusive to white people. It mixes up class, hierarchy, status, consumerism, and some just plain randomness.

For instance –

Rugged Individualism

Self-reliance

Individual is primary unit

Independence and autonomy highly valued and rewarded

Individuals assumed to be in control of their environment – “You get what you deserve”

But that’s not a racial list. It’s a mix of philosophical and political and sociological, but not racial. And pretty much the whole list is like that – a giant category error, or string of category errors.

The idea seems to be that majoritarian habits and ways of thinking=white habits and ways of thinking…which in a majority-white country is sort of tautological, and not interesting.

Some items on the list are conservative shibboleths, and some are just “you don’t say.” Under religion, “Christianity is the norm” – in other words Christianity is the majority religion in the US. You don’t say! That doesn’t make it white. Also hello? There’s quite a deep tradition of African-American Christianity; do we have to call that part of “whiteness”?

In short it’s just so damn silly, along with all its other faults, that I wonder why anybody ever paid any attention to it.

Trump and co are openly moving to steal the election. This is a violation of several laws.

The head of the Iowa Postal Workers Union alleged Tuesday that mail sorting machines are “being removed” from Post Offices in her state due to new policies imposed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major GOP donor to President Donald Trump whose operational changes have resulted in dramatic mail slowdowns across the nation.

Mail sorting machines are being removed. What will that do? Sabotage voting by mail, of course.

Asked by NPR‘s Noel King whether she has felt the impact of DeJoy’s changes, Iowa Postal Workers Union President Kimberly Karol—a 30-year Postal Service veteran—answered in the affirmative, saying “mail is beginning to pile up in our offices, and we’re seeing equipment being removed.”

Karol went on to specify that “equipment that we use to process mail for delivery”—including sorting machines—is being removed from Postal Service facilities in Iowa as DeJoy rushes ahead with policies that, according to critics, are sabotaging the Postal Service’s day-to-day operations less than 90 days before an election that could hinge on mail-in ballots.

Observers reacted with alarm to Karol’s comments, viewing them as further confirmation that DeJoy is deliberately attempting to damage the Postal Service with the goal of helping Trump win reelection in November.

Ya think? What else would removal of sorting machines be?

Karol’s remarks come as members of Congress and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans are demanding DeJoy’s immediate resignation or removal in the wake of his displacement of nearly two dozen top Postal Service officials late last week—a major leadership overhaul that critics dubbed a “Friday Night Massacre.”

According to internal Postal Service memos obtained by Reuters, DeJoy—a former logistics executive with tens of millions invested in USPS competitors—was aware his operational changes would lead to mail delays. As Reuters reported:

The reorganization, introduced in July, has resulted in thousands of delayed letters in southern Maine, as delivery drivers follow a new directive to leave on time, even if the mail has not been loaded.

Delays have also been reported in at least 18 other states, according to media reports.

“One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that—temporarily—we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks,” says one memo, dated July 10. The plan hopes to eliminate 64 million working hours nationally to reduce personnel costs, according to another memo.

And to steal the election and to destroy the Postal Service so that the for-profit outfits can make more profit.

In a statement over the weekend, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) warned that Dejoy’s “nefarious collective efforts will suppress millions of mail-in ballots and threaten the voting rights of millions of Americans, setting the stage for breach of our Constitution.”

“It is imperative that we remove him from his post,” said DeFazio, “and immediately replace him with an experienced leader who is committed to sustaining a critical service for all Americans.”

Do it.

Stonewall wants us to know that oh yes it definitely does support the swift and easy prescription of puberty blockers.

Sterility and arrested brain development, rock on!

Trump is telling us right out in the open that he’s carefully kneecapping our ability to vote by mail, i.e. rigging the election so that he can keep destroying everything while piling up more money for himself.

Speaking with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network on Thursday morning, Trump appeared to confirm that he opposes Democrats’ proposed funding for mail-in balloting and the U.S. Postal Service in order to make it more difficult to expand voting by mail.

“Now they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he said. “But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.”

And he doesn’t want “them” to have it because “they” will vote his sorry ass back to Queens.

Trump also alluded to this idea at a news conference on Wednesday evening, noting that Democrats are now asking for $3.5 billion for universal mail-in voting and an additional $25 billion for the Postal Service.

“They don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can’t do it, I guess,” Trump said. “Are they going to do it even if they don’t have the money?”

He added: “But therefore they don’t have it. They don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in votes.”

And: “Therefore, they can’t do the universal mail-in vote. It’s very simple. How are they going to do it if they don’t have the money to do it?”

He does love to repeat himself.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last year suggested that Democrats’ proposal to make Election Day a federal holiday — something that would logically increase turnout — was “a power grab that’s smelling more and more like exactly what it is.”

“A power grab,” meaning grabbing the power of getting elected via full voting rights. Republicans want to make it difficult to vote – so what does that tell you? Who is really “grabbing” power here? Isn’t it more of a “grab” to suppress the vote among people who would vote you out?

So of course we get this:

Thanks What a Maroon for alerting us to that.

“So what?!” says Tucker Carlson in fake fox anger.

Margaret Sullivan in the Post:

Not only did Carlson mispronounce it, but when a guest went out of his way to politely correct him, Carlson had one of his trademark fits of pique.

The exchange went like this:

“Tucker, can I just say one thing?” said Richard Goodstein, an adviser to Democratic campaigns.

Carlson: “Of course.”

Goodstein: “Because this will serve you and your fellow hosts on Fox. Her name is pronounced ‘comma’ — like the punctuation mark — ‘la.’ Comma-la.”

He went on: “Seriously, I’ve heard every sort of bastardization of her —,” and then Carlson broke in: “Okay, so what?”

With his familiar mocking laugh, Carlson demanded to know what difference it made if he pronounced it KAM-a-la, with the first syllable like “camera.” Or Ka-MILL-a. Or, properly, Comma-la.

The difference it makes is it’s just basic. Get people’s names right. Oh and while we’re at it, get the adjectival form right too – it’s not “Democrat party” and “Democrat senator,” the adjective is Democratic. British news media please note.

In Carlson’s case, he used his guest’s correction to begin one of his typical rants. Making a fuss over her name, he argued, only proves how Democrats don’t want Harris challenged in any way at any time.

You don’t “challenge” political figures by getting their names wrong. You do it by making substantive criticisms of their actions and/or policies – not their looks, not their clothes, not their accessories: their actions and/or policies. You can do that and pronounce their names correctly both at once.

Of course Trump is calling Kamala Harris the N word.

President Trump has called magazines, pharmaceutical advertisements and questions “nasty.” He has called rumors, numbers and one unnamed TV columnist who gave “The Apprentice” a bad review “nasty.” He has called men “nasty,” and he has called women “nasty.”

So of course he wasted no time in using it on a woman who is more intelligent and impressive than he is.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, the president described Harris’s questioning of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing as “extraordinarily nasty” — “nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing.” He also said she was “the meanest” and “the most horrible” in pressing Kavanaugh. And Trump said her debate stage attacks against Biden during the Democratic primaries were “very, very nasty.”

Which, as I’ve mentioned before, is just absurd coming from the most foul-mouthed abusive insulting vulgar piece of shit who’s ever polluted the Oval Office by breathing in it.

Calling a woman nasty, say many experts and women in politics, is another way to deliberately dismiss and demean female politicians.

“It really has become coded language for a woman, and it tries to put her in a place that is unacceptable to society,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List, which works to elect pro-choice Democratic women across the country. “Our society allows for poor behavior by men but has little acceptance for anything but perfection by women, and so a term like ‘nasty’ really is just coded language, at least for a certain piece of the population.”

It’s also belittling though. It sounds feeble; mean but feeble. Especially in Trump’s Queens accent. (That’s me being nassssty.)

Aparna Thomas, a professor of politics and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at Cornell College in Iowa, said the descriptor is “dismissive” and signifies that “women are not to be taken seriously.” She said it was significant that “nasty” was the inaugural attack Trump hurled at Harris once she became Biden’s running mate.

“That’s the first thing that comes to the president’s mind, is that she’s to be dismissed and that she’s a nasty woman,” Thomas said. “We’re now back to 2016, where we have a vice-presidential candidate who is female and is still being judged by a different set of standards set by men.”

We never left it.

Jonathan Chait wrote a thing in New York magazine last month, about anti-racism training and some eccentric ideas some such trainers (or entrepreneurs) have embraced. In Googling for more I saw that National Review and Don Junior were also interested, so keep that in mind – but even National Review and Don Junior aren’t wrong about everything. (Nearly everything, in Junior’s case, but not quite everything.)

The star of anti-racism training is Robin DiAngelo of White Fragility fame. What Chait focuses on is the whiteness studies part.

The African-American History Museum has a page on whiteness, which summarizes the ideas that the racism trainers have brought into relatively wide circulation. The museum’s page summarizes what it calls “white culture” in this astonishing graphic:

What’s the problem? The problem is ascribing things like “emphasis on scientific method” to whiteness ffs! Bam, with one blow of their fist they declare black people uninterested in science. That will work out well! I guess Katherine Johnson was just mistakenly trying to be “white” with all that math skill she had? Neil Tyson should have played basketball instead?

And by the way this dreck was created by white people, for…anti-racism training. What would pro-racism training look like?

Also the graphic is full of baby talk. In the second item on the list, Family Structure, it says “father, mother, 2.3 children is the ideal social unit.” It is? White people think 2.3 children is the ideal? What do they do with the .3 of a child?

It’s confused, it’s dopy, it’s talking about different things at different times, it’s a grab bag, it’s silly. The section labeled “history” – what is that even supposed to mean? History as taught in school, history as scholarship, history as museum gift shops, what? And it’s not true.

But the worst part is including various instrumental virtues and treating them as part of whiteness when what they are part of is what it takes to get shit done. Oh no, planning for the future! Paying attention to time! How hideously pale, everyone must do the opposite!

Chait comments:

“White” values include things like “objective, rational thinking”; “cause and effect relationships”; “hard work is the key to success”; “plan for the future”; and “delayed gratification.” The source for this chart is another, less-artistic chart written by Judith Katz in 1990. Katz has a doctorate in education and moved into the corporate consulting world in 1985, where, according to her résumé, she has “led many transformational change initiatives.” It is not clear what in Katz’s field of study allowed her to establish such sweeping conclusions about the innate culture of white people versus other groups.

Also: she is white. It’s almost as if it’s a cunning plan by actual racists.

The African-American History Museum took the page down after all this hostile attention. Good move.

Meanwhile we mustn’t lose sight of the filthy corruption of “senior adviser” Ivanka Trump. (Her brothers are just as filthy but they don’t have pretend jobs in the White House, they don’t insert themselves into conversations among heads of state at international meetings, they don’t take Daddy’s place at the table at international meetings, they don’t have pretend jobs in the White House.)

Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, earned at least $36 million in income outside their White House roles in 2019, according to financial disclosure forms released on Friday. 

The income, first reported by The Washington Post, is from the businesses, properties, and other assets owned by the couple.

“Conflicts of interest?” [giggle, simper] “What are those?”

According to the Post, the amount is about $7 million higher than their earnings in 2018, and the real amount may be as high as $157 million, as the Office for Government Ethics does not require officials to submit exact but only approximate income figures. 

…

Ivanka Trump closed her fashion business in 2018, a year after after taking a role in the White House. The business had been subjected to a boycott campaign when she initially refused to close it despite working in a government role. She continues to own a stake in her father’s business, the Trump Organization, and has a wide range of other assets.

According to the disclosure forms filed to the Office of Government Ethics, she received $4 million in income from the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC.   

The one that foreign officials and others seeking favors from Trump lavish money on. Massive throbbing conflict of interest.

Kushner decided earlier this year not to divest of stocks in a real estate tech start-up, Cadre, he co-founded, despite being advised by government ethics lawyers to do so, government ethics nonprofit CREW reported in July. 

The company has received $90 million in investment from foreign sources, according to The Guardian. 

“That’s unethical, Junior.”

“MmmmmmI don’t care, gonna keep it anyway.”

Filthy filthy filthy.

Donnie Disaster has added a quack to his pandemic team. Donnie D introduced him yesterday at the “press briefing.”

The man Trump was pointing to was Dr. Scott Atlas, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who frequently appears on Fox News and has advised Republicans in the past. And crucially, unlike the government’s medical experts who have advised Trump until now, has adopted a public stance on the virus much closer to Trump’s — including decrying the idea that schools cannot reopen this fall as “hysteria” and pushing for the resumption of college sports.

Just what we need – even more murderous denialism about the pandemic.

“He’s working with us and will be working with us on the coronavirus,” Trump said. “And he has many great ideas. And he thinks what we’ve done is really good, and now we’ll take it to a new level.”

“And and and he thinks I’m a really good boy and and he said I could have ice cream and and and you’re not the boss of me shut up bang bang I have to go potty now.”

Although Monday was Trump’s first public introduction of Atlas, multiple sources with knowledge of the relationship told CNN that Atlas has been informally advising Trump for weeks. Trump first noticed Atlas on Fox News, where he asserted it doesn’t matter “how many cases” there are in the US, wrongly claimed those under 18 years old have “essentially no risk of dying,” implied teachers who are at high risk for contracting Covid-19 should “know how to protect themselves,” baselessly claimed “children almost never transmit the disease” and without evidence blamed a rise in cases in southern states on protests and border crossings.

A reckless hack, in other words. Fabulous. Trump has almost 3 months left to kill us all; do you think he can manage it? (He has another almost 3 after that but I think lame-duck killing is a little more difficult.)

Mermaids? Mermaids who? I think you must have the wrong number.

Maybe the same reason the BBC did.

Along with the non-stop bullying of women.