Kate Brannen has a long and hair-raising explanation of exactly what happened between the White House and the Pentagon during the struggle over getting the Congressionally approved funding for Ukraine released.

The basic story: the Pentagon tried like hell to get the OMB to release the money and the OMB refused and also blew smoke about what it was doing, and the Justice Department redacted the most damning evidence, not for reasons of national security or national anything else but to cover Trump’s ass.

Lemme repeat that.

The Justice Department redacted the most damning evidence not for reasons of national security or national anything else but to cover Trump’s ass.

“Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”

This is what Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), told Elaine McCusker, the acting Pentagon comptroller, in an Aug. 30 email, which has only been made available in redacted form until now. It is one of many documents the Trump administration is trying to keep from the public, despite congressional oversight efforts and court orders in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation.

The Trump administration is trying to hide this from us because it is so incriminating. That’s all. There’s nothing cleaner or less incriminating to say about it, it’s just Trump’s filthy enablers doing his filthy work.

Congress passed the aid overwhelmingly, Republicans as well as Democrats. Trump put a hold on it to extort Ukraine. The Pentagon kept trying to get it released, the trumpers kept refusing to release it, and the DoJ tried to cover the whole thing up. It’s filthy.

Last month, a court ordered the government to release almost 300 pages of emails to the Center for Public Integrity in response to a FOIA lawsuit. It released a first batch on Dec. 12, and then a second installment on Dec. 20, including Duffey’s email, but that document, along with several others, were partially or completely blacked out.

Blacked out because they incriminate Trump. Hey, isn’t there an election coming up? Don’t we need to know what Trump has been doing (barring national security secrets) to make an informed choice? Is it cool for Trump to hide information that makes him look criminally indifferent to anything but his own desire to damage a rival? Is it cool for Trump to use the powers of the office we need to kick him out of, to hide information that would get him kicked out of it?

The punchline at the end is that the Trump stooge told the Pentagon the hold was all their fault.

Duffey, adding OMB and Pentagon lawyers to the recipients list, and in a formal and lengthy letter that was quite different from the way he’d addressed McCusker all summer, chastised her and the Defense Department for dropping the ball, saying that if and when the hold is lifted, and DOD finds itself unable to obligate the funding, it would be DOD’s fault. 

“As you know, the President wanted a policy process run to determine the best use of these funds, and he specifically mentioned this to the SecDef the previous week. OMB developed a footnote authorizing DoD to proceed with all processes necessary to obligate funds. If you have not taken these steps, that is contrary to OMB’s direction and was your decision not to proceed. If you are unable to obligate the funds, it will have been DoD’s decision that cause any impoundment of funds.”

Essentially: You guys screwed up. Not us. 

McCusker responded:

“You can’t be serious. I am speechless.”

It’s how they roll.

The unpleasant Dawn formerly Don Ennis, managing editor of OutSports, posted a New Year’s message to TERFS, starting with admitting he was name-calling.

The subhead tells us what to think in advance.

Outsports Managing Editor Dawn Ennis offers this reasoned response to hateful messages targeting trans women athletes and all transgender people.

We’ll decide for ourselves whether it’s reasoned or not, thanks. Talk of “hateful messages” and “targeting” in the subhead is not a good start if you want us to think the response is “reasoned.”

Dear TERFs, anti-trans activists and transphobes:

Again: not a good start.

It’s a new year, and I’m using this occasion to address you directly.

I know, you’re not keen on being called “TERFs” or any of those other names, or “labels,” as you call them; Which is odd since you seem to have absolutely no problem labeling me and people like me “transgender,” “trans” and “biological male.”

Yes, that’s a really bad start. Cheerily agreeing that you’re calling us by pejoratives that we reject is not a good start. Adding “but you started it!” is not a good start. Treating “transgender,” “trans,” and “biological male” as all one category is not a good start.

For the record, the label I choose for myself is “woman.”

For what record? At any rate, choosing a label for oneself is one thing and trying to force the entire world to adopt your chosen label is very much another.

We get that you call yourself a woman. That doesn’t mean we have to agree that you are one. Donald Trump could call himself a Guatemalan child separated from her asylum-seeking mother by ICE, but that wouldn’t make it true. Labels do not make reality. Assertion is not a magical power to make something true. Just saying is just saying.

Anybody can choose any label, but there are plenty of situations in which doing so can lead to a quarrel or an arrest. Fraud is a crime, and it’s not unknown for people to perpetrate fraud by labeling themselves something they’re not. We can choose the label “doctor” but if we start taking patients without the requisite training, we can get ourselves in big trouble.

Then he says yes yes I’m transgender but you care about that more than I do.

So, as a gesture of goodwill, for the rest of this post, I will refrain from using words that might provoke further animosity. Provocation is not why I’m reaching out.

Oreally? Then why start with the provocation and then agree that it’s provocation?

Zero for rhetorical skill, here. Take the class again.

The rest of the letter is too boring to deal with.

Oh about that North Korea thing…

Q    Mr. President, can you — what is your message tonight for — what is your message tonight for North Korea?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we’ll see.  I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.  I know he’s sending out certain messages about Christmas presents, and I hope his Christmas present is a beautiful vase.  That’s what I’d like — a vase —

Cute. I love it when he makes jokes about nuclear war.

Q    Do you think it will be, sir?

THE PRESIDENT:  — as opposed to something else.  I don’t know.  I — look, he likes me; I like him.  We get along.  He’s representing his country.  I’m representing my country.  We have to do what we have to do.

Yes, sure, that’s what it’s about, whether or not he “likes” you, as if this were high school.

But he did sign a contract.  He did sign an agreement, talking about denuclearization.  And that was signed.  Number-one sentence: denuclearization.  That was done in Singapore.  And I think he’s a man of his word.  So we’re going to find out, but I think he’s a man of his word.

Yes, certainly. Thank god it’s all that simple.

In case you were feeling any impulse to think Princess Ivanka isn’t as bad as her rotting-from-the-head father, watching this will cure you.

All they could have been getting done were it not for the impeachment.

Oddly enough women don’t see Ivanka Trump as a diversity hire.

CES, the eading consumer-electronics trade show, is facing criticism after picking Ivanka Trump to serve as its keynote speaker next month in Las Vegas, after years of being accused of overlooking the role of women in technology.

I find that pretty disgusting and I’m not even a woman in technology.

She has no knowledge or experience or credentials in the field, and she also has no knowledge or experience or credentials in any other field. All she’s ever done is parlay her corrupt father’s celebrity and money into money and celebrity for herself.

“This is a terrible choice on so many levels but also – what an insult to the YEARS AND YEARS of protesting how few women were invited to keynote & being told it was a pipeline problem while similarly-situated men were elevated,” tech commentator Rachel Sklar tweeted. “There are so many great, qualified women. Shame.”

…

While the president’s daughter has been involved in White House efforts to boost the economic empowerment of women and their families, and spoke at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in The Hague this year, her engagement with technology is limited.

Plus “has been involved in White House efforts to boost the” blah blah blah doesn’t even mean anything. It’s just noise. Maybe she’s done some actual work, but frankly it seems highly unlikely, and we have no way of knowing what actual work she has done and how good it was. She’s just there, nepotizing, because nobody has managed to stop her yet.

Shapiro said in a statement: “We welcome her to the CES keynote stage, as she shares her vision for technology’s role in creating and enabling the workforce of the future.”

Blah blah blah. Again, it’s just handwaving. It’s meaningless. She has no “vision,” she has nothing to say. Barbie gives a keynote.

Joan Smith points out some implications of the Cyprus outrage:

This sequence of events is a stain on the Cypriot justice system, but what lies behind it is a hugely disproportionate anxiety about false accusations. Indeed it is one of the principal myths that undermine rape investigations, even though the idea that there are high levels of false allegations is unsupported by evidence. In the UK, a handful of widely publicised cases that ended in acquittals or a decision not to proceed to trial has tainted the entire system for investigating rape. Many people do not understand that a decision not to prosecute reflects an assessment of the available evidence, and does not mean the victim was lying.

The Crown Prosecution Service denies the accusation that it has become “risk averse”, but there has been a 52% drop in the number of rape cases prosecuted since 2016, despite an increase of 43% in complaints to the police. According to the latest figures for the year ending in March 2019, there were 58,657 allegations of rape in England and Wales but only 1,925 successful prosecutions. Unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool misogynist, it simply defies belief that more than 55,000 women are lying about being raped every year.

Sadly, though, a hell of a lot of people are dyed-in-the-wool misogynists.

The truth is actually much worse: a habit of treating women as untrustworthy witnesses has imbued our own criminal justice system with a corrosive degree of suspicion. It’s far from unusual for victims to face intrusive demands for personal information, including school and medical records. They are made to feel as though they, rather than their alleged attackers, have shameful secrets in their past.

Bitchez be lyin, right?

New rule for women: don’t report gang-rape, because if you do you could find yourself convicted of lying.

The UK government is to raise concerns with the authorities in Cyprus over the fairness of a trial in which a British teenager was found guilty of lying about being gang-raped.

A judge ruled on Monday that the 19-year-old wilfully indulged in public mischief in claiming she was raped by a group of Israeli males aged between 15 and 22 while she was on holiday in Ayia Napa in July.

The ruling by Michalis Papathanasiou at Famagusta’s district court in Paralimni was immediately and strongly condemned by the defence team and rights groups. They claimed the trial was full of legal irregularities that called the verdict into question and suggested a desire to protect relations with Israel may have influenced the process.

Or that plus a settled conviction that all women are lying whores.

The case against the student hinged on a statement retracting her original accusation, signed after hours of questioning by detectives in a police station that was neither recorded nor attended by a lawyer. She said in court that the police had forced her to change her story, telling the judge she was “scared for my life”.

Sounds like the Central Park 5 but in reverse. Sometimes the cops coerce suspects into signing a false statement, sometimes they bully an accuser into signing a false statement.

The legal aid group Justice Abroad said the trial had been far from fair because Papathanasiou had refused to consider whether the defendant had actually been assaulted.

Then…how did he or anyone come to the conclusion that she was lying?

“We are not surprised by the result given the frequent refusal during the trial of the judge to consider evidence which supported the fact that the teenager had been raped,” said Michael Polak, a barrister with the group.

“Shutting down questioning from our Cypriot advocates and the production of evidence into the trial on a handful of occasions, the judge stridently stated, ‘This is not a rape case, I will not consider whether she was raped or not.’”

Uhhhh…isn’t that like trying someone for burglary without considering whether there was any burglary or not?

The teenager, who has already spent a month in prison, could be jailed for up to a year and fined in excess of €1,000 (£850). Although released on bail from Nicosia general prison, she has been forced to relinquish her passport, moving from safe house to safe house ever since.

Tell us more about cis privilege.

What is transphobic? Saying that a man competing against women in sport is unfair is transphobic. We’re told.

Advantage? What advantage? What advantage could that doctor in the middle possibly have?

Mike Bloomberg describes for us his vision of hell plan to get lots done because desks and screens.

Dallas News:

Since my younger daughter is only 11, I didn’t expect the weight of the letter she brought me that night around 11 p.m., hours after I’d put her to bed.

In glittery red ink, the same she used for her Christmas list, her words sank my heart. At a friend’s birthday party, they were playing on the little girl’s phone. The girl handed it to my daughter and said, “Boys are disgusting.” My daughter clicked on a male classmate’s Snapchat story to find a video of him and a few other boys from her class laughing as they watched rape porn. She said the woman was bound up, saying “no” as a masked man approached her.

Her letter went on to describe a group of boys in her sixth grade class frequently joking about assaulting the girls in the parking lot. She said if any of the girls aren’t sitting with their legs closed, the boys will ask if they want to get pregnant. And if the girls’ legs are crossed, boys from this group often walk by and say, “Spread ‘em.”

This does not give me hope for the future.