Evil Don is mad at Pompeo.

Trump has fumed for weeks that Pompeo is responsible for hiring State Department officials whose congressional testimony threatens to bring down his presidency, the officials said. The president confronted Pompeo about the officials — and what he believed was a lackluster effort by the secretary of state to block their testimony — during lunch at the White House on Oct. 29, those familiar with the matter said.

Inside the White House, the view was that Trump “just felt like, ‘rein your people in,’” a senior administration official said.

Right, because that’s how everything works. It’s all personal, and it’s all about the guy at the top reining in the peons, and various guys at various tops jostling each other to rein in their respective peons, and the one who jostles hardest wins.

Trump particularly blames Pompeo for tapping Ambassador Bill Taylor in June to be the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, the current and former senior administration officials said.

Taylor has provided the House Intelligence Committee with some of the most damaging details on the White House’s effort to pressure Ukraine into investigating one of the president’s potential rivals in the 2020 election, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden.

And Pompeo of course knew he would do that, and hired him anyway, or for that very reason. It’s all personal, you see. There is no policy, no diplomacy, no desire for peace or stability or fairness, it’s all just guys versus guys.

A crack in the seemingly unbreakable bond between Trump and Pompeo is striking because Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, is viewed as the “Trump whisperer” who has survived — and thrived — working for a president who has routinely tired of and discarded senior members of his team.

But the impeachment inquiry has put Pompeo in what one senior administration official described as an untenable position: trying to manage a bureaucracy of 75,000 people that has soured on his leadership and also please a boss with outsized expectations of loyalty.

“He feels like he’s getting a bunch of blame from the president and the White House for having hired all these people who are turning against Trump,” an official familiar with the dynamic said of Pompeo, “and that it’s the State Department that is going to bring him down, so it’s all Pompeo’s fault.”

He works for Trump. My sympathy is nowhere to be found.

The people at State don’t like him any better.

State Department officials are critical of Pompeo for buckling to pressure from the president and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and abruptly recalling Yovanovitch while she was serving as U.S. ambassador in Ukraine. Yovanovitch had been vilified by Giuliani, who convinced the president she was working against his interests.

Criticism of Pompeo inside the State Department escalated when he refused to publicly defend Yovanovitch after a reconstructed transcript of the July 25 call revealed Trump disparaged Yovanovitch to Zelenskiy, administration officials have said. Pompeo’s closest aide, Ambassador Mike McKinley, resigned over the secretary’s refusal to defend Yovanovitch.

Testimony from Taylor and others show Pompeo was keenly aware of the concerns his top officials had about Giuliani’s efforts and his handling of Yovanovitch.

In public testimony on Friday, Yovanovitch appeared to excoriate Pompeo for “the failure of State Department leadership to push back as foreign and corrupt interests apparently hijacked our Ukraine policy.”

“It is the responsibility of the department’s leaders to stand up for the institution and the individuals who make that institution the most effective diplomatic force in the world,” she said.

Yes, but Pompeo is interested in Pompeo, not the institution and the individuals who make that institution the most effective diplomatic force in the world. Expecting these people to look past their own precious selves is to expect miracles.

According to administration officials, Pompeo’s refusal to publicly defend Yovanovitch cemented a wider view within the State Department that he has enabled some of Trump’s impulsive foreign policy decisions, such as the withdrawal of U.S. special forces from Syria after a phone call with Turkey’s Erdgoan.

“Pompeo is hated by his building,” a person close to the secretary said, adding that he “feels the heat a great deal and feels it’s personal at state.”

Good. He’s a bad man doing bad things.

Trump is a big fan of torture, provided it’s the US doing it.

Trump has held the same views about war crimes and torture for years — and being commander in chief has not changed him. He believes that previous presidents have been far too eager to send Americans to war, but that once they’ve been deployed, these soldiers should be free to treat enemies brutally.

• Trump’s views on this subject flared up again last week. He clashed with Pentagon brass when he cleared three soldiers who have been accused or convicted of war crimes.
• Pentagon leaders had privately argued that the president’s intervention in these cases would undercut the code of military justice.

Trump has told advisers that the U.S. military became too politically correct under President Obama and that he wanted to unleash them to fight with “toughness,” without these burdensome rules of engagement.

More like the Nazis for instance, or Stalin’s troops.

• Trump’s immutable views on this subject have put him at odds with Pentagon leadership more than once. From the outset, Trump disagreed with former Defense Secretary James Mattis over the effectiveness of waterboarding.
• Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, captured the widespread concerns in a tweet earlier this year: “Absent evidence of innocence or injustice the wholesale pardon of US servicemembers accused of war crimes signals our troops and allies that we don’t take the Law of Armed Conflict seriously. Bad message. Bad precedent. Abdication of moral responsibility. Risk to us.”

Behind the scenes: Sources close to Trump say the man who most closely reflects the president’s views on warfighting is “Fox & Friends” host and veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars Pete Hegseth.

• Hegseth advocated vigorously for these soldiers accused of war crimes. He did so on television and in private conversations with Trump. Hegseth was so closely read in on Trump’s plans that, as the NYT pointed out, he previewed them the week before Trump’s announcement.
• Hegseth told the “Fox & Friends” audience that he’d talked to Trump and that “the president looks at it through that lens, a simple one, and important one … the benefit of the doubt should go to the guys pulling the trigger.”

What could go wrong?

Books by Selina Todd (she’s a historian):

Young Women, Work, and Family in England, 1918-1950, Oxford University

Winner, Women’s History Network Book Prize ‘Young women emerge in this history as a critically important force…When we imagine a typical interwar worker, it isn’t as a bob-haired 14-year-old shop assistant wearing her first pair of heels’. LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS 

The People. The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010 2014Book of the Year in Observer and Guardian; one of David Kynaston’s Books of the Year; one of only three history books by women to be a bestseller in 2014. Now translated into Japanese, Korean, Catalan and Spanish.

Tastes of Honey: the making of Shelagh Delaney and a cultural revolution is published in late August 2019. Stuart Maconie says it’s ‘smart’, David Hare that it’s ‘riveting’ and Ken Loach that it captures a ‘vital cultural and social moment’.

Oxford would be bonkers to fire someone like that, but we live in bonkers times.

The headline:

Palatine School District Approves Full Bathroom Rights For Transgender Students

Had transgender students been denied “full bathroom rights” until now? What are “full bathroom rights” anyway? Do students who are not transgender still have them at Palatine School District?

The suburban high school district at the center of a national debate over transgender student rights voted Thursday night to gives its transgender students full access to school locker rooms and bathrooms.

So they can go into all of them? While students who are not transgender have to pick those for girls or those for boys?

The debate over transgender student access started four years ago when a student charged that the district’s practices discriminated against transgender students. The student filed a complaint with the federal government, which found in 2015 that the district was violating the student’s civil rights by denying her use of the girls’ locker rooms.

In other words a boy who Identified As a girl wanted to use the girls’ locker rooms, and the feds determined that he had a civil right to do that. The right of the girls not to have a boy in their locker room while they were changing clothes apparently didn’t matter.

The district said if a cisgender student feels uncomfortable changing around a transgender student, there are private areas to use or accommodations can be made on request.

That’s not the issue. The issue is girls who don’t want to change around a boy, seeing as how saying tut loudly and moving away doesn’t actually work. The onus shouldn’t be on girls to “request” an “accommodation” or a mysterious “private area.”

In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said the district’s policy is welcome and long overdue.

It doesn’t matter what the girls think; they don’t count.

Nick Robinson of the BBC tweeted a few days ago:

Should the law treat me as a woman if I chose to identify as one? Yes @lucianaberger
of the @LibDems told me on @BBCr4today despite criticism by some women that their rights are being ignored.

Jolyon Maugham QC commented about this wrongthink about self ID. (More on this post.)

A woman replied to Maugham:

If Nick says he’s a woman that doesn’t mean he is. The Lib Dem’s would believe and treat him as a woman. That is ludicrous.

Maugham QC:

If Nick says it he’d be lying. Which is why his tweet is so reductive, and loaded.

Oh. He would? How does Maugham QC know that? How do we know it? How does anyone know it? How can Maugham QC so confidently say that of Nick Robinson but not of other men who say they are women?

Another insubordinate woman asked him:

I don’t understand, Jo. As it stands in my gym, if a man who looks like a man is undressing in the women’s changing room which creeps me out because, yanno, he’s a man… well, if I go and alert a member of staff i’ll be the one in the wrong if he’s gone in thinking he’s a woman.

that’s my actual gym, run by @GlasgowCC, i’ve not made that up. does that sound fair to you? for me to lose my peace of mind and for men to be able to come in and observe me and my kids so long as they say they’re women?

Jo’s reply is startling.

That would be really poor behaviour, of x, to be so insensitive to your (understandable) feelings. If I was you in that situation, I expect I’d tut loudly and move away. Most people get the message.

Oh, good. Hooray. That’s that whole problem solved then. All we have to do when a man is taking his clothes off in a closed space with us is say tut loudly and move away. Move away where, in this closed space? Erm…whatever space there is to move away into. And if he follows? Erm…go back to the original space. And if he assaults? Erm…say tut even more loudly? Most people get the message, Maugham QC says so.

A whole long conversation ensues, in which Maugham totally fails to get the point. It’s honestly quite horrifying, to see how blankly uncomprehending he is and how women’s repeated explanations simply wash off him. Like here:

why, he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong, just getting undressed like all the other women? what would be the poor behaviour?

JMQC:

I don’t think that’s a very good faith response.

Reply:

I don’t know which response you’re talking about, sorry. but hand on heart i’m talking in good faith. wrt where a tw should change, i’d argue for a third space. wrt an increased risk i’d say it’s not really cool for you to make that decision for me. i’m pro safeguarding.

JMQC:

We get along in society by being sensitive to the reactions of those around us. That’s how all sorts of interactions work. And I’m not pretending an authority to make decisions for you. I’m just explaining why I hold the views I do.

But we don’t. Women and girls don’t “get along in society” that way because many men and boys are not sensitive to our reactions – just as JMQC is not in this very interaction.

He has no clue, and he has no clue that he has no clue. It’s so depressing.

Humanists UK warns against a stealth evangelical campaign disguised as Xmas presents for children in need:

Schools are being warned not to support the Operation Christmas Child appeal run by an evangelical US charity Samaritan’s Purse, which unbeknownst to many parents uses donors’ gifts to evangelise to vulnerable children, after it emerged that more schools are collecting donations for the scheme.

Operation Christmas Child sends shoeboxes full of toys, books, and other shiny presents to vulnerable children in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. But alongside the packages put together by schools, the charity also adds religious literature which aims to convert children to Christianity.

Can you say “strings attached”? Can you say “sneaky godbothering shits”?

Today it has emerged that several schools in Colchester have collected hundreds of shoebox donations worth thousands of pounds which will be used for the scheme. It has prompted a warning by Humanists UK for schools and other well-meaning individuals to be aware of the charity’s questionable activities.

In previous years, the head of the charity, Reverend William Franklin Graham III, has gone on the record as being racist and homophobic and has described homosexuality as an ‘abomination’. He also said Muslims ‘should be barred from immigrating to America’ and called on Christians to convert Muslims.

Just three days ago the very right-wing Washington Times reported on Franklin Graham’s abject submission to Donald Trump:

Evangelist Franklin Graham has not been shy about rallying the faithful to support President Trump and his administration. Mr. Graham repeatedly asked the public to pray for Mr. Trump before the 2016 election. The pastor again called for prayer earlier this month as the threat of impeachment loomed against the president, the dire situation amplified by some Democrats and plenty of negative news coverage.

Mr. Graham now has issued both a judgment call on the events and another plea for prayer. He remains straightforward about the House impeachment hearings that opened Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

“It’s a day of shame for America. The media is calling the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry ‘historic’ and it is — historically shameful. That our politicians would bring this kind of harm to our country over a phone call, with the world watching, is unbelievable,” Mr. Graham said in a public message shared through social media.

The pussy-grabbing immigrant-bashing child-torturing insult-mongering bully Trump is Franklin Graham’s ideal, so we know what to think of his preaching and proselytizing. May he wake up with a very bad toothache.

Jane Clare Jones:

The most notable thing here – other than 50, 000 some ppl liking a dude saying ‘fuck those evil witches’- is how many read it as identical to an affirmation of trans rights. This is how the discourse is structured. Being pro-trans is signaled, above all, by being anti-TERF.

The tweet she is commenting on is alas by Adam Savage, the Mythbusters guy. I saw it yesterday and sighed and moved on.

TERFs are shit. https://twitter.com/charliejane/status/1195156950394097665

It’s all women’s fault, as usual. Radical feminist women “are shit.”

A student residence in Bolton goes up like a torch.

Firefighters have been tackling a huge blaze at a university student accommodation block.

Crowds of students were evacuated from The Cube in Bolton when the fire broke out at about 20:30 GMT on Friday.

At its height about 200 firefighters from 40 fire engines were tackling the blaze which was affecting every floor.

A witness said the fire was “climbing up” the six-storey building. One person was rescued by crews using an aerial platform.

@JoLiptrott tweeted a Guardian article from last year about Grenfell-type cladding on student residences:

Thousands of students arriving at university for freshers’ week face sleeping in high-rise accommodation wrapped in combustible Grenfell-style cladding, the government has admitted.

Fifty-four privately owned student residential towers in England remain clad in aluminium composite material similar to that which helped spread the fire at Grenfell Tower 15 months ago, claiming 72 lives. The extent of the problem was revealed in figures released on Thursday by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Only eight of the 62 student towers rising over 18 metres and using material that officials said breached building regulations have so far been completely fixed, according to the data. Remediation plans were unclear for 23 of the towers, officials said.

The block in Bolton wasn’t a tower, being only six stories, and I don’t know that it had the same kind of cladding. Still: it’s disquieting to see a large residential building go up in flames that fast.

@AirdalePhil tweets:

Charles Pierce at Esquire says goodbye to Roger Stone’s career as a ratfucker.

On Friday, during a recess in the committee hearings into one of his former boss’s other abuses of power, Stone was convicted on all seven counts on which he’d been called to the bar, and no sartorial cock-of-the-walk narcissism can save him this time.

I remember being nauseated watching him get treated like a star at the Republican National Convention in 2016, and even more deeply nauseated watching him gallivant around the Capitol dressed like Mr. Peanut’s evil twin during the inauguration that same year.

…

Moreover, to those of us who have followed politics for a while now, watching Roger Stone go to the sneezer is a blessed bit of rough justice for all of the people he has victimized over the years and, indeed, for the system of government that was his most prominent victim of all. He learned the basics of ratfcking from Richard Nixon, which is like learning music from Mozart. In 1977, he was elected president of the Young Republicans with the help of his good friend, Paul Manafort. But his career came to full flower in the 2000s, which began with his role in disrupting the Florida recount process on behalf of the Bush campaign. (He may or may not have been central to the infamous Brooks Brothers Riot that shut down the recount in Miami-Dade County, but it certainly bore all the hallmarks of Stone’s work.) And he was pushing the idea of a Trump presidential campaign long before one finally was organized in 2015.

He was an A-level predator in the jungle politics that also produced Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, the jungle politics that many Nice Republicans would rather not talk about now that the rot and decay has taken the ground under their feet. The Republican Party was perfectly happy with Roger Stone for as long as it needed his gifts for the dark arts.

What Nice Republicans are there? Given how unanimously they’re going along with everything Trump does, I don’t think I believe in their existence.

Trump’s press secretary issued a statement, which I can’t find any source for other than news media saying so – I don’t know if she said it aloud in front of a camera or put it on a billboard or what. It’s evil and filthy enough to share though.

The tweet was not witness intimidation, it was simply the President’s opinion, which he is entitled to. This is not a trial, it is a partisan political process — or to put it more accurately, a totally illegitimate charade stacked against the President. There is less due process in this hearing than any such event in the history of our country. It’s a true disgrace.

Right. The president is entitled to an opinion, and he’s entitled to an opinion about an ambassador he fired because she was in the way of his corrupt intentions, and he’s entitled to express that opinion on Twitter while she is testifying to an impeachment inquiry. Sure. That definitely all makes perfect sense and isn’t in the least a shameful pack of lies from a compromised hack defending a criminal who has stolen our government and is working hard to destroy it.

Impeachment hearing chapter 2 of the day: the Guardian Live reports:

Fox News anchors described the testimony of Maria Yovanovitch as a “turning point” in the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Anchor Bret Baier predicted that Trump’s tweet smearing Yovanovitch’s reputation as the longtime diplomat testified would lead to a new article of impeachment against the president.

That was a turning point in this hearing so far. She was already a sympathetic witness & the President’s tweet ripping her allowed Schiff to point it out real time characterizing it as witness tampering or intimidation -adding an article of impeachment real-time.

That’s a Fox anchor who said that.

Trump says the gutting of the State Department is a good thing.

We have vacancies in various departments because we do not want or need as many people as past administrations (and save great cost), and also, the Democrats delay the approval process to levels unprecedented in the history of our Country!

Guilty guilty guilty.

Former Trump associate Roger Stone has been found guilty on all counts, including lying to the same House committee currently holding impeachment hearings.

Stone becomes the latest member of the president’s circle to be convicted — joining the likes of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn.

Lie down with dogs get up with fleas.

And then there’s Giuliani:

Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Rudy Giuliani stood to personally profit from a Ukrainian natural-gas business pushed by two associates who also aided his efforts there to launch investigations that could benefit President Trump, people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, pitched their new company, and plans for a Poland-to-Ukraine pipeline carrying U.S. natural gas, in meetings with Ukrainian officials and energy executives this year, saying the project had the support of the Trump administration, according to people briefed on the meetings. In many of the same meetings, the two men also pushed for assistance on investigations into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and alleged interference by Ukraine in the 2016 U.S. election, some of the people said.

Filth as far as the eye can see.