Gordon Sondland suddenly remembered he’d got it exactly opposite. Gosh he’ll forget his own name next! Isn’t memory a funny thing!

Gordon Sondland, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, reversed himself in new testimony to House impeachment investigators, saying he does believe military aid for Ukraine was contingent upon the launch of politically motivated probes.

In his revised statement, Sondland said he told a top Ukrainian official on Sept. 1 that hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the beleaguered U.S. ally would “likely” be held up unless the government announced investigations of Trump’s political rivals.

Oh well fortunately it wasn’t a crucial point in the impeachment inquiry, no more significant than what color socks he was wearing that day. Was military aid that Ukraine needed for survival (given Putin’s attacks) used to force Ukraine to do Trump’s bidding, or not? No biggy. Nothing rides on the answer to that question.

The acknowledgment of a potential quid pro quo is an explosive shift that threatens to upend claims by Trump allies that military aid was not used as a bludgeon to advance Trump’s domestic political interests.

Sondland revealed the exchange in supplemental testimony he submitted to House impeachment investigators on Monday, saying he had failed to recall the episode when he testified in person last month.

Marks and Spencer recently announced a “gender-neutral” policy for its changing rooms. Quite a few women objected; some of them wrote to M&S directly. Rose George is one:

A response from @marksandspencer about their awful decision to refuse to guarantee single-sex changing facilities to women and girls. Pretty much identical to what they tweeted @JeanHatchet

And my response.

Just look at that pathetic mess. “As a business, we strive to be inclusive and therefore, we allow customers the choice of which fitting room they feel comfortable to use, in respect of how they identify themselves.” But not “in respect of” what they really are and how vulnerable they may be to spying creeping perving men if they can’t have women-only changing rooms.

How is it “inclusive” to put women at risk for the sake of indulging the fantasies of a few men that they are women underneath their skins? Men are not made more vulnerable either way, but women are. Why are people suddenly so willing to put women and girls at risk from men?

“We understand your concerns and I want to make it clear that if any customer was [sic] to act inappropriately or cause intentional offence, the necessary action would be taken.” Oh that’s all right then – they’ll do something about it after it’s happened. Why not just make customers change in the middle of the shop then? Why not yank their clothes off them the minute they walk in, for greater ease of trying on and oh yes being “inclusive”?

The fire department will take the necessary action after your house burns to the ground. The doctors will take the necessary action after you’ve died of your treatable illness. The police will take action after you’ve been raped and strangled. Preventive action has been ruled transphobic.

Also note the careful intentional offence stipulation. They won’t take the necessary action if it’s just an unintentional offence, like being a naked man in a space where women and girls are trying on clothes.

Kind regards though. Thanks for that.

Yovanovitch was in terrible danger in Ukraine – danger from Trump’s Twitter.

On 24 April this year, she received a call from Carol Perez, the director general of the foreign service, speaking to her in cryptic tones as if Yovanovitch’s life was in danger if she remained at her ambassadorial post in Kyiv. She spoke as if there was a threat too awful to describe clearly on a phone line.

“She said that there was a lot of concern for me, that I needed to be on the next plane home to Washington,” Yovanovitch recalled in her testimony to the congressional committees conducting impeachment hearings. Taken aback, the ambassador to Ukraine wanted to know what the sudden panic was about. Perez just told her: “I don’t know, but this is about your security. You need to come home immediately.”

So she did, and found a State Department she didn’t recognize.

When Yovanovitch went to see the deputy secretary of state, John Sullivan, he confirmed that she had lost the confidence of the president, again without explaining how or why. His explanation of the urgent call in the middle of the night was equally bizarre.

“They were worried that if I wasn’t physically out of Ukraine, that there would be, some sort of public either tweet or something else from the White House,” Yovanovitch testified. “And so this was to make sure that I would be treated with as much respect as possible.”

The ambassador had been evacuated not because of some outside threat, but in fear of a tweet from the president. The terrible capricious power of Trump’s Twitter outbursts, and their paralysing effect on the administration, is a striking theme of the Yovanovitch transcript.

This toy that other people use for jokes and stories and conversation (or, in truth, for bullying and shaming and dogpiling) Trump uses to destroy and inflame and disrupt.

She had grown accustomed to a whispering campaign against her from Ukrainian politicians and businessmen for whom she had made life difficult, but when an article appeared on The Hill news site, recycling Ukrainian smears against her, she asked for a show of support from her secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. Such support for an ambassador in a critical post should have been a given, but Pompeo remained silent.

“What I was told is that there was concern that the rug would be pulled out from underneath the state department if they put out something publicly,” Yovanovitch said. “You know, that perhaps there would be a tweet of disagreement or something else” from the president.

The best Pompeo did for his ambassador in Ukraine, according to her testimony, was to contact Fox television’s Sean Hannity, to ask if there was any truth to the smears against Yovanovitch, which Hannity was helping to push. That a secretary of state had to go to a talk show host to find out what was going on in Ukraine neatly encapsulates the nature of the Trump presidency.

Not all that neatly. There’s still always more to say than there is space or time to say it.

Now, in Ukraine and elsewhere, a shadow foreign policy has emerged, whose true goals are known to the president, his family and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Through that channel, a discredited Ukrainian prosecutor and two obscure Florida businessmen who had become Giuliani’s sidekicks, wielded more influence than the entire state department. They fought to get Yovanovitch removed and they succeeded.

For experienced diplomatic veterans like Yovanovitch, this kind of corruption and dysfunction was all too familiar. They see it every day in the world’s autocracies.

“This is the sort of stuff we report on, how the president’s family and its hangers-on run everything. Now foreign diplomats are saying the same things about us,” one US foreign service officer observed recently.

The shame of it is scorching.

Charles Pierce at Esquire has been reading the transcript of Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony, and has learned that Sean Hannity was helping Trump tell lies about her.

Schiff: And did you ever find out when, you know, the allegations were being made or the attacks were being made by Donald Trump, Jr., or Rudy Giuliani, did you ever find out what the Secretary of State’s position, whether the Secretary of State was going to defend you or not, apart from the refusal by the Secretary to issue a statement in your defense?

Yovanovitch: What I was told by Phil Reeker was that the Secretary or perhaps somebody around him was going to place a call to Mr. Hannity on Fox News to say, you know, what is going on? I mean, do you have proof of these kinds of allegations or not? And if you have proof, you know, telI me, and if not, stop.

And I understand that that call was made. I don’t know whether it was the Secretary or somebody else in his inner circle. And for a time, you know, things kind of simmered down.

Schiff: I mean, does that seem extraordinary to you that the Secretary of State or some other high-ranking official would call a talk show host to figure out whether you should be retained as ambassador?

Yovanovitch: Well…I’m not sure that’s exactly what was being asked.

Schiff: Well , they were asking if what basis they…was Hannity one of the people criticizing you?

Yovanovitch: Yes.

Schiff: So some top administration official was going to him to find out what the basis of this Fox host was attacking you for?

Yovanovitch: Uh-huh.

Sean Hannity running US diplomacy.

Back in August I did a couple of posts about cricket player Maxine Blythin. I missed the news a month later:

🏆 | What a season she’s had!

Your 2019 Kent Women Player of the Year is…. Maxine Blythin!

What a season indeed! Taking a woman’s place on the team and then taking an award from a woman.

One poignant reply a few minutes ago:

I teach at a girls’ school in Kent. We’ve had speakers in from Kent cricket to encourage the girls to view cricket as a sport for them. I guess that was all just a lie.

Oh not at all, girls can still play, they just have to be prepared for boys to be on the team too. I suppose if enough boys decide to cheat that way then girls can’t still play, but…I don’t know, maybe they can stand on the sidelines and cheer the boys on?

Garrett Epps points out:

Trump has, one way or another, changed our national life irrevocably. When one side of a political struggle has shown itself willing to commit crimes, collaborate with foreign powers, destroy institutions, and lie brazenly about facts readily ascertainable to anyone, should the other side—can the other side—then pretend these things did not happen?

Some Democratic leaders are proclaiming that we can go back to the world before Trump—and before Brett Kavanaugh and Mitch McConnell, before Bill Barr and Rudy Giuliani, before an invasion of a secure facility at the Capitol, before babies were torn from their mothers and caged, before racist rhetoric from the White House and massacres at a synagogue and an El Paso Walmart—to a world of political cooperation, respect for norms, and nonpolitical courts.

How?

Assume new national leadership in 2021. What leader worth voting for would negotiate with Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy and believe either will keep his word; what sane president would turn over sensitive documents to Republican-led committees; what Democratic president would simply accept that the federal courts are now the property of the opposition, and submit issues of national policy to them, in the confidence of receiving a fair shake? After this night in the forest, can I, or any sane person, ever believe in these people and institutions again?

No. I think he’s right that we’ve gone down a road we can’t go back up.

Sorry to cite the Daily Mail, but you know how it is – sometimes the quality papers are looking fixedly in the other direction.

A birth coach has been ‘ostracised’ by her professional organisation after transgender activists branded as offensive a Facebook post in which she said that only women can have babies.

Lynsey McCarthy-Calvert, 45, was forced to stand down as spokesperson for Doula UK and has since resigned altogether from the national organisation for birth coaches. Her exit comes after transgender rights activists triggered an investigation in which Doula UK concluded her message breached its equality and diversity guidelines.

What equality and diversity guidelines are those then? Ones that say men can have babies? Is there a big market for birth coaches who think men can have babies? Wouldn’t prospective clients be worried the doula might get confused on the big day and start coaching Daddy?

‘I am angry and sad,’ she said last night. ‘I was effectively ostracised for saying I am a woman and so are my clients.

‘I have been very disappointed by Doula UK’s response. The leadership are paralysed by not wanting to upset transgender rights activists. They have fallen over themselves to acquiesce to their demands.’

Their demands to treat women as oppressive privileged class enemies, and to remove all mention of them from public life.

The Doula UK row started after Cancer Research UK dropped the word ‘women’ from its smear test campaign, instead saying screening was ‘relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix’.

In response, Mrs McCarthy-Calvert posted a photograph on Facebook of a negligee-clad woman somersaulting underwater, with the wording: ‘I am not a “cervix owner” I am not a “menstruator” I am not a “feeling”. I am not defined by wearing a dress and lipstick. I am a woman: an adult human female.’

Beneath it she wrote: ‘Women birth all the people, make up half the population, but less than a third of the seats in the House of Commons are occupied by us.’

She claimed women were accused of transphobia more than men, arguing men were not ‘subjected to cries of bigotry and transphobia when they say they don’t want to have sex with a woman with a penis’. Most trans-women have not had their male genitalia removed.

…

Days later, around 20 trans activists wrote a letter of complaint claiming Mrs McCarthy-Calvert had ‘clearly’ breeched Doula UK policies stating that members ‘shouldn’t post anything that our colleagues, clients and affiliates would find offensive’.

They alleged that the post contained several ‘trans exclusionary comments’ including the description of a woman as an ‘adult human female’.

Doula UK immediately withdrew Mrs McCarthy-Calvert as spokesperson and, after a four-month investigation, its board of directors concluded in March the post ‘does breach Doula UK’s guidelines’.

Last night, Doula UK denied it had ‘acquiesced’ to activists or that Mrs McCarthy-Calvert had been ‘in some way driven out of the organisation’.

A spokesperson added: ‘We are proud to say that we seek to listen to the lived experience of marginalised groups and make changes – including changes to the language we use – if we believe it is necessary to make the Doula UK community more welcoming and supportive.’

So it’s welcoming and supportive to tell male people they can gestate babies? And to punish a woman for saying it’s women who gestate babies?

It’s upside-down world.

So the Trump people threw a Halloween party for staff and their kids.

A Halloween party on Oct. 25 at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building featured candy, paper airplanes and — concerning for some attendees — a station where children were encouraged to help “Build the Wall” with their own personalized bricks.

Photos of the children’s mural with the paper wall were provided to Yahoo News.

The party, which took place inside the office building used by White House staff, included the families of executive-branch employees and VIP guests inside and outside government.

…

The “Build the Wall” mural was on the first floor, outside the speechwriter’s office and next to the office of digital strategy and featured red paper bricks, each bearing the name of a child.

Aww, cute.

Build the wall to keep out the filthy foreigners, plus also, America First. Isn’t that a healthy message for children? “Always be selfish, kids! You first! Push to the head of the line, grab all the chocolates, punch anyone who objects, knock down anyone who gets in your way. MAGA!”

Earlier in the week offices inside the EEOB had been instructed to put together kid-friendly displays for trick-or-treaters. The displays were supposed to be interactive and inspiring, and all were supposed to address the party’s theme: “When I grow up I want to be…”

You know, they could have done that. Even Trump people can imagine inspiring futures for kids, I would think. Astronauts, doctors, rocket scientists, dancers, teachers, chefs, musicians – lots of things other than adding bricks to a wall built to keep brown people out.

Those who worked in and around the EEOB said the border wall display is far different from what was done in prior years. “We never did anything like this in the Obama administration,” said Nate Snyder, who previously served in the Department of Homeland Security as a counterterrorism official. “We hung up skeletons and ghosts.”

However, a person who works with the Trump administration said people were making too much out of a children’s display. “Everyone loses their minds over everything, and nothing can be funny anymore,” the person said.

One, the wall is not funny. Two, any conceivable Wall Jokes would be nauseatingly inappropriate for children.

Erika Andiola, the chief advocacy officer for the immigration rights organization RAICES, said the wall, which has become a symbol for Trump’s immigration agenda, including the child separation policy, was inappropriate for a kids’ party.

“I don’t think they understand the amount of pain that people are going through at the border for them to make a joke out of it,” Andiola said of the Trump administration. “We still are dealing with children in cages even if people are not calling it that, so it’s not a joke.”

Oh, it’s not that they don’t understand. It’s that they like it.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy organization, also described the wall as “an offensive metaphor” to feature at a children’s party. “It screams to white grievance voters that ‘real Americans’ should fear, exclude and dehumanize brown people,” Sharry said. “Only in Trump’s White House would a holiday event centered on kids, costumes and candy become a propaganda opportunity for his racism and xenophobia.”

Snyder, the former Obama counterterrorism official, said that by politicizing the walls of the EEOB, Trump’s staff showed a “lack of respect for where they are and what they represent.”

“This building is historical beacon of freedom that once housed the military, and now you have a fake construction-paper wall with ‘America First’ signs on it,” Snyder lamented.

“For me as a person who worked in and outside of the White House and walked these halls countless numbers of times,” he said, “it seems like a desecration of the building.”

It’s what we stand for now.

Do we believe in magic? Jolyon Maugham QC again:

To construct an argument around that because a man raped a women in a women’s prison it follows that trans women as a class pose a risk to women in prison is plain and simple bigotry of a type applied to eg black men, gay men, rape victims, jews etc etc

A reply:

No it’s not – TW are male – we want to exclude males from female only spaces like prisons. Unless it’s bigoted to have any female only spaces, any female only anything.

Jolyon QC:

That’s what, sadly, so many of these replies come to. That you have the right to define someone else’s identity and treat them accordingly. I find it really sad that so many whose self-conception is of protecting minorities and disadvantage find themselves arguing as you do.

When and why and how did clever people like QCs become so convinced that “identity” is such a magical category that everyone is required to take everyone’s word for her/his “identity” no matter what the identity, what the circumstances, what the details?

There is no such magic. You’d think lawyers of all people would know that, since they must have to deal with lying and liars and lies all the time. There is no magic that requires us to treat other people’s claimed “identities” as sacrosanct and forbidden to question.

Women are not “defining” a man’s identity by recognizing him as a man. They’re just heeding the evidence of their senses and their years of experience. There is no moral rule that says women have to take a man’s word for it that he’s a woman. People are working hard to invent such a rule and make it binding on everyone, but we still have room to resist.

Amy Hamm tweets:

So @MorganeOgerBC wants women to drown in the ocean and this trans activist outside #GIDYVR wants to behead women.