The narrative is becoming clearer.

In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign even as Russian agents made more efforts to influence him. At the same time, in this account he ordered hush payments to two women to suppress stories of impropriety in violation of campaign finance law.

The prosecutors made clear in a sentencing memo filed on Friday that they viewed efforts by Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to squelch the stories as nothing less than a perversion of a democratic election — and by extension they effectively accused the president of defrauding voters, questioning the legitimacy of his victory.

The Republicans are trying to paint it as a nothingburger, and to convince us that Trump didn’t know it was illegal.

But if Trump didn’t know it was illegal…what was his understanding of why Cohen kept the hush money a secret? To put it another way, did Cohen pretend to Trump that it was all legal and aboveboard? If so, why? Why would he put himself in jeopardy to keep Trump out of it?

The exposure on campaign finance laws poses a challenge to Mr. Trump’s legal team, which before now has focused mainly on rebutting allegations of collusion and obstruction while trying to call into question Mr. Mueller’s credibility.

“Until now, you had two different charges, allegations, whatever you want to call them,” Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the incoming Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in an interview on Saturday. “One was collusion with the Russians. One was obstruction of justice and all that entails. And now you have a third — that the president was at the center of a massive fraud against the American people.”

And not just any old fraud but one that put him in all his corruption and incompetence in the White House. The fraud in question gave him the power to destroy the planet.

(Not for the first time, I feel the need to point out that a country that has weapons that can destroy the planet should have much better filters to keep corrupt egomaniacs from having the sole power to launch them.)

Lobster guy has a funny one today.

He's casually called a "climate change denier," for example, which is an appallingly treacherous term of criticism, used to denigrate someone personally by associating them with Holocaust deniers. The ethics of anyone who employs it should be instantly questioned. https://t.co/K9lRIrlE9I

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) December 8, 2018

Ok not really funny, exactly; more like sinister. Of course it’s not “appallingly sinister” to talk of climate change denial and to call particular people deniers. There is such a thing as denial, and there are deniers; the words are not confined to the Holocaust.

Look at Trump for one example. He doesn’t bother to read anything or learn anything or ask anyone, he just shouts “I don’t believe it!” and keeps on walking to the helicopter. He denies that the Mueller investigation has found anything when it has issued multiple indictments.

Look at the tobacco executives who told Congress under oath that they didn’t “believe” nicotine is addictive. Look at Mohammed bin Salman who told Trump several times that he Didn’t Do It. Look at a lot of things. We are not wanting for examples of people who just blindly deny deny deny no matter what the evidence or argument. Those people are deniers, and they engage in denial. It’s a thing.

I’m questioning Jordan Peterson’s ethics right now.

The NY Times has an explainer on how Jared Kushner got so cozy with the murderous Mohammed bin Salman.

Senior American officials were worried. Since the early months of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, had been having private, informal conversations with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s king.

Given Mr. Kushner’s political inexperience, the private exchanges could make him susceptible to Saudi manipulation, said three former senior American officials. In an effort to tighten practices at the White House, a new chief of staff tried to reimpose longstanding procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders.

That all by itself is stunning and enraging (even though we already knew it). The tightly woven noose of nepotism and pig-ignorance will choke us all. Jared Kushner is a real estate marketer; that’s all he is; he has no ghost of any kind of qualification for running US foreign affairs. Trump might as well give Barron the job.

Anyway Jared and Mo stayed besties despite the staff members, including after the murder of Khashoggi.

As the killing set off a firestorm around the world and American intelligence agencies concluded that it was ordered by Prince Mohammed, Mr. Kushner became the prince’s most important defender inside the White House, people familiar with its internal deliberations say.

Mr. Kushner’s support for Prince Mohammed in the moment of crisis is a striking demonstration of a singular bond that has helped draw President Trump into an embrace of Saudi Arabia as one of his most important international allies.

“A singular bond” aka a weird sinister probably-corrupt collaboration with a murderous authoritarian member of a crime family. I guess that’s the source of the “bond”? They’re both pointless clueless worthless sons of crime families?

But it’s also, the Times underlines, something that was carefully arranged by the Saudis.

A delegation of Saudis close to the prince visited the United States as early as the month Mr. Trump was elected, the documents show, and brought back a report identifying Mr. Kushner as a crucial focal point in the courtship of the new administration. He brought to the job scant knowledge about the region, a transactional mind-set and an intense focus on reaching a deal with the Palestinians that met Israel’s demands, the delegation noted.

My point exactly. He knows nothing and he has the outlook of a marketer, aka “a transactional mind-set,” along with a father-in-law stupid and corrupt enough to give him power he shouldn’t have.

“The inner circle is predominantly deal makers who lack familiarity with political customs and deep institutions, and they support Jared Kushner,” the Saudi delegation wrote of the incoming administration in a slide presentation obtained by the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, which provided it to The Times. Several Americans who spoke with the delegation confirmed the slide presentation’s accounts of the discussions.

Sigh. They know it, we know it, the Trumpers don’t care.

Just a few months into the Trump administration Prince Jared managed to slide MBS into a formal lunch with Trump after Merkel had had to cancel due to weather. This was not protocol but White House people put out statements saying oh sure it was, everything’s fine, this is all totally normal.

“The relationship between Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman constitutes the foundation of the Trump policy not just toward Saudi Arabia but toward the region,” said Martin Indyk, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Middle East envoy. The administration’s reliance on the Saudis in the peace process, its support for the kingdom’s feud with Qatar, an American ally, and its backing of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, he said, all grew out of “that bromance.”

Well, as long as the boys are happy.

Heartrending.

1. Today I did the annual story on holiday decorations at the Governor's residence. I've done it every year, for years. A very light but very fun story. Every year my reporting partner was Wendi Winters. This year, it was Selene. Wendi was murdered in June. https://t.co/hDlixzieht

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

3. Not in a "ghost" sense, I hope she has moved on to a better world then Capital feature stories : ) But she was there in my mind. I could almost hear her voice echoing through the empty rooms. "How many cookies are you making this year?", her favorite question..

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

5. And that was it. The tears started, and I'm standing in the Maryland Governors home weeping to myself about my dead friend. She died in The Capital newsroom on June 28th, shot by a man who wanted to kill every journalist he could.

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

7. Five people died, Rebecca, Wendi, Gerald, Rob, John. I always type their names in the order I think they were killed. I think, Rebecca first, at the door. Wendi charged him. Gerald and Rob were trapped in their cubicle. John, trying to get out the blocked exit.

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

9. Every year Wendi made us all Oreo holiday cookies. except for the one year she made us jarred pesto. The question came up yesterday in the newsroom, who is going to make the cookies this year? Selene spoke up, I will.

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

11. And if we die for it, someone else will pick up the threads, and report on the holiday decorations at the Governor's house. Its what we do. -30-

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

Journalist writes piece about the putative “transphobia” of Mumsnet, in which of course “transphobia” is taken to mean not insults and bile aimed at trans people but simply failure to agree that men who identify as women literally are women. (And men who etc, except that gets far less attention. Male entitlement scores another win.)

Anyway, there’s a paragraph that sums up the bizarro-world belief system nicely.

But if, as Roberts and Pedersen assert, the community’s influence is a result of its engaged membership, Mumsnet finds itself at the political whims of a very particular membership base. When it comes to Mumsnet’s reputation for transphobia, it seems that the very demographics to which Pedersen attributes its success may have resulted in an especially narrow vision of womanhood—one that specifically excludes trans women.

Ah yes, it’s such an especially narrow vision of womanhood that doesn’t include men as women.

The journalist is a woman, by the way. We’ve grown accustomed to seeing women catering to male entitlement and shitting on feminist women this way, but it’s still disgusting.

It doesn’t get better.

Since 2016, Mumsnet—specifically its Feminism board—has increasingly found itself on the receiving end of criticism from trans people and their allies.

Found itself? Receiving end? Criticism? In other words trans activists, mostly male, have increasingly taken to bullying women at Mumsnet.

“When I started using Twitter and engaging in the trans sphere in mid-2017, Mumsnet was constantly referenced both on my timeline and in DMs,” says Joss Prior, a trans woman who is part of a sizable trans community that monitors and discusses Mumsnet regularly.

That monitors – because women can’t be allowed to talk about things without male monitoring.

“The whole of the Feminism board was like a spectre hanging over the daily trans discourse.”

Ooooh a spectre is haunting Europe, only now it’s the evil TERF.

Jane Clare Jones offers a list of 30 propositions on ontological totalitarianism. I will share a few by way of appetizer.

2. Human beings have a right to their own perceptions.

10. Resisting coercion is not bullying.

12. Recognition must be freely given if it is to meaningfully function as validation.

Good one. Yes it must. If it’s forced…well it’s not really recognition, is it, it’s just a mouthing of words.

15. Trans people who are visibly gender non-conforming are subject to violence as a result of the policing of patriarchal gender norms.

16. Feminists do not police patriarchal gender norms.

 

21. People refusing to validate your identity may be painful.

22. Something being painful is not conceptually identical to it being a moral harm, structural violence, or an act of oppression.

23. Not getting our needs met is sometimes painful.

24. Sometimes our needs don’t get met because other people also have needs, beliefs, and interests.

25. Thinking you must always have you needs met and refusing to understand why other people may not meet your needs, is narcissistic entitlement.

And you know what? Narcissistic entitlement does not make for progressive politics. Progressive politics is pretty much all about rejecting narcissistic entitlement.

There’s that saying, “no man is a hero to his valet.” Miriam Jordan at the NY Times has talked to Trump’s housekeeper at Bedminster.

During more than five years as a housekeeper at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Victorina Morales has made Donald J. Trump’s bed, cleaned his toilet and dusted his crystal golf trophies. When he visited as president, she was directed to wear a pin in the shape of the American flag adorned with a Secret Service logo.

Quite an achievement for an undocumented immigrant housekeeper.

Ms. Morales’s journey from cultivating corn in rural Guatemala to fluffing pillows at an exclusive golf resort took her from the southwest border, where she said she crossed illegally in 1999, to the horse country of New Jersey, where she was hired at the Trump property in 2013 with documents she said were phony.

I got nervous when I read that yesterday, wondering why the Times was putting her at risk this way, but in fact Morales is going public on purpose and with legal assistance.

She said she was not the only worker at the club who was in the country illegally.

Sandra Diaz, 46, a native of Costa Rica who is now a legal resident of the United States, said she, too, was undocumented when she worked at Bedminster between 2010 and 2013. The two women said they worked for years as part of a group of housekeeping, maintenance and landscaping employees at the golf club that included a number of undocumented workers, though they could not say precisely how many. There is no evidence that Mr. Trump or Trump Organization executives knew of their immigration status. But at least two supervisors at the club were aware of it, the women said, and took steps to help workers evade detection and keep their jobs.

All while Trump rants and raves about “illegals” invading our precious lily-white Nayshun.

Ms. Morales said she has been hurt by Mr. Trump’s public comments since he became president, including equating Latin American immigrants with violent criminals. It was that, she said, along with abusive comments from a supervisor at work about her intelligence and immigration status, that made her feel that she could no longer keep silent.

“We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money,” she said. “We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humiliation.”

Ms. Morales and Ms. Diaz approached The New York Times through their New Jersey lawyer, Anibal Romero, who is representing them on immigration matters. Ms. Morales said that she understood she could be fired or deported as a result of coming forward, though she has applied for protection under the asylum laws. She is also exploring a lawsuit claiming workplace abuse and discrimination.

They gave the Times hours of interviews about their work at Trump’s club and their interactions with supervisors. They say Trump is both demanding and kind, often giving generous tips.

She said she washed and ironed Mr. Trump’s white boxers, golf shirts and khaki trousers, as well as his sheets and towels. Everything belonging to Mr. Trump, his wife, Melania, and their son, Barron, was washed with special detergent in a smaller, separate washing machine, she said.

“He is extremely meticulous about everything. If he arrives suddenly, everyone runs around like crazy” because Mr. Trump inspects everything closely, Ms. Diaz said.

She recalled a nervous moment in 2012, when Mr. Trump approached her and asked her to follow him to the clubhouse, a renovated 1930s Georgian manor, where he proceeded to run his fingers around the edges of frames on the wall and over table surfaces to check for dust.

“You did a really great job,” she said he told her, and handed her a $100 bill.

That same year, she said, Mr. Trump had an outburst over some orange stains on the collar of his white golf shirt, which Ms. Diaz described as stubborn remnants of his makeup, which she had difficulty removing.

In other personnel news, there’s the Fox News personality who is currently the State Department spokesperson and is now going to be the US ambassador to the UN.

The United Nations came into existence to vanquish Germany, as 26 nations jointly pledged in 1942 not to surrender to “savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.”

To vanquish Nazi Germany, rather than Germany as such, which continued to exist after Hitler did away with himself in the bunker. Germany was and is bigger than Nazism, as the US is bigger than Trumpism. (Not enough bigger, and getting less so all the time, but still bigger.)

Three-quarters of a century later, the woman who would soon become President Trump’s pick to represent the United States at the United Nations cited the D-Day landings — a cornerstone of this unwavering Allied pledge and the basis of the Nazi defeat on the Western Front — to showcase the strength of German-American relations.

“When you talk about Germany, we have a very strong relationship with the government of Germany,” Heather Nauert, the State Department’s spokeswoman, said in June. She added: “Tomorrow is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. We obviously have a very long history with the government of Germany, and we have a strong relationship with the government.”

Remember D-Day? When the US and Germany joined hands to defeat the villainous Norwegians? We were tight then, man.

The D-Day comment raised eyebrows over the summer, when some suggested it demonstrated a lack of historical understanding from the former “Fox & Friends” presenter who gained prominence on television during the Monica Lewinsky scandal but has no diplomatic experience.

No no, she has more historical understanding than anyone else, so much more that she sees a deeply hidden friendship beneath the superficial appearances of, say, the Battle of the Bulge, not to mention Auschwitz.

She also has a wealth of experience as a talking head on Fox and Friends.

She has broadcast just about every right-wing talking-point under the sun, as documented extensively by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

In 2014, she warned that immigrant children arriving in the United States were bringing “disease.” In 2015, she attackedthe Environmental Protection Agency by suggesting that a grant to college students working on a device allowing hotels to track water usage by guests was a “Big Brother move.”

…

Nauert has referred to immigrants in the United States without status seeking to obtain an education as “illegals.” She has spread conspiracies about the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

Couldn’t they have found someone even more qualified though? One of the real housewives of Palm Springs or Atlantic City or Las Vegas?

It’s all so…Hitleresque. Emily Badger in the Times:

In much of Wisconsin, “Madison and Milwaukee” are code words (to some, dog whistles) for the parts of the state that are nonwhite, elite, different: The cities are where people don’t have to work hard with their hands, because they’re collecting welfare or public-sector paychecks.

Da big city, where all the Jews are.

That stereotype updates a very old idea in American politics, one pervading Wisconsin’s bitter Statehouse fights today and increasingly those in other states: Urban voters are an exception. If you discount them, you get a truer picture of the politics — and the will of voters — in a state.

Thomas Jefferson believed as much — “the mobs of great cities add just so much to support of pure government,” he wrote, “as sores do to the strength of the human body.”

Wisconsin Republicans amplified that idea this week, arguing that the legislature is the more representative branch of government, and then voting to limit the power of the incoming Democratic governor. The legislature speaks for the people in all corners of the state, they seemed to be saying, and statewide offices like governor merely reflect the will of those urban mobs.

We have the same split here in Washington state: east of the mountains is where the real people are and over here on the west side it’s all granola-munching libbruls.

Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin Statehouse, drew this distinction even more explicitly after the midterm election.

“If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority,” he said. “We would have all five constitutional officers and we would probably have many more seats in the Legislature.”

Hmm, yes, and if you took California and New York state out of the US you would have far fewer cities; if you took Chicago and Detroit out, white people would be a bigger majority; if you took every city over 100,000 people out probably everyone left would believe in god. Or something. But we don’t take cities out, because guess what, cities are not frivolous extras or plots against pale people, they’re places where a lot of useful activity happens, alongside a lot of nonsense but there is nonsense everywhere.

Republican gerrymandering in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina have pushed the limits of how much the urban voter can be devalued.

In Wisconsin, Democratic candidates for the State Assembly won 54 percent of the vote statewide. But they will hold only 36 of 99 seats. They picked up just one more seat than in the current Assembly, a result of a gerrymander drawn so well that it protected nearly every Republican seat in a Democratic wave election.

That’s a jaw-dropping set of numbers: 54% of the vote but 36 of 99 seats. That is some heavy-duty cheating the Republicans did. And they did it so well it will never be undone, apparently.

Now there’s a shock – men wildly underestimate how much women are harassed. You don’t say!

The survey was carried out after the #MeToo campaign – first ignited by the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexually abusive behaviour towards female actors – spread worldwide with women sharing their experiences online.

In Denmark, where a 2012 survey found 80% of women had experienced some form of sexual harassment since the age of 15, the average answer among men was 31%.

In the Netherlands – where a prominent conductor was recently fired due to allegations of sexual harassment – 73% of women reported being affected yet the average answer among men was 38%.

French men put the figure at 41% whereas the 2012 survey found that 75% of French women had been harassed. The survey was carried out just months after footage of Marie Laguerre being struck on a Paris street for responding to sexual harassment went viral.

France previously introduced legislation which include fines in an effort to combat sexual violence in the country.

In the US, where a 2018 poll found that 81% of women had experienced sexual harassment at some point in their lives, American men’s average answer was 44%.

Meanwhile we get a Yale philosopher – a man – expressing bewilderment that there are feminist women who are gender critical.

https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1070036831234940929

https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1070038865732341760