Trump-supporting Congress dude busted for insider trading.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y. was arrested Wednesday morning on federal insider trading charges, law enforcement officials said.

An indictment obtained from a federal grand jury alleges relates to Australian biotech company Innate Immunotherapeutics, on which Collins served as a board member.

The indictment alleges Collins scrambled to call his son from the White House lawn and tell him non-public information about a failed drug trial in which they both owned shares.

Nice touch that he did it from the White House lawn. I wonder if he passed Melania in her $1400 plaid shirt and pristine jeans pretending to “garden.”

Collins was Trump’s first supporter in Congress, and was reportedly a member of his transition team after the 2016 presidential election. The 27th congressional district in New York, which Collins currently represents, voted for Trump at a higher level than any other district in the state in 2016.

Well they have so much in common – the corruption, the corruption, and the corruption.

The GOP congressman reportedly surrendered to federal agents in Manhattan on Wednesday morning. He is expected to appear in federal court in lower Manhattan later today. The U.S. attorney for the SDNY is expected to detail the charges in a press conference at noon.

It was just a little phone call.

The indictment reveals that the results from a more than three-year-long clinical trial for Innate’s primary drug were passed to the company’s board members on June 22, 2017. The trial, Innate CEO Simon Wilkinson told the board in an email, was a failure.

“I have bad news to report,” Wilkinson wrote, explaining the “clinical failure” of the trial. The company’s stock price “was tied to the success” of the drug, the indictment says.

Collins was attending a congressional picnic at the White House at the time he received the email. He replied: “Wow. Makes no sense. How are these results even possible???”

About a minute after responding to the email, Collins called his son twice, but was not able to get through. Cameron Collins called him back three more times, apparently to no avail, as well.

On his fourth attempt, Collins connected with his son and spoke for just over six minutes, explaining that Innate’s drug trial had failed.

Innate issued its press release on the night of June 26; in the next trading session, the stock plummeted more than 90 percent.

Ooooopsie.

Glasgow Rapecrisis on Facebook:

Really sad to report today that we have had to close down the #GlasgowClydeRapeCrisis waiting list for all new survivors coming to the project. We can still offer telephone helpline support on 08088 00 00 14 every day of the week from 11.00 am until 2.00 pm and Monday to Thursday from 5.30 pm until 7.30 pm and we can offer drop-in services to survivors on Wednesdays from 10.30 am until 3.00 pm and Wednesday evenings from 5.30 pm until 7.30 pm. Please check our website for more info about support. We are so sorry for having to make this decision but recent loss of funding for our work with young women and girls has had a significant impact on our overall service provision with current waiting times of up to 9 months for ongoing, face to face support. We will keep everyone posted about any changes to the service and, hopefully soon, when we get our waiting list open again and can offer shorter waiting times to survivors and their families.

A commenter asked what body or bodies had withdrawn funding. The reply:

Isabelle Kerr We have had funding from BBC Children in Need for six years. It funded amazing work with young women 13 – 18 years. This year we did not get re-funded because they felt we “didn’t do enough for male survivors”. It’s a women only service – always has been.

Women-only services are no longer allowed.

Yes, the Saudis are in a snit all right.

Now deleted, here a screenshot of the threatening Saudi "infographic" featuring an airliner headed for the Toronto skyline. pic.twitter.com/LrkCLxxjFk

— Tobias Schneider (@tobiaschneider) August 6, 2018

More:

Amid a diplomatic spat between Saudi Arabia and Canada, a pro-Saudi Government Twitter account shared – and then deleted – a digitally altered image that appeared to show a plane flying towards the skyline of Toronto, Canada’s largest city.

The image, shared by the account @infographic_ksa, was accompanied by a message in English that contained the saying, “He who interferes with what doesn’t concern him finds what doesn’t please him.” The text “sticking one’s nose where it doesn’t belong!” was also superimposed over the image.

Although the image was deleted, screenshots of the tweet were quickly shared.

…

The post reminded many social media users of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, in which planes were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon. A total of 2977 people were killed.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia, and Saudi royals have long been accused of complicity in the attack.

H/t Rob

Bookmarks Bookshop on Facebook:

Socialist bookshop calls for solidarity following Nazi attack

Bookmarks bookshop in Bloomsbury, central London, has called on supporters to attend a solidarity event following an attack by far right thugs.
Twelve men invaded the shop last Saturday, destroying displays, wrecking books and chanting Alt-right slogans. One was wearing a Donald Trump mask.
Since the attack Bookmarks the socialist bookshop has received messages of support from leading figures in the trade union and labour movements and thousands of activists from around the world.
Those tweeting their support include singer and activist Billy Bragg, Rupa Huq MP, historian Louise Raw and Guardian columnist Owen Jones.
David Lammy MP tweeted: “The normalisation of far right politics is already leading to chaos and vandalism on our streets. Fascist thugs attacking book shops is the logical conclusion to a political movement which rejects facts and experts. We need to be vigilant.”
Bookmarks is holding a solidarity event in the shop on Saturday 11 August from 2pm. Throughout the afternoon there will author readings as well as speakers from the trade union and labour movement.
Dave Gilchrist, manager of Bookmarks, said: “This horrific attack on a radical bookshop should send shivers down the spine of anyone who knows their history. The Nazis targeted books because they knew how important radical ideas are for challenging racism and fascism. The same is true today, and that is why we have to show that we won’t be intimidated.”
Bookmarks is also calling on supporters to donate funds to help bolster security in the shop and to replace lost stock. Donations can be transferred to: Sort Code: 30 93 29 A/c: 00089719

H/t Vanina

Ah, so that’s how it’s done.

A Japanese medical school deliberately cut women’s entrance test scores for at least a decade, an investigation panel said on Tuesday, calling it a “very serious” instance of discrimination, but school officials denied having known of the manipulations.

…

The alterations were uncovered in an internal investigation of a graft accusation this spring regarding the entrance exam for Tokyo Medical University, sparking protests and anger.

Lawyers investigating bribery accusations in the admission of the son of a senior education ministry official said they concluded that his score, and those of several other men, were boosted “unfairly” – by as much as 49 points, in one case.

When it becomes unfashionable to tell women to go away, one has to resort to secret manipulations.

They also concluded that scores were manipulated to give men more points than women and thus hold down the number of women admitted, since school officials felt they were more likely to quit the profession after having children, or for other reasons.

“This incident is really regrettable – by deceptive recruitment procedures, they sought to delude the test takers, their families, school officials and society as a whole,” lawyer Kenji Nakai told a news conference.

This kind of thing is one hint as to how James Damore’s “manifesto” was so wrong: we can’t assume women “just don’t like tech as much as men do” when there are still so many obstacles being thrown under their wheels all the time.

The investigation showed that the scores of men, including those reappearing after failing once or twice, were raised, while those of all women, and men who had failed the test at least three times, were not.

Inflate the men’s scores but leave the women’s alone – that’s a level playing field, right? After all they didn’t lower the women’s scores.

The Times takes a farewell look at Paul Ryan:

As has been strenuously noted, Trump and Ryan are stylistic and philosophical opposites: Trump the blunt-force agitator vs. Ryan the think-tank conservative. Trump lashes out while Ryan treads carefully. Ryan still fashions himself a “policy guy” and a man of ideas: In high school, he read the conservative philosopher Ayn Rand and was captivated by her signature work, “Atlas Shrugged.”

Stop right there. One, reading Atlas Shrugged does not make anyone a person of ideas. Two, Ayn Rand was not a philosopher. She was a screenwriter and a novelist.

The speaker says he tries to encourage good behavior in the president. “He put out a tweet last night that was really good,” Ryan told me after he and the president hung up. (It was apparently an inoccuous tweet about trade.) The speaker’s words carried the vaguely patronizing tone of a parent affirming a potty-training milestone.

Which would be slightly less horrifying if the guy being potty trained didn’t have the sole power to launch the nukes.

Ryan has been bashed from almost all sides for going along with Trump.

Ryan’s defiance to Trump, such as it is, can carry an almost pro forma quality. He will avoid or claim ignorance if possible (“I didn’t see the tweet”), chastise the president if he must (rarely by name), wait for the latest outrage to pass, rinse and repeat. “Frankly, I haven’t paid that close attention to it,” said Ryan at a June news conference in which he was asked about the job status of Scott Pruitt, the scandal-drenched E.P.A. administrator who was finally run out of office in July and whose mounting offenses over several months would have been impossible for even the most casual news consumer to miss.

“I can understand all of the rationalities,” says Charlie Sykes, a longtime conservative radio host in Wisconsin who spent years trying to persuade Ryan to run for president before turning sharply against him over Trump. “In a Faustian bargain, you get a lot of things. You get the wealth, you get the beautiful women and you get all this good stuff.”

You get a lot of things, you get all this good stuff – money, cars, fuckable women. Stuff, man.

After our meeting in his office, Ryan addressed a packed house of congressional interns in the Capitol Visitor Center. A former intern himself, Ryan has a well-known Washington origin story: He worked as a waiter at Tortilla Coast, the renowned Capitol Hill bar and restaurant, before being elected to Congress at 28. In his talk to the interns, Ryan encouraged students to resist the temptation of Twitter “snark.” He encouraged them not to “degrade the tone of our debate” and to appeal to our “common humanity.”

In other words, brass-necked hypocrisy.

Ryan prefers to tell Trump how he feels in private. He joins a large group of Trump’s putative allies, many of whom have worked in the administration, who insist that they have shaped Trump’s thinking and behavior in private: the “Trust me, I’ve stopped this from being much worse” approach. “I can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day and say I avoided that tragedy, I avoided that tragedy, I avoided that tragedy,” Ryan tells me. “I advanced this goal, I advanced this goal, I advanced this goal.”

I locked in on the word “tragedy.” It sets the mind reeling to whatever thwarted “tragedies” Ryan might be talking about. I asked for an example. “No, I don’t want to do that,” Ryan replied. “That’s more than I usually say.”

Sure, what right do we have to know?

Ryan gave a little lunchtime speech and there was a Q and A afterwards.

Rubenstein also sprang a question about whether Ryan thought it would be proper for Trump to pardon anyone caught up in the Mueller investigation.

“I’m not going to touch that one,” he said. Rubenstein followed up with a related question about whether Trump should be allowed to pardon himself. Ryan laughed. “I’m good, thanks,” he said, as if he were resisting a plate of hors d’oeuvres — not touching that either.

Because this is all a joke. Haha, so funny, having a mob boss running the country.

Rubenstein eventually touched down elsewhere, but the pardon question lingered, at least with me. It came off as a quintessential example of Ryan glibly blowing off what could be a monumental abuse of presidential power and a potentially gigantic crisis. I raised this in the car heading back to the Capitol. His eyes bulged for an instant, as if some defense enzyme had been released.

“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff,” Ryan said of the pardon issue.

“Shouldn’t you?” I said. It’s speculative, to a degree, I allowed. “But if you’re not going to touch that, who is?”

“I don’t think he’s going to do things like that,” Ryan said of Trump.

“He already has,” I said, referring to Trump’s pardoning of lawbreaking allies (Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza).

“No, I’m talking about firing and things like that,” Ryan said.

Trump has already done that too (James Comey) and has reportedly wanted to fire Mueller on at least two occasions. “My point is,” Ryan said, “and I’ve said it all along, Mueller should be able to do his job.”

Ryan seemed to become agitated by this line of questioning. “I’m not going to spend my time being a pundit, theorizing and speculating,” he said. “I’m going to spend my time making a difference in people’s lives, getting stuff done.” Now I was slightly annoyed by Ryan’s reduction of my question to “pundit theorizing,” as if Mueller’s investigation held zero significance to people’s lives. “I’m not going to spend my time getting into these circular debates,” Ryan added. “I’m trying to get an agenda passed.”

I pointed out that if Trump fires Mueller, it might be too late for Ryan to do anything even if he wanted to, and the country could already be well into a constitutional crisis.

“I don’t think — ” Ryan began, then stopped. “He knows my opinion on these things.”

In other words he’s a worthless self-protecting Trump-enabling piece of shit.

Pete Vernon at Columbia Journalism Review on Trump’s attacks on the press:

As Trump has ratcheted up his media criticism, his supporters have been given the opportunity to show they’re getting the message. A trio of rallies provided scenes of hostility toward journalists doing their jobs, leading to frightening—and increasingly dire—predictions. The New York Times’s Bret Stephens wrote Friday about a threatening voicemail he received, in which the caller said, “I don’t carry an AR but once we start shooting you f—ers you aren’t going to pop off like you do now. You’re worthless, the press is the enemy of the United States people.” Arguing that it’s only a matter of time until one of Trump’s devotees takes the president at his word, Stephens concludes, “We are approaching a day when blood on the newsroom floor will be blood on the president’s hands.”

It would be soothing to be able to think that ragey attack speech is inert, but it’s not possible.

Speaking about the venomous scenes from Trump’s Tampa rally, MSNBC’s Katy Tur explained that viewers were only getting part of the story. “What you saw and still see on TV, those boos and those taunts, are only part of it. What you do not see are the nasty letters, or packages, or emails, the threats of physical violence. ‘I hope you get raped and killed,’ one person wrote to me just this week,” Tur said. “So if anyone in the administration cares about the safety and security of journalists, the health of a free and unintimidated press—and by extension our democracy as a whole—please say something to your boss, your dad, your commander-in-chief, before it is too late.”

I know from various Twitter harassment-campaigns that lots of people are willing to make violent threats, and no I’m not confident that every single one of them is just venting.

Below, more on growing fears about the impact of Trump’s words.

• In their own words: On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN’s Brian Stelter played a clip of a threat broadcast on C-SPAN, in which a caller threatens to shoot Stelter and his colleague Don Lemon.
• “The enemy of the people”: NPR’s Scott Simon compared Trump’s language to that used by dictators throughout history, adding, “if the president had called reporters nosy, cranky, contentious, or smart-alecky, many reporters would have laughed and agreed. But calling them—us—enemies of the people is the kind of curse made by tyrants.”
• From words to action: Citing a study by German researchers about the link between politicians’ words and violence against journalists, The Washington Post’s Rick Noack sees parallels to the current state of discourse in the US.

From Barack Obama to this.

Greg Sargent says it’s not just that Trump admitted collusion in That Tweet, and not just that in the process he also admitted the statement he composed about That Meeting was a lie – it’s also that he revealed why.

But what’s also notable is why Trump tweeted this. He was responding to a report in The Post that said this:

Trump has confided to friends and advisers that he is worried the Mueller probe could destroy the lives of what he calls “innocent and decent people” — namely Trump Jr. … As one adviser described the president’s thinking, he does not believe his son purposefully broke the law, but is fearful nonetheless that Trump Jr. inadvertently may have wandered into legal ­jeopardy.

Publicly, at least, Trump is denying that he believes his son is in legal jeopardy. In his tweet, he claimed that this report is “a complete fabrication,” adding that the meeting was “totally legal and done all the time in politics.”

But the actions of Trump himself — and of his lawyers — cast doubt on this claim, and this points to a huge hole in the current spin that Team Trump is attempting. It’s this: Trump and his lawyers keep claiming there was nothing wrong with this meeting — but they keep lying about it.

The old “I didn’t eat the entire cake, and it wouldn’t be bad if I did eat the entire cake” routine.

It is possible, of course, that members of Team Trump only lied repeatedly about the meeting because they thought it was politically, and not legally, problematic. But it’s more likely that The Post’s reporting is correct — that Trump does worry about legal jeopardy. This is reinforced by the fact that Trump keeps pretending, as he did in this tweet, that the very thing that may make this meeting legally problematic — the Russian government’s role — never happened. And if Trump does recognize that, it would provide a reason for trying to obstruct the probe.

But he didn’t try to obstruct it, and if he did that’s fine.

The state of this.

Tom Watson has vowed to face down an online campaign to oust him as Labour’s deputy leader after he criticised the party leadership’s handling of the antisemitism row.

Critics of Watson caused the hashtag #ResignWatson to trend on Twitter, after an Observer interview in which he said Labour faced a “vortex of eternal shame” unless it tackled the issue head-on.

The deputy leader called for the party to end disciplinary action against the MPs Ian Austin and Margaret Hodge, who criticised Jeremy Corbyn’s response to the row, and also said Labour should fully adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and all its examples.

On Monday, the party suspended George McManus, a member of Labour’s national policy forum (NPF), after comments he posted on Facebook about Watson and “Jewish donors”.

McManus, who stood for election to lead the body this year, highlighted donations received by Watson from the businessman Sir Trevor Chinn and wrote: “Apparently Watson received £50,000+ from Jewish donors. At least Judas only got 30 pieces of silver.”

The world’s gone mad.

Adam Davidson at the New Yorker notes that 44 years ago today Nixon released the “smoking gun tape” after the Supreme Court ruled that he had to; three days later he resigned.

On August 5, 2018, precisely forty-four years after the collapse of the Nixon Presidency, another President, Donald Trump, made his own public admission. In one of a series of early-morning tweets, Trump addressed a meeting that his son Donald, Jr., held with a Russian lawyer affiliated with the Russian government. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere,” he wrote. “I did not know about it!”

The tweet contains several crucial pieces of information. First, it is a clear admission that Donald Trump, Jr.,’s original statement about the case was inaccurate enough to be considered a lie. He had said the meeting was with an unknown person who “might have information helpful to the campaign,” and that this person “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” This false statement was, according to his legal team, dictated by the President himself. There was good reason to mislead the American people about that meeting. Based on reporting—at the time and now—of the President’s admission, it was a conscious effort by the President’s son and two of his closest advisers to work with affiliates of the Russian government to obtain information that might sway the U.S. election in Trump’s favor. In short, it was, at minimum, a case of attempted collusion. The tweet indicates that Trump’s defense will continue to be that this attempt at collusion failed—“it went nowhere”—and that, even if it had succeeded, it would have been “totally legal and done all the time.” It is unclear why, if the meeting was entirely proper, it was important for the President to declare “I did not know about it!” or to tell the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to “stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.”

Because Trump is too stupid not to try every possible lie, including those that contradict each other.

The President’s Sunday-morning tweet should be seen as a turning point. It doesn’t teach us anything new—most students of the case already understand what Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner knew about that Trump Tower meeting. But it ends any possibility of an alternative explanation. We can all move forward understanding that there is a clear fact pattern about which there is no dispute:

• The President’s son and top advisers knowingly met with individuals connected to the Russian government, hoping to obtain dirt on their political opponent.
• Documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee and members of the Clinton campaign were later used in an overt effort to sway the election.
• When the Trump Tower meeting was uncovered, the President instructed his son and staff to lie about the meeting, and told them precisely which lies to use.
• The President is attempting to end the investigation into this meeting and other instances of attempted collusion between his campaign staff and representatives of the Russian government.

So, now what? Who knows.

My goodness, woke activism gets more surprising every day. Here’s @transphilosophr, who describes herself thus:

Writer. Ex-academic philosopher. @RebelMouse | Forthcoming book “Transgressive: A Trans Woman on Gender, Feminism and Politics” with @JKPBooks #WomenInTech

And here’s how she talks about “TERFs” – i.e. women she doesn’t like.

I've figured it out! TERFs smell so bad because they live on a steady diet of red herring. Red herrings for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Red herring body wash. Red herring shampoo. Red herring supplements. If it smells like rotten fish, TERFs probably love it.

— @rachelwilliams@hachyderm.io (@rach_a_williams) August 4, 2018

Women smell like fish, haw haw haw.

That’s a misogynist “joke” that goes back as far as jokes, but she’s insisting that it’s about logic and they just don’t get her philosophical profundity.

But also also, WOMEN STINK LIKE ROTTEN FISH.

Bad:

It just will not end. We may be witnessing the complete collapse of the ecosystem. Much of [southwest Florida] now enveloped in the smell of death.

This is just one canal. People are reporting the smell up to 15 miles inland.

Sad times. Still no Mainstream Media Coverage. Please share.

From the Times on July 30:

Florida has an algae problem, and it’s big. This year, an overgrowth in the waters off the state’s southwestern coast is killing wildlife and making some beaches noxious.

The toxic algal bloom, known as a red tide, is not unusual. Red tides appear off the state’s coast almost every year. But this one, still going strong after roughly nine months, is the longest since 2006, when blooms that originated in 2004 finally abated after 17 months.

The blooms can poison marine animals like sea turtles and manatees, while waves and ocean spray can carry toxins into the air and cause respiratory problems in people.

…

Climate change is expected to intensify the freshwater algal blooms, according to Timothy Davis, associate professor of biology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

“They really flourish in warm waters,” he said. Also, increased rainfall can bring more nutrients into lakes. “We’re expecting to see larger blooms that last longer and could potentially be more toxic.”

Very bad.

Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018

It was totally legal, it’s done all the time – plus, also, he knew nothing about it! Just in case it turns out it wasn’t totally legal, or in fact legal at all, even slightly. Belt and braces, people, belt and braces.

I’m old enough to remember when this meeting was about adoptions. https://t.co/SZ2FDwsNzO

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) August 5, 2018

Trump statement, July 2017: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago.” https://t.co/9lYejcZxzK

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) August 5, 2018

They knew they would be meeting with representatives of the Russian state.

They knew they were being offered Russian state intelligence.

They intended to use Russian intelligence offered by Russian agents against an American opponents.

They did not alert the FBI.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 5, 2018

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström points out that “it’s our/their culture” is not a blank check to violate women’s rights.

I want to reflect on the word “culture”, and the way that it is used to justify the oppression of women. I believe firmly that culture should never be accepted as an excuse for the oppression of women.

“Culture” is typically defined by sociologists as a set of values, norms and beliefs among a group.  It may refer to the traditional culture in Afghanistan, of football fans in Argentina, or of university students in Sweden. Let me clarify what I mean by the “oppression” of women. I use the term to mean all instances when a woman is restricted because of her gender—whether she is explicitly discriminated against under the law or unfairly treated and looked down upon.

Not all oppression of women around the world can be explained by culture and, of course, not all cultures include the oppression of women. But the instances of it are many and varied: from the woman who is forced to marry against her will in the name of religion to the woman who is expected to put up with sexual harassment at work, because “that is just the way it is.”

I disagree with one bit of that – I think all cultures do include the oppression of women.

Saying that the oppression of women exists in all societies does not mean it is the same everywhere. The situation is worse in some cultures, and it does no good to pretend otherwise.

To what extent is this a problem? Should we not respect the fact that some cultures mean a lot to some people, and that cultural differences regarding the roles of men and women should be accepted?

No, because cultures include dissent and oppression and rebellion, and we shouldn’t “respect” the meaningfulness of cultures by siding with the dominant members.

Four years ago, Sweden was the first country in the world to launch a feminist foreign policy. The notion of feminism is provocative to some people, but to us, feminism means that women and men should have the same rights, duties and opportunities. Or as the aphorism goes, feminism is “the radical notion that women are human beings.”

Our simple model is based on three Rs: rights, representation and resources.

Using these categories in any country where we have an embassy, we assess the practical realities of daily life. Do women and girls have the same rights—the right to education, to work, to marry whom they want, to divorce, to run businesses, to open bank accounts, etc? Are women represented where decisions are made that affect them—in government, parliament, local assemblies, businesses and organisations? Do women’s and girls’ interests receive the same resources—in budgets, in development cooperation?

Wherever we identify inequality, we think of what we can do to remove it. In practice, this means that we have been pushing for the Women, Peace and Security agenda in the UN Security Council, where Sweden is a non-permanent member. We have initiated a network of women peace negotiators who are active all over the world.

We have given a lot of support to women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights and provided funding for midwives in Eastern Africa. And our 108 embassies around the world are relentlessly organising events, creating attention and support for women’s issues.

Further reading: Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? by Susan Moller Okin

The Post has another long story on how much more wack Trump is this week than he was last week. I just want to point to the final item in the story.

Trump made a surprise call into Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show Wednesday to congratulate the conservative icon on his 30th anniversary on the air. Trump mused aloud with Limbaugh about whether it would be more politically advantageous for him to shut down the government over border wall funding before or after the November elections.

“I’ve heard a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, don’t do it before the election. We’ll upset the applecart,’ ” Trump said. But, he added, “I actually think it’s a great campaign issue. I think it would be great before.”

That’s a novelty – a president talking about a future (planned, chosen, aimed for) shutdown of the government as if it were an exciting fun beneficial thing. It’s as if he were rejoicing at a hurricane or tornado or earthquake, only more so because he’s the one planning to do the shutting down. This is how much attention he pays to the overall well-being of the people.

This is one of those times when the kind and courteous agreement to call men who have transitioned to being trans women “women” with no further qualification is not a good plan. People who go into convenience stores to swing axes at random shoppers are rarely female.

The headline: Sydney axe attack: Woman guilty of trying to kill strangers

The text:

A woman who attacked two people with an axe in an Australian convenience store has been convicted of attempted murder.

Evie Amati, 26, carried out the unprovoked attack in Sydney last year.

After entering the 7-Eleven store, Amati used the axe to strike a man in the face and a woman in the back of the head. Both victims suffered serious injuries.

Amati had pleaded not guilty, arguing that she was experiencing a psychosis at the time of the attack.

The New South Wales District Court convicted her of three charges on Friday, after almost two days of deliberations by a jury.

During the trial, the court heard that Amati’s victims thought she had come from a costume party when she entered the store about 02:00 on 7 January last year.

See the axe? It connected, knocking the guy down and breaking his face.

Amati attacked her second victim, Sharon Hacker, near the door, leaving her with a fractured skull.

Amati then attempted to strike a third person, Shane Redwood, outside the store, but he managed to use his backpack as a shield. She was arrested shortly later.

Her lawyer, Charles Waterstreet, told the court that she had been “out of her mind” at the time, and was affected by drugs, alcohol and prescription medication.

Amati testified that her mental health had declined after she began taking hormones to transition from male to female.

And that’s how long it took the BBC to make clear that Amati is trans. Most people reading the story won’t have read that far.