Fortune reports we’ve been downgraded, we who are Yanks.

While U.S. citizens could once claim to be part of the 9% of people in the world governed by a “full democracy,” they are now part of the near 45% who live in a “flawed democracy.”

That’s according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, which downgraded the U.S. in their 2016 Democracy Index published Wednesday. The move puts the U.S. in the same category as Poland, Mongolia, and Italy.

The “full democracy” period must have been quite brief, since before the Voting Rights Act we definitely were not one.

What besides Trump makes us not one?

• the electoral college
• gerrymandering
• voter suppression (made possible by the Shelby ruling)
• money in political campaigns (made much worse by the Citizens United ruling)

All that preceded Trump.

To arrive at this conclusion, the paper analyzed over 200 countries and considered factors like political culture and political participation.

“Popular trust in government, elected representatives and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the U.S.,” the paper’s authors wrote. “This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of [Donald] Trump as U.S. president in November 2016.”

And then he pushed it off a cliff.

The BBC on #MosqueMeToo:

Egyptian-American feminist and journalist Mona Eltahawy first talked about her experience of sexual assault during Hajj in 2013.

She is behind #MosqueMeToo.

Muslim men and women from around the world started using the hashtag yesterday and in less than 24 hours it was tweeted 2,000 times.

A Muslim woman emailed me after she read my thread about being sexually assaulted at Haj to share her mother’s experience with sexual assault at Haj. She sent me a poem that broke all the pieces I though I had stitched together. I was crying as I replied to her.

— Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) February 9, 2018

It has gone on to become one of the top ten trends of Farsi Twitter.

Many of the women sharing their experiences on Twitter report being groped, inappropriately touched or having someone rub against them in the crowd.

For Muslims, the Hajj is the fifth and final pillar of Islam. It is something that every sane adult Muslim must undertake at least once in their lives if they can afford it and are physically able.

It is estimated two million Muslims undertake Hajj each year, creating huge crowds in the holy city of Mecca.

And what’s one thing that happens in huge crowds? Men stick out their hands and grab.

Many Iranian and Farsi speaking Twitter users not only shared their experience of harassment but also challenged the belief that wearing the hijab keeps women safe from assault and harassment.

In Iran the hijab is mandatory. There are posters in cities and towns comparing unveiled women to unwrapped candy and lollipops attracting unwanted attention from flies.

But some of the lollipops are fighting back.

So much ordure hitting so many fans I need an omnibus post just to list it all.

Rachel Brand is leaving her job.

Rachel L. Brand, the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, plans to step down after nine months on the job as the country’s top law enforcement agency has been under attack by President Trump, according to two people briefed on her decision.

Ms. Brand’s profile had risen in part because she is next in the line of succession behind the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who is overseeing the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian influence in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump, who has called the investigation a witch hunt, has considered firing Mr. Rosenstein.

Such a move could have put her in charge of the special counsel and, by extension, left her in the cross hairs of the president.

Kelly says he’s willing to leave his job.

John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, told officials in the West Wing on Friday that he was willing to step down over his handling of allegations of spousal abuse against Rob Porter, the staff secretary who resigned in disgrace this week over the accusations, according to two officials aware of the discussions.

The officials emphasized that they did not consider a resignation imminent, and that Mr. Kelly — a retired four-star Marine general who early in his tenure often used a threat of quitting as a way to temper President Trump’s behavior — had made no formal offer.

But his suggestion that he would be willing to step down if the president wanted him to reflected the degree to which the scandal surrounding Mr. Porter has engulfed the White House.

All the more so after two senior staffers called the Post to report that Kelly had just told them to lie about when he pushed Porter out.

For all the turmoil, Mr. Trump on Friday warmly praised Mr. Porter, saying it was a “tough time” for his former aide and noting that Mr. Porter had denied the accusations.

“We wish him well,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Porter, who was accused of physical and emotional abuse by two ex-wives. The president added, “He also, as you probably know, says he is innocent, and I think you have to remember that.”

“He worked very hard,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked for a comment about Mr. Porter. The president said he had only “recently” learned of the allegations against his former aide and was surprised.

“He did a very good job when he was in the White House, and we hope he has a wonderful career, and he will have a great career ahead of him,” Mr. Trump said. “But it was very sad when we heard about it, and certainly he’s also very sad now.”

The glowing praise of a staff member accused of serial violence against women was in line with the president’s own denials of sexual impropriety despite accusations from more than a dozen women and his habit of accepting claims of innocence from men facing similar allegations. Among them was Roy S. Moore, the former Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, who is accused of molesting teenage girls.

#MeToo #TimesUp etc etc.

On Friday morning at the White House, Mr. Kelly appeared to be trying to paint his handling of the matter in a more favorable light. At the end of the senior staff meeting, Mr. Kelly volunteered that he had something he wanted to “clarify,” according to people with knowledge of his remarks.

Mr. Kelly went on to say that he had learned of Mr. Porter’s true situation less than an hour before he removed him from his job. Two people familiar with the comments said that most of the staff appeared incredulous; one person said several people in the room knew that the timeline Mr. Kelly had presented was false.

As the meeting broke up, Ms. Hicks loudly complained about what had transpired, a person briefed on the meeting said.

And The Intercept claims that the CIA is wary of intel that implicates Trump because Pompeo is, shall we say, not exactly non-partisan.

Many intelligence officials are reluctant to get involved with anything related to the Trump-Russia case for fear of blowback from Trump himself, who might seek revenge by firing senior officials and wreaking havoc on their agencies. For example, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence and thus the man supposedly in charge of the entire U.S. intelligence community, has said he does not see it as his role to push for an aggressive Trump-Russia investigation, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The call came from inside the house.

Here’s some striking dysfunction – Kelly holds a meeting with senior staff at which he tells them to lie about when he (Kelly) fired Porter. When he leaves the senior staff look at each other and go “Wow, that’s a big lie.” Two of them pick up the phone and call the Post.

The Post reports:

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly on Friday morning instructed senior staff to communicate a version of events about the departure of staff secretary Rob Porter that contradicts the Trump administration’s previous accounts, according to two senior officials.

During a staff meeting, Kelly told those in attendance to say he took action to remove Porter within 40 minutes of learning abuse allegations from two ex-wives were credible, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because discussions in such meetings are supposed to be confidential.

“He told the staff he took immediate and direct action,” one of the officials said, adding that people after the meeting expressed disbelief with one another and felt his latest account was not true.

I mean really. It doesn’t get much more broken down than that. Obviously Kelly knows who was in the room so now he knows that they all knew he was telling them to lie and that two of them instantly told the Post about it. He’ll probably be gone within hours.

Good riddance, by the way. Those lies he told about Representative Wilson? Unforgivable.

Plus he’s telling senior White House staff to lie, just like that. Goodbye.

At Friday’s meeting, Kelly also told subordinates to convey to other White House aides he cares about domestic violence, according to the officials.

“Tell them I care. Tell them I really really care. How much? This much.”

Talk about cruel and unusual…

The Arizona Legislature is considering a bill that would provide incarcerated women with an unlimited supply of feminine hygiene products, including tampons, pads, cups and sponges.

Consider? As in, currently they limit them?

Currently, incarcerated women get 12 free pads each month. They must ask an officer if they need more, must pay for them, and may only possess up to 24 at a time. Unlike in other states, if they want tampons, they must buy them.

Ohhhhhh for god’s sake. Women can’t help how much they bleed. It’s not possible to control the flow to suit the number of pads available. Menstruating isn’t some whim that women have.

Numerous women testified how humiliating and frustrating the current situation is.

“Bloodstained pants, bartering and begging for pads and tampons was a regular occurrence,” Adrienne Kitcheyan said of her six years in Perryville.

…

Former inmate Tuesday Brower said she usually wore two or three pads stacked on top of each other every day while she worked a yard-crew job so that she wouldn’t stain her pants.

“I would take the pad apart and make three tampons because it would hold better at work and I have received a ticket before for contraband because you’re not allowed to do that,” she said.

Kitcheyan said if blood stained a prisoner’s pants, she would be given a ticket for being out of dress code, which could result in her losing visitation rights, phone calls and the ability to purchase store items — including tampons and pads.

Sue Ellen Allen, who served seven years in Perryville, said officers can and do deny requests for more pads.

“The humiliation is really something you carry with you forever,” she said.

It sounds like something Arpaio dreamed up.

You know how libertarians often seem like callous ruthless shits? Politico reports:

Three former employees of the famed Cato Institute say they were sexually harassed by Ed Crane, the 73-year-old co-founder and president emeritus of the think tank and one of the most recognizable figures in the libertarian movement.

The invisible hand up the skirt.

One former employee said Crane asked her to take off her bra. Another said he compared her breasts to pornographic images on his computer. A third said he sent her an email on breast augmentation. Crane also settled an additional sexual harassment claim by a former employee in 2012, her lawyer confirmed to POLITICO.

Oh, I beg your pardon, the invisible hand down the shirt.

Three other former Cato employees described witnessing Crane making sexual and other inappropriate comments to young women at Cato both at work and during after-work events. Crane drank alcohol in his office during the day, according to multiple former employees. One male former employee said he saw Crane try to unsnap the bra of a female colleague at an office holiday party on a boat on the Potomac River.

Boobies! Can’t get enough of the boobies!

Former employees say Cato’s libertarian ideals extended to the workplace. A 1999 book on sexual harassment published as a “Cato Institute book” encouraged women to find avenues for dealing with sexual harassment that didn’t involve reporting incidents to management or using the legal system.

“Libertarians would believe in the right to ask” to proposition someone “and the right for someone to say no,” said Cinda Jones, a former Cato head of marketing who left the organization in 2001.

Uh huh, my point exactly. I’ve seen a lot of libertarians like that.

“Working at Cato, if you’re a young libertarian, is an enormous privilege,” said the former research assistant who said she received an email from Crane about breast augmentation in 2003. “People just sort of thought, ‘Well I’m a libertarian, Ed owns the place, I kind of believe in his right to run it the way he wants to.’”

Ownership is 900% of the law!

Kelly knew about Rob Porter. He knew and did nothing; he didn’t care. Porter was unable to get a security clearance because of the allegations of violence toward women. The job Porter was doing absolutely requires a security clearance, because the Staff Secretary sees everything – all the security briefings and all the everything. Porter was doing the job without the necessary clearance, which he couldn’t get because his two former wives said he punched them. Oh and also? Hope Hicks was dating him, and she helped write the White House statement about his firing yesterday.

All totally fine, folks, just walk on, keep the sidewalks clear. Today is National Prayer Breakfast day, so Trump duly stood up and told everyone how awesome God is.

Mr. Trump’s remarks came amid growing questions about how the White House handled allegations of domestic violence against one of the president’s closest aides.

The White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, steadfastly defended the aide, Rob Porter, right up until Mr. Porter resigned on Wednesday. Officials now say the White House was aware of the charges against Mr. Porter, which contributed to a delay in granting him a security clearance for his post as staff secretary.

Just brilliant. One, they knew the guy in this sensitive job was accused of hitting women, and two, they knew that was why he had no security clearance, and three, they had him doing the job anyway. Maybe four will turn out to be that Russia has been blackmailing him all along.

Still, the president seemed entirely at ease with his audience. If anything, he has strengthened his position with evangelicals in the last year, in part because of the Jerusalem decision. They have shown unshakable support for him, even after reports that one of his associates paid hush money to a porn star with whom Mr. Trump had an affair before he became president. Mr. Trump has denied the affair.

Melania Trump is reported not to believe his denial. The “affair” is reported to have taken place weeks after Melania gave birth.

Let’s have another feel-good story. You can’t have too many in the Age of Trump.

It was reported last month that the Doomsday Clock has been moved up again.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced today that it has moved its Doomsday Clock to 2 minutes before midnight, citing North Korea’s recent tests of missiles and nuclear weapons and the world’s lack of progress in confronting climate change.

“In 2017, we saw reckless language in the nuclear realm heat up already dangerous situations and relearned that minimizing evidence-based assessments regarding climate and other global challenges does not lead to better public policies,” said Rachel Bronson, the Bulletin’s president and CEO in Chicago, Illinois. Last year the clock moved half a tick, from 3 minutes to 2.5 minutes before midnight; it has been in single digits since India and Pakistan staged back-to-back nuclear weapons tests in 1998.

In addition to a war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board flagged steps by all of the world’s nuclear powers to enhance their nuclear arsenals. The lack of high-level negotiations between the United States and Russia on arms control, Russia’s activities in Crimea, and plans to strengthen the U.S. nuclear arsenal have also heightened tensions, said Sharon Squassoni, a board member and international affairs expert at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “With U.S.-Russian relations so strained, there is little room for progress anywhere else,” she noted at a press briefing.

Trump bears blame for being “unable to develop, coordinate, and clearly communicate a coherent foreign, much less nuclear, policy,” said Robert Rosner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago. The panel cited a dearth of diplomats and Trump’s October 2017 decision not to certify that Iran was in compliance with an international agreement to throttle back its nuclear weapons program.

The Bulletin scientists said worsening effects from climate change have also increased the risk of global annihilation, citing destructive hurricanes in the Caribbean, heat waves around the globe, wildfires in the United States and Canada, rising greenhouse gas emissions, and declining Arctic ice cover.

Are things today as bad as in 1953, when both the United States and Russia exploded thermonuclear bombs? Comparisons are difficult, Bronson says, but there are more nuclear weapon states today than in the 1950s. “We’ve made the clear statement that we feel the world is getting more dangerous. … We present the clock not so much as doom and gloom, but as an opportunity to get government and the public discussing the important issues,” adds physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University in Tempe.

We could have been a contender.

The Trump administration doesn’t do a great job of vetting the people it hires. Maybe that’s because the Boss Man is such a rancid specimen himself that they want him to have company, or want him not to feel weird and out of step, or have no idea what a decent human being even is? Or maybe it’s because they prefer rancid specimens.

One of them has just quit because of embarrassing revelations.

A senior White House official announced Wednesday he is resigning following allegations by his two ex-wives of physical and emotional abuse.

The official, Rob Porter, served as the staff secretary and often controlled the paper flow to President Trump’s desk, along with his daily schedule. Porter also oversaw the White House’s policy implementation process and worked closely with Chief of Staff John F. Kelly to try to instill discipline in the chaotic West Wing. He spent hours of the day with Trump and frequently traveled with him on Air Force One.

Yeah well. Trump assaulted Ivana that time; Bannon beat up his wife; maybe they just think it’s normal.

Senior West Wing aides spent part of Wednesday morning preparing for the fallout from his departure. Many senior officials, including Kelly, urged Porter to stay, according to White House advisers.

…

The White House issued statements of support late Tuesday from Kelly, Sanders and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Porter’s previous boss in the Senate.

“Rob Porter is a man of true integrity and honor and I can’t say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidante and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him,” Kelly said Tuesday night, hours before pictures appeared that included Holderness’s blackened eye.

On Tuesday night, Hatch released a statement supportive of Porter.

“It’s incredibly discouraging to see such a vile attack on such a decent man,” he said. “Shame on any publication that would print this — and shame on the politically motivated, morally bankrupt character assassins that would attempt to sully a man’s good name. I know Rob. I’ve known him for years, both as a close friend and as a personal advisor. He is kind and considerate towards all. The country needs more honest, principled people like Rob Porter, which is why I hope that this cynical campaign to discredit his character ultimately fails.”

Wait a second. If he’s decent and kind and considerate towards all, why is he working for Trump? Why is he part of the administration of a man who is conspicuously and calculatedly none of those things?

Oh, hell.

The contestants — all pledges of Cornell’s Zeta Beta Tau fraternity — called their secret, fat-shaming sex game the “Pig Roast,” according to the Daily Sun, Cornell’s student newspaper.

The rules were simple: Would-be brothers allegedly earned points for having sex with overweight women. If there was a tie at the end of the game, the victory went to whoever had slept with the heaviest woman. New members were told not to inform the women about the contest, according to a university report.

I’m so sick of meanness. If we could just do away with this kind of recreational meanness that would get rid of a lot of utterly pointless misery in the world. We can’t banish every disease or prevent every accident, but there’s no physical reason we couldn’t just stop doing shit like that.

Ryan Lombardi, Cornell’s vice president for student and campus life, called the game “abhorrent,” the Daily Sun reported.

“Behavior that degrades and dehumanizes women contributes to a climate and culture of tolerance for sexual violence,” he said.

Here’s a wild thought: maybe universities don’t actually need fraternities (and sororities) at all. Maybe they’re not a benign institution. Maybe they should just go the way of the duel and the male-only suffrage.

I haven’t been paying attention to SpaceX and I had no idea they were doing this until Maddow showed us last night. I had a hard time believing what I was seeing.

https://youtu.be/u0-pfzKbh2k

Here’s how big they are:

Every time Elon Musk and SpaceX manage to land a used Falcon 9 rocket on one of the company’s two droneships, it’s a huge achievement. It’s pretty easy to see that getting anything into space and then back again is tough, let alone putting a tube-shaped rocket on a droneship the size of a football field in the middle of the ocean, but most of the pictures of SpaceX landings don’t give you a good sense of scale. It’s easy to look at them and forget that Falcon 9 rockets are really, really dang big.

The most recent version of the Falcon 9 is 230 feet high, or a little more than 70 yards — it’s basically two thirds of a football field standing on its end, or the same height as a fourteen or so story building in a big city.

Mind officially blown.

Updating to add: I was wrong when I said I’d had no idea – I did have any idea once but then I forgot about it. Back in 2015. Dave Ricks reminded me. That too is a fun watch!

Trump as seen from the other side of the pond department: Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian on Trump’s childish/despotic desire for a Big Parade of Guns n Tanks.

He’d been nagging the generals about this for a while but, according to the Washington Post, he gave the order at a meeting at the Pentagon last month.

No need for us to deconstruct the motive behind this instruction. It came after Trump was the guest at France’s Bastille Day parade, where he stood at Emmanuel Macron’s side and watched tanks, gun trucks and column after column of starchly uniformed soldiers. “We’re going to have to try and top it,” Trump said afterwards. (The actual order to military chiefs was phrased in the language of a spoiled child: “I want a parade like the one in France.”)

The whole thing is like a spoiled child. The being awestruck at a military parade; the gormlessly announcing how awestruck he was; that idiotic solemn salute when no one else was saluting and it’s not even his country –

He looks like a giant toddler.

…the envy; the unembarrassed announcement of the envy; the demand for a Bigger and Better one – every bit of it is so spoiled child we don’t know whether to vomit or laugh-sob or start building a shelter.

Opponents can react to this in one of two ways. Mockery is the obvious response, seeing in Trump’s desire to display US tanks and rocket launchers on Pennsylvania Avenue the same transparent insecurity as the mid-life crisis neighbour who suddenly turns up with a Ferrari in the driveway.

Or we can be more sober, and regard this as just the latest and potentially most spectacular demonstration of Trump’s authoritarian instincts.

That’s just it, as it pretty much always is with Trump – he’s both at once, at all times – shockingly and hilariously/disgustingly childish, and horrendously destructive in more ways than we can list.

Just as he has repeatedly expressed admiration for strongmen in the Vladimir Putin mode, just as he regards the machinery of the state as his personal staff – casually referring to “my justice department” or “my generals” – and just as this week he suggested that those who refuse to applaud him are “treasonous”, so this is yet more proof that Trump’s instincts are those of the autocrat. Little wonder that he wants to take the salute at the kind of military display more associated with Moscow or Pyongyang than Washington DC.

And tried to take it in Paris, as if he were the local boss rather than a visitor.

But, Freedland goes on, lots of people here will love it. Yes, we know.

More from the Daily Mash:

Women tell everyone to just fuck off

H/t Stewart