From the Financial Times:

At 10pm last Thursday night, Jonny Gould took to the stage in the ballroom at London’s Dorchester Hotel. “Welcome to the most un-PC event of the year,” he roared. The sports broadcaster was there to host a charity auction — the centrepiece of a secretive annual event, the Presidents Club Charity Dinner.

The purpose is to – wink wink – raise money for Good Causes…but – nudge nudge – not really.

It’s for men only; the “entertainment” included 130 women who were told to wear “skimpy black outfits with matching underwear and high heels.” At a party afterwards, to the astonishment of everyone, many of the women were groped and propositioned.

The event has been a big deal for 33 years but it’s flown under the radar, presumably because the riffraff haven’t been allowed within a mile of it. The FT sent a couple of reporters to work undercover as hostesses. During the six hour event many of the hostesses were the target of “groping, lewd comments and repeated requests to join diners in bedrooms” in the oh so posh Dorchester.

The agency that hired the women warned them that they would likely face “annoying” men and that for some it’s a job they never want to do again. They’re given instructions on sexy makeup and hair and shoes. When they arrive on the day, guess what’s the first thing they have to do.

Sign a five page non-disclosure agreement without being allowed to read it or keep a copy.

But hey, it raises a lot of money for charity, so who cares how it goes about it, eh?

H/t Screechy Monkey

Women journalists covering Pence’s trip to Israel are being subjected to gender segregation.

[O]n Tuesday, female journalists were particularly perturbed to discover that they had been relegated to covering Pence’s spiritual stop at the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, from the other side of a fence.

The Western Wall — the outer wall of the raised esplanade that is called the Temple Mount by Jews and al-Haram al-Sharif by Muslims — is currently under the authority of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Western Wall Heritage Foundation. According to custom, the plaza is divided by gender, with men praying on one side of a barrier and women on the other.

“According to custom,” of course. It’s always “according to custom.” That’s how it works. It is our custom to treat women as inferior beings. Next question?

For Pence’s visit to the wall, the foundation set up two platforms side by side straddling the barrier. As Pence prayed on the men’s side, however, it was impossible for the female journalists to see above the cameras and microphones held by their male colleagues.

“It was the same situation during President Trump’s visit to the Western Wall in May 2017,” said the foundation in a statement. “We reject any attempt to divert the discussion from the important and moving visit of the US Vice President and his wife at the Western Wall.”

Moving shmoving. Their god hates women.

Female journalists covering the event disagreed, however, coining the hashtag #pencefence on Twitter.

Tal Schneider, a prominent Israeli journalist, tweeted: “Separation at the Western Wall. The women stuck in isolation and can not photograph, work. Women journalists are second-class citizens. The American women photographers are frantically yelling at the representatives of the White House. #PenceFence

Pence no doubt approves. He won’t work with women without a chaperone, thus handicapping women who work for him and women who need to meet with him as part of their jobs. PenceFence indeed.

Terrifying.

Republicans may be on the verge of publicly releasing a secret memo compiled by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), one of President Trump’s most devoted bodyguards against accountability on Capitol Hill, that purports to show serious misconduct by the FBI and Justice Department toward the Trump campaign. The memo is the latest effort to build an alt-narrative that casts the FBI’s Russia probe — which became special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe — as a Deep State Coup to remove Trump from power.

Trump’s goons have been demanding its release.

Adam Schiff says the memo is bullshit.

“It’s highly distorted spin by Nunes,” Schiff told me. “The Nunes spin memo distorts the underlying materials and has presented Members with a very misleading impression of what those materials show.”

Schiff also made a striking claim: He said that in allowing the memo to be accessed in a classified setting by House Republicans, Nunes has violated an agreement with the FBI and the Justice Department. Schiff added that its public release would also violate that agreement. The GOP leaders on the intel committee have allowed members of Congress to access the document, but Democrats charge this is merely an effort to arm them with misleading talking points to attack the FBI on Trump’s behalf.

This is a slow-motion coup. The Republicans are kneecapping all the institutions that would get in the way of their attempt to establish a one party state.

The memo created by Nunes purports to document classified information that shows serious misconduct by top FBI and Justice Department officials in getting authority from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to conduct secret surveillance on Trump campaign officials, in particular former foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Three people who have seen the memo told Politico that it also raises questions about the role of the so-called “Steele Dossier” in prompting that surveillance.

Thus, the Nunes memo appears to be the latest effort to delegitimize the Russia probe by painting it as born of partisan dirty tricks and an illegitimate abuse of power.

And at the same time there’s the war on McCabe and Wray.

Meanwhile, the political meddling with the FBI appears to be continuing on another front: Axios reports that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray has threatened to resign over pressure on him from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire a top FBI official whose removal Trump has been demanding, allegedly because he’s a Clinton ally.

I wish I were confident they will fail.

Speaking of people saying that comments not directed at them are Inoffensive, there’s also Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

No one “expressed offense” during a recent Oval Office meeting on immigration where President Donald Trump allegedly used the term “shithole countries” to describe Africa, said Senator Tom Cotton, a shift from comments he made last week.

“I was not offended,” Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Nobody in the meeting expressed their offense.”

That’s so stupid it’s almost funny. The fact that white Republican Tom Cotton was not “offended” by Trump’s racist dismissal of all of Africa really tells us nothing about what we should think of Trump’s racist dismissal of all of Africa. If an insult is not aimed at you or people like you then you’re not the best authority on whether or not it’s an insult.

From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Sao Paulo, January 19, 2018–Authorities in the Brazilian state of Goiás must undertake a thorough investigation into the murder of local radio show host Jefferson Pureza Lopes, and bring those responsible to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Lopes was killed on the night of January 17 when two men drove on motorcycles to his house in Edealina, a town of around 4,000 people southwest of Brasilia, and shot him dead as he was sitting near a half-open door watching television, police and news reports said.

Friends and colleagues told the local news site Globo and CPJ that Lopes, who was frequently critical of local politicians on his radio show, faced threats and other forms of intimidation for more than a year before his murder.

According to the radio station’s director, Cristina Leandro, Lopes reported the threats to police, but the court cases stymied for procedural reasons.

Lopes is the second journalist killed in Brazil this week, following the murder of Ueliton Bayer Brizonin in Amazonia’s Rondonia state on January 16.

“This is the second murder of a journalist in one week and serves as a stark reminder of the dangers Brazilian reporters face in rural areas,” CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney said from New York. “Brazilian authorities must swiftly investigate the killing of Jefferson Pureza Lopes and bring those responsible to justice.”

…

Lopes, 39, worked as a radio presenter for Beira Rio FM, a station based in Edealina, that is owned by a political rival to Edealina’s current mayor, a police spokesperson told CPJ. According to the spokesperson who was not authorized to give his name, Lopes frequently criticized the incumbent on air.

Leandro confirmed to CPJ that Lopes was a sharp and constant critic of local politicians, and devoted much of his daily one-hour show, Voz do Povo (Voice of the People), to highlighting what he saw as corruption or poor administration by local politicians.

Marlon Queiroz, Lopes’ co-host and a station DJ, told the Globo TV station that Lopes regularly received threats.

“For two years now he’s been getting threats, daily threats via WhatsApp– messages saying I’m going to end your family, that kind of thing,” Queiroz said.

In fall 2016, Leandro told CPJ Lopes’ house was shot up. Several months later after Lopes had been criticizing a local politician on air, her husband put a gun to Lopes’ head and told him to stop, according to Leandro.

Now he has stopped.

Robert Reich hours before the shutdown:

I was Secretary of Labor during the first government shutdown in 1996, and, believe me, it’s not pretty. I recall people in tears because they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills, piles of unopened letters, uncollected data, frustrated workers, a mystified and angry public.

What happens when the government shuts down? Millions of people who work for the government are put on unpaid furlough. They don’t get their paychecks, and will never be repaid for the time lost. Millions of federal contractors are also left out in the cold. Essential government functions protecting public health and safety continue, but much of the enforcement of government regulations comes to a grinding halt.

Congressional offices are partially closed because most personnel are also furloughed. The federal courts continue to function, barely, but many of the employees normally at the court houses are no longer there. Military personal on active duty continue to report for duty but will not be paid until the shutdown ends. The mail will continue to be delivered. Federal Emergency Management cleanup efforts in Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida and California are likely to continue but will surely be hampered.

If you are a recipient of Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, TANF, or food stamps, you’ll continue to receive your benefits. But if you have problems or questions, forget it. There’s no one there to answer them.

If the shutdown lasts a few days, the damage will be minimal. If it continues into next week, you will begin to feel its effects.

The 3 previous government shutdowns occurred during periods of divided government, when Republicans and Democrats couldn’t agree on funding. Never before have we faced a shutdown when the same party runs both houses of Congress and the White House.

That the world’s leading democracy and richest nation should be on the brink of shutting down its government shows how close to a banana republic we’ve come.

Trump and his gang are “getting tough” on immigrants and getting results…results like locking up a busy doctor in an area with a shortage of doctors due partly to the spike in flu cases.

Lukasz Niec was 5 years old when his parents brought him and his sister to the United States from Poland. With two suitcases in tow, his parents — both doctors — left behind a country on the verge of social turmoil. It was 1979, about two years before the country’s authoritarian communist government declared martial law.

Niec received a temporary green card and, in 1989, became a lawful permanent resident. He grew up in Michigan, went to medical school, became a doctor, and raised a daughter and stepdaughter.

Niec, now 43, never fathomed that his legal status in the United States would become an issue. With a renewed green card, and nearly 40 years in the country, his Polish nationality was an afterthought for Niec, his sister told The Washington Post. He doesn’t even speak Polish.

But on Tuesday morning, immigration authorities arrested Niec at his home, just after he had sent his 12-year-old stepdaughter off to school. Niec, a physician specializing in internal medicine at Bronson Healthcare Group in Kalamazoo, Mich., has been detained in a county jail ever since, awaiting a bond hearing and possible deportation.

He was convicted of two misdemeanors as a teenager and screwed up again as an adult.

According to Kalamazoo County court records cited by MLive, Niec also pleaded guilty in 2008 to operating impaired by liquor. After he completed probation, the conviction was set aside, the plea withdrawn and the case dismissed. He was also charged with domestic violence in 2013 and a jury found him not guilty after a trial, MLive reported.

Over the decades, tens of thousands of legal residents have been deported for relatively minor offenses. But under previous administrations, immigration authorities have often let low-level offenders off the hook, prioritizing the deportations of violent criminals. A memo from the Obama administration in 2011 directed immigration officials to look at a number of factors, such as familial relationships with U.S. citizens, criminal history, education and contributions to the community, in deciding whether arrests and prosecution are warranted, as The Post’s Kristine Phillips reported.

But the Trump administration has issued sweeping new guidelines expanding the range of immigrants that count as high priority for deportation, including low-level offenders, and those with no criminal record — regardless of how long they have lived in the country.

Meanwhile Trump himself gets away with crime after crime after crime, most of it far from low-level.

Lucasz Niec has been a doctor for more than a decade. He treats patients at three different Bronson hospitals, and is responsible for scheduling all physicians in his group, covering about five hospitals in the area, his wife said. He was picked up by immigration officials on his first day off after working a week straight, including several double shifts.

…

“He is needed in the hospital,” his wife said. Hospitals in the area are packed full, she said, in part because of the widespread influenza. The Kalamazoo area has seen an increase in flu cases in recent weeks, in numbers well above the four-year average, according to the Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services Department.

A number of his hospital colleagues have written letters to an immigration judge, rallying support for Niec, MLive reported.

“The consensus about his character is overwhelming with no single complaint I have ever heard from anyone over 10 years,” Kwsai Al-Rahhal, M.D. wrote, according to MLive. “He is loving, caring and respectful.”

Another colleague, Jose Angelo L. De Leon, M.D., wrote about how Niec often stepped up to take on extra hours due to staff shortages.

“I cannot say enough about his work ethic and his service to our community,” De Leon wrote.

But never mind all that, he was born in Poland and Trump is president.

Russia still helping.

As lawmakers wage a messaging war over who caused the government shutdown, Republicans and the White House are getting a big boost in their efforts to blame Democrats for the mess ― from the Russians.

#SchumerShutdown ― the hashtag that GOP leaders and the White House are using to accuse Democrats of causing the shutdown ― on Sunday night became the top trending hashtag being promoted by Russian bots and trolls on Twitter, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project led by former top national security officials from both parties.

…

#SchumerShutdown has surpassed #ReleaseTheMemo as the highest trending hashtag among Russian influence campaigns. They seized on that hashtag earlier this month in an effort to pressure Republican lawmakers to release a classified memo written by House GOP aides that allegedly describes abuses in FBI surveillance practices. Conservative organizations like Breitbart and the Daily Caller have given major coverage to the memo, but Democratic lawmakers have denounced it as deeply misleading.

Making America great again? Maybe not so much.

The US has suffered a jarring “crash” in trust in its institutions in the first year of the Trump presidency, according to a new study, with its elites now as disparaging as the wider public of government, business and media.  The collapse in trust seen in the US was the most stark any country has seen in the 17-year history of the Edelman Trust Barometer, a survey of 33,000 people in 28 countries, and came despite a growing economy, stock markets hitting record highs and a president vowing to make America great again.

It’s not surprising, is it. Our inability to function is right out there in the open for all to see. Our institutions failed to prevent an obviously incompetent and evil monster from being elected head of state. What trust in them could we have after that?

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Shannon Bond write that this dive was caused by falling confidence in government but that fall dragged the other institutions down along with it.

China, on the other hand, has riz.

The Times has pictures from women’s marches all over the planet. I find them quite moving.

Jackson, Mississippi:

Elijah Baylis/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated Press

San Francisco:

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

From the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), a story by Joshua Cuevas about the lengths far-right cyberbullies will go to harm people they perceive as enemies.

A 2017 Pew poll regarding Americans’ views on higher education, specifically those of Republicans, should alarm educators and, indeed, all citizens. Pew found that nearly 60 percent of Republicans currently believe that colleges and universities are having a negative effect on the country. One would expect that most parents would want their children to complete some form of postsecondary education, if only out of concern for their future earning potential. But among many on the right there is a pal­pable hostility toward the basic concept of higher education, as if college attendance made one part of a liberal conspiracy, and professors have come to be viewed as the embodiment of what many resent in American culture: political correctness, diversity, willingness to look to science for answers, secularism, feminism, intellectualism, socialism, and a host of other “isms.”

It started – surprise surprise – with a social media conversation about the election soon after it happened. A guy got mad at the author.

Shortly afterward, I received a personal message from the OP, who had now taken on a differ­ent identity, as a young female college student. He indicated that he had taken his grievances about me to an anonymous forum and closed with the threat, “This is going to be bad for you.” People with whom I had never had previous contact began to send me messages. One of the first said, “You’re a nigger.” Another called me a “faggott” [sic]. One attacked my preteen daughter as illegitimate. Several other indi­viduals, including a person who identified himself on his personal page as being employed as a data scientist at Facebook, used the phrase, “You must go back.” I did not initially understand what he meant by this but quickly came to realize that he was implying that, because I am Hispanic, I should be deported.

I did not respond, but I did examine each person’s page for patterns and commonalities. Some of the attacks came from dummy accounts, false profiles likely set up specifically for this type of situation—to enable anonymous attacks without the risk of expo­sure or retribution. Of the profiles that appeared to be real, most of them “liked,” or were part of, pro-Trump groups, and most were followers of former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

A link to my Rate My Professors page made it clear that their attacks were expanding. Apparently some­one had Googled my name and discovered that I was a professor; the open nature of Rate My Professors provided an opportunity for more attacks. Soon, sixty new “reviews” of my teaching, all uniformly vulgar, appeared. Some referred to bestiality; one complained about my supposed use of “Mein Kamp” [sic] in the classroom.

Similarly profane and racially motivated mes­sages appeared in my university email. One was formatted like a student inquiry, asking whether one of my courses was a prerequisite to a course titled JEWS1488; another was just a string of profanity.

Then I received a message from an actual student, who contacted me after stumbling across the source of the spam and abuse I had been receiving. He provided links to threads on a website that is know to be a cess­pool of white supremacist activity and suggested that I make screenshots to document the discussion there.

The messages I had received seemed tepid in com­parison with these threads. Protected by anonymity, the participants felt no need to conceal their bigotry.

The OP had taken one of my comments from the original article on the election and had posted it in one thread. He fabricated other comments and attributed them to me. The OP knew the kinds of information that would agitate visitors to the site—mention of my Hispanic background, reference to my liberal leanings, threats (supposedly from me) to shut down their website, and so on. The post­ers were unaware that I had written almost none of the statements the OP had posted. The depravity of their comments would have been unacceptable in any civilized environment. One commenter used an ava­tar that displayed an image of Hitler superimposed across a flag with a swastika.

Much of what was posted initially revolved around my Hispanic origins. Commenters suggested that I needed to be deported and called me a “spic.” As a liberal-leaning Hispanic professor, I was a perfect target for white supremacists.

Their plans became darker and more elaborate. One commenter suggested that their remote attacks on me be expanded to include my family. Another suggested that they take images they had found of my wife and Photoshop them in profane ways. They began to draft letters to send to administrators at my university and provided suggestions for editing to incriminate me. One commenter suggested they alter a screenshot they had created to make it appear as though I had used the term nigger. Another suggested that they accuse me of anti-Semitism. Their stated goal was to see that I was fired. This, apparently, was the type of opportunity they relished: find a person to harass, maybe by drawing him or her into a politi­cal argument, locate any information they could find online, and then coordinate attacks in an attempt to damage the person as much as possible.

And on, and on, and on. It was sustained and systematic and as damaging as they could make it – which, because they left trails and made mistakes, was not all that damaging, but not for want of trying.

Yet Michael Shermer’s Skeptic magazine portrays the left as the Scary Faction.

From Boston Common:

Twitter

By the way, if you're wondering why coverage of the huge marches yesterday seems kind of muted, it's because those hundreds of thousands weren't sitting in diners in small-town America, and therefore don't count. Also many of them were women.

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 21, 2018

CNN reports:

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in cities across the United States on Sunday for a second day of Women’s Marches, calling for equality and respect while urging supporters to make their voices heard by voting in this year’s midterm elections.

Sunday’s marches were held one year from the day hundreds of thousands of women, donning pink hats, took to the streets of Washington in a stunning display of resistance to President Donald Trump, whose administration many feared could threaten women’s rights.

Not “feared” so much as “knew.” We knew it would, and it has and is. It’s attacking abortion rights, Medicaid, the ACA, and individual women by name.

The Post on the international marches:

Thousands took to the streets of European capitals, among them Berlin, Paris and London, on Sunday as part of the global “Women’s March” movement.

One day after large crowds attended protests across the United States and all over the world, including in Rome, Sydney and Buenos Aires, it was northern Europe’s turn. While those who marched rallied against a number of issues — such as the gender pay gap or perceived injustices in the Middle East — they all appeared to share a common dislike for President Trump. The number of rally participants worldwide was lower than the millions who took to the streets a year ago, but the “resistance” against Trump still drew hundreds of thousands.

One wag issued instructions yesterday on what women at the women’s marches were allowed to think.

I also want to stress that if you do attend, it is CRUICIAL that you do with an INTERSECTIONAL mindset. Centering reproductive systems at the heart of these demonstrations is reductive and exclusionary.

The replies are a tad caustic. One included this eloquent cartoon.

And in case you’re thinking it’s just the Coastal Elites aka Jews & feminazis – behold Omaha.

Chris Machian/The World Herald

The little girls carried signs and clutched pink balloons. They perched atop their fathers’ shoulders and walked alongside their mothers. They joined in chants of “This is what democracy looks like!” and “Strong women, strong world!”

They were among the youngest of the more than 8,000 people of all ages who marched through downtown Omaha on Saturday for the 2018 Omaha Women’s March. Last year’s local march, held the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, drew 12,000.

President Pussygrabber is attacking Planned Parenthood now.

U.S. health officials on Friday said they were revoking legal guidance issued by the Obama Administration that had sought to discourage states from trying to defund organizations that provide abortion services, such as Planned Parenthood.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials also said the department is issuing a new regulation aimed at protecting healthcare workers’ civil rights based on religious and conscience objections.

The regulation protects the rights of healthcare workers [to refrain] from providing abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization, the officials said during a media call with reporters.

But refusing to do one’s job is not a civil right. If you don’t want to be involved in abortions then don’t go into a branch of healthcare that is involved in abortions.

On Thursday, HHS said it was creating a new division that would focus on conscience and religious objections, a move it said was necessary after years of the federal government forcing healthcare workers to provide such services.

Experts on Thursday said the move to protect workers on religious grounds raised the possibility it could provide legal cover for otherwise unlawful discrimination, and encourage a broader range of religious objections.

So I went to the march. It was pretty great.

I didn’t go to the whole thing – I went to the end. Down the hill to the Center, then through the Center and toward downtown a couple of blocks until I found the front of the march. I watched some and joined it some.

There were a couple of Jesus-head guys bellowing through a bullhorn, and the march would do a wave of screams and howls to drown them out every minute or two. I did my share of yelling.

I tried to position myself so that nobody behind me would whack me in the ankle with a stroller, but all the same somebody behind me whacked me in the ankle with a stroller.

When we were under the monorail track a train came along and tooted the horn so the march screamed and waved and hallooed so then the train just fell on the horn and stayed there.

Lots and lots and lots of pussyhats.

A sign saying I CAN’T BELIEVE I STILL HAVE TO PROTEST THIS SHIT.

Another sign saying I CAN’T BELIEVE I STILL HAVE TO PROTEST THIS FUCKING SHIT.

Both carried by veterans of this fucking shit.

Bettina Hansen / The Seattle Times