Offenses

Oct 25th, 2017 6:06 pm | By

Harvey Weinstein’s topple has dragged Leon Wieseltier down now.

Leon Wieseltier, a prominent editor at The New Republic for three decades who was preparing to unveil a new magazine next week, apologized on Tuesday for “offenses against some of my colleagues in the past” after several women accused him of sexual harassment and inappropriate advances.

As those allegations came to light, Laurene Powell Jobs, a leading philanthropist whose for-profit organization, Emerson Collective, was backing Mr. Wieseltier’s endeavor, decided to pull the plug on it.

Bad luck for him that his backer is a woman, I guess.

A spokesman said Emerson Collective would not elaborate further on the nature or source of the information it had received. But stories about Mr. Wieseltier’s behavior are now surfacing in the aftermath of revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults and harassment of women.

Over the past week, a group of women who once worked at The New Republic had been exchanging emails about their own accounts of Mr. Wieseltier’s behavior in and out of the magazine’s office in Washington, according to one person who has seen the confidential chain and was granted anonymity to describe its contents.

Several women on the chain said they were humiliated when Mr. Wieseltier sloppily kissed them on the mouth, sometimes in front of other staff members. Others said he discussed his sex life, once describing the breasts of a former girlfriend in detail. Mr. Wieseltier made passes at female staffers, they said, and pressed them for details about their own sexual encounters.

One woman recounted that while she was attempting to fact-check a column Mr. Wieseltier wrote, he forced her to look at a photograph of a nude sculpture in an art book, asking her if she had ever seen a more erotic picture. She wrote that she was shaken and afraid during the incident.

Mr. Wieseltier often commented on what women wore to the office, the former staff members said, telling them that their dresses were not tight enough. One woman said he left a note on her desk thanking her for the miniskirt she wore to the office that day. She said she never wore a skirt to the office again.

And then there’s a shocker.

According to the women, male staff members routinely witnessed Mr. Wieseltier’s behavior and did nothing.

Nice.

He quit the New Republic after the takeover.

After Mr. Wieseltier’s departure from The New Republic, he landed on his feet, becoming the Isaiah Berlin senior fellow in culture and policy at the Brookings Institution as well as a contributing writer and critic at The Atlantic magazine.

Ah, well, I just saw a tweet saying Brookings has dropped him – that’s what alerted me to the story. Will the Atlantic follow suit? Probably.

I always found Wieseltier annoying as a critic. My surprise to find he’s also annoying as a human is not vast.

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A quarter of households have no clean drinking water

Oct 25th, 2017 4:10 pm | By

Two more people in Puerto Rico have died of leptospirosis.

Puerto Rico has announced at least 76 cases of suspected and confirmed leptospirosis, including several deaths, in the month after Hurricane Maria, according to Dr. Carmen Deseda, the state epidemiologist for Puerto Rico.

The spiral-shaped Leptospira bacteria, which are found in the urine of rodents and other animals, can spread after floods through drinking water or infection of open wounds, according to the World Health Organization.

…

Since the hurricane hit in September, many in Puerto Rico have not had access to clean drinking water or electricity. As of Wednesday, a quarter of households did not have access to clean drinking water, according to data from Puerto Rico’s Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AAA).

But Trump went there and threw rolls of paper towels at them, so nothing further can be done.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has attempted to cover that shortage with bottled water deliveries, but some desperate residents have been drinking from whatever water sources they can find, such as rivers or creeks. Doctors and public health experts are worried that that the water crisis would lead to further health problems.

“There is a public health crisis here,” Catherine Kennedy, a vice president at National Nurses United, told CNN from Puerto Rico. “They need water. And we haven’t seen much of FEMA.”

FEMA is for people who speak English, sorry.

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Let the predatory financial practices flourish and thrive

Oct 25th, 2017 11:37 am | By

That vote against a new consumer protection:

Senate Republicans voted on Tuesday to strike down a sweeping new rule that would have allowed millions of Americans to band together in class-action lawsuits against financial institutions.

The overturning of the rule, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking a 50-to-50 tie, will further loosen regulation of Wall Street as the Trump administration and Republicans move to roll back Obama-era policies enacted in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. By defeating the rule, Republicans are dismantling a major effort of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog created by Congress in the aftermath of the mortgage mess.

The rule, five years in the making, would have dealt a serious blow to financial firms, potentially exposing them to a flood of costly lawsuits over questionable business practices.

And we can’t have that, so the banker class moves to protect the banker class.

For decades, credit card companies and banks have inserted arbitration clauses into the fine print of financial contracts to circumvent the courts and bar people from pooling their resources in class-action lawsuits. By forcing people into private arbitration, the clauses effectively take away one of the few tools that individuals have to fight predatory and deceptive business practices. Arbitration clauses have derailed claims of financial gouging, discrimination in car sales and unfair fees.

The new rule written by the consumer bureau, which was set to take effect in 2019, would have restored the right of individuals to sue in court. It was part of a spate of actions by the bureau, which has cracked down on debt collectors, the student loan industry and payday lenders.

But now the Republicans have put a stop to it, so debt collectors, the student loan industry and payday lenders can go right on ripping people off! Is this a great country or what.

Looking to head off a repeal, Democrats and consumer advocates branded the effort as a gift to financial institutions like Wells Fargo and Equifax. Both companies, in the face of corporate scandals, used arbitration clauses to try to quash legal challenges from customers.

The rule, Democrats argued, was precisely what was needed to protect the rights of vulnerable borrowers. Regulators and judges, including some appointed by Republican presidents, have also backed the position.

Class actions, they argue, are not just about the size of the payouts, which are typically spread out among a large group of people. They are also about pushing companies to change their practices. Large banks, for example, had to pay more than $1 billion to settle class actions beginning in 2009 that accused them of tweaking checking account policies to increase the amount of overdraft fees that they could charge customers.

“Tonight’s vote is a giant setback for every consumer in this country,” Richard Cordray, the director of the consumer bureau, said in a statement. “As a result, companies like Wells Fargo and Equifax remain free to break the law without fear of legal blowback from their customers.”

Nice work, Bob Corker and all the rest of the Republicans.

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Declaration of conscience

Oct 25th, 2017 11:31 am | By

In case you want to read Margaret Chase Smith’s speech in its entirety: it’s here.

I’ll share an excerpt.

The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world.  But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.

It is ironical that we Senators can in debate in the Senate directly or indirectly, by any form of words, impute to any American who is not a Senator any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming an American — and without that non-Senator American having any legal redress against us — yet if we say the same thing in the Senate about our colleagues we can be stopped on the grounds of being out of order.

It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor.  Surely the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal.  Surely we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we “dish out” to outsiders.

I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul-searching — for us to weigh our consciences — on the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America — on the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.

I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution.  I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

            The right to criticize;

            The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

            The right to protest;

            The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.  Who of us doesn’t?  Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own.  Otherwise thought control would have set in.

The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as “Communists” or “Fascists” by their opponents.  Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America.  It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.

The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.  But there have been enough proved cases, such as the Amerasia case, the Hiss case, the Coplon case, the Gold case, to cause the nationwide distrust and strong suspicion that there may be something to the unproved, sensational accusations.

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Smith decided she had to speak out

Oct 25th, 2017 11:16 am | By

The Post offers us a history lesson today. Jeff Flake’s speech yesterday reminded Kevin Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton, of Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” address to the Senate on June 1, 1950.

Like Flake, Smith (R-Maine) spoke to denounce a demagogue in her own party and to announce her refusal to stand quietly by as he did damage to the nation’s institutions. Smith’s target — unnamed in her speech, much as Trump was unnamed in Flake’s — was none other than the junior Republican senator from Wisconsin: Joseph R. McCarthy.

A few months earlier, in February, McCarthy had set the political world on fire with his stunning accusation that there were 205 “known communists” working in the Truman State Department. Challenged on his charges, McCarthy repeatedly refused to offer any proof; indeed, in later versions of the speech, he even changed the alleged number several times over. But no matter. McCarthy’s charges made for spectacular headlines and, as he discovered, fame brought with it a rise in his political fortunes.

Fame and lying. Very Trump. No wonder Roy Cohn was Trump’s mentor.

For his Republican colleagues in the Senate, McCarthy posed a bit of a problem. The GOP had been wandering in the political wilderness for the previous two decades, cast away by voters who blamed them for the Great Depression and rallied to the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the New Deal and World War II. At long last, McCarthy had provided a popular cause that might let them tear down the Democrats and build themselves up instead.

Some of them were delighted; others were unhappy about the evidence-free accusations.

Though she was a freshman senator, and the only woman in a male-dominated body, Smith decided she had to speak out. (As she made her way to the chamber, she ran into McCarthy himself on the Senate subway. “Margaret, you look very serious,” he joked. “Are you going to make a speech?” “Yes,” she shot back, “and you will not like it!”)

With McCarthy and their colleagues arrayed around her, Smith noted with sadness that the Senate had been “debased” in recent months by a new politics of “hate and character assassination.” “I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul-searching — for us to weigh our consciences — on the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America,” she announced.

Smith was, as she noted in her remarks, a loyal Republican and a proud partisan, one who had criticized Democrats repeatedly in the past and would continue to do so in the future. But partisanship had its limits, she insisted: “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

There’s also lying. McCarthy lied; Trump lies.

Speaking out against McCarthyism was a patriotic duty for all good Republicans, Smith asserted, in part because McCarthy had presented his own actions as patriotic. “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations,” she said, “are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought.”

Those are also of course basic principles of liberalism, in the classic sense that Republicans can defend just as passionately as Democrats can. They are among the founding principles of the United States (with the tragic stipulation that they didn’t apply to slaves or Native Americans or, mostly, women), but they are also principles of many other countries now and of the UN at least on paper.

The Senate was largely stunned by the speech. Most expected McCarthy to return the attack with his usual ferocity, but he glared at the back of Smith’s head for a while and then abruptly stormed out of the chamber. A few colleagues muttered comments of support, but the Republican leadership largely looked the other way.

No Twitter then. No way for McCarthy to tell his millions of followers what a loser Smith was.

Pundits like Lippmann and Baruch praised her speech, but it made no difference.

But despite the widespread praise, Smith’s declaration did nothing to stop McCarthy. Publicly, the Wisconsin Republican continued to ignore her. When pressed, he responded, “I don’t fight with women senators.” Privately, McCarthy mocked Smith and her supporters as “Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.” One of the men who signed Smith’s Declaration, he joked, had been caught “speaking through a petticoat.” Within weeks, the debate over the Declaration of Conscience was swept aside by the outbreak of the Korean War. With a new Cold War crisis abroad, McCarthy and McCarthyism grew steadily stronger at home. Emboldened by his reelection that fall and the electoral success of his supporters, too, McCarthy finally had his revenge in 1951. He kicked Smith off the prized permanent investigations subcommittee he chaired, replacing her with a Republican rising star who shared his anti-communist commitments: Richard M. Nixon, then a senator from California.

That worked out well.

McCarthy was able to do a lot of damage from then on, until he made the beginner’s mistake of going after the Army; at that point the Senate finally censured him.

Today, Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” stands as a piece of stirring rhetoric, but also a stark reminder that words can only do so much. It is not enough to speak out against threats to the nation, to give voice to one’s conscience. Convictions ultimately mean little, if there are no actions to match them.

Flake’s words echo Smith’s, but they ultimately ring even more hollow. Though Flake has spoken out against Trump consistently, he has also regularly voted to support the president’s agenda on issues ranging from health care repeal to the budget to the Supreme Court. Indeed, only hours after his principled stand in the Senate, Flake fell back in line that same night, providing a crucial vote against a consumer protection measure that brought the Senate to a 50-50 tie, and a tiebreaker by Vice President Pence. For all his valiant words, he’s only given the president another victory.

Oh yes?

Yes. That’s for another post.

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There are hundreds more

Oct 25th, 2017 10:04 am | By

It’s odd the way choice and liberty and autonomy and making one’s own decisions are usually core values for Republicans and conservatives. Of course those values are often in tension with other core Republican / conservative values that come from the goddy wing, like obedience and deference and respect for tradition / hierarchy / the sacred…but they are core values nevertheless.

Or maybe they’re really core values only for men, while the goddy ones are more suited to women. Real Men™ make their own decisions while Real Women™ obey Real Men™ and clerics and Mr God.

But even so, it’s a little odd for a political orientation that is so strongly libertarian, often at the expense of concern for the general welfare, to be so adamantly indifferent to such a complete violation of personal autonomy as forced pregnancy. Imagine being told that a state employee was going to inject you with a fetus that you were required to carry to term and then push painfully out. Major violation of human rights, no? But once the state employee with the needle is out of the picture, that becomes no longer clear.

But it should be clear. We have to live in our bodies; we have no choice. Pregnancy is a major disruption of a body that someone lives in, so if she decides she doesn’t want to do that with her body, that should be decisive.

Anyway. Jane Doe got her abortion at last.

An undocumented teen in federal custody ended her pregnancy Wednesday morning less than a day after a judge’s order forced the government to allow the 17-year-old to be promptly transferred to an abortion facility.

The announcement from the teenager’s attorneys puts an end to a case that raised difficult political questions and highlighted the Trump administration’s new policy of refusing to “facilitate” abortions for unaccompanied minors.

The Trump administration’s evil new policy of torturing undocumented girls and women who need abortions.

“Justice prevailed today for Jane Doe. But make no mistake about it, the administration’s efforts to interfere in women’s decisions won’t stop with Jane,” said Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project which represented the teen.

The ACLU is continuing its broader challenge to the administration’s new policy on behalf of what the organization says are hundreds of undocumented pregnant teenagers in federal custody.

The administration of President Pussygrabber who is accused of sexual assault by multiple women. He’s getting his revenge.

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The flagrant disregard for truth and decency

Oct 24th, 2017 5:55 pm | By

Trump’s going to be blistering up the Twitter now, after Jeff Flake’s goodbye speech.

Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who has tangled with President Trump for months, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek re-election in 2018, declaring on the Senate floor that he “will no longer be complicit or silent” in the face of the president’s “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior.

Mr. Flake made his announcement in an extraordinary 17-minute speech in which he challenged not only the president but also his party’s leadership. He deplored the “casual undermining of our democratic ideals” and “the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency” that he said had become prevalent in American politics in the era of Mr. Trump.

Trump’s being president is as if Twitter trolls were president. Twitter trolls have been making personal attacks and flagrant disregard for truth and decency the social media norm for years, and now Trump is spreading that to the whole country. (They’re connected, too. Bannon is a troll, and Bannon’s boy wonder was Milo, who is definitely a troll.)

The announcement appeared to signal a moment of decision for the Republican Party. Last week, Senator John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, spoke in Philadelphia, denouncing the “half-baked, spurious nationalism” that he saw overtaking American politics. Former President George W. Bush, in yet another speech, lamented: “We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism.”

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump had renewed his attacks on another critic in the Republican Party, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, saying he “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.” Mr. Corker, appearing more weary than angry, said the president “is debasing our country.”

But Mr. Flake, choosing the Senate floor for his fierce denunciation of the president, appeared to issue a direct challenge to his colleagues and his party.

Which they will ignore in favor of setting up three committees to investigate Hillary Clinton.

“It is often said that children are watching,” he said. “Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up?’ What are we going to say?”

“I was busy investigating Hillary Clinton, and besides, shut up.”

“We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal,” Mr. Flake said. “They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy.”

We know. We’re living it.

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Launching

Oct 24th, 2017 5:27 pm | By

Brilliant satire.

House Republican leaders on Capitol Hill said they were launching two new investigations into Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, keeping alive a pair of storylines that have fueled anger with the party base.

One is a project aimed at looking into the FBI’s decision not to prosecute Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Less than an hour later, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said he would look into Clinton’s role in a 2010 uranium deal that became a favorite attack line by then-candidate Donald Trump.

Hahahaha that’s hilarious – saying they’re still investigating her even though she doesn’t have any kind of government job any more and they have more pressing matters like I don’t know North Korea Puerto Rico ISIS health insurance climate change – stuff like that.

But wait, there’s more.

Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, of Virginia, and House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, of South Carolina, announced a joint inquiry by their committees to investigate the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation last year, including the FBI’s decision-making “in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton.”

Image result for but her emails flood

So so funny.

Oh wait. This isn’t The Onion. It’s NPR. They’re not joking.

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Promptly and without delay

Oct 24th, 2017 5:00 pm | By

A court has ordered the Trump administration to let that teenage Jane Doe in Texas have her abortion even though the Feds have her in custody because she crossed the border from Mexico without papers.

Lawyers and advocates for the girl accused federal immigration and health officials of preventing her from having an abortion and of taking extraordinary steps to persuade her and other undocumented pregnant minors to have their babies rather than abort them.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in Washington sided with the girl, sending the case back to a lower court, which immediately ordered the Trump administration to allow the girl to obtain an abortion “promptly and without delay.” The ruling may be only one of many legal chapters to come if the Justice Department decides to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

On what grounds, one wonders, since abortion is legal.

“It is the perfect storm between abortion and immigration, and the Trump administration has shown absolute hostility to both of those issues,” said Brigitte Amiri, the lead lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Jane Doe.

They hate immigrants (except rich white ones) and they hate abortion and they hate women, so what could be more fun for them than to torture a young immigrant woman by not letting her have an abortion? Three birds smashed with one stone.

A.C.L.U. lawyers said that in March, the Trump administration enacted a policy that requires the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the health department division that oversees the care of unaccompanied minors, to personally approve any abortion, a broad shift in how previous administrations handled the issue.

Advocates for abortion rights have accused the director, Scott Lloyd, of pushing anti-abortion beliefs onto the young women in federal custody.

In emails that were made public as part of another case, Mr. Lloyd appears to have personally met with undocumented pregnant teens in shelters and spoken with them about their pregnancies. After traveling to San Antonio in March and visiting with one minor at a shelter there, he wrote to some his staff that if things “get dicey” with the minor’s adult sponsor, “I know a few good families with a heart for these situations who would take her in in a heartbeat and see her through her pregnancy and beyond,” according to an email included in court documents.

At least she’ll be forced to go through childbirth when she doesn’t want to. They must be so happy when that happens.

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Unable to rise to the occasion

Oct 24th, 2017 11:40 am | By

If Corker thinks all this, is he talking impeachment? If not, why not?

If they all think this, or if most of them think this, are they talking impeachment? If not, why not?

Sen. Bob Corker said a lot of things about President Trumpon Tuesday morning. The Tennessee Republican warned that Trump’s itchy Twitter finger could set off another world war. He suggested Trump is a liar. He said Trump’s legacy will be “debasing” America. He said Trump is not a role model for children. He declined to say whether Trump should be trusted with the nuclear codes. He said Trump’s conduct is “very sad for our nation.” He said Trump has “proven himself unable to rise to the occasion.”

…

Later on — and perhaps most damningly — he said there were “multiple occasions where [White House] staff has asked me to please intervene; he was getting ready to do something that was really off the tracks.”

This was always obvious. It’s a great pity Republicans didn’t do everything they could to prevent his election a year ago.

The senator is describing Trump as an imminent threat to American government and American lives. He’s suggesting Trump is damaging American society. He says Trump isn’t only failing, but that he’s “unable to rise to the occasion.” He suggests Trump was ready to do crazy things before Corker intervened and put a stop to it. He’s basically arguing that Trump is derelict in his duties as president, or unfit for the office.

So is he going to act on it? Probably not.

This thing isn’t working.

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The chief doesn’t just get up and run his mouth

Oct 24th, 2017 11:22 am | By

John McWhorter is hilarious.

Brian Williams: He’s quick to remind us that he went to the best schools.

John McWhorter: Umhm and he learned nothing in them.

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Who is the real lightweight?

Oct 24th, 2017 9:54 am | By

I guess Trump was feeling bored this morning? I don’t know why else he would decide to pick another fight with a Republican senator in full public view.

Corker fired back.

The protracted Tuesday-morning brawl quickly spread from taxes and debt to foreign policy and the president’s fitness for office.

Mr. Corker said Mr. Trump was “absolutely not” a role model for the children in America.

“I don’t know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and is debasing our country,” Mr. Corker said in a CNN interview, suggesting that he will soon convene hearings to examine the ways Mr. Trump “purposely has been breaking down relationships around the world.”

“It’s unfortunate that our nation finds itself in this place,” he added.

It’s too bad Corker didn’t say all this a year ago.

Another exciting morning at the Adult Day Care Center.

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A substantial process

Oct 24th, 2017 9:07 am | By

The check was in the mail! It was in the mail, I tell you! Ok it was in the mail after the story broke in the Post, but all the same it was in the mail.

The family of a slain US soldier has received their $25,000 personal check from President Donald Trump months after receiving a condolence call from Trump and being offered the money, according to an ABC11 reporteron Monday.

A letter signed by Trump was also sent with condolences to Chris Baldridge, the father of Sgt. Dillon Baldridge, who was one of three US soldiers killed in Afghanistan when an Afghan police officer fired on them. The Taliban have since claimed responsibility.

“I am glad my legal counsel has been able to finally approve this contribution to you,” the letter reportedly said.

Oh, nice, a condolence letter complete with flagrant steaming lie. What a coincidence that his legal counsel finally approved the check minutes after the story broke in the news. How odd that his legal counsel has to approve a personal check for 25k but doesn’t have to approve the steady ongoing violation of the Emoluments Clause to name just one item.

The check’s reported date, October 18, is the same date as that of a Washington Post report that first revealed Trump’s phone call to the Baldridges. Trump had reportedly offered $25,000 to the family and proposed to help establish an online fundraiser several weeks after Dillon’s death. The Post, however, said that as of the report’s publication, Trump had done neither.

But surely the date is pure coincidence.

After The Post’s report, a White House official said that there was a “substantial process that can involve multiple agencies any time the president interacts with the public, especially when transmitting personal funds” and that “the check has been in the pipeline since the president’s initial call with the father.”

Do we believe that? No we do not, not for a second.

The Baldridges expressed gratitude upon finally receiving the check.

“I’m still speechless,” Dillon Baldridge’s mother, Jessie, told ABC11. “We are so moved and grateful, and we promise to use the money to honor Dillon’s legacy.”

“We just thought he was saying something nice,” she continued. “We got a condolence letter from him (a few weeks later) and there was no check, and we kind of joked about it.”

Oh yes, very nice, to say I’ll send you 25k and then not do it. Heart of gold, that guy has.

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Friends

Oct 24th, 2017 8:06 am | By

Cooper, photographed by James Garnett.

Image may contain: outdoor and nature

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It has to stop

Oct 23rd, 2017 4:29 pm | By

Megyn Kelly sent up a rocket on the subject of sexual harassment at Fox this morning. The Post did a transcript.

On Saturday, the Times revealed yet another settlement, paid to dispose of a sexual harassment case against O’Reilly. Not a huge shock there, we already knew of five, thanks to a Times report in April. But this latest one was for $32 million. Reportedly paid directly by O’Reilly to Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl, right before Fox News renewed his contract.

Thirty-two million dollars. That is not a nuisance value settlement, that is a jaw-dropping figure. O.J. Simpson was ordered to pay the Goldman and Brown families $33.5 million for the murders of Ron and Nicole. What on earth would justify that amount? What awfulness went on?…

…

O’Reilly calls the Times reports a malicious smear, claiming that no woman in 20 years ever complained to human resources or legal about him.

Maybe that is true. Fox News was not exactly a friendly environment for harassment victims who wanted to report, in my experience. However, O’Reilly’s suggestion that no one ever complained about his behavior is false — I know because I complained. It was November of 2016, the day my memoir was released. In it, I included a chapter on Ailes and the sexual harassment scandal at Fox News — something the Murdochs knew I was doing and, to their credit, approved.

O’Reilly was being interviewed on CBS News that day and he brushed aside questions about sexual abuse at Fox. So Kelly wrote to the co-presidents of Fox.

…an email I have never made public but am sharing now because I think it speaks volumes about powerful men and the roadblocks one can face in taking them on.

I wrote, in part, “Perhaps he didn’t realize the kind of message his criticism sends to young women across this country, about how men continue to view the issue of speaking out about sexual harassment. Perhaps he didn’t realize that his exact attitude of shaming women into shutting the hell up about harassment on grounds that it will disgrace the company is part of how Fox News got into the decade-long Ailes mess to begin with.

Perhaps it’s his own history of harassment of women, which has, as you both know, resulted in payouts to more than one woman, including recently. That blinded him to the folly of saying anything other than ‘I am just so sorry for the women of this company, who never should have had to go through that.’ ”

Bill Shine called me in response to my email, promising to deal with O’Reilly. By 8 p.m. that night, O’Reilly had apparently been dealt with. And by that, I mean he was permitted, with management’s advance notice and blessing, to go on the air and attack the company’s harassment victims yet again.

Oh that kind of “dealt with.”

That was the one where he said if you don’t like being sexually abused at work then quit.

This is not unique to Fox News. Women everywhere are used to being dismissed, ignored or attacked when raising complaints about men in authority positions. They stay silent so often out of fear. Fear of ending their careers. Fear of lawyers, yes. And often fear of public shaming, including through the media.

At Fox News, the media relations chief Irena Briganti is known for her vindictiveness. To this day, she pushes negative articles on certain Ailes accusers, like the one you are looking at right now. It gives me no pleasure to report such news about my former employer, which has absolutely made some reforms since all of this went down. But this must stop. The abuse of women, the shaming of them, the threatening and the retaliation, silencing of them after the fact, it has to stop.

It has to, but will it?

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Trump almost immediately replied

Oct 23rd, 2017 11:33 am | By

You know, if Trump actually intended his phone call to Myeshia Johnson to be consoling, as opposed to intending it as the performance of an irksome duty, then he would not now be brawling with her. He just wouldn’t. The intention to console or attempt to console or send a heartfelt message of intending to console would make subsequent brawling simply out of the question. Her grief would blot out his ego concerns, and that would be that.

So from his behavior now we can conclude that he never meant any genuine sympathy or kindness by the call, and that he was simply ticking off another presidential task that he doesn’t relish.

Chris Cillizza makes a similar point.

As difficult as it is emotionally, it is just as simple politically speaking. You call — or write — expressing deepest sympathies and condolences. You offer any assistance you can. The end.
Which makes what President Donald Trump has done — and is doing — with Myeshia Johnson (and Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson) all the more appalling.
On Monday, in an interview with “Good Morning America,” Johnson, the widow of slain Sgt. La David Johnson, spoke for the first time in public about her phone call with Trump. She confirmed Wilson’s account that Trump had told her that her husband “knew what he was getting into” and added: “It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it. He couldn’t remember my husband’s name.”

To which Trump almost immediately replied via Twitter: “I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!”

It’s staggering to consider what Trump is doing here.

After spending the weekend attacking Wilson for allegedly lying about the nature of the call between himself and Johnson — even though White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed last week the basics of Wilson’s account of the words Trump used — the President is now suggesting that the widow of a soldier killed in action is lying.

And why? Because his attention is all on himself, and not at all on Johnson.

Here’s the thing: It is absolutely possible that, at root, this is all one big misunderstanding. Trump, awkward and unfamiliar with the empathy required to make this sort of call, came across as callous and uncaring to Johnson and Wilson in an entirely unintentional way. They were offended.

At that point, Trump could have made much — maybe all — of this go away by simply calling Myeshia Johnson back and saying something along these lines: “I’m so sorry our previous call made you upset. I struggle with every death of an American soldier and I simply am not great all the time at conveying how much your loss means to me and the country.”

Could have, but never would have in a million years. It’s not in him.

Maybe we should all be sending him letters of condolence. “We’re so sorry – it must be a nightmare having no empathy for any other human beings at all. It must be so stifling and empty to be stuck with only your own ego for your whole life. We can’t imagine anything worse, ourselves.”

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Bespoke platitudes for the middlebrow

Oct 23rd, 2017 10:56 am | By

I’m reading Jon Ronson’s Shaming book so I’m reminded of Jonah Lehrer. Steven Poole wrote about his return last year.

The most vilified writer of modern times is back, and people are lining up to give him another kicking. Jonah Lehrer’s 2012 book Imagine: How Creativity Works was pulled from shelves after it was demonstrated to contain fabricated quotes purportedly from Bob Dylan and WH Auden. He subsequently admitted to plagiarising the work of others in his blogposts, while critics noted apparent plagiarism and disregard for facts throughout his published work. The pop-neuroscience whiz-kid had, it appeared, simply stolen or made a lot of it up.

Well, we are living in an era of post-truth politics, so why not post-truth nonfiction? Four years on, and the disgraced author – after publicly apologising for at least some of the above – has managed to publish another volume, A Book About Love. Naturally, onlookers are suspicious. In a brilliantly disdainful review for the New York Times, Jennifer Senior calls the book a “nonfiction McMuffin” and “insolently unoriginal”.

I like “insolently unoriginal.” I’ll have to steal it.

But Lehrer has his defenders. Booksellers tell the Wall Street Journal that the guy deserves a second chance (especially, one imagines, if it helps them sell books). And the New York Times columnist David Brooks handles Lehrer with kid gloves, offering excuses for the writer’s earlier misdeeds: “Success fell on Lehrer early and all at once – and it ­ruined him,” because he had too much work to keep up with honestly. This might seem insufficient justification, given that plenty of other people enjoy sudden success and do not start stealing and lying.

Yes but David Brooks. David Brooks has had decades of unearned success for uttering unremarkable platitudes, so I suppose he’s motivated to excuse unearned success in others.

The deeper problem, however, is that it was clear to some of us that his books were egregious even before it turned out they contained plagiarism and fabrication. As I and the psychologist Christopher Chabris have noted, for example, Imagine drew unwarranted conclusions from partial scientific evidence in order to promote an “uplifting moral” that was nothing more than syrupy conventional wisdom.

Much like David Brooks, or Thomas Friedman. I hate that kind of thing, myself.

Publishers love books that tell clear, simple stories sprinkled with cutting-edge science. Newspapers and magazines, too, are hungry for such articles. This is now, Engber argues, “less a Jonah Lehrer problem than a science journalism problem”. Jennifer Senior, for her part, says that it was all along: the “vote to excommunicate” Lehrer back in 2012 was not just about his lying, but was “a referendum on a certain genre of canned, cocktail-party social science, one that traffics in bespoke platitudes for the middlebrow and rehearses the same studies without saying something new”. If so, however, the excommunication was surely unfair, given that other notable practitioners of this sort of thing have happily carried on.

Exactly, and they’re highly paid and all over the airwaves. Alain de Botton is another.

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Empty barrel yourself

Oct 23rd, 2017 10:27 am | By

It’s bizarre that Kelly refuses to apologize.

Newsweek reports:

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is demanding an apology for Florida Representative Frederica Wilson after “reprehensible” and “blatant lies” were spewed about her from the White House podium.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly falsely told reporters on October 19 that Wilson took credit for securing funding for an FBI facility, calling her an “empty barrel”—and did not retract his comments after a video from the building dedication revealed that Wilson did not do what Kelly said she did.

Kelly seems to have a very high opinion of his own honor, so wouldn’t you think he would see it as dishonorable to tell several lies about someone, have the lies clearly demonstrated to be lies, and refuse to withdraw them and apologize?

“General Kelly’s comments are reprehensible,” the CBC said in a statement. “Congresswoman Wilson’s integrity and credibility should not be challenged or undermined by such blatant lies. We, the women of the Congressional Black Caucus, proudly stand with Congresswoman Wilson and demand that General Kelly apologize to her without delay and take responsibility for his reckless and false statements.”

The CBC support follows Wilson’s own request for an apology. She accused Kelly of “character assassination” on Sunday for calling her an “empty barrel” after she revealed Trump’s insensitive comments to a gold star widow whose husband, Army Sgt. La David Johnson, died in an ambush in Niger, Africa.

“Not only does he owe me an apology, he owes an apology to the American people, because when he lied on me he lied to them, and I don’t think it’s fair,” Wilson told MSNBC. “He owes the American people an apology for lying on one of their congresswomen.”

It’s clearly not fair. He has the platform of the White House chief of staff, and he abused it to tell several damaging lies about Wilson. Decidedly not fair.

They degrade us all.

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But if Harvey, why not Donald?

Oct 23rd, 2017 9:43 am | By

It ruined Harvey Weinstein (for the moment at least) but it hasn’t ruined Trump. Why is that?

As the aftershocks from Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct spread to other powerful men in Hollywood and media, a group of women for whom the allegations are “gross but familiar” are wondering if the fallout will reach an even more powerful man – the one in the White House.

During the course of his presidential campaign, more than 10 women came forward with accusations that Donald Trump had touched or kissed them without consent – something he bragged about on the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape when he said stars like him could “grab them by the pussy”.

A number of other women accused Trump of unwanted sexual advances. And like so many of the Weinstein stories to come out this month, their claims have remarkable consistency.

And yet there he sits just the same – insulting women from his Top Platform while he’s at it.

Three of them spoke with the Guardian after the allegations against Weinstein – who denies the claims against him – came to light, to revisit their accusations against Trump.

Although they are glad women have spoken up against the Hollywood producer and feel the culture may finally change, they are worried the relative silence of men will continue to allow abusers to rise to power.

They are Cathy Heller, who told the Guardian last year that in the late 1990s Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips the first time they had ever met; Kari Wells, a former model and Bravo Actress, who said Trump aggressively propositioned her in 1992 while he was dating her friend; and Jessica Leeds, who said Trump assaulted her on a plane in the early 1980s when he allegedly groped her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.

They are just a fraction of the women who have said Trump attacked them.

Trump has denied all allegations, at various points threatening to sue his accusers and calling their accounts “total fabrication” and “pure fiction”. He also suggested some of the accusers were not attractive enough for him to have assaulted them, saying of Leeds: “Believe me: She would not be my first choice. That I can tell you.”

Of the ongoing legal case against him, he has said: “It’s totally fake news. It’s just fake. It’s fake. It’s made-up stuff, and it’s disgraceful.”

But by now we have a long and detailed record of Trump brazenly lying, so his denials might as well be his used kleenex.

For Leeds, one of the first women to come forward with her story last year, her frustration revolves around just how little effect the renewed attention on sexual assault seems to be having on the man occupying the White House.

“Mr Trump was able to slough off the whole thing and that was very disappointing,” Leeds told the Guardian last week. “I think perhaps without the Weinstein stories I probably would have slipped more and more into the background.”

The pussy tape should have destroyed his public career once and for all. Instead he was elected president. It’s a punch in the face to all women.

And men needed to make it clear that Trump’s brand of “locker-room talk” is unacceptable, she said. “It would be nice at this point if we started hearing from men on this issue, because it’s not one-sided.”

For example, Leeds referred to Gwyneth Paltrow’s story in which, after Weinstein allegedly made a move on her, she confided in her boyfriend at the time, Brad Pitt. Paltrow came forward with her story this month, Leeds noted, but we have not heard from Pitt.

“Some of these men, it would be helpful if they could speak out. And until they do, maybe we’ll get it off our chests and feel better about ourselves, but I don’t think it’s going to change,” she said.

That should be as true for men in Washington as for those in Hollywood, said Leeds.

I don’t see it happening though, because for far too many men it just is not the case that Trump’s brand of “locker-room talk” is unacceptable. For far too many men it’s entirely acceptable, though maybe not something they want to say to their own daughters. Examining why it’s not ok to say to or about My Daughter™ but is ok to say in the locker room is too much to ask. These guys are busy.

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Making women unmentionable

Oct 22nd, 2017 12:12 pm | By

Also in the Times – Andrew Gilligan:

The government has said the term “pregnant woman” should not be used in a UN treaty because it “excludes” transgender people.

Feminists reacted with outrage to what they said was the latest example of “making women unmentionable” in the name of transgender equality.

The statement comes in Britain’s official submission on proposed amendments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the UK has been a signatory since 1976. The UN treaty says a “pregnant woman” must be protected, including not being subject to the death penalty.

Yet in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office submission, Britain opposes the term “pregnant woman” because it may “exclude transgender people who have given birth”. The suggested term is “pregnant people”.

Only two known UK cases exist of transgender pregnancy, where children are born to trans men who have had a sex change but retained a functioning womb and ovaries.

Sarah Ditum, a prominent feminist writer, said: “This isn’t inclusion. This is making women unmentionable. Having a female body and knowing what that means for reproduction doesn’t make you ‘exclusionary’. Forcing us to decorously scrub out any reference to our sex on pain of being called bigots is an insult.”

It never ceases to amaze me that so many people – people who think of themselves as progressive and right-on and social justicey – can’t see that deleting women from discussions of the rights of pregnant women or abortion rights – is not a good (or progressive) idea. Never ceases to.

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