Russia threat should unite us, not divide us: “It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally… And they will be back, because we remain…that shining city on the hill, and they don’t like it. “ Me (Senate Intel 6/8/17)

— James Comey (@Comey) January 25, 2018

Comey:

Russia threat should unite us, not divide us: “It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally… And they will be back, because we remain…that shining city on the hill, and they don’t like it.” Me (Senate Intel 6/8/17)

Well, we don’t, really. One, we never were, because slavery and genocide just for a start, and two, we’ve gotten worse in some ways instead of better. Russia is much worse still, yes, but that’s not much of a standard.

One huge flashing-sign reason we are not any kind of shining city on a hill is the disgusting fact that we have a larger proportion of our people locked up than any other country on earth. Our nearest rival is Russia.

There’s also the gulf between rich and poor which has grown in recent decades as opposed to shrinking – that’s not my idea of a shining city on a hill. There’s the shambolic health care non-system; there’s rising homelessness; there’s high infant and maternal mortality; there’s an inadequate social safety net; there’s entrenched poverty and neglect; there’s racism and police violence; there are far too many guns and too many outbursts of violence; money is allowed to decide elections.

All that doesn’t add up to a shining city on a hill, I’m sorry. Putin stinks, the Russian oligarchy stinks, but that doesn’t make us a shining city.

Brendan O’Neill. Spiked. The Presidents Club. Calm down.

Moral outrage…outrage entrepreneurs…raging loudly against the wicked…Britain’s chattering class…the utterly non-shocking news…sassy young women who early in life use their nous and looks to earn a buck…not the most decorous of annual affairs…pink-hued Guardian wannabe…posh fury with Brexit…to jump on the trending bandwagon…grovelling apologies…heads on platters…arrogant instinct…every little thing that displeases them.

…freedom of association…mixing with whomever they choose…a less than PC fashion…whiter than white…the new moral guardians…infantilised the women…the possibly sad or old-fashioned men…hapless, slave-like creatures needing to be saved by the middle-class, clever women…the skills necessary to deal with dickheads…today’s media women…national scandal…men touched their knees…the political and media classes…safe-spaced and prudish…

Every fucking cliché in the book innit. They don’t need Brendan, they could just chop up his old columns and paste the bits in.

A beautiful, blistering series of tweets by MarinaS:

How many trans men were at that fucking "dinner", eh? And were the participants asked to RSVP their gender identity, just in case the organisers offended them by assuming they were men? Would it have been "oh sorry, nevermind, you're uninvited"?

— MarinaS (@marstrina) January 24, 2018

Come back to me on self identification when gender is not enough of a socially constructed but VERY CONCRETE reality that it determines whether you get invited to elite mixers where the /other/ gender is coralled like animals in a petting zoo.

— MarinaS (@marstrina) January 24, 2018

Or was it exactly what it looks like: an occasion for men to wallow in the power conferred on them by their meat & two veg, cosily reinforcing their economic bonds with other plutocrats by playing out their collective rapacity on the bodies of women?

— MarinaS (@marstrina) January 24, 2018

I guess what they ought to have done is gone in to the men's loos (no guard posted outside that, I gather) & come out identifying as the type of person who end up at the table at fancy galas, instead of on the menu.

— MarinaS (@marstrina) January 24, 2018

So steamed rn about the fucking pincer movement the politics of backlash have done on feminism. We have to fight on two fronts – one that says nobody knows what a woman is so she doesn't matter, & one that says everyone knows exactly what a woman is, & that she doesn't matter.

— MarinaS (@marstrina) January 24, 2018

Republicans in North Carolina are trying to make NC a one-party state, and the courts are telling them No Can Do, so now they’re trying to make the courts one-party.

Courts have overturned 14 laws passed by the legislature since 2011, including redistricting maps for the House of Representatives and the state legislature that one federal court called “among the largest racial gerrymanders ever encountered by a federal court.” Sweeping voting restrictions passed by the legislature in 2013 suffered a similar fate, with a federal appeals court saying they targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The legislature’s Republican supermajority hasn’t fared any better in state courts, which have blocked GOP efforts to strip teachers of tenure and to prevent the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, from appointing a majority of commissioners on state and local boards of elections.

Now the legislature has embarked on an unprecedented plan to transform the state’s courts by gerrymandering judicial maps to elect more Republican judges, preventing Cooper from making key judicial appointments, and seeking to get rid of judicial elections altogether. Cooper calls it an attempt to “rig the system.”

Probably because that’s clearly what it is.

Now the legislature is taking up a host of controversial new proposals in a special session, including redrawing judicial maps for the first time in roughly 50 years to put more Republicans on the bench. The new maps would likely give Republican judges 70 percent of seats on North Carolina’s superior and district courts, according to an analysis by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a voting rights group based in Durham. The group calls the new lines “a gross political gerrymander of our state’s legal system, designed to ensure that Republican judges will be elected in a disproportionate number of districts statewide.”

Not good.

The FT reports that the Presidents Club is disbanding.

The Presidents Club has decided to close after a Financial Times report detailing sexual harassment and groping of women at a fundraising dinner it organised.

The group said late on Wednesday that “the trustees have decided that the Presidents Club will not host any further fundraising events”. Remaining funds held by the trust will be distributed to children’s charities and “it will then be closed.”

The BBC:

A man who helped organise a men-only charity dinner, where hostesses were allegedly groped, has quit the Department for Education board.

David Meller quit his non-executive role after claims about the event by an undercover FT reporter.

Charities are refusing donations from the Presidents Club Charity Dinner, at London’s Dorchester Hotel.

Everyone is shocked, shocked.

In a statement, the Presidents Club said: “The organisers are appalled by the allegations of bad behaviour at the event asserted by the Financial Times reporters. Such behaviour is totally unacceptable.

“The allegations will be investigated fully and promptly and appropriate action taken.”

A spokesman for the Artista agency, which recruited the hostesses, said: “I was not aware of any claims of sexual harassment but the kind of behaviour alleged is completely unacceptable.

“I am checking with the staff and any complaints will be dealt with promptly and fairly.”

But what about that nondisclosure agreement?

Suzanne Moore on that boys’ night out for charity gropefest:

But this event has been going for 33 years. It was introduced by a Channel 5 baseball presenter called Jonny Gould, with the words: “Welcome to the most un-PC event of the year.”

Political correctness gone mad, you see, means that you cannot grope 19-year-olds who have been told to wear matching underwear under tight skirts while bunging some dosh to Great Ormond Street.

Indeed. Treating women like actual human beings as opposed to walking holes is suffocating politikul korrektnessss.

The detail is nauseating: the hostesses who have been tracked to the toilet and told to see the organiser if it’s all getting too much. The parading on stage of the girls. The hands up the skirts, and the strange business of attendees holding the women’s hands as though they were possessions.

It is a less exotic version of Jezebels, in The Handmaid’s Tale – except this was the Dorchester, and these men include politicians and business leaders who pay lip service to promoting policies of equality in the workplace.

They may even believe in equality in the workplace, while still expecting freedom for themselves to treat women as sex dolls in someone else’s workplace. “The women I see every day are colleagues; the women I see once a year at the Dorchester are up for grabs.”

And if you want a good cause, here’s one: equality for women. Indeed one might have thought, post-Weinstein, that getting your penis out in front of a student at a fundraising dinner is not the wisest of moves. But the gentlemen’s agreement that it somehow is has been busted. The cover is blown, to reveal that the top of society looks like a bunch of lowlife men who reinforce each other’s scummy behaviour. This isn’t about a few men, though. An entire structure enables this – one that turns giving to charity into a circle jerk over the bodies of young women.

Young women who are forced to sign an NDA that they haven’t been allowed to read.

One section of an interview on Fresh Air on Monday:

LEVISKY: The creed to which Daniel refers and the initial establishment of strong democratic norms in this country was founded in a homogeneous society, a racially and culturally homogeneous society. It was founded in an era of racial exclusion. And the challenge is that we have now become a much more ethnically, culturally diverse society, taken major steps towards racial equality, and the challenge is making those norms stick in this new context.

DAVIES: And you do note in the book that the resolution of the conflicts around the Civil War and a restoration of kind of normal democratic institutions was accompanied by denial of voting rights and basic citizenship privileges to African-Americans in the South. So this hasn’t exactly been a laudable course all the time.

ZIBLATT: Yeah, so this is this great paradox – tragic paradox, really – that we recount in the book, which is that the consolidation of these norms, which we think are so important to democratic life of mutual toleration and forbearance, were re-established, really, at the price of racial exclusion. I mean, there was a way in which the end of Reconstruction – when Reconstruction was a great democratic effort and experiment – and it was a moment of democratic breakthrough for the United States where voting rights were extended to African-Americans. At the end of Reconstruction throughout the U.S. South, states implemented a variety of reforms to reduce the right to vote – essentially, to eliminate the right to vote for African-Americans.

There’s a major howler in that passage. It’s an interview and it’s easy to make howlers in interviews and they probably would have caught it if it had been written…but still.

That “moment of democratic breakthrough for the United States where voting rights were extended to African-Americans” during Reconstruction? Voting rights were not extended to African-Americans during Reconstruction; they were extended to African-American men. They were not extended to African-American women, nor were they extended to white women. It’s odd how women are just not considered part of the population even now, even by academics talking about democracy and norms. It’s odd how easily women are simply forgotten. It’s odd how easily the exclusion of women remains just invisible to so many people even now.

I didn’t know him but I have many friends who did and I can see that Josh Kutchinsky is a great loss.

The IHEU:

Josh Kutchinsky, one of the greatest friends to international humanism, died last night. He had been suffering from an interstitial lung disease diagnosed in 2016.

Josh was a committed organiser and phenomenal personality within the humanist movement, both at home in the UK, and internationally.

During many years of activism, he served as a trustee of Humanists UK, and then Humanists UK’s international representative to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), as well as joining IHEU’s Uganda Humanist Schools Advisory Group. He was a founding trustee of the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust. In 2013 he received the IHEU Distinguished Services to Humanism Award at the IHEU General Assembly in Bucharest.

Josh was an early driving force behind the Central London Humanist Group, and he continued this and many other roles for some time even after moving to Montauroux in the south of France.

Josh was deeply enthusiastic and supportive of fellow humanists’ efforts. He loved meeting and whenever possible travelling to participate and encourage humanist activities around the world. Following on from the 2004 IHEU General Assembly in Kampala, Uganda, he founded an online support network sharing “good news and bad” among humanist activists from around the world which is still active today.

Humanists UK:

Josh’s contributions to the growth of humanism around the world were vast. For many, he is best remembered for the key role he played in the development of humanism in Africa, where his work helped change the lives of hundreds of young people for the better. In 2008, he became a founding trustee of the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust, a charity working to provide a liberal, humanist education to some of the region’s poorest and most vulnerable children. He also played a pivotal role in setting up Francophone Africa’s first ever secular conference in 2007. He put in place and maintained digital infrastructure which supported humanist networks to form and develop across the continent.

Josh found his experiences working alongside humanist colleagues from around the world profoundly inspiring. In a poem he wrote following the 2011 World Humanist Congress in Oslo, he found expression for what it was he most celebrated in humanism: ‘Thinking freely, / Touching hands, / Minds conceiving.’ But for all his work overseas, he was no less involved in humanism at home, where he helped lead the UK’s largest and most successful local humanist group – the Central London Humanists – for many years. He also served as a trustee of Humanists UK. The Chair of the Board at the time, Robert Ashby, remembers how he made ‘valuable and carefully considered contributions at all times’ and this was a hallmark of all Josh’s work.

Ros Lyn on Facebook writing from Accra:

We had such a great time in Malta and the gifts we got for each other was such a beautiful surprise including the gift from his wife. Leo Igwe and i are at a loss for words. The 3 of us have such great memories together. We always hang out like old friends after conferences, took long walks, trying new foods or not lol and our conversations got so deep that passers by would wonder what we smoked 😆. Josh was the epitome of a Humanist in all sense of the word. A truly Distinguished Service to Humanism Award Winner, humble, down-to-earth, funny, freethinker, teacher and a good listener. He was always with a smile even when he was ill and allowed me take photos of him anyway. When I last saw him, i was soooo happy because i missed him but i was sad and held back my tears because he was so ill but Leo just had to see him and bring him to join us at the conference in London and i know Josh was so proud to witness Leo receive his Distinguished Service to Humanism Award as well. He was always there to advice and support. I am so proud to have known you and have you as an icon to look up to all your great works and achievements. 

A sad day.

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.