The NY Times has an explainer on how Jared Kushner got so cozy with the murderous Mohammed bin Salman.

Senior American officials were worried. Since the early months of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, had been having private, informal conversations with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s king.

Given Mr. Kushner’s political inexperience, the private exchanges could make him susceptible to Saudi manipulation, said three former senior American officials. In an effort to tighten practices at the White House, a new chief of staff tried to reimpose longstanding procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders.

That all by … Read the rest

Heartrending.

1. Today I did the annual story on holiday decorations at the Governor's residence. I've done it every year, for years. A very light but very fun story. Every year my reporting partner was Wendi Winters. This year, it was Selene. Wendi was murdered in June. https://t.co/hDlixzieht

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

3. Not in a "ghost" sense, I hope she has moved on to a better world then Capital feature stories : ) But she was there in my mind. I could almost hear her voice echoing through the empty rooms. "How many cookies are you making this year?", her favorite question..

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

5. And that was it. The tears

Journalist writes piece about the putative “transphobia” of Mumsnet, in which of course “transphobia” is taken to mean not insults and bile aimed at trans people but simply failure to agree that men who identify as women literally are women. (And men who etc, except that gets far less attention. Male entitlement scores another win.)

Anyway, there’s a paragraph that sums up the bizarro-world belief system nicely.

But if, as Roberts and Pedersen assert, the community’s influence is a result of its engaged membership, Mumsnet finds itself at the political whims of a very particular membership base. When it comes to Mumsnet’s reputation for transphobia, it seems that the very demographics to which Pedersen attributes its success may have

Jane Clare Jones offers a list of 30 propositions on ontological totalitarianism. I will share a few by way of appetizer.

2. Human beings have a right to their own perceptions.

10. Resisting coercion is not bullying.

12. Recognition must be freely given if it is to meaningfully function as validation.

Good one. Yes it must. If it’s forced…well it’s not really recognition, is it, it’s just a mouthing of words.

15. Trans people who are visibly gender non-conforming are subject to violence as a result of the policing of patriarchal gender norms.

16. Feminists do not police patriarchal gender norms.

 

21. People refusing to validate your identity may be painful.

22. Something being painful is not conceptually

There’s that saying, “no man is a hero to his valet.” Miriam Jordan at the NY Times has talked to Trump’s housekeeper at Bedminster.

During more than five years as a housekeeper at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Victorina Morales has made Donald J. Trump’s bed, cleaned his toilet and dusted his crystal golf trophies. When he visited as president, she was directed to wear a pin in the shape of the American flag adorned with a Secret Service logo.

Quite an achievement for an undocumented immigrant housekeeper.

Ms. Morales’s journey from cultivating corn in rural Guatemala to fluffing pillows at an exclusive golf resort took her from the southwest border, where she said she crossed

In other personnel news, there’s the Fox News personality who is currently the State Department spokesperson and is now going to be the US ambassador to the UN.

The United Nations came into existence to vanquish Germany, as 26 nations jointly pledged in 1942 not to surrender to “savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.”

To vanquish Nazi Germany, rather than Germany as such, which continued to exist after Hitler did away with himself in the bunker. Germany was and is bigger than Nazism, as the US is bigger than Trumpism. (Not enough bigger, and getting less so all the time, but still bigger.)

Three-quarters of a century later, the woman who would soon become President Trump’s

It’s all so…Hitleresque. Emily Badger in the Times:

In much of Wisconsin, “Madison and Milwaukee” are code words (to some, dog whistles) for the parts of the state that are nonwhite, elite, different: The cities are where people don’t have to work hard with their hands, because they’re collecting welfare or public-sector paychecks.

Da big city, where all the Jews are.

That stereotype updates a very old idea in American politics, one pervading Wisconsin’s bitter Statehouse fights today and increasingly those in other states: Urban voters are an exception. If you discount them, you get a truer picture of the politics — and the will of voters — in a state.

Thomas Jefferson believed as much — “the mobs

Now there’s a shock – men wildly underestimate how much women are harassed. You don’t say!

The survey was carried out after the #MeToo campaign – first ignited by the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexually abusive behaviour towards female actors – spread worldwide with women sharing their experiences online.

In Denmark, where a 2012 survey found 80% of women had experienced some form of sexual harassment since the age of 15, the average answer among men was 31%.

In the Netherlands – where a prominent conductor was recently fired due to allegations of sexual harassment – 73% of women reported being affected yet the average answer among men was 38%.

French men put the figure at 41% whereas

Let’s go back in time, back to December 1992, courtesy of the New York Times archive:

Six years after the arms-for-hostages scandal began to cast a shadow that would darken two Administrations, President Bush today granted full pardons to six former officials in Ronald Reagan’s Administration, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger’s private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush’s endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.

So he lied to … Read the rest

This seems skeevy enough for anyone’s taste.

Lobbyists representing the Saudi government reserved blocks of rooms at President Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel within a month of Trump’s election in 2016 — paying for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel in just three months, according to organizers of the trips and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

At the time, these lobbyists were reserving large numbers of D.C.-area hotel rooms as part of an unorthodox campaign that offered U.S. military veterans a free trip to Washington — then sent them to Capitol Hill to lobby against a law the Saudis opposed, according to veterans and organizers.

Hey, great, using military veterans to lobby for a law on behalf … Read the rest

Another for-profit chain of “universities” abruptly shuts down, leaving students with big debts and no degrees.

Birmingham, Alabama-based Education Corp. of America said it was closing schools operating as Virginia College, Brightwood College, Brightwood Career Institute, Ecotech Institute and Golf Academy of America in more than 70 locations in 21 states. The company said in October that it had more than 20,000 students, although more recent documents indicate the number may be closer to 15,000.

The company, backed by investors including private equity firm Willis Stein & Partners of Chicago, is the latest in a series of for-profit colleges to close after allegations that they were loading students up with debt while not providing them with marketable skills.

Well, … Read the rest