Trump is sulking.

President Trump made his first official public appearance since Election Day on Wednesday, observing Veterans Day in a traditional wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

Trump, who is defying declarations that he lost his reelection bid, did not speak at the event.

The president and his entourage – including first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Pence and second lady Karen Pence – did not arrive at the tomb until well after the scheduled start time of 11 a.m. ET.

The motorcade was still driving when the gun salute to veterans went off. It seems just a tad disrespectful, especially when we know he’s not doing anything other than trying … Read the rest

#MaryWollstonecraft seeing her statue for the first time pic.twitter.com/nsSVUbNG4z

— Susan Harrison (@SueHarrison123) November 11, 2020

… Read the rest

More and more people are telling Trump to stop being a whiny bratty fool.

Pressure is mounting on Donald Trump to accept the results of the presidential election, after every major news outlet called the race for Joe Biden. The Democratic presidential-elect’s lead in the popular vote also continues to grow, now surpassing 5 million votes.

A number of world leaders have called Biden to congratulate him on his victory, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson referred to Trump as the “previous president” while speaking in Parliament today.

Biden leads by tens of thousands of votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

The Post reports:

[E]ven some of the president’s most publicly pugilistic aides, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows,

Princess Ivanka is celebrating!

Oooooh! Exciting!

See also:

JOE BIDEN DEFEATS PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP

The Associated Press declares Joe Biden the winner of a grueling campaign for the American presidency. He will lead a polarized nation through a historic collision of health, economic and social crises. #APracecall pic.twitter.com/lInwqjX3PB

— The Associated Press (@AP) November 7, 2020

I guess she missed that one.… Read the rest

More hot air and confusion:

Hambling told PA Media that the statue was every woman and clothes would have restricted her to a time and place. “It’s not a conventional heroic or heroinic likeness of Mary Wollstonecraft. It’s a sculpture about now, in her spirit,” she said.

Bee Rowlatt, a writer who has been a central figure in the fight to have a statue of Wollstonecraft, said the statue represented “an idea of collaboration” and the birth of feminism.

How? How does it represent that? Who would look at it and see that? And anyway it’s supposed to be about Mary Wollstonecraft, not collaboration or generalized feminism. It’s so classic, in a way – this falling into the trap … Read the rest

That Statue continues to rile the pesky women. This is a point I hadn’t thought of:

They strip prisoners to disempower them and break them down. They know what they're doing.

— Liza Vespi lah/di/dah (@LizaVespi) November 11, 2020

Livia Gershon at Smithsonian Magazine:

Hambling, for her part, tells the Evening Standard’s Robert Dex that the nude figure is not meant to depict Wollstonecraft, but women of all eras.

Really. If the naked figure is meant to depict women of all eras, why is it so extremely young, thin, fit, muscular, Aryan, tiny-breasted, and deformed in the genital region? Why is it a Hitleresque flawless specimen with a basketball where the crotch should be?

But also…why in hell … Read the rest

Astonishing.

Watch this moment: pic.twitter.com/rw4rDmXO98

— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2020

pic.twitter.com/U6MmLOkZFQ

— brownie (@ibrakeforjake) November 10, 2020

… Read the rest

Trump is suing Michigan.

The campaign of President Donald Trump said Tuesday  it is suing Michigan in federal court in an effort to prevent final certification of the state’s election results, as Trump continues to refuse to concede to Joe Biden or accept the outcome of the race for the presidency. 

He’s suing Michigan for not voting for him. That’s totally a thing you can do.

Attorneys for the Trump campaign said late afternoon the new lawsuit would be filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Although the bulk of the allegations appear to focus on Detroit, located on the other side of the state, the seat of state government in Lansing is

Lying liars working hard to force Trump on us:

Facebook has taken down a network of pages linked to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

The seven pages were spreading false claims and conspiracy theories about voter fraud. They collectively had amassed more than 2.45 million followers, according to the activist group Avaaz, which alerted Facebook to the network on Friday.

One group was called “Stop the Steal” (and then “Gay Communists for Socialism”).

“Stop the steal” has become a rallying cry for supporters of President Donald Trump who baselessly allege cheating in the election and the vote-counting process. Last week, Facebook removed a large group called “Stop the Steal” that had gained more than 360,000 followers within a

Oh whaddya know.

A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to three officials briefed on the investigation and a statement from a House congressional committee.

Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy.

But on Monday, Hopkins,

Via KBPlayer – some other statues of women:

Amy Johnson Herne Bay pic.twitter.com/ysK8lgSgCa

— Audrey Ludwig (@AudreySuffolk) November 10, 2020

We see a lot of debate about the #Wollstonecraft statue …

Our #VirginiaWoolf #statue, still in fundraising, can be seen below in progress. What are your thoughts? pic.twitter.com/l1zss1oVnJ

— Virginia Woolf Statue (@VWoolfStatue) November 10, 2020

Joan Littlewood outside the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London. pic.twitter.com/LBF237GKCu

— Kathryn_Kirton (@KathrynKirton) November 10, 2020

Statue to alleged witches executed in Prestonpans, East Lothian. pic.twitter.com/nDleEgulDI

— Trina (@hightreebud) November 10, 2020

… Read the rest

About this Mary Wollstonecraft statue…not a statue of her, mind, a statue for her, whatever that means. Anyway, it’s been unveiled. Entirely unveiled. It’s not universally popular.

What is exceptionally obtuse about the naked Wollstonecraft statue is that she was vilified for having sex outside marriage, causing her enormous anguish. The decision to portray her in an ahistorical & heavily sexualised way feels like adding insult to injury. #wollstonecraft

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) November 10, 2020

“It’s not a sculpture OF Mary Wollstonecraft, it’s a sculpture of every woman!” reminds me of the misogynist poet in Friends who told Monica “the empty vase isn’t about you, it’s about all women!” Yeah thanks, that’s worse

— becca (@boodleoops) November 10, 2020

What do you mean “cannot”?

Sen. Chris Coons has been on CNN this morning, suggesting that in private Republican senators are asking him to convey best wishes to president-elect Joe Biden while stating that they cannot yet say that in public because of Trump’s insistence on not conceding defeat.

I’m not seeing the insurmountable obstacle.

Of course they can say that in public despite Trump’s grotesque rude authoritarian disruptive refusal to concede – they can and they absolutely should, in order to shine a harsher light on Trump’s authoritarian flouting of the norms. What they mean is that they don’t want to, and that’s contemptible.

Coons also said “This is an uncertain time these next 71 days. I think

Trump’s lawyers are starting to sweat.

Jones Day is the most prominent firm representing President Trump and the Republican Party as they prepare to wage a legal war challenging the results of the election. The work is intensifying concerns inside the firm about the propriety and wisdom of working for Mr. Trump, according to lawyers at the firm.

Doing business with Mr. Trump — with his history of inflammatory rhetoric, meritless lawsuits and refusal to pay what he owes — has long induced heartburn among lawyers, contractors, suppliers and lenders. But the concerns are taking on new urgency as the president seeks to raise doubts about the election results.

Aka “do we really want to be the lawyers … Read the rest

From Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, 10 seconds, Laurie. Today, the Supreme Court takes up the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of people, if they vote to eviscerate it, to take it down, could lose their healthcare in the midst of this pandemic. Your comment?

LAURIE GARRETT: Well, obviously, that would be dreadful, horrible, awful. And none of those people would have the financial wherewithal to turn to another source to get healthcare. This has implications not just for them, the individuals and their families, but for everybody they have contact with. And so, in a way, we’re committing mass suicide. This is an incredibly self-destructive thing for American people to do, to deny healthcare to millions of

Barr is helping Trump violate all the norms, as usual.

Ellen Weintraub, the Federal Election Commissioner told CNN on Saturday that “there really has been no evidence of fraud” this election. “Very few substantiated complaints, let me put it that way. There is no evidence of any kind of voter fraud,” she said. “There is no evidence of illegal votes being cast.”

But in Barr’s memo, the attorney general tells prosecutors that, “although the States have the primary responsibility to conduct and supervise elections under our constitution and the laws enacted by Congress, the United States Department of Justice has an obligation to ensure that federal elections are conducted in such a way that the American people can have

Why Loser Don fired Mark Esper:

Esper had been at odds with Trump on a number of issues, most importantly his insistence at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer that there were no legal grounds to deploy active-service troops on the streets of US cities.

He was also working with Congress on legislation to rename US army bases named after Confederate generals. In a final interview Esper predicted that he would be followed by a “yes man”, adding “And then God help us.”

We can all hold our breath until January 20, right?

In the face of Trump’s widely reported fury of his intransigence, Esper stopped giving press briefings in the Pentagon in July.

I guess beheadings are the hot new thing.

More than 50 people have been beheaded in northern Mozambique by militant Islamists, state media report. The militants turned a football pitch in a village into an “execution ground”, where they decapitated and chopped bodies, other reports said.

Several people were also beheaded in another village, state media reported.The beheadings are the latest in a series of gruesome attacks that the militants have carried out in gas-rich Cabo Delgado province since 2017.

Not a very nice religion then.

The BBC’s Jose Tembe reports from the capital, Maputo, that the latest attack was probably the worst carried out by the militants. Many people are shocked, and they are calling for a peaceful

The Trump people are putting sugar in the gas tanks, because they can.

The Center for Presidential Transition, a nonpartisan advisory board, urged the Trump administration on Sunday to begin the handoff to staff supporting Joe Biden, whose victory continued to grow in magnitude as states completed their ballot counts.

…

A Trump appointee named Emily Murphy, who is administrator of the General Services Administration, has refused to sign a letter allowing the Biden team to formally begin its work, the Washington Post first reported. The paperwork would release millions of dollars for use in the transition process and give Biden’s team access to government officials and office space and equipment.

Make America Dysfunctional Again!

Members of Trump’s

Ulster peer finds new way to insult Kamala Harris:

A former deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist party and member of the House of Lords has been called on to apologise after referring to the US vice-president-elect as “the Indian” in a tweet.

He…what???

The 82-year-old peer was widely criticised after tweeting: “What happens if Biden moves on and the Indian becomes President. Who then becomes Vice President?”

He’s saying he didn’t know her name, that’s all. That’s all! What’s the big deal?! It’s totally normal to refer to her as “the Indian” if you don’t know her name. The fact that it would take two seconds to find out her name via Google is neither here nor there.… Read the rest