There was so much stuff yesterday that I never got to the DHS whistleblower. About that:

A senior Department of Homeland Security official alleges that he was told to stop providing intelligence reports on the threat of Russian interference in the 2020 election, in part because it “made the President look bad,” an instruction he believed would jeopardize national security.

Gee, what a wacky belief.

The official, Brian Murphy, who until recently was in charge of intelligence and analysis at DHS, said in a whistleblower complaint that on two occasions he was told to stand down on reporting about the Russian threat and alleged that senior officials told him to modify other intelligence reports, including about white supremacists, to

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Golly, there was a big ol’ to-do about a religious fanatic who wanted to throw a religious super-spreader event in a Seattle park on Labor Day (this past Monday) but the Parks Department said no you can’t and closed the park.

A prayer rally was planned for Seattle’s Gas Works Park on Labor Day, prior to the city announcing the park’s temporary closure.

On Friday, Sept. 4, Seattle Parks and Recreation issued a notice that Gas Works Park would be closed Sept. 7 “due to anticipated crowding that could impact affect the public health of residents.”

On Saturday, Sept. 5, worship leader Sean Feucht released a statement on his Facebook page, saying the city announced the temporary

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About these awesome book deals that do nothing to save anyone: Dahlia Lithwick last November:

These books are not necessarily about saving the country. Take, for example, Bolton, Trump’s hawkish former national security adviser, who reportedly just reached a $2 million deal with Simon & Schuster for a book to come out next year. Now, Bolton could certainly serve his nation right now by confirming what Fiona Hill has testified to regarding the effort to extort Ukrainian assistance in cooking up oppo research for Trump in advance of the 2020 election. Hill has said that when the plot unwound around Bolton, he told her, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” and

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Siva has a point.

https://twitter.com/sivavaid/status/1303780980638052352

I don’t know why I overlooked that this morning. Why the hell (obvious selfish reasons aside) did Woodward not report the story at the time instead of saving it for his book launch?

I suppose a likely answer is that Trump agreed to the interviews for a book, not a Washington Post story. But maybe in a life or death situation you ought to break a deal of that kind? Just maybe?

https://twitter.com/sivavaid/status/1303748714301919235 https://twitter.com/sivavaid/status/1303748345702363141… Read the rest

Interesting.

When Northwestern University psychologist Dan P. McAdams first wrote about Donald Trump’s psyche for “The Atlantic” in 2016, he knew his subject was not your average politician. He just couldn’t nail down why. 

His new book, “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning” (Oxford University Press, March 2020), provides some surprising answers. Trump, McAdams asserts, may be the rare person who lacks any inner story, something most people develop to give their lives unity, meaning and purpose.

McAdams is something called a “narrative psychologist.”

Trump, McAdams argues, can’t form a meaningful life story because he is the “episodic man” who sees life as a series of battles to be won. There is no connection between

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The American Humanist Association is apparently captive. Rachel Deitch, their Director of Policy and Social Justice, ardently defends the “right” of men who identify as women to compete against women in sport. Women have to take a back seat to men who identify as women.

A few weeks ago this story was shared on the Facebook page of the American Humanist Association (AHA) to celebrate a preliminary injunction by a federal judge against Idaho’s backwards Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. The comments thread quickly devolved into a malicious and transphobic free-for-all. Faced with an onslaught of posts that violated our social media guidelines, our social media coordinator brought the social justice department in to assist. It took nearly three

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How interesting. Trump told Bob Woodward on February 7 how very dangerous the coronavirus is. February 7.

President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book “Rage.”

“This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Woodward on February 7.

In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. “Pretty amazing,” Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times “more deadly”

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Captain Clinch is gloating.

https://twitter.com/CaptainBridget/status/1303293253215682560

What is “vilify”? How is it defined? What’s the standard? What’s the threshold? How is the tension between “it is a crime to vilify” and the value of free speech resolved?

https://twitter.com/CaptainBridget/status/1303655771876409344

Exactly, to the minute, 24 hours between the two.… Read the rest

But the new one is getting piled on too.

Discrimination laws in the ACT protect people from vilification for good reason. If you break the law it does have consequences so dont' vilify people Canberrans! We want a safe, inclusive community for everyonehttps://t.co/jOs61BTkgr

— ACTHRC (@ACTHumanRights) September 8, 2020

Don’t “vilify” this huge threatening man or he will make you pay him $10,000 for the vilifitude.

You’re making case law that allows men to effectively impose lèse majesté laws against individual women, and financially ruin them. It’s terrifying. This decision was a crime against democracy and a blow to women’s engagement in the public sphere.

— WoLF (@WomensLibFront) September 9, 2020

Brilliant way of putting it; I wish I’d … Read the rest

It gets more and more sinister.

Discrimination laws in the ACT protect people from vilification for good reason. If you break the law it does have consequences so dont' vilify people Canberrans! We want a safe, inclusive community for everyonehttps://t.co/jOs61BTkgr

— ACTHRC (@ACTHumanRights) September 8, 2020

ACT is Australian Capital Territory, so that’s the Twitter account of the Australian Capital Territory Human Rights Commission – which is disturbing. Apparently it’s against the law to “vilify” people in the ACT, but the ACTHRC doesn’t bother to tell us what “vilify” means. It’s hard to believe that liking Facebook posts amounts to “vilification” under Australian law but who the fuck knows at this point. But don’t worry, folks, just don’t “vilify” … Read the rest

Kolesnikova tore up her passport rather than let her kidnappers force her to leave Belarus.

“She was pushed into the back seat (of the car), she yelled that she wasn’t going anywhere,” Ms Kolesnikova’s colleague Anton Rodnenkov told a news conference in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday.

Mr Rodnenkov said he and another colleague had been kidnapped on Monday, driven between buildings, and interrogated with hoods over their heads and their hands tied.

They accepted an offer to leave Belarus with Ms Kolesnikova but when the car reached the border she refused to cross. The two men told journalists they did not know where she was now.

She’s a brave woman.… Read the rest

Oh no, another huge bruiser of a man victimized by a woman who Liked comments on Facebook. That will be ten thousand dollars madam, pay the cashier.

A dispute over a post on Canberra radio newsreader Beth Rep’s Facebook page was meant to end with an apology to transgender activist Bridget Clinch.

Instead, the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal yesterday found Ms Rep breached discrimination laws when she ‘liked’ offensive comments on the post, and ordered she pay Ms Clinch $10,000 in compensation.

Ms Clinch — an Australian Army captain who medically transitioned from life as a male to female in 2010 — first came into contact with Ms Rep after the newsreader made online comments about her after International

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Trump is getting the Justice Department to defend him in that E. Jean Carrol defamation suit.

Not long after the ruling, Trump was given deadlines to produce his DNA. Carroll is a former Elle columnist who alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store. Carroll has claimed that the “Donna Karan coat-dress” she was wearing at the time of the alleged rape has been hanging on the back of her closet door and remained “unworn and unlaundered since that evening.” Carroll and her lawyers have requested a DNA swab so that Trump’s DNA can be compared to sample of unidentified male DNA found on the dress. In

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About that Sturgis Motorcycle Rally…

According to a new study, which tracked anonymized cellphone data from the rally, over 250,000 coronavirus cases have now been tied to the 10-day event, one of the largest to be held since the start of the pandemic. It drew motorcycle enthusiasts from around the country, many of whom were seen without face coverings inside crowded bars, restaurants, and other indoor establishments. 

The explosion in cases, the study from the Germany-based IZA Institute of Labor Economics finds, is expected to reach $12 billion in public health costs.

Gee. You could build a lot of good public housing with $12 billion.

“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the ‘worst-case scenarios’ for

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This in the Atlantic is from last November:

At least one human life has already been lost as a direct result of the widespread obsession with turning the sex of one’s unborn child into an explosive (often literally) spectacle. In October, an Iowa woman was killed when her family inadvertently built a pipe bomb as part of their gender-reveal party—a gathering at which expectant parents dramatically and colorfully announce the sex of their baby.

The methods for doing so seem to have started out as benign, if stereotypical—cutting into a cake to reveal either blue or pink frosting, say. But in the past couple of years, some kind of communal madness has taken hold, and many of these feats

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Aw, Mister Nice Guy.

Speaking in Jupiter, Florida, Trump announced he was signing an order to expand a moratorium on offshore drilling to include Florida’s Atlantic coast, Georgia and South Carolina.

Well that’s eccentric. Normally he’s in there yelling “Drill drill drill!” and tearing up laws protecting pesky things like shorelines.

The Trump administration has generally been enthusiastic about oil and gas drilling, but some Florida officials had expressed fear that the state’s tourism industry would be negatively impacted if the moratorium was allowed to expire.

Oh well that explains it then. Mar-a-Lago and Doral.

Trump’s announcement seems to be an attempt to curry favor with voters in a key swing state that could determine the winner of the

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Oh does it really.

Why we're using 'womxn'

No, that's not a typo: 'womxn' is a spelling of 'women' that's more inclusive and progressive. The term sheds light on the prejudice, discrimination, and institutional barriers womxn have faced, and explicitly includes non-cisgender women.

— TEDxLondon (@tedxlondon) September 5, 2020

Why why why why WHY does the word “women” need to be “more inclusive”? Should we start spelling “Black” in some funny new way to be more “inclusive”? The suggestion would be seen, rightly, as incredibly insulting. Should we start talking about wxrkers instead of workers? In order to be more inclusive by including plutocrats and bosses and exploiters of every stripe?

What on earth is progressive about changing the spelling … Read the rest

Hello! Sorry for unusually long silence, there was a power failure here, starting at 3:41 yesterday afternoon and ending a few minutes ago at noon 23. There were about 19 (only slight exaggeration) City Light trucks lined up along the block earlier when I went out to look.

Also, because that wasn’t enough, the California smoke has arrived. UGH. All sympathy to the people of California living with this for the past few weeks.… Read the rest

Genius.

The mayor of Tuscaloosa is letting bars near the University of Alabama reopen on Tuesday, even though the school just reported more than 800 new cases.

800 new cases – hooray, that means it’s time to open up the bars! So that we can try for 8 thousand new cases!

In a press release, Mayor Walt Maddox citied a “positive trend” in results, saying an overall decline in community positivity rates “provides an opportunity for a limited reopening of bars which have sacrificed a great deal to protect our healthcare system and economy.” At the same time, the university reported 846 new cases over the last week—the largest increase in a single week since classes began.

Which Maddox … Read the rest

Navalny’s condition is slightly improved.

On Monday, the Charité hospital in Berlin said in a statement that Mr Navalny was being weaned off mechanical ventilation.

“He is responding to verbal stimuli. It remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” it said.

I think we can assume they won’t be beneficial.

Meanwhile Anna Nemtsova says today’s attack is classic KGB.

Men in civilian clothes with masks covering their faces grabbed the woman inspiring a revolution in Belarus on Monday. They pushed Maria Kolesnikova into a minivan at about 10am local time (3am ET)—the opposition leader hasn’t been seen since.

Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’ brutal leader for the past 26 years, has been cracking

… Read the rest