Guess who:

He didn’t read intelligence reports and mixed up classified material with what he had seen in newspaper clips. He seemed confused about the structure and purpose of organizations and became overwhelmed when meetings covered multiple subjects. He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness.

No, not him, the other one.

This isn’t how President Trump is depicted in a new book by former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. Instead, it’s McCabe’s account of what it was like to work for then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could

More bad moon rising.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, announced on Thursday that President Trump planned to declare a national emergency so he can bypass Congress and build his long-promised wall along the southwestern border.

That raised the prospect of a constitutional clash with lawmakers over who controls the federal purse.

Mr. McConnell said the president would take action after signing a bill to keep the government open but not fund his wall.

.@PressSec: President Trump will sign the government funding bill, and as he has stated before, he will also take other executive action—including a national emergency—to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border.

— The White House 45 Archived

Julie Bindel on Meghan Murphy’s lawsuit against Twitter:

‘Twitter would never have attracted the hundreds of millions of users it boasts today had Twitter let it be known that it would arbitrarily ban users who did not agree with the political and social views of its management or impose sweeping new policies banning the expression of widely-held viewpoints and perspectives on public issues,’ Murphy’s lawyers submitted.

That’s a good point. (This is why people pay lawyers.) Twitter certainly didn’t make clear from the outset that it would be doing that.

As I wrote at the time of her ban, Murphy, who, like me, is constantly de-platformed, attacked and vilified for daring to question the Orwellian madness of the

This is what you get when you set up a government of corrupt unqualified hacks: connections to people who bend their efforts to promoting epidemics.

The wife of White House communications director Bill Shine on Wednesday went on an anti-vaccine tirade while spreading conspiracy theories about an outbreak of measles in the Pacific north-west.

In a series of tweets, Darla Shine lashed out against a CNN segment detailing the outbreak, which has seen more than 50 unvaccinated people contract measles in Washington state and Oregon.

“Here we go LOL #measlesoutbreak on #CNN #Fake #Hysteria,” Darla Shine tweeted. “The entire Baby Boom population alive today had the #Measles as kids … Bring back our #ChildhoodDiseases they keep you healthy &

Farewell, Oppy.

The longest-lived robot ever sent from Earth to the surface of another planet, Opportunity snapped pictures of a strange landscape and revealed surprising glimpses into the distant past of Mars for over 14 years. But on Wednesday, NASA announced that the rover is dead.

“It is therefore that I am standing here with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission is complete,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science.

The rover was designed to last only three months, but proved itself to be one of the solar system’s most unexpected endurance athletes. It traveled more than the distance of a marathon when its designers only expected it to move about half

Burn.

.@jaketapper shows President Trump's hypocrisy over Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic tweet with a little help from a "rogue" control room. pic.twitter.com/EJc2TJnmrU

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) February 13, 2019

… Read the rest

Maggie Astor at the Times zooms in close on sexism in electoral politics.

Few Americans acknowledge they would hesitate to vote for a woman for president — but they don’t have to, according to researchers and experts on politics and women and extensive research on double standards in campaigns. Reluctance to support female candidates is apparent in the language that voters frequently use to describe men and women running for office; in the qualities that voters say they seek; and in the perceived flaws that voters say they are willing or unwilling to overlook in candidates.

And this describes all of us. The drip drip drip of background sexism does its work on all of us, no matter how … Read the rest

And then there’s this cloud on the horizon.

Why did CNN give Howard Schultz a town hall last night? Its own polls have him way down. Once again, he offered no substance. His only “qualification” is he has billions to pour into a campaign. Schultz is what’s rotten about American politics. Shame on CNN for legitimizing him.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) February 13, 2019

Same reason they gave Trump so much airtime, no doubt. Greed? Cupidity? Lust for gain? One of those.… Read the rest

Why does the BBC keep doing this?

They did a segment to observe the anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and his blasfeemius book.

To discuss it they invited Farzana Shaikh, Geoffrey Robertson (Rushdie’s lawyer during the fatwa), and Peter Tatchell. Gita Saghal informed us that they could have had Pragna Patel but decided not to.

Getting annoyed watching @BBCNewsnight. They asked Pragna of @SBSisters, but stood her down after asking if she were Muslim!

— Gita Sahgal (@GitaSahgal) February 11, 2019

So they decided against Pragna and got Tatchell instead – also not a Muslim! What the hell?

Why is it that black or Asian women have to pass an authenticity test, not a test if

Mermaids is doing “gender training”:

@ACCJulieCooke opening our third day of training sessions delivered by @Mermaids_Gender. Fantastic trans awareness and education for our staff and partners! @MerPolCEU @MerpolLGBT pic.twitter.com/m5nmJdfH2p

— Christian Owens (@genderspaceuk) February 12, 2019

At the top of this image the slide informs us: Gender identity is also on a spectrum. We all have our own unique identity.

Do your arms stick out a little bit? Have you measured how far? That measurement would be your exact unique gender identity. If that’s too hard to measure you can check to see if you have things flapping out at the sides of your head, or if you have a waist, or if you wear a triangle. That is, … Read the rest

The Guardian on the Ligue du LOL’s campaign of bullying women and Other races:

The group, believed to have had about 30 members, is said to have spread pornographic memes online and doctored photos to humiliate its victims.

What group members claim started as dubious humour in private exchanges, however, appears to have soon degenerated and spread on to the wider web mostly through Twitter.

Even “humour” in private exchanges doesn’t have to involve, say, pornographic memes and doctored photos. There are other ways to be funny and even other ways to gossip about people’s flaws.

They’re posting lengthy apologies / explanations on Twitter, saying they didn’t realize how nasty it all was for the people they did it to.… Read the rest

BuzzFeed reports:

A secret group of mainly male French journalists have been accused of coordinating a sprawling, yearslong campaign of harassment abusing women writers, feminist activists, people of color, and LGBT people.

The group, Ligue du LOL, or LOL League, has been operating for about a decade. So far, three journalists have been suspended, one has resigned, and one has been fired since the accusations were made public online. People working at four of France’s biggest news outlets have been implicated.

Journalists – you know, people who help shape our opinions and worldviews.

The LOL League started as a Facebook group in 2009 by journalist Vincent Glad, who now works at one of France’s largest newspapers, Libération. The group