Olivier Blanchard offers analysis of a manipulative meme:

Chances are that you have seen this meme floating around, especially around elections. It isn’t what you think it is. It is not a friendly digital handshake. It isn’t meant to help neighbors mend fences. It is a deliberate instrument of psychological manipulation.

I have seen that meme, and cordially hated it.

I worked in Marketing for nearly two decades. I know this kind of device when I see it. Let me explain.

1. The image
Note the childlike simplicity of the image, the super basic smiling face. The finger pointing up at it. The open posture. The baby-like head. What part of the brain is this image stimulating? It looks

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on Trump chastises the people of California.

As the Washington Post reported, the California Professional Firefighters president Brian Rice issued a response that I’ll copy here in full:

The president’s message attacking California and threatening to withhold aid to the victims of the cataclysmic fires is Ill-informed, ill-timed, and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines.

At a time when our every effort should be focused on vanquishing the destructive fires and helping the victims, the president has chosen instead to issue an uninformed political threat aimed squarely at the innocent victims of these cataclysmic fires.

At this moment, thousands of our brother

For crying out loud.

The Labour Party has threatened a member with disciplinary action for referring to a transgender woman as “a man”.

Janey Hutton made the comment on a closed Facebook group, writing: “Its (sic) painful to see biological women say trans women (men) are sisters. The desperation to appear PCWOKE is vomit inducing. These are MEN.”

She then received a letter from Sophie Goodyear, head of complaints of Labour’s National Executive Committee, describing the remarks as “offensive”, saying “abuse of any kind, whether direct attacks or pejorative language which may cause offence is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in our party.”

But it’s not “pejorative language” to say that men are men, or to say … Read the rest

For Trump’s other loving contribution of the day, he decided to shout at California for being on fire.

Hours after officials announced grim new statistics in California’s Camp Fire — nine dead, more than 6,700 structures incinerated — President Trump blamed poor forest management for the destruction and threatened to pull federal funding.

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

A normal president would express compassion and concern, and nothing else. While the fires … Read the rest

Now here’s a nice credential for our new Attorney General:

Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general, served on the advisory board of a Florida company that a federal judge shut down last year and fined nearly $26 million after the government accused it of scamming customers.

The company, World Patent Marketing, “bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars” by promising inventors lucrative patent agreements, according to a complaint filed in Florida by the Federal Trade Commission.

Court documents show that when frustrated consumers tried to get their money back, Scott J. Cooper, the company’s president and founder, used Mr. Whitaker to threaten them as a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Cooper’s company paid Mr. Whitaker nearly $10,000

Tim Weiner at the Post tells us that Trump can’t kneecap the FBI.

Not even Richard Nixon could stop the G-men. God knows he tried. Trump is no student of history, but he would do well to recall Nixon’s battle with the bureau.

When Hoover died in May 1972 — six weeks before the Watergate break-in — Nixon installed a politically loyal stooge, L. Patrick Gray, in his place. “You’ve got to be a conspirator,” Nixon counseled Gray. “You’ve got to be totally ruthless.” Nixon tried to sabotage the FBI as soon as it started looking into the break-in, ordering the CIA to obstruct the bureau’s investigation, on spurious national security grounds. Gray destroyed devasting evidence linking the

Benjamin Wittes in the Atlantic tells us that last week he told a small audience that it was too late to fire Mueller; now he wonders if he was too optimistic.

Whitaker is the kind of bad dream from which career Justice Department officials wake up at night in cold sweats. He’s openly political. The president is confident in his loyalty and that he won’t recuse himself from the investigation—notwithstanding his public statements about it and his having chaired the campaign of one of the grand jury witnesses. There are legal questions about his installation at the department’s helm. And he’s known as the White House’s eyes and ears at Justice.

It’s bad—very bad.

But, he says, he still thinks … Read the rest

This afternoon outside the White House:

.@RepRaskin at the #ProtectMueller protest in front of the White House:

“Whitaker is not just professionally unqualified to be Attorney General. He’s constitutionally unqualified to be Attorney General.” #WhitakerMustRecuse pic.twitter.com/wgXRx8JOXo

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) November 8, 2018

Public Citizen president Robert Weissman: "In this country, it is the people who rule, not the autocrat who rules. And we will defend our democracy. Congress will act when we make them act, and we will make them act." #ProtectMueller pic.twitter.com/wXaR1JBGJG

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) November 8, 2018

.@waltshaub: “Sessions was a terrible Attorney General, but he did one thing right: He recused himself from the investigation. Trump didn’t like that, so he fired him. Nixon

James Kirkup wrote about the Jenni Murray denunciation yesterday:

Here we go again. Perhaps there should be a template for journalists writing about transgender issues and the treatment of women with the “wrong” opinions. The template would look something like this:

A small group of noisy, angry people, many of them male, have demanded that [Insert woman’s name] not be allowed to speak/ appear/ have a job/ do anything because [woman] once said things the small group of people didn’t like or agree with.

Really, we could use it for so many cases and so many women: Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, Janice Turner, Posy Parker, Linda Bellos…

…me…

And a great many more, and the ranks keep growing all the … Read the rest

Surprise surprise surprise, Whitaker has no intention of recusing himself. Well no shit; that’s why he got the job, so obviously he’s not going to do the thing he was promoted to not do. Normally the job should have gone to Rosenstein, and Whitaker wouldn’t have been in the line at all, but Don wants a loyal stooge and Whitaker is his boy.

Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has no intention of recusing himself from overseeing the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people close to him who added they do not believe he would approve any subpoena of President Trump as part of that investigation.

Also according to everything we know about … Read the rest