Tom “Air Miles” Price is out. If only he’d had the sense to hop on Amtrak he could have stuck around.

But don’t let them tell you this is Trump keeping his promise to drain that swamp.

Mr. Price’s job was on the line since the first of a string of reports by Politico on Sept. 19 about his extensive use of charter aircraft. Mr. Trump has fumed privately and publicly about Mr. Price’s actions, fearing that they undercut his promise to rid Washington of the sort of abuses that have soured the public on its political class. The president made clear on Friday that he also saw it as undermining his promise to save the government money, citing efforts to renegotiate contracts.

fearing that they undercut his promise to rid Washington of the sort of abuses that have soured the public on its political class.

Which is the more significant abuse – a Cabinet secretary chartering jets just because he can, or a president milking the job for every dime of profit he can get his tiny little hands on? Which is more genuinely corrupting? Which is more likely to skew the policies and actions of the government?

I leave it to your wisdom to determine.

Now US high schools are trying to force students to make the Approved Demonstration of Loyalty to a Song [or Piece of Cloth or Man With Strange Hair].

In Long Island, the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which runs a private Catholic school system, said students at its three high schools could face “serious disciplinary action” if they kneel during the anthem before sporting events.

Sean P. Dolan, a spokesman for the diocese, said on Friday that the letter, which was sent to principals, was intended to restate policy that the diocese already had in place.

But he added in an emailed statement: “Although the Diocese does not agree that demonstrations are appropriate in its schools during the playing of the National Anthem — which recognizes the tremendous sacrifices of Americans of all races, ethnicities and religions — it notes that students who seek to challenge racism and racial discrimination are firmly in accord with Catholic teaching.”

Which of course raises a separate question of whether or not education should be expected to conform to “Catholic teaching” in the first place, which I very strongly think it should not – but on the kneeling/standing question, I don’t buy this claim that playing a “national” song “recognizes the tremendous sacrifices of Americans of all races, ethnicities and religions.” I don’t buy the claim that that’s what it’s about. I think it’s a gesture of patriotism or nationalism, and nothing more than that. It’s far from confined to military contexts, so why should we think it’s about the military? Or maybe Dolan didn’t mean military sacrifices alone but sacrifices of any kind…but that would be an even more novel version of what singing a patriotic song is supposed to mean.

I think people are adding all these meanings to the song in order to justify trying to bully people over it. That makes it pretty circular.

“Respect the flag!”

“Why?”

“The war dead!”

“But it’s not about the war dead.”

“It is now!”

“Why?”

“Because respect the flag!”

In northwest Louisiana, Scott Smith, the superintendent of schools in Bossier Parish, said student athletes are expected to stand for the anthem. “It is a choice for students to participate in extracurricular activities, not a right, and we at Bossier Schools feel strongly that our teams and organizations should stand in unity to honor our nation’s military and veterans,” he said in a letter that was obtained by The New York Times.

But the supe’s personal feefees shouldn’t be a rule to the entire student body. Even his strong feefees shouldn’t. Schools are not the army, and students are not supposed to be under military discipline.

Waylon Bates, the principal of Parkway High School in Bossier City, La., a city of more than 60,000 people near Shreveport, outlined the punishment students would face at his school. He sent a letter on Thursday to athletes and parents saying athletes were required to stand “in a respectful manner” during the anthem.

Or?

Or they won’t be allowed to play.

“Failure to comply will result in loss of playing time and/or participation as directed by the head coach and principal,” the letter said. “Continued failure to comply will result in removal from the team.”

Just as Trump shouted on Twitter. Trump is controlling what high school athletes can do now.

When the issue is swept up into the public school system, as is happening in Louisiana, it runs up against students’ First Amendment rights and a Supreme Court ruling in 1943, which said public school students could not be forced to salute the American flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance if it conflicted with their religious beliefs. That ruling involved a case of Jehovah Witnesses who were expelled from school for not reciting the pledge.

“The law does not permit schools to forbid students from to expressing their views, and all schools should be on notice that these policies are in fact unconstitutional,” Marjorie Esman, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said in an interview on Friday.

The Supreme Court also touched on students’ right to peaceful protest during public school hours in 1969, when it ruled in favor of students who wanted to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War.

The 1969 ruling essentially said that students do not lose their constitutional rights to free speech at the schoolhouse gate, said Francisco Negrón Jr., the chief legal officer of the National School Boards Association. If a protest is not disruptive, public schools have to allow it.

Catholic and other goddy schools of course can be as authoritarian as they like. Since “god” is an authoritarian concept in itself, that’s often very authoritarian.

Oh good, another heckuva job, Brownie.

“I am very satisfied,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke told reporters outside the White House. “I know it’s a hard storm to recover from but the amount of progress that’s been made, and I really would appreciate any support that we get. I know it is really a good news story in terms of our ability to reach people and the limited number of deaths that have taken place in such a devastating hurricane.”

Well, that’s because it takes a few days to die of dehydration and a few more to die of starvation. The deaths are expected to rise sharply as those few days tick by.

Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, expressed full confidence that the response effort is appropriately led and resourced and unfolding at a good pace.

“What I will tell you is that we are mobilizing and marshaling the resources of the United States of America in a way that is absolutely professional, fast, and adequate to meet the needs,” Bossert said alongside Duke.

“This is textbook and it’s been done well,” Bossert added later from the White House podium.

It’s only those silly people actually in Puerto Rico who don’t see it that way, and what do they know?

Duke’s suggestion that the federal response was a “good news story” struck some as tone deaf and reflected the perils of the Trump administration’s attempts to reassure Americans that the federal government is responding appropriately to the unfolding crisis.

Asked to clarify her comment that the government’s response to the storm is a “good news story,” Duke pointed to effective coordination between federal and local authorities and said there is “unification of command.”

Oh. Well that’s nice, I guess, but it loses sight of the actual goal, which is to keep people in Puerto Rico from dying in the horrible aftermath of the hurricane. It’s nice if everyone wears a clean uniform and all but it’s not really the core issue here.

President Donald Trump did not publicly address the situation in Puerto Rico on Thursday, but acknowledged a day earlier the difficulties of bringing quick relief to the island, calling it “a very difficult situation.”

“That place was just destroyed. That’s not a question of, gee, let’s dry up the water, let’s do this or that. I mean, that place was flattened. That is a really tough situation,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.

One that he didn’t so much as mention in his official Twitter dispatches for several days because he was so laser-focused on the dire emergency of football players kneeling instead of standing for Our Patriotic Song.

Oh yes, oh yes – a male researcher has worked out (to his own satisfaction at least) that lesbianism is something to do with pleasing men.

A new study that attempted to reveal the origins of lesbianism, is claiming that same-sex relationships in women only exist because it turns men on.

Published on Science Direct, the report by Menelaos Apostolou, a male professor at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus comes to the conclusion that lesbian and bisexual attraction all stems from male desire.

Well that does make sense if you think about it, because only men are actually human. Women are just simulacra, remotely operated from the planet Androcentro.

“My argument in the paper is this: A considerable proportion of men desire same-sex attractions in women, and this is one possible reason why many women have such attractions,” Apostolou told Pink News.

The study also suggests another possible reason for men being attracted to lesbian or bisexual women, is that if their partner cheats on them, they’re still in with a chance of having children.

Deffo. Say you’re a man. You don’t want Your Woman getting pregnant by another man, because kids are expensive, dude. What to do, what to do. Solution! You make it so that she has sex with women instead of men.

Ok but how? How do you make it that she does that?

With the magic of your mind, of course.

“A woman, driven by her sexual desires, may seek sexual contact outside of her long-term intimate relationship,” it writes.

“When this woman has sex with another woman she does not have sex with another man which translates into same-sex contact reducing the risk of cuckoldry.”

Totally. If there are any kids, they’ll be your kids, and thus the expense won’t be so irritating.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, surprised and a little hurt at the reaction to his habit of chartering planes every time he wants to go anywhere, even if it’s to Philly and the train would get there faster, says he’ll pay us back for the cost of his seat. Not for the cost of the flights, mind you, just for his seat. That would be a fair arrangement if a seat had been all it took to get him there, but the point is that he chartered whole entire planes, so that’s what he owes us for, minus the cost of a normal ticket.

He says he would also like to keep his job, please.

In a statement released on Thursday, he said, “Today, I will write a personal check to the US Treasury for the expenses of my travel on private charter planes. The taxpayers won’t pay a dime for my seat on those planes.”

The expense for his seat on those planes comes out to $51,887.31, according to an HHS spokesperson.

Politico has reported that the total cost of the private jets Price flew on was more than $400,000 and included trips to places where he has friends and family. Price is not covering the cost for support staff and others who flew with him on those charter planes, staff who otherwise would have flown commercial.

But hey, he’s paying 1/8 of the cost, so can’t we just accept that and be grateful? Why are we so grudging?

“What the Secretary has done is say that while all of this travel was approved by legal and HHS officials, the Secretary has heard the taxpayers’ concerns and wants to be responsive to them,” the HHS spokesperson said. “That’s why he’s taking the unprecedented step of reimbursing the government for his share of the travel.”

Ooh, special! Only, the trouble is, all the chartering of planes to go visit family is also unprecedented, and it came first, and he’s not paying it all back. So.

In his statement, Price made it clear he hopes to keep his job. “I have spent forty years both as a doctor and in public service putting people first,” Price said. “It has been my personal honor to serve the American people, and I look forward to continuing that service.”

But he’s working for Trump, so it’s not possible to believe that thing about putting people first. Sorry.

Inside Climate News on the depth of the disaster in Puerto Rico:

“It is very bad down there right now,” said Sven Rodenbeck, chief science officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2017 hurricane response. “For the vast majority of the island, there is no power. They have had flooding, and the health care system—many of the clinics and hospitals are closed. A lot of the drinking water systems are not operational, along with the waste water systems.”

Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, gave a blunt assessment of the situation.

“People are dying,” Cruz told CBS news on Tuesday. “This is the reality that we live in, the crude aftermath of a storm, a hurricane that has left us practically paralyzed.”

The disaster facing the U.S. territory—and mirrored to an extent in the nearby Virgin Islands—is exacerbated by long standing environmental justice issues facing a poor, underrepresented minority population on an island where climate experts have long warned of the increasing risks of such a catastrophe.

Witness Trump, not even noticing the problem for days because he was too busy ranting about football players and flags.

A request by several members of Congress to waive shipping restrictions known as the Jones Act to help get fuel and supplies to Puerto Rico was denied by the administration on Tuesday with the argument that it wasn’t necessary, Reuters reported. The administration did waive the Jones Act after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit Texas and Florida to help move fuel.

So…it’s not necessary why? Because we care about Texas and Florida but we don’t care about Puerto Rico?

“These storms are big, islands are small; if they get a direct hit it can overcome the entire place,” said John Mutter, a professor of earth and environmental sciences and of international and public affairs at Columbia University. “If all the first responders are unable to respond because the whole place is trashed, it creates a whole new level of disaster.”

Poor communities are always hit the hardest in events like this, Mutter said.

In the case of Puerto Rico, where nearly half the population is below the poverty level, the territory has no vote in Congress, and Texas and Florida are vying with the territory for limited federal disaster resources, inequity in recovery could be exacerbated.

Also a xenophobic racist is running the country.

They can’t even make sure the water is clean enough.

Even when EPA officials are able to inspect the island’s superfund sites, they may not be able to test surrounding floodwaters for toxins, Judith Enck, former EPA administrator for Region 2, which includes Puerto Rico, said.

“Typically they would either use a local lab which won’t be functioning because there’s no electricity, or they would ship the results back to the region 2 lab in Edison New Jersey, but there is no real shipping options,” Enck said.  “They can do inspections, see if there are cracks in oil tanks or thing like that, but I don’t see how they will actually be able to do any sampling.”

Now back to football.

Sunday we read a piece by Gaby Hinsliff about the disproportionate rage directed at BBC reporter Laura Kuenssberg.

Yesterday I read this in the Guardian from last July: Yvette Cooper ‘sick to death of vitriol’ directed at Laura Kuenssberg.

The Labour MP Yvette Cooper has launched a staunch defence of the BBC political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, as she called on Labour to be a “broad-based party” and its supporters to stop engaging in “vitriolic abuse” online.

Cooper defended Kuenssberg, regularly under fire for perceived political bias, as she set out a potential strategy to put Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street and attacked the US president, Donald Trump.

She said Trump’s approach to politics and social media was “normalising hatred” and the problem was not confined to the right wing.

Today I read Helen Lewis on the subject:

During the bit of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour conference where journalists were just beginning to drift off, Buzzfeed Political Editor Jim Waterson posted about a story on The Canary. The pro-Corbyn “alternative” site had posted an article by Steve Topple headlined: “We need to talk about Laura Kuenssberg. She’s listed as a speaker at the Tory Party conference.”

As Waterson put it, “It took me two mins to call the event organiser and find out this is bollocks. She’s not speaking at Tory conference. Already going viral regardless.”

She’d been invited to speak – as had a lot of people, because that’s what happens.

There are two problems here. The first is the way that The Canary – an independent, reader-funded “alternative” news site – uses Kuenssberg as a traffic-driver for hate-clicks. This is a flimsy story – leftwing journalists speak at Tory conference, and vice versa – even if it were correct. Which it isn’t, as the BBC press office soon made clear.

@bbclaurak is not speaking at this @csjthinktank event. At Labour & Conservative conferences to report impartially for @BBCNews

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) September 27, 2017

The BBC is a target, BBC reporters are targets, but Kuenssberg is especially a target. Now why might that be do you suppose?

BBC editors receive constant complaints from politicians and their teams about their reporting. Why? Because they reach so many people. What is reported on the BBC matters.

However, it’s not hard to spot that some BBC staff get more flak than others. Those in front of camera are instantly recognisable, and so make better targets. So – let’s be honest – are women. There is a strain of misogyny which delights in being told that there are some women it’s OK to hate.

A huge strain. That joy in Socially Approved hatred of women seems to take up most of the oxygen in trans activism these days, which means it’s also taking over the left as a whole, especially when combined with the right-on hatred of Hillary Clinton.

The media should not give license to that impulse, and neither should anyone who calls themselves progressive. Internet arguments over the exact calibration of condemnation given to vitriol against Diane Abbott vs Laura Kuenssberg miss the fact that both left and right are united in finding some women acceptable targets for sexist abuse. Do as you would be done to.

The demonisation of Kuenssberg, which the Canary has taken such delight in, has had real world effects. The BBC political editor was given a bodyguard for Labour party conference, presumably as a result of threats. When the story was reported, a sizeable section of the online left, instead of believing that the BBC would make a sensible decision based on duty of care to an employee, decided to question whether it was an anti-Corbyn plot. Where were these threats? Why won’t you tell us what they are? The tone was conspiracist, which is frankly boggling to anyone who has ever clicked on the replies to a Kuenssberg tweet. The hate for her is real, it is often wildly divorced from anything she’s actually done, and it often takes overtly misogynist forms.

In fact, look at one of the first responses to the Canary’s own tweet of the story.

Same old same old.