The equation of white marble with beauty

Aug 5th, 2017 5:58 pm | By

In June there was Sarah Bond.

Earlier this month, Bond published an article in the online arts publication Hyperallergic saying that research shows ancient Western artifacts were painted in different colors but have, over time, faded to their base light marble color — giving the false impression that white skin was the classical ideal.

Uh oh. We know where this is going.

“Modern technology has revealed an irrefutable, if unpopular, truth: many of the statues, reliefs and sarcophagi created in the ancient Western world were in fact painted,” she wrote. “Marble was a precious material for Greco-Roman artisans, but it was considered a canvas, not the finished product for sculpture. It was carefully selected and then often painted in gold, red, green, black, white and brown, among other colors.”

While today’s scholars have accepted this as fact, she said, the general public is another story. Part of the problem is that most museums and art history textbooks continue to contain “a predominantly neon white display of skin tone when it comes to classical statues and sarcophagi.”

The “assemblage of neon whiteness serves to create a false idea of homogeneity — everyone was very white! — across the Mediterranean region,” she continued. “The Romans, in fact, did not define people as ‘white’; where, then, did this notion of race come from? … The equation of white marble with beauty is not an inherent truth of the universe.”

Bond suggests this misunderstanding has perpetuated or been used to support racism over time, saying that “how it continues to influence white supremacist ideas today [is] often ignored.” Groups such as Identity Europa, for example, use classical statuary “as a symbol of white male superiority,” she added. “It may have taken just one classical statue to influence the false construction of race, but it will take many of us to tear it down.”

Unpossible. There’s no such thing. What we see and hear has no influence whatsoever on what we think. Our thoughts come directly from God, or from the energy of the cosmos if that’s what you prefer to call it – but in no case do they come from what we experience in our environment. Our sacred free will and original thinking depend on this well-established fact, and I defy any mere classics scholar who would attempt to challenge it.

We make up our own thoughts out of our own heads; we do we do we do! We’re miraculous that way. We have souls, and internal essences, and Identities, and those are where our ideas come from – not from what we read or see or hear said.

Conservative sites like National Review and Campus Reform were on the case.

Campus Reform included some lengthy quotes from Bond’s piece and contacted her for comment. She complied, saying that “Greeks and Romans actually added color to their art and thus white marble was often the canvas rather than the finished product.” The “exalting of white (and unpainted) marble was then an 18th century construct of beauty rather than representative of the classical view,” she added in an email to the website. But the coverage there and elsewhere, plus an additional mention by conservative talk radio host Joe Pags, was enough to prompt online threats of violence and calls for her termination, she says. There was additional heckling and harassment, including anti-Semitic references (Bond is of Jewish descent).

“What they want to believe is that there is a liberal professor that is so sensitive to race issues that she will make race issues out of anything,” Bond told ArtForum. “They want to make me an example of the hyperliberalization of the academy.”

They’re making America great again.

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Every kind of source must be interpreted

Aug 5th, 2017 4:54 pm | By

Sarah Zhang at the Atlantic takes off from Taleb’s rudeness to Mary Beard to talk about what we don’t know about genetics.

In December, the BBC released on YouTube an old animated video about life in Roman Britain, which featured a family with a dark-skinned father. This depiction recently caught the ire of an Infowars editor, who tweeted, “Thank God the BBC is portraying Roman Britain as ethnically diverse. I mean, who cares about historical accuracy, right?”

To which Mary Beard—best known as a classicist at Cambridge, and more recently known for taking on internet trolls—replied, “this is indeed pretty accurate, there’s plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain.” To which Nassim Nicholas Taleb—best-known for railing about epistemic arrogance in The Black Swan, and recently known for arguing on Twitter—replied:

Oh how quickly the conversation jumped from children’s cartoon to Infowars rant to genetics. Having completed a close reading of the entire thread—you’re welcome—I think the most charitable interpretation is a classic Twitter case of arguing past one another. Beard is saying there were indeed dark-skinned people in Roman Britain. Taleb cries BS: A mixed family was not typical of the time. Those positions are not inconsistent. We each have hills to die on, I suppose.

That genetics even came up at all in a debate about ancient Roman history is indicative of science’s stature in these fractious times. Genetics gets invoked as neutral, as having none of the squishiness of historical interpretation.

Or the bullshit, as Taleb so politely puts it.

But that is simply not true—as applied to Roman Britain or any other time or place in the ancient world. Geneticists, anthropologists, and historians who rely on DNA to study human migrations are well aware of the limitations of DNA analysis. At the same time, ancestry DNA tests are becoming ever cheaper and more popular, and misconceptions abound.

“We have written sources. We have archaeological sources. Now we have genetic sources, but no source speaks for itself.” says Patrick Geary, a historian at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, who is using DNA to track barbarian invasions during the fall of the Roman empire. “Every kind of source must be interpreted. We are only at the beginning of how to properly interpret the genetic data.”

Interpreted? But that’s that humanistic bullshit that Taleb is so scornful of.

But seriously, what she goes on to say about how historians use genetics is interesting.

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Did Quintus Lollius Urbicus sneak across the border?

Aug 5th, 2017 4:16 pm | By

Mary Beard looks at another bizarre Twitter storm, this one set off by outrage at The Very Idea that there were any not entirely white people in Roman Britain.

It all started when an “alt-right” commenter picked up on a BBC schools video that featured a family in Roman Britain in which the father, a high ranking  soldier, was presented as black (as it is a cartoon it is harder to be more precise than that). The commenter objected both on twitter and on an online site. ‘The left’ he wrote, ‘ is literally trying to rewrite history to pretend Britain always had mass immigration.’

Several people objected to this criticism before me, notable Mike Stuchbery, who  pointed out on Twitter quite a lot of the evidence for ethnic and cultural diversity in the province. I came in quite late to say that the video was ‘pretty accurate’. I think, for example, that the BBC character was loosely based (with a bit of a chronological shift) on Quintus Lollius Urbicus, a man from what is now Algeria, who became governor of Britain; you can still visit his grand tomb at Tiddis. If you want some more information on that accuracy, then try the blog of Neville Morley or of Matthew Nicholls; thanks to both for the support — and to the many others who have spoken up. I am really grateful.

You mean there wasn’t a Wall between Algeria and Britain? You mean the Mediterranean and the Atlantic weren’t full of sharks the size of 747s that ate any ship that ventured too far from home? You mean people from one place could actually travel to another place, even one quite a long distance away? How can this be? It must be PolitiKol Korrektness.

It was then that the attacks came, and have gone on for days since. True they haven’t yet got to death threats (as they have with my US colleague Sarah Bond, who had the nerve to talk about classical statues not originally being white) but a torrent of aggressive insults, on everything from my historical competence and elitist ivory tower viewpoint to my age, shape and gender (batty old broad, obese, etc etc ). True they were well balanced by the support I got (thanks again all), and individually none was more than irritating, but the cumulative effect was just nasty. And it got worse after Nicholas Nassim Taleb weighed in, not on my side. He proved a rallying cry for the insults. One person, for example, posted a photo of Taleb, with the message to me ‘Hey… how does this make you pheel?’. When I said that it felt a bit like harrassment another came in with ‘no its what actual debate looks like. A bit more would might make you a better historian’ <sic>. And the same guy followed that up with a cartoon image of a frog putting his ‘hand’ over a woman’s mouth. This was about par for the course in gender terms. Whereas Taleb was Prof Taleb, I was Ms Beard (I don’t actually give a stuff about academic titles, but you see what’s going on here!)

Taleb himself was slightly less insulting, slightly. He accused me of talking bullshit and started to turn the whole thing into a bit of academic warfare/oneupmanship: ‘I get more academic citations per year than you got all your life!’ he wrote at one point.

At that point I took a quick squiz at Prof Taleb’s Twitter and found the usual dreary bullying combined with whines about PolitiKol Korrektness. How tedious these people are.

He wrote a piece for medium about how PolitiKolly Korrekt it all is and how angry it makes him, with an extra rant about UK academics:

The UK political correctness mob. Britain perfected the scholar with “f*** you money”, but today’s typical U.K. academic is a wuss, with a renewable 5 year contract, and, like the middle class, in a state of insecurity and constant fear of being caught breaking rules. They are very vulnerable to the slightest accusation (recall the Tim Hunt affair where a Nobel winner was summarily fired because of a confusing joke, with no chance of explaining what he meant).

Oh look, he got a basic fact wrong. Nearly everybody arguing his side of the question got that basic fact wrong. Tim Hunt was not fired, summarily or otherwise. He was a retired academic at the time. He was removed from an honorary professorship, an unpaid position.

In my case “feminists” were upset that I could disagree with a woman (I should not treat a woman as I would a man, yet they manage to find no contradiction.) So they used the excuse that I call Mary Beard Ms Beard simply because I will never call a historian with a PhD “Doctor”, particulary if the person, like Ms Beard has shown evidence of being a BS vendor…

Well he doesn’t actually mean “has shown evidence of being a BS vendor.” He means “has said something I don’t like.”

Greetings from Pepe the Frog.

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August 5, 1964

Aug 5th, 2017 10:13 am | By

Ari Berman notes an anniversary:

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Generally less central

Aug 5th, 2017 9:47 am | By

Study comes up with the least surprising findings ever:

A new study from the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering found that films were likely to contain fewer women and minority characters than white men, and when they did appear, these characters were portrayed in ways that reinforced stereotypes. And female characters, in particular, were generally less central to the plot.

No kidding. The vast majority of movies these days have literally only men in starring roles.

The study, conducted by the school’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab, used artificial intelligence and machine learning to do a linguistic analysis of nearly 1,000 popular film scripts, mostly from the last several decades. Of the 7,000 characters studied, nearly 4,900 were men and just over 2,000 were women. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the male characters spoke far more than the female ones did, with 37,000 dialogues involving men and just 15,000 involving women.

Women are there to look hot, not to say stuff.

While previous studies examined how frequently characters of each gender spoke, the school’s researchers went further by analyzing what was actually said.

They found that the language used by female characters tended to be more positive, emotional and related to family values, while the language used by male characters was more closely linked to achievement. African-American characters were more likely to use swear words, and Latino characters were more apt to use words related to sexuality. Older characters, meanwhile, were more likely to discuss religion.

The researchers also looked at the “centrality” of each character by mapping his or her relationship to others in the film. They found that in most cases, when a female character was removed from the narrative, the plot was not significantly disrupted — except for in horror movies, in which women are often portrayed as victims.

It’s the same old thing. Women aren’t really people – they’re facsimiles, who can play the parts of people in a limited way, but they’re not people all the way through, with complicated thoughts and feelings. They don’t really matter. They don’t make anything happen. They’re not agents.

The study was one of two released recently by U.S.C. researchers that looked at diversity in film. The other, by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, found that in 900 films released from 2007 to 2016, the percentage of speaking characters who were women never climbed above 32.8 percent.

Because women, meh. They’re too boring to be allowed to speak much.

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Paltrow will happily take your money

Aug 5th, 2017 9:19 am | By

David Gorski, an actual medical doctor, takes a look at Goop and the medical doctors who defend it.

One thing the publicity did reveal is just how much about the money Paltrow is:

This is Paltrow’s peculiar gift — or grift — and it was on full display at “In Goop Health,” her day-long event meant to bring her website’s “most requested and shared wellness content to life.” By last week, all 500 tickets, ranging from $500 to $1,500, had sold out; another event is planned for New York City in January.

Attendees were told via email to arrive at 9 a.m. The summit wouldn’t actually begin for another hour, which allowed enough time to shop inside a cavernous industrial space for Goop-branded products such as water bottles ($35), hoodies ($100) and a “G.”-branded flight pack consisting of four thin nesting canvas bags containing some magnesium packets, a sleep mask, earbuds and moisturizer ($198).

It was the physical manifestation of the day to come: For those willing to spend so much on so little, Paltrow will happily take your money.

This is, of course, what Goop is about far more than anything else, which Colbert’s skewering mocked so well. And there is a lot of quackery, pseudoscience and nonsense. It ranges from “leech facials” (whatever that is—wait, I don’t want to know) to aura photography (basically Kirlian photography, showing that no pseudoscience or mysticism ever completely disappears) to IV drips to earthing to crystal therapy (of course!) to the lectin avoidance diet. (More on this last one later; it suffices for now to say that lectin is the new gluten.) Indeed, the Goop brand was best described as “pure, unadulterated, blood-diamond free, organic-certified, biodynamic, moon-dusted bullshit.”

But it’s not just goofy beauty-product marketing.

Beauty products have always featured a healthy helping of woo, after all. But that’s not all Goop promotes. It also promotes The One Quackery To Rule Them All, homeopathy, plus other quackery like detox cleanses, naturopathy, colon cleanses, functional medicine, and a whole lot of dubious fad diets. This dubious medical advice is then coupled with fear mongering about “mold toxicity,” the Epstein-Barr Virus as the root of all chronic illness, and the long-debunked claim that bras predispose to breast cancer. So, yes, it might be amusing that Paltrow has claimed that there are all sorts of “toxins” in shampoo (which is, of course, why she says you should buy her shampoos) or that goat’s milk is the cure for what ails you, but she’s fused the usually relatively minor woo associated with beauty and “wellness” with some serious quackery. She’s basically taken beauty woo and weaponized it into something that is no longer just a relatively harmless bit of nonsense for customers with, as comedians Mitchell and Webb once put it, a “vague sense of unease, a touch of the nerves, or even just more money than sense.” It’s gotten serious.

And then the doctors got into the act.

It finally happened about a week and a half ago, when an article by two of Goop’s doctors was published on the Goop website. The title? “Uncensored: A Word from our Doctors.” The two doctors in question were Dr. Steven Gundry, who is doing his best to turn lectins into the new gluten, and Dr. Aviva Romm, who claims that EBV is the cause of thyroiditis, which is the cause of…well, basically almost all chronic diseases. It was basically a hit piece on Dr. Gunter, who is one of the most persistent and widely quoted bloggers criticizing Goop.

And another actual medical doctor, as opposed to a movie star or an offspring of Queen Brenda.

never have I seen such a passive-aggressive, self-righteous combination of tone trolling and mansplaining in a single article. His is merely a somewhat more subtle form of ad hominem attack. One also has to wonder why Goop decided to attack Dr. Gunter specifically and not, say, Prof. Tim Caulfield, who actually wrote a book entitled Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: How the Famous Sell Us Elixirs of Health, Beauty & Happiness. Could it be because the editors of Goop thought it would be easier to paint a woman as unreasonable and—dare I say it?—hysterical? Perish the thought! Or why didn’t Goop attack Stephen Colbert? It couldn’t be because he’s the host of a popular late night [show] that might one day be needed to help promote one of Paltrow’s movies someday, not to mention that Colbert could very easily punch back with devastating effect, could it? Perish the thought!

Oh dear, how cynical. I’m shocked.

Dr. Romm invoked a veritable crank bingo of tropes, such as the “science was wrong before” trope (also invoked by Dr. Gundry), before going all “just starting a conversation” on us:

In a time when women are desperately hungry for safe alternatives to mainstream practices that too often fall short of helpful for chronic symptoms, and in the setting of a medical system that is continually falling short of providing lasting solutions to the chronic disease problems we’re facing: I prefer, rather than ridiculing vehicles that are actually highly effective at reaching large numbers of women who want to be well, to seek to understand what women are looking for, what the maintstream isn’t providing; and how we can work together to support those vehicles in elevating their content so that women are receiving the meaningful, and evidence-based answers, they want and deserve, whenever possible.

TRANSLATION: Don’t mock us, even though we peddle absolute nonsense sold with bafflegab. We’re highly effective at reaching large numbers of women who want to be well. Then we well them expensive nonsense.

Or sell them, probably, but “well them” is a good way of putting it. Lie back, relax, and let us well you [for a steep fee].

Read the whole thing.

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Beach essentials like a leather-wrapped cooler

Aug 4th, 2017 2:21 pm | By

A Hadley Freeman tweet alerted me to new news from Gwyneth Paltrow.

https://twitter.com/HadleyFreeman/status/893350561600471040

https://twitter.com/HadleyFreeman/status/893350837464051712

To Architectural Digest we go, to drink our fill of this luxurious general store with its straw hats on the wall.

Gwyneth Paltrow and the Hamptons go together like a Hans Wegner chair in a Scandinavian-style home. That’s why Paltrow, who has a home in Amagansett, finally decided to bring her signature Goop Mrkt out East, and it’s not your typical polished Hamptons boutique. Tucked inside a 20th-century cottage, the store is more like a chic general shop you would find in an English seaside town, which is exactly the look Paltrow wanted to achieve when she enlisted former Soho House designer Vicky Charles, of Charles & Co., to reimagine the landmarked property.

People replying to Freeman’s tweet are providing poignant details of the chic general shop you would find in an English seaside town: the stale cakes, the Fray Bentos tinned steak and kidney pie, the three day old sausage rolls under a heat lamp by the till, the combination of scratch cards, cheap strong lager and dusty tins of Tyne brand beef curry.

Ah the olde worlde charme.

Goop’s own products, curated specifically for the Hamptons lifestyle, create an extra layer of contemporary. In the “mudroom,” guests are greeted with herb bundles hanging from the wall; beach essentials, like a leather-wrapped cooler from Jayson Home; and gardening supplies, including a brass mister and Womanswork gloves. “This particular space was inspired by a room in an English cottage, where you can just kick off your wellies and store your gardening tools,” says Brittany Pattner, Goop’s creative director.

Other items are more farm-focused, such as tomatoes grown from the outdoor garden and fresh-baked bread from Eli Zabar, which will be delivered daily. “It’s all about the easy, breezy life you live out here,” says Pattner. “We wanted to create a really holistic experience of not only curating products, but also providing the right context for those items.” Mission accomplished.

It’s curated specifically for the Hamptons lifestyle.

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Trump’s rudeness is a STATE SECRET

Aug 4th, 2017 11:13 am | By

Let’s go back to February 16 to revisit Trump’s fury over “leaks” about his tantrums and train-wrecks.

President Trump said Thursday that he had personally directed the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation and determine who was responsible for what he said were illegal leaks that have unfairly damaged his fledgling administration.

“I’ve actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks,” Mr. Trump said during a contentious, 75-minute news conference at the White House. “Those are criminal leaks.”

No law forbids a president from making [to make] a criminal referral to the Justice Department, but it is unusual for a president to direct the agency to open a criminal investigation into his perceived opponents or to talk publicly about having done so. The White House, under presidents of both parties, has generally restricted direct contact with the Justice Department about prospective investigations to avoid the appearance of politicizing law enforcement.

But of course “unusual” and “generally” cut no ice with Trump, because he’s here to drain the swamp, which means he can do anything he wants to.

Mr. Trump appeared particularly incensed at public reports about his rancorous phone conversations with foreign leaders, including telling the president of Mexico the he might send American troops to stop “bad hombres down there,” and berating the prime minister of Australia over an Obama-era deal to resettle refugees and then cutting the call short.

But that’s just too bad, because we need to know how rash and inappropriate and incompetent he is.

He also expressed frustration over leaks about federal surveillance that picked up pre-inaugural phone calls between the Russian ambassador and Michael T. Flynn, who resigned under pressure this week from his role as national security adviser.

We get it: he wants his lies and corruption kept secret. Of course he does. But that’s in his interest, not ours.

Susan Hennessy, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington and former intelligence agency lawyer who has written about leaks, said that Mr. Trump’s directive could send a chilling message.

“The fear is that these leak investigations will be used as a form of political retaliation” against people who may have exposed information that is personally embarrassing to Mr. Trump, she said. “We don’t want this to become a political witch hunt.”

If they can get away with using leak investigations as a form of political retaliation, they will use them that way.

During the news conference, Mr. Trump did not directly answer questions about the substance of other recent reports on private dealings his aides may have had with Russia. Instead, he reframed the question as a problem of leaks. He declared that the “leaks are real,” but denounced articles based on the leaked information as “fake news.”

This is all about the reframing.

For most of American history, the government did not prosecute those suspected of leaking. From the founding of the country through the end of the 20th century, just one person was convicted of leaking, and he was later pardoned.

But starting during the George W. Bush administration and intensifying in the Barack Obama administration, the government has brought leak-related charges far more frequently. Depending on how they are counted, Mr. Obama oversaw nine or 10 leak-related cases, more than all previous presidents combined.

Still, Matt Miller, a former director of public affairs for the Justice Department in Mr. Obama’s first term, said none of those cases involved going after someone who had leaked information about embarrassing or inappropriate activity by a president or his immediate staff.

But that’s what they’re planning to do now, if they can get away with it.

Back to the present.

The Trump administration has been bedeviled by leaks large and small that have disclosed infighting inside his administration, including the president’s rancorous phone conversations with foreign leaders. Information shared with reporters brought to light what surveillance showed about contacts by Mr. Trump’s associates with Russia and even what Mr. Trump said to Russian visitors in the Oval Office about his firing of Mr. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.

In May, Mr. Trump himself disclosed sensitive intelligence to visiting Russian officials about an Islamic State plot, blurting out details that had been shared by Israel — a disclosure that some intelligence officials worried might have effectively exposed an important Israeli government source. The president does have the authority to declassify and disclose information at his own discretion.

Not all leaks are illegal, but the Espionage Act and a handful of other federal statutes criminalize the unauthorized disclosure of certain categories of national-security related information that could harm the country or aid a foreign adversary.

He tweeted sensitive intelligence just the other day, too.

In February, Mr. Trump said at a news conference that he told Mr. Sessions to look into leaks — an unusual thing to say, since presidents generally try to avoid appearing as if they are asserting political control over law enforcement.

Mr. Comey also wrote in a memo, recounting one of his conversations with Mr. Trump, that the president had told him to consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information.

It would be unusual to prosecute a journalist for publishing government secrets, a step that would raise significant First Amendment issues. Mr. Sessions took no questions, but Mr. Rosenstein afterward demurred when asked whether he would prosecute reporters for doing their jobs, saying he would not “comment on hypotheticals.”

That’s nice. Threaten journalists, and then refuse to answer reasonable questions.

Somehow I don’t feel any more secure.

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Look, look at the shiny thing

Aug 4th, 2017 9:42 am | By

Grand jury? What grand jury? Never mind that: it’s all about THE LEAKS.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that the Justice Department has more than tripled the number of leak investigations compared with the number that were ongoing at the end of the last administration, offering the first public confirmation of the breadth of the department’s efforts to crack down on unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information.

Sessions made the announcement at a long-anticipated news conference with his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, as well as Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina.

Yeah, man. Never mind all the ethics violations. Never mind the torrent of lies. Never mind That Meeting. Never mind the fact that Trump personally wrote the lying statement for Junior. Never mind all this pesky obstruction of justice. Never mind the Russians. It’s about THE LEAKS.

Though he did not say if it resulted in a criminal referral, Sessions cited in particular a recent disclosure to The Washington Post of transcripts of President Trump’s conversations with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and another with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

We need to know about those. It’s in the public interest to know how Trump talks to foreign heads of state.

Sessions also said he was devoting more resources to stamping out leaks — directing Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to actively monitor every investigation, instructing the National Security Division and U.S. attorneys to prioritize such cases and creating a new counterintelligence unit in the FBI to manage the work. He said he was reviewing the Justice Department’s policy on issuing subpoenas to reporters.

Now why would they want to change what the FBI considers a priority? Any guesses?

Several prominent conservatives lauded Sessions’s announcement, while open government and free press groups said it was worrisome. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said it would “strongly oppose” revising department guidelines on issuing subpoenas to reporters, and Danielle Brian, executive director at the Project On Government Oversight, said leak investigations might inappropriately target well-intentioned whistleblowers.

“Whistleblowers are the nation’s first line of defense against fraud, waste, abuse, and illegality within the federal government, the last thing this administration wants to do is to deter whistleblowing in an effort to stymie leaks,” Brian said.

Leak cases are difficult to prove and prosecute, and they almost always come with political controversy — especially when the leaks involve providing information to reporters that is arguably in the public interest.

Quite so. Trump lies and cheats and steals whenever he can get away with it, so it’s in the public interest to keep a very close watch on him.

It has long been Justice Department practice in leak investigations to try to avoid investigating journalists directly to find their sources. Instead, the policy has been for investigators to first focus on government employees. In some cases, when the scrutiny of government employees has been exhausted, senior Justice Department officials may authorize an investigation of journalists, possibly by examining their phone records.

As a result, leak investigations are often slow moving, and many never lead to any charges. Within the FBI and the Justice Department, agents and prosecutors who handle leak cases have long argued that if they could investigate journalists earlier and more aggressively, they could be more successful in prosecuting leak cases.

“We are reviewing the entire process of how we conduct media leak investigations by responding to issues that have been raised by our career prosecutors and agents,’’ said Rosenstein. “We’re taking basically a fresh look at it… We don’t know yet what if any changes we want to make but we are taking a fresh look.’’

Sessions said the Justice Department must “balance the press’s role with protecting our national security and the lives of those who serve in the intelligence community, the armed services and all law abiding Americans.”

Yeeaah national security is not the issue here. It’s all about Trump security.

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Cosmopolitan bias

Aug 3rd, 2017 5:06 pm | By

Down into the muck they go.

On Wednesday, for reasons known only to whatever critters inhabit the ravines and gullies of the presidential cortex, they trotted [Stephen] Miller out to talk about the administration’s new proposal to limit legal immigration. Miller is not equipped to be the public face of a phony real estate scam, let alone the executive branch of the government of the United States. Jim Acosta of CNN asked him a question. It did not go well.

Transcript via Adweek:

Acosta: This whole notion of they have to learn English before they get to the United States, are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?

Miller: I have to say, I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree that in your mind — this is an amazing moment. That you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English is so insulting to millions of hardworking immigrants who do speak English from all over the world. Have you honestly never met an immigrant from another country who speaks English outside of Great Britain and Australia?

Ah yes your “cosmopolitan bias”…you dirty Jew. That’s what “cosmopolitan” means in the mouths of the Stephen Millers of the world.

The way Miller leaned into the word “cosmopolitan” while answering Acosta has a long and ignoble history in 20th century authoritarianism, especially the anti-Semitic variety. During World War II, for example, the Soviet government under Stalin used to rail regularly at “rootless cosmopolitanism,” especially in the arts. The Nazis were fond of tossing it around, too. There is no context in which Miller’s use of the word against Acosta makes sense except as a historical signaling device.

The muck is rising around us.

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Important White House ethics rule

Aug 3rd, 2017 1:51 pm | By

Here we go:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Special counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington to investigate allegations of Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, the Wall Street Journal said on Thursday, citing two unnamed people familiar with the matter.

The grand jury began its work in recent weeks and is a sign that Mueller’s inquiry into Russia’s efforts to influence the election and whether it colluded with President Donald Trump’s campaign is ramping up, the Journal said.

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The late lamented Voting Rights Act

Aug 3rd, 2017 1:15 pm | By

Sierra Gray at the ACLU writes:

On the shoulders of my grandfather Dilmus Agnew, my mother watched Martin Luther King, Jr. give his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech in our nation’s capital in 1963. “We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote,” exclaimed Dr. King, as my mother watched on. “No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Because of the work of Dr. King and other civil rights advocates, two years later the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ushered in a new era for the rights of people of color. The road to passing the VRA was not an easy one. But it was the product of the blood, sweat, and tears of many fighting for basic civil rights, culminating in the events of March 7, 1965. The painful sting of tear gas and the piercing sounds of guns from Alabama State troopers turned a peaceful protest in Selma organized by Dr. King into what we know today as Bloody Sunday.

…

Just five months after “Bloody Sunday,” the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law on August 6 in the presence of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other prominent civil rights activists. The VRA outlawed literacy tests, poll taxes, and other discriminatory barriers that were used to keep African-Americans from voting. In addition, it provided checks and balances on state policies in places with a history of discrimination.

President Johnson’s claim that voting rights are an American issue was exemplified through the bipartisan support the act received. There has been widespread bipartisan support of the VRA since its inception to its subsequent reauthorizations. Most recently in 2006, Congress reauthorized, nearly unanimously, the act for another 25 years.

But the question is, now, 52 years later, has the “dream” been fulfilled? Has justice rolled down like waters and righteousness like a stream as Martin Luther King, Jr. hoped it would?

We have seen great progress over the past half-decade thanks to the VRA. By the end of 1965, 250,000 new African-American citizens were registered to vote. The number of African-Americans holding elected offices has grown nationwide. Representation in the House and Senate increased from five legislators before the VRA was passed to 50 in 2017.

Progress, however, has been interrupted.

In 2013, the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby v. Holder removed the heart of the Voting Rights Act. In a five to four decision, the court struck down the key provision of the law that required states with a history of voter discrimination to preclear changes to their voting laws and practices with the Department of Justice to ensure their fairness. The majority made this decision even as they acknowledged that voter suppression and discrimination still occur.

As a result, the flood gates opened with17 states introducing restrictive laws affecting over 110 million people and their right to vote. The new laws range from Texas’ voter ID laws that prohibit students to use their school identification to vote while accepting gun licenses to North Carolina’s “monster voter suppression” bill that a federal appeals court found to be “targeting African Americans with almost surgical procession.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was one of the most successful civil rights laws in our nation’s history. We must honor and never forget those that fought inside and outside the court room, and even paid with their lives to ensure that all people have the right to vote. That’s why we have to keep up the fight to end voter suppression laws and efforts.

Congress must pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act to fully restore the Voting Rights Act. The Advancement Act would restore and update the requirements for states with a history of discrimination to get pre-approval before voting changes take effect, combatting the modern forms of voter suppression we see today.

The responsibility is now ours to honor the trailblazers of the past through action that will ensure an even brighter future for all Americans.

We’d better not hold our breaths on that one.

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Well no the phone calls didn’t actually happen but

Aug 3rd, 2017 12:15 pm | By

Sanders was forced to admit that those fantasy “phone calls” of Trump’s were not real, actual, happened in real life phone calls, but phantasmagoria from his distracted brain.

Has President Trump told you about the time the head of the Boy Scouts called to say his was the best speech ever delivered to the more than century-old organization? What about when the president of Mexico picked up the telephone to let him know that his tough enforcement efforts at the border were paying off handsomely?

The anecdotes, both of which Mr. Trump told over the last week, were similar in that they appeared to be efforts to showcase broad support for the president when his White House has been mired in turmoil. But they also had another thing in common, the White House conceded on Wednesday: Neither was true.

Of course they weren’t. It’s become child’s play to recognize his boastful lies. He provides fresh examples every day on Twitter, so we’d be pretty dense if we hadn’t picked up the pattern by now.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, confirmed at her daily briefing what the Boy Scouts and the Mexican government had already asserted publicly, which is that neither phone call that Mr. Trump referred to had occurred.

But they weren’t lies, she wants you to understand. Lots of people did like his Boy Scouts rant, and he has actually spoken to Peña Nieto, so they weren’t lies, just slight exaggerations about specifics like time, place, medium, content, upshot, and the like.

The nonexistent phone calls added to questions about Mr. Trump’s credibility and that of his White House, already in doubt given shifting explanations on matters large and small, including the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration and his involvement in drafting a statement about why his son Donald J. Trump Jr. had met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer during the campaign. The calls appeared to be the latest evidence that the president, who prefers impromptu storytelling to a fact-checked script, is willing to shade or even manufacture events to suit his preferred narrative — even when the story is easily disprovable and of little consequence.

Ok here’s a conundrum: is that more because he’s a self-serving liar, or because he’s stupid? Serious question. That impromptu storytelling thing is a big favorite with people who aren’t all that sharp. It goes with having no interesting thoughts or analyses. Trump’s head is pretty empty. It does have a lot of clutter in the form of slogans and prejudices, but there isn’t much more than that. Who knows whether or not he even realizes it when he’s making shit up?

“He’s been lying his whole life, almost reflexively, and it’s almost as if he finds it more satisfying and easier than to speak with precision,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who later wrote a biography of Mr. Trump, “The Truth About Trump.” “When he was a kid, he lied about whether he hit a home run or not, and when he was a young man, he lied about how tall Trump Tower is — how many floors it is and the actual floors in feet — and he lied about which beautiful women were interested in him.”

Narcissism & dishonesty=a bad recipe.

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Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.

Aug 3rd, 2017 10:37 am | By

The Washington Post got its hands on transcripts of two of the much-discussed phone conversations Trump had during his first week as Top Dude, the one with Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and the one with Malcolm Turnbull of Australia.

In the call with Turnbull the issue was an existing agreement with the Obama administration to accept some refugees Australia was holding on Nauru and Manus Islands and whether or not Trump would honor it. This was the day after Trump’s initial travel ban, that went down so smoothly…and he was not in the mood to honor that agreement.

Trump: Well, actually I just called for a total ban on Syria and from many different countries from where there is terror, and extreme vetting for everyone else – and somebody told me yesterday that close to 2,000 people are coming who are really probably troublesome. And I am saying, boy that will make us look awfully bad. Here I am calling for a ban where I am not letting anybody in and we take 2,000 people. Really it looks like 2,000 people that Australia does not want and I do not blame you by the way, but the United States has become like a dumping ground. You know Malcom, anybody that has a problem – you remember the Mariel boat lift, where Castro let everyone out of prison and Jimmy Carter accepted them with open arms. These were brutal people. Nobody said Castro was stupid, but now what are we talking about is 2,000 people that are actually imprisoned and that would actually come into the United States. I heard about this – I have to say I love Australia; I love the people of Australia. I have so many friends from Australia, but I said – geez that is a big ask, especially in light of the fact that we are so heavily in favor, not in favor, but we have no choice but to stop things. We have to stop. We have allowed so many people into our country that should not be here. We have our San Bernardino’s, we have had the World Trade Center come down because of people that should not have been in our country, and now we are supposed to take 2,000. It sends such a bad signal. You have no idea. It is such a bad thing.

Turnbull patiently explains that they’re all subject to vetting and the US can accept whatever number it chooses, including zero.

Turnbull: Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you. The obligation is to only go through the process. So that is the first thing. Secondly, the people — none of these people are from the conflict zone. They are basically economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. That is the vast bulk of them. They have been under our supervision for over three years now and we know exactly everything about them.

Trump: Why haven’t you let them out? Why have you not let them into your society?

Turnbull: Okay, I will explain why. It is not because they are bad people. It is because in order to stop people smugglers, we had to deprive them of the product. So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Noble [sic]Prize winning genius, we will not let you in. Because the problem with the people —

Trump: That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am.

Point missed. He apparently didn’t listen to the part about people smugglers, because later he asks why the focus on boats, whatcha got against boats? He heard the “we will not let you in” and it drove the “people smugglers” right out of his head.

They went back and forth some more until Trump let the angry bear all the way out:

 

Turnbull: The given number in the agreement is 1,250 and it is entirely a matter of your vetting. I think that what you could say is that the Australian government is consistent with the principles set out in the Executive Order.

Trump: No, I do not want say that. I will just have to say that unfortunately I will have to live with what was said by Obama. I will say I hate it. Look, I spoke to Putin, Merkel, Abe of Japan, to France today, and this was my most unpleasant call because I will be honest with you. I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.

This despite the fact that Turnbull had repeatedly clearly explained to him that that was not why they were detained on the islands.

Trump got angrier and angrier.

Well, maybe you should let them out of prison. I am doing this because Obama made a bad deal. I am not doing this because it fits into my Executive Order. I am taking 2,000 people from Australia who are in prison and the day before I signed an Executive Order saying that we are not taking anybody in. We are not taking anybody in, those days are over.

Turnbull: But can I say to you, there is nothing more important in business or politics than a deal is a deal. Look, you and I have a lot of mutual friends.

Trump: Look, I do not know how you got them to sign a deal like this, but that is how they lost the election. They said I had no way to 270 and I got 306. That is why they lost the election, because of stupid deals like this. You have brokered many a stupid deal in business and I respect you, but I guarantee that you broke many a stupid deal. This is a stupid deal. This deal will make me look terrible.

Turnbull: Mr. President, I think this will make you look like a man who stands by the commitments of the United States. It shows that you are a committed —

Trump: Okay, this shows me to be a dope. I am not like this but, if I have to do it, I will do it but I do not like this at all. I will be honest with you. Not even a little bit. I think it is ridiculous and Obama should have never signed it. The only reason I will take them is because I have to honor a deal signed by my predecessor and it was a rotten deal. I say that it was a stupid deal like all the other deals that this country signed. You have to see what I am doing. I am unlocking deals that were made by people, these people were incompetent. I am not going to say that it fits within the realm of my Executive Order. We are going to allow 2,000 prisoners to come into our country and it is within the realm of my Executive Order? If that is the case my Executive Order does not mean anything Malcom [sic]. I look like a dope. The only way that I can do this is to say that my predecessor made a deal and I have no option then to honor the deal. I hate having to do it, but I am still going to vet them very closely. Suppose I vet them closely and I do not take any?

Turnbull points out that that’s what he’s been saying. Trump asks more repetitive questions and delivers a final angry outburst:

I have no choice to say that about it. Malcom [sic], I am going to say that I have no choice but to honor my predecessor’s deal. I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made. It is an embarrassment to the United States of America and you can say it just the way I said it. I will say it just that way. As far as I am concerned that is enough Malcom [sic]. I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.

The transcript has them saying bye-bye and thanks, but I think the staff invented those.

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Activities that are likely to cause loss of life

Aug 2nd, 2017 4:21 pm | By

There’s a campaign to save Europe.

Or rather, that’s what a group of far-right activists believe they’ll be doing in the coming days when they plan to set off in a 422-ton vessel with a 25-member crew from Sicily, hoping to block rescue boats saving the lives of migrants on the Mediterranean Sea.

In recent months, European far-right groups have targeted the nongovernmental organization rescue efforts between Italy and Libya. At least 90,000 migrants and refugees — mostly from sub-Saharan Africa — have crossed the route, and at least 2,300 have died, in 2017 so far. In May, far-right activists disrupted a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) search-and-rescue boat from disembarking at the Sicilian port of Catania. Then, on June 26, the activists announced they had obtained a vessel (called C-Star) and headed to Catania, where they hoped to “intervene” in NGO search-and-rescue missions during what they said would be a “summer of disturbances.”

You know, like the way activists used to go to sea to try to disrupt whalers. Or not so much like that as the inversion of that, since the activists then were trying to save whales while the activists now are trying to prevent people from saving drowning migrants.

Last Wednesday, Defend Europe activists were photographed spending time with Katie Hopkins, the British Mail Online columnist. Hopkins is best known for once describing refugees as “cockroaches” in a national newspaper and for being fired from her LBC radio show after calling for a “final solution.”

Ah yes Katie Hopkins, whom “Last Liberal” Dave Rubin boasted of interviewing yesterday.

But let’s be clear: Their aim to interfere with boats is completely illegal. The Defend Europe activists are paranoid, embroiled in chaos and have no real plan. They’re disguising themselves by wearing wigs because they believe the police are trailing them. What’s more, their boat has been held up in Cyprus, where its captain was arrested, allegedly over false documents.

In June, I boarded a rescue mission with MSF, one of the same boats the activists are hoping to stop. On board, many of the people who had been rescued had escaped indefinite detention in Libya, where conditions are described as “inhumane.” Others had fled forced labor, sexual violence and even modern-day slave markets. A few weeks earlier, activists had blocked one of MSF’s boats in Catania — the rescue team was not amused, but nor were its members threatened. Instead, they’ve grown weary: They want to get on with their work, not play games with people who are putting vulnerable people’s lives at risk.

Because of these “games,” Patreon dropped Lauren Southern.

Lauren Southern, a right-wing Canadian blogger and YouTuber who works with Generation Identity, said Patreon “essentially eviscerat[ed] the majority of my income” when the crowdfunding site banned her earlier this month. In a YouTube video uploaded July 21, Southern shows an email from Patreon that reads: “It appears you are currently raising funds in order to take part in activities that are likely to cause loss of life. We have therefore decided to remove your page.”

Southern was recently involved in a viral stunt obstructing a refugee search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean and had made plans to do it again on a larger scale. Jack Conte, a cofounder of Patreon, took to YouTube on July 28 to confirm and explain the decision. He said that Patreon’s trust and safety team judges accounts by their “manifest observable behavior … what a camera has seen, what an audio device has recorded.” He pointed to Southern’s video of herself directing her coconspirators to veer in front of a rescue ship and her plans for a second such excursion as evidence.

Of course she’s now being hailed as a martyr for free speech.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments


Greatest ever ever ever ever

Aug 2nd, 2017 12:59 pm | By

Another entry in the Great Book of Donald’s Lies:

On Tuesday, Politico got its hands on a previously unpublished transcript of Trump’s July 25 interview with the Wall Street Journal. In that interview, Trump makes a bold claim about his controversial Boy Scouts speech the day before. After someone from the Journal suggested that Trump got a “mixed” reaction to his speech, Trump — as he often does — seemed to overcompensate.

“I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful,” Trump said. “So there was — there was no mix.”

Except a source for the Scouts said this doesn’t appear to have happened at all.

“We are not aware of any call from national BSA leadership to the White House,” the source said.

Cautiously worded. Maybe the head of Scouts did unofficially call Don to lick his bum? If so he apparently hasn’t claimed credit.

 Trump delivered the speech in West Virginia on the evening of July 24, and the Scouts appeared to rebuke him the next day, saying the organization is “wholly nonpartisan and does not promote any one position, product, service, political candidate or philosophy.”

That was the same day — July 25 — that Trump spoke with the Journal. Two days later, July 27, the Scouts issued a fuller effort to distance themselves from Trump’s speech. In a letter posted online, the Scouts apologized.

“I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree,” said Michael Surbaugh, the chief scout executive for the Boy Scouts of America. “That was never our intent.”

Come on now. It was Trump. What else was he going to do? Give a thoughtful grown-up idealistic speech in a thoughtful grown-up manner? Please.

This, of course, wouldn’t be the first time Trump has inflated the reception his speeches have received. To wit:

Which is more repellent, the lying or the boasting? It’s so hard to choose.

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To strike good deals for the American people

Aug 2nd, 2017 12:38 pm | By

Trump reluctantly signed the Russia sanctions bill.

Trump’s reluctant signing of the legislation came nearly a week after it was approved by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority in the Senate and after a similarly large majority in the House. The president issued two statements outlining his concerns with the bill, which he called “seriously flawed,” primarily because it limits his ability to negotiate sanctions without congressional approval.

“By limiting the Executive’s flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together,” Trump said in a statement on Wednesday morning.

“Deals” – as if they’re arguing over the price of a set of golf clubs Trump want to sell on eBay.

The signing statement, long a controversial tool of president, expresses the president’s concern with legislation but it does nothing to halt or amend it. The president had the ability to veto it, but it would likely have been overridden by majorities in Congress.

Bush junior used those extensively by way of saying he was going to ignore the legislation – hence the “controversial” label.

Lawmakers’ solidarity in tying Trump’s hands on this issue reflects a deepening concern about the administration’s posture toward Russia, which critics have characterized as naive. The new Russia sanctions expand on measures taken by the Obama administration to punish the Kremlin for its alleged efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. But Trump has continued to doubt that Russia was responsible and he has called the investigations in Congress and by the special counsel into Russian meddling a “witch hunt.”

Is it naïve, or is it corrupt, or is it blackmailed?

Trump said that he signed the bill despite his reservations for the sake of “national unity.” In a second statement accompanying his signing of the legislation, Trump called some of the provisions in the legislation “clearly unconstitutional.”

Trump of course has no clue what’s constitutional and what isn’t.

According to constitutional law experts, Congress rightfully asserted its own constitutional powers to serve as a check on the executive branch, even on matters of national security.

Constitutional and national security expert Michael Glennon from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy said that Trump’s statement was “gross misreading” of the case law he cited in his signing statement to bolster his claim that the congressional review provision had unconstitutionally robbed him of the power to negotiate.
“That’s obviously a misguided interpretation of his constitutional authority,” Glennon said. “Congress has very broad authority over foreign commerce — it’s explicitly given the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.
“It could have, if it desired, imposed those sanctions without giving the president any waiver authority whatsoever,” he added.
Well ok but Trump is president and you’re not.

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Which twin has the dump?

Aug 2nd, 2017 7:06 am | By

The BBC asks, slyly, is the White House really a dump?

Why no, who said it was? Bette Davis?

Haha just kidding; of course not, it was Our Donnie, chatting to fellow bozos on one of his golf courses.

According to Golf.com, Mr Trump has explained his frequent appearances at various courses across America to patrons by saying: “That White House is a real dump.”

It led Chelsea Clinton, who is more than a little familiar with the interior of the White House, to tweet: “Thank you to all the White House ushers, butlers, maids, chefs, florists, gardeners, plumbers, engineers & curators for all you do every day.”

So, is it really a dump?

Well, it certainly doesn’t look like that in photographs released by Architectural Digest in July.

Yes but does Architectural Digest meet Donald Trump’s high standards?

Image result for trump penthouse

Now that is tasteful elegance.

If the current president is displeased by his new residence, it may be due to a clash of personal taste.

After all, Architectural Digest described the private rooms at the White House as “an oasis of civility and, yes, refined taste”.

But how about Mr Trump’s personal home? His penthouse in New York’s Trump Towers certainly has a different aesthetic.

Yes, that different aesthetic is the style known as “really globbing it on.”

“At one level, [the decor is] aspirational, meant to project the wealth so many citizens can only dream of,” author Peter York wrote in Politico. “But it also has important parallels – not with Italian Renaissance or French baroque, where its flourishes come from, but with something more recent. The best aesthetic descriptor of Trump’s look, I’d argue, is dictator style.”

According to Mr York, who has written a book called Dictator Style, the apartment screams “I am tremendously rich and unthinkably powerful” – which is more than a little at odds with Washington’s more understated style. After all, its ” neoclassical public buildings” are supposed to “evoke stability and trustworthiness through their restraint”, he wrote.

Dictator Really Globbing It On.

By that standard the White House no doubt does look very restrained and minimalist, aka a dump.

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Excerpts

Aug 1st, 2017 6:03 pm | By

Politico has the full transcript of Trump’s interview with the adoring Wall Street Journal. The Journal published excerpts, but the transcript was [gasp] leaked.

Trump, as always, babbles and thrashes from subject to subject and repeats himself repeats himself. He also gets very stroppy when anyone says anything hinting he’s not universally beloved.

WSJ: We were in West Virginia yesterday.

TRUMP: Oh, you did? Was that a scene, though? Huh?

WSJ: That was a scene, yes. (Laughter.)

TRUMP: Biggest crowd they’ve ever had. What did you think?

WSJ: I thought it was an interesting speech in the context of the Boy Scouts.

TRUMP: Right.

WSJ: They seemed to get a lot of feedback from former scouts and –

TRUMP: Did they like it?

WSJ: It seemed mixed.

TRUMP: They loved it. [Laughter.] It wasn’t — it was no mix. That was a standing –

WSJ: In the — you got a good — you got a good reaction in –

TRUMP: I mean, you know, he writes mostly negative stuff. But that was a standing ovation –

WSJ: You got a good reaction inside the arena, that’s right.

TRUMP: … from the time I walked out on the stage — because I know. And by the way, I’d be the first to admit mixed. I’m a guy that will tell you mixed. There was no mix there. That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix.

WSJ: Yeah, there was a lot of supporters in the arena.

TRUMP: And I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. So there was — there was no mix.

But he’d be the first to admit mix. The very first. He’d admit it up one side and down the other. He’s a guy that will tell you mixed. But this was not mixed.

He’s been learning that some places have many people. He did not know that before. It’s amazing the things you learn.

TRUMP: Well, you know, we’re going for 15 [percent]. We’re going to see, and we’ll see. But, you know, I don’t want to say anything about negotiation. I mean, we are asking for 15 percent, and we think we’re going to grow tremendously.

So I deal with foreign countries, and despite what you may read, I have unbelievable relationships with all of the foreign leaders. They like me. I like them. You know, it’s amazing. So I’ll call, like, major — major countries, and I’ll be dealing with the prime minister or the president. And I’ll say, how are you doing? Oh, don’t know, don’t know, not well, Mr. President, not well. I said, well, what’s the problem? Oh, GDP 9 percent, not well. And I’m saying to myself, here we are at like 1 percent, dying, and they’re at 9 percent and they’re unhappy. So, you know, and these are like countries, you know, fairly large, like 300 million people. You know, a lot of people say — they say, well, but the United States is large. And then you call places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and you say, you know, how many people do you have? And it’s pretty amazing how many people they have. So China’s going to be at 7 [percent] or 8 percent, and they have a billion-five, right? So we should do really well.

There’s the tragedy of Sessions.

WSJ: You can fire him.

TRUMP: Look, Jeff – I could. But we’ll see what happens. But I was – I appointed a man to a position. And then shortly after he gets the position, he recused himself. I said, what’s that all about? Why didn’t you tell me that you were going to do that, and I wouldn’t have appointed you? But I appointed him. And shortly thereafter, he recused himself. So I think that is a –

BAKER: You also suggested in Cleveland today they should be going – or, yesterday – they should be going after Hillary Clinton. Is that –

TRUMP: Well, I didn’t – I wouldn’t have wanted to. But I see the way they go after us on a witch hunt, you know? The Russian – the Russian story’s all an excuse for the Democrats losing.

Therefore he should “go after” her – as if it were grade school as opposed to a government.

They divert to other things for awhile but by golly it comes back to Sessions. Ssssesssssionssssss.

WSJ: Just on Sessions, just one thing. Would you like to see him step aside? Would you like to see him resign? Would it be in the country’s best interest just –

TRUMP: I’m just very disappointed in him. I’m disappointed in, you know, a number of categories. I told you, the leakers. He should have – he should be after them. So many people say to me: Why are they going after you on nothing and they leave Hillary Clinton alone on, you know, really major things? And it is – so I’m disappointed in him. And don’t forget, when they say he endorsed me, I went to Alabama. I had 40,000 people, you may have been there, remember, in Mobile?

WSJ: I remember.

TRUMP: I had 40,000 people. He was the senator from Alabama. I won the state by a lot, massive numbers. A lot of the states I won by massive numbers. But he was a senator. He looks at 40,000 people and he probably says, what do I have to lose, and he endorsed me. So it’s not like a great, loyal thing about the endorsement. But I’m very disappointed in Jeff Sessions.

But about that other matter, Mr President?

WSJ: Are you willing for the status quo to continue, though? At what point do you say enough?

TRUMP: I’m just looking at it. I’ll just see.

WSJ: What about Bob Mueller?

TRUMP: It’s a very important, very important thing.

WSJ: I mean, but, Bob Mueller is also really the one leading this investigation. It’s his job to see –

TRUMP: Well, we’re going to see.

BAKER: And he’s investigating Russia – your Russian connection –

WSJ: He’s the Russian guy. So Sessions has recused himself, but is Bob Mueller’s job safe? There is speculation –

TRUMP: No, we’re going to see. I mean, I have no comment yet, because it’s too early. But we’ll see. We’re going to see. Here’s the good news: I was never involved with Russia. There was nobody in the campaign. I’ve got 200 people that will say that they’ve never seen anybody on the campaign. Here’s another – he was involved early. There’s nobody on the campaign that saw anybody from Russia. We had nothing to do with Russia. They lost an election and they came up with this as an excuse. And the only ones that are laughing are the Democrats and the Russians. They’re the only ones that are laughing. And if Jeff Sessions didn’t recuse himself, we wouldn’t even be talking about this subject.

WSJ: Would you consider –

TRUMP: You know, it was very interesting. Trey Gowdy said today – again, he’s a very straight shooter, he’s a good guy – he said, no, I understand the president. He was on Fox. He said: I understand the president. You put a man in office who really wanted that job. I actually said to him – and you know some of my lawyers, it’s not – you know, off the record, it’s not exactly – right? You know some of them.

BAKER: I know Marc quite well.

TRUMP: Well, but a lot of them. But I put a man in office – and he said this. And he goes in office, then he immediately recuses himself. I fully understand the president. You know, and a lot of people do, a lot of people. He – you know, I don’t go to loyalty. I think it’s disloyal to the office of the presidency, not necessarily me. I think it’s very disloyal to the office of the presidency. And if he didn’t do that, you wouldn’t have all this stuff. You know, you wouldn’t have it.

Yup yup yup that’s it, it’s all about the office of the presidency, that’s what he cares about. Not about himself at all.

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Who We Are

Aug 1st, 2017 4:52 pm | By

Benjamin Wittes quotes the Wall Street Journal:

The nation’s top narcotics officer repudiated President Donald Trump’s remarks about police use of force, issuing a memo saying Drug Enforcement Administration agents must “always act honorably” by maintaining “the very highest standards” in the treatment of criminal suspects.

Chuck Rosenberg, who as acting DEA chief works for the president, told agency personnel world-wide in a Saturday memo to disregard any suggestion that roughing up suspects would be tolerated. The memo came a day after Mr. Trump told a crowd of law-enforcement officers they shouldn’t be “too nice” when arresting “thugs.”

“The president, in remarks delivered yesterday in New York, condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement,” begins the memo, titled “Who We Are” and marked “Global Distribution.”

Mr. Rosenberg wrote that although he is certain no “special agent or task force officer of the DEA would mistreat a defendant,” Mr. Trump’s comments required a response.

The White House, the Justice Department and the DEA, which is an arm of the Justice Department, declined to comment on the Rosenberg memo.

“I write to offer a strong reaffirmation of the operating principles to which we, as law enforcement professionals, adhere,” the memo says. “I write because we have an obligation to speak out when something is wrong. That’s what law enforcement officers do. That’s what you do. We fix stuff. At least, we try.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if more people who work for the president did that? Like for instance, as Wittes says, Sessions and Rosenstein?

Wittes comments:

This is what it looks like when a law enforcement agency head is willing to speak seriously in response to Trump’s abusive treatment of law enforcement and abusive vision of it.

And it’s actually not the first time Rosenberg has spoken publicly about agency values over the past few months. Back in April, he testified before a congressional committee about the DEA’s “Core Values program,” which he iniated in 2015. The values he articulated are worth pausing over in relation to Trump’s engagement with law enforcement generally. In his testimony, Rosenberg described that “these values reflect what it means to be a DEA employee” and said that “these Core Values . . . form the cornerstone for our Compliance Program, geared towards holding ourselves accountable and maintaining our integrity and reputation for future generations.” Notably, he lists the core values explicitly in his email, which I quote in full below.

What are DEA’s Core Values?

  1. Dedication to upholding the Constitution of the United States and the Rule of Law.
  2. Respect and compassion for those we protect and serve.

Ok let’s stop there and think about that one. It covers everyone, you know, including suspects. It should and I hope in Rosenberg’s mind does also cover convicted perps. It covers everyone; it doesn’t carve out big exceptions for people who should have their heads slammed into cars before they’re even questioned, or for people in the wrong political party, or for women, or for immigrants, or for losers.

Isn’t that what we want? Just in general? Mutual respect and compassion as the default? Not mockery and cruelty and bullying as the default?

This is what’s so horrendous about living in Trump world, this is what’s bringing us all down so hard. It’s this sudden total abandonment of that core principle or value. It makes everything seem hopeless and disappointing and awful. Being governed by a mean callous bully of a man is a terrible situation.

These lists are valuable in the present moment because they help explain the deep clash that is taking place between President Trump and his senior law enforcement officials. Take a moment and ask yourself which of Rosenberg’s core values President Trump might even plausibly be said to be adhering to.

Dedication to upholding the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law? Nope.

Respect and compassion? Pulease.

Exactly. How horrible is that?

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