Lawrence Tribe makes some connections for us:

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/869508509662154753

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/869509687498113025

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/869511624297730048

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/869516343959314432

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/869517064230318080

Russia may knows things about Trump’s business dealings it can use to blackmail him. The point of the Emoluments Clause was precisely to prevent that. It could be that the reason Trump carried on like such an authoritarian nightmare at NATO and the G7 is because Putin told him to. The sudden crumbling of our relationship with liberal democratic Europe may be all because Trump has sleazy and/or criminal secrets that Putin is holding over him.

Meanwhile Republicans in Congress are looking fixedly in the other direction.

It could hardly be any more disgusting.

Exciting news: the UK has its first ever “gender-fluid” police officer.

A police officer has become Britain’s first gender-fluid officer and is using separate male and female identities while at work.

One some days the officer goes by the name Callum — and on other days goes by the female name of Abi.

The transgender PC has two warrant cards, one in their male name, the other in their female identity.

See what I mean about exciting? I suppose Abi shows up in pink tutus and a mop of curls, while Callum is in camouflage gear and a full beard?

Gender fluid is a gender identity which refers to a gender which varies over time. A gender fluid person may at any time identify as male, female, neutral, or any other non-binary identity, or some combination of identities.

Their gender can also vary at random or vary in response to different circumstances. It comes as part of the Met Police’s diversity initiative encouraging officers to “be themselves” at work.

Cool.

The thing I don’t get though is…so what? What is anyone supposed to do about it? Why bother to announce it?

Unless…are we assuming women and men are so profoundly different that it’s necessary to adjust our behavior and way of talking according to other people’s gender? Do Abi-Callum’s colleagues need to know their gender at any particular moment in order to interact with them appropriately or correctly or otherwise according-to-gender?

Because if so – what about the rest of us? What, especially, about women? What about women, who have been trying for decades to get the world to stop relating to us as if we were defective and incomplete and not too bright? What about us if we don’t want to be simpered at or whispered to or coaxed along or flirted with or patronized or sidelined?

Or to put it another way, where does gender-fluid end and self-absorbed begin?

Why should anyone care what Abi-Callum thinks their gender status is at any given moment? I don’t suppose cops generally make official announcements of their moods every few seconds, so why does Abi-Callum need to tell us about these shifting flowing fluxing “genders” that actually just sound like moods?

Callum, who had been a male male police officer for 13 years, told the Sun: “The first time I walked into a Met building as Abi, I was hyperventilating so much I almost passed out. “I’ve done it a handful of times since and felt so happy that I got to be me at work.

“Abi is a part of me that exists and I want that part to be recognised and validated. “But I’m still me. I’m still the same person whether I’m presenting as Callum or Abi. It’s the same dice. You’re just looking at a different number.”

Yeah see that’s what I object to, that wanting one’s various “parts” to be recognised and validated. That’s ridiculous. We don’t have to go around recognizing and validating everyone. Between friends, ok, they can validate each other if they want to, but people at large? No. How would we ever get anything else done, just for one thing? Who has time to recognize and validate all the people we come in contact with?

Besides I don’t want to. Nobody should want to. It’s just self-obsession, and self-obsession sucks. We need a new woke progressive thing where we stamp out self-obsession. There’s nothing the lest bit progressive about it, after all, and progressives have other work to do. The hell with people’s “genders” and what name they are today and being validated. It’s a big world, and nobody’s Self is the center of it.

Sean Hannity is the new Victim of Rampant Political Correctness.

Rumors of Fox News host Sean Hannity being fired kept going while advertisers continued pulling out of sponsoring his show after he pushed for a conspiracy theory regarding the death of Democratic National Staffer, Seth Rich, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday.

The report came after media watchdog, Media Matters For America, published a list of advertisers sponsoring Hannity’s show on Fox. Hannity described the move as a “kill shot” aimed at forcing him out of Fox News.

But Sean, this is America, home of free everything, where advertisers can pull their ads any time they feel like it, because that’s FREEDOM.

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/867126424691515394

Jeez, what a snowflake! What a social justice warrior, what a whiner, what a regressive internet thingummy.

While police say Seth Rich’s death was a result of a failed robbery, Fox News’ now retracted story asserted an FBI forensics examination showed he had leaked work related emails to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Explaining the retraction of the story, Fox News later said: “The article was not initially subject to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed. We will continue to investigate this story and will provide updates as warranted.”

Hannity, however, continued to question the circumstances of Rich’s death, citing statements from piracy website founder Kim Dotcom who claimed he knew Rich was a WikiLeaks source.

Seth Rich’s family made a written plea to Hannity to stop discussing theories surrounding the unsolved murder.

So he finally did, but the capitalist lackeys had already started backing away. Twitter celebrity Dave Rubin thinks it’s an outrage.

In 70's the Religious Right went after "Soap" for gay character. Got it canned. Now #RegressiveLeft going after advertisers for wrongthink.

— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) May 26, 2017

“wrongthink” – as if telling lies about a murder victim on a highly popular mass market tv show were a mere matter of thinking. Paf.

Speaking of Montenegro and Duško Marković and NATO and Russia and Trump…last November the Times reported on an alleged plot allegedly by the Russians allegedly to fuck everything up.

Aleksandar Sindjelic, a veteran anti-Western activist from neighboring Serbia, has become a key informant — and a suspect — in a sprawling investigation into an alleged plot orchestrated by two Russians to seize Montenegro’s Parliament building last month, kill the prime minister and install a new government hostile to NATO.

Mr. Sindjelic’s account of the events includes a visit to Moscow in September to plan the operation and details of the encrypted phones he was asked to use to avoid eavesdropping. He has not directly implicated any Russian officials but has raised questions about the links between state agencies and a murky network of Russian nationalists active in the Balkans and in eastern Ukraine.

The Pan-Slavic alliance versus the demonic West.

After the early-1990s breakup of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia and Montenegro were parts, the Balkan region has been a zone of dark and often lethal intrigue.

To Moscow’s dismay, Serbia and Montenegro, both traditionally close to Russia, have increasingly tilted toward the West, applying to join the European Union and, in Montenegro’s case, even NATO.

With a few thousand soldiers, a handful of tanks and only 600,000 residents, Montenegro — whose application to join NATO was accepted in May and now awaits ratification — is hardly a military powerhouse. But it controls the only stretch of coastline where warships can dock between Gibraltar and eastern Turkey not already in the hands of the alliance.

“There is a big struggle going on,” said Ranko Krivokapic, an opposition leader who has lobbied for years for Montenegro to join NATO. “We are the last piece of the Mediterranean that is not already in NATO, the last piece in a big puzzle.”

Now they’re in NATO…being jostled and pushed by Donnie from Queens.

Russia has campaigned furiously to keep Montenegro out of the alliance, supporting pro-Moscow political groups in the country and Orthodox priests who view NATO as a threat to Slavic fraternity and faith.

“NATO is an occupying force, and I am absolutely against it,” said Momcilo Krivokapic, an Orthodox priest and an estranged relative of the pro-NATO politician. His church in Kotor, an ancient fortress town, is just a few yards from Kotor Bay, a deepwater haven long coveted by both Russia and the West for its strategic location.

In early October, Father Krivokapic presided over a ceremony in Kotor for the foundation of the Balkan Cossack Army, a Russian-led grouping of Pan-Slavic nationalists bitterly hostile to NATO. The priest described the gathering as “just folklore,” featuring men in fur hats and imperial-era costumes.

Uh huh, and those monuments to slavery and white supremacy all over the South are “just honoring our past.”

Useful background for the push by the tiny tiny tiny man.

Is it racist to have a feminist festival that excludes white people?

The Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has called for a black feminist festival in the French capital to be banned, saying it was “prohibited to white people”.

The first edition of the Nyansapo Festival, due to run from 28-30 July at a cultural centre in Paris, bills itself as “an event rooted in black feminism, activism, and on (a) European scale”.

Four-fifths of the festival area will be set aside as a “non-mixed” space for black women, according to its website. Another space will be a “non-mixed” area for black people regardless of gender. Another space would be “open to all”.

Is separatism an intermediate step on the road to equality? Do minorities need to exclude the majority at times because otherwise they will always be drowned out?

French anti-racist and antisemitism organisations strongly condemned the festival. SOS Racisme described the event as “a mistake, even an abomination, because it wallows in ethnic separation, whereas anti-racism is a movement which seeks to go beyond race”.

I don’t know. I’m not sure if it really does wallow in ethnic separation, or just enact a desire to be the dominant presence for once.

The cultural centre La Générale, where the event was to be hosted, and the collective Mwasi, which organised the event, said on Sunday they were the “target of a disinformation campaign and of ‘fake news’ orchestrated by the foulest far right”.

“We are saddened to see certain anti-racist associations letting themselves be manipulated like this,” read a statement posted on the Generale website.

A “decolonisation summer camp” in the north-eastern French city of Reims elicited similar outrage last year, as it billed itself as a “training seminar on antiracism” reserved for victims of “institutional racism” or “racialised” minorities – excluding by default white people.

Possibly an outrage too many.

Jen Gunter tears a chunk out of Gwyneth Paltrow’s metaphorical hide.

Dear Ms. Paltrow,

I understand you recently said that anyone who is going to fuck with you better bring their A game.

…

From tampons to tomatoes to toxic lube your website is a scare factory. Literally. It’s either made up (often poorly, but with liberal use of the word toxin) or someone’s hypothesis with little to no supporting data. Tampons are not vaginal death sticks, vegetables with lectins are not killing us, vaginas don’t need steaming, Epstein Barr virus (EBV) does not cause every thyroid disease, and for fuck’s sake no one needs to know their latex farmer what they need to know is that the only thing between them and HIV or gonorrhea is a few millimeters of latex so glove that shit up. Here’s an A game pro tip for you, if you are writing a “sex post” use an expert who actually knows that the WHO has guidelines on lubricants. Your post on lubes is so bad it’s a joke.

You have the gall to tell people like me that we better bring our A game when you bring ghosts and magic to the table. Literally. You promote a ghost whisperer and crystals and of course jade eggs that one recharges with energy from the moon. Really, a dude who talks with ghosts, Naturopaths, and a jade eggthusiast who has a certification from the school she founded is on your A squad?

Jade eggs? That one recharges with energy from the moon, or the sun, or winsome distant Pluto?

Q

Why and how are crystals so powerful?

A

This is where science and mysticism intersect: Crystals are millions of years old and were forged during the earliest part of the earth’s formation. I think of crystals as a timeless database of knowledge, because they retain all the information they have ever been exposed to. Crystals absorb information—whether a severe weather pattern, or the experience of an ancient ceremony—and pass it to anyone that comes into contact with them.

The 8 essential crystals page

But where’s the science?? I missed the science! I see the mysticism all right but where does it intersect with science?

How do crystals absorb information? How does Paltrow know they do? How do they pass it to people who touch them?

And ancient therapies? Girl, you love those. This means that you want your medicine from before we understood that bacteria and viruses were a thing, like when people thought tuberculosis was caused by vampires? What about trepanation or drinking Gladiators’ blood? Those are ancient therapies. Are they in your rotation? Honestly, it’s like you and your experts use Horrible Histories as a reference.

Your goopshit bothers me because it affects my patients. They read your crackpot theories and they stop eating tomatoes (side note, if tomatoes are toxic why do Italians have a longer life expectancy than Americans?) or haven’t had a slice of bread for two years, they spend money on organic tampons they don’t need, they ask for unindicted testing for adrenal fatigue (and often pay a lot via copayments or paying out-of-pocket), or they obsess that they have systemic Candida (they don’t). I have a son with thyroid disease and I worry that in a few years he might read the kind of batshit crazy thyroid theories you promote and wonder if he should stop his medication and try to cure the chronic EBV that he doesn’t have. I also worry that science will have to spend more and more resources disproving snake oil as opposed to testing real hypotheses. I worry that you make people worry and that you are lowering the world’s medical I.Q.

Platrow’s bullshit is funny in a way, but it’s very harmful. She’s Trumpesque in the arrogance of it – what makes her think she gets to make up her own medical facts? Just the fact that she’s a movie star? That’s no different from Trump thinking his reality tv stardom makes him a suitable candidate for the presidency.

It does not take my A game to counter the snake oil, biologically implausible theories, incorrect information, and magic that you and GOOP pass off as health advice. Really, I’m not sure it even takes my C game. It might take a game, like Clue, but that’s about it.

We’re not fucking with you we’re correcting you and you know what? We’re not going to stop.

XOXO

Science

*May 24, 2017: Correction, this post has been updated to reflect the fact that GOOP claims the energy of jade eggs is recharged by the moon and not the sun.

The sun would make it much too hot. That’s just silly.

Another “cultural appropriation” crisis.

Willamette Week reported ten days ago:

During an impromptu Christmastime road trip last year to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico, Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly lost their minds over tortillas.

“In Puerto Nuevo, you can eat $5 lobster on the beach, which they give you with this bucket of tortillas,” Connelly says. “They are handmade flour tortillas that are stretchy and a little buttery, and best of all, unlimited.”