Now here’s a smart guy.

Brilliant call.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts will end nearly all of his state’s social-distancing restrictions on Monday even as the number of new coronavirus cases has trended upward over the last few months.

Cases are going up so – shrug – might as well stop trying.

The new rules will still limit the size of large indoor gatherings, such as concerts, meeting halls and theaters, but will drop all other state-imposed mandates in favor of voluntary guidelines, as other conservative states have done.

Because “conservative” now means “ignore all expert health advice and refuse to take sensible steps to damp down a lethal pandemic.” They really want to go with that?

Richard Wolffe

The Inuit are supposed to have dozens of words to describe snow. The Brits have endless ways to talk about rain. Now it’s time for Americans to delineate all the many ways that Donald Trump is dumb.

I’ve been working on that project since July 2016.

(I know there’s a retort that he’s having a lot of success for someone who is dumb. Yes but the dumb is why he’s having the success. Sadly, pathetically, maddeningly, tragically, there are enough Murkans who love to see somebody stupid in the White House to put him there and keep him there despite impeachment.)

If Bob Woodward’s new blockbuster teaches us anything new about the character of the 45th president, it’s that we don’t yet have the words to describe the multiple variants of the vacuum inside his head.

There’s the stupidity of arrogance, the stupidity of ignorance, and his old friend: the stupidity of blatant duplicity. There’s his homicidal stupidity, his traitorous stupidity, his criminally corrupt stupidity and his plain old infantile stupidity.

Let’s start with the top of this taxonomy: the domain of Donald’s dumbness. At his core, the former reality TV star is a particularly stupid man who thinks he is very smart.

So maybe, Wolffe suggests, this stupidity explains his 18 interviews with Woodward. (Trump hinted as much in that “press conference” the other day, when he said he respects Woodward because of hearing his name year after year. Not, he stupidly elaborated, because of his work, just because of Celebrity. Now that is stupid.)

… our very stupid genius vomited up all manner of secrets that collectively prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he represents the greatest single danger to the fate of both the American people and to himself.

How do we classify the stupidity of blabbing the greatest secret of them all: that he knew all along how Covid-19 was deadly and easily transmissible? We now know that in late January, his national security adviser told him the coronavirus was the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency. A week later, he told Woodward that the disease was “more deadly even than your strenuous flus”.

But see at that time he didn’t know he was going to lie to us about it for months and months and months. Because he’s stupid.

Then he admitted it all over again at the press conference Wednesday.

“So the fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love our country. And I don’t want people to be frightened,” he told reporters. “We want to show confidence. We want to show strength.”

Nothing says confidence or strength quite like 190,000 dead citizens. And nothing blows up your pushback against Woodward (“another political hit job”) like admitting to your arrogance and duplicity at a press conference.

Mattis and Coats knew how bad it was but couldn’t bring themselves to do anything about it.

Because of their failures to act, we now have an intelligence community that suppresses warnings about Russian election interference and white supremacist terrorists, while hyping conspiracies about antifa. You could say this was an impeachable state of affairs, but Republican senators have developed a new stupidity of cowardice.

Is it cowardice or love? I think it’s more that they love him, because they’re as bad as he is.

He leads with “I don’t say this out of ego but”

Hahahaha no obviously not.

He also implies that he’s getting it in the same sense Obama did, but Obama got the actual prize, awarded by the committee, not a nomination, awarded by one far-right jackass.

But never mind, Trump isn’t bragging about his farcical nomination out of ego.

I’m reading it. It’s tough going – I’ll be reading it in segments and taking breaks. Here’s one item:

Male violence and rape, and police inaction over these crimes, is also a problem for women and children not in prostitution who live near or enter the Holbeck zone. In 2015, ‘Sally – a young woman with learning disabilities, then aged 17 – was approached at a bus stop in Beeston on a weekday afternoon, bundled into a car, and raped in a nearby home. With DNA evidence, the attacker was quickly arrested and prosecuted in court. However, during a gruelling court case which saw Sally forced into a cross-examination, the defence lawyer argued that his client had simply mistaken Sally for a sex worker, and he walked free’.

Source: E. Carlisle, ‘Holbeck sex zone in the spotlight again’, South Leeds Life (31 August 2018), https://southleedslife.com/holbeck-sex-zone-in-the-spotlight-again/

An honest mistake.

Interesting.

The “I heart Rowling” poster didn’t get complaints, but Network Rail took it down anyway, because…………….??????

So then Network Rail got 128 158 complaints about the taking down, and ignored them.

Jessica Krug doing her academic woman of color thing.

H/t Lady Mondegreen

From Pliny:

New level of disgust. We knew he’d done it, but now we learn he bragged about it to Woodward.

President Donald Trump bragged that he protected Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of the American journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Why does the pestiferous sack of shit think that’s something to brag of?

Woodward wrote that Trump called him on January 22 shortly after attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. During the conversation, Woodward pressed the president about Khashoggi’s gruesome murder.

…

“The people at the Post are upset about the Khashoggi killing,” Woodward told Trump on January 22, his book says. “That is one of the most gruesome things. You yourself have said.”

“Yeah, but Iran is killing 36 people a day, so —” Trump began, before Woodward redirected the conversation and continued to press Trump about MBS’s role in ordering Khashoggi’s killing.

“I saved his ass,” Trump had said amid the US outcry following Khashoggi’s murder, the book says. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”

But that’s a bad thing. That’s not a good thing, it’s a bad thing. We don’t want you saving MBS’s ass. We don’t want you getting Congress to leave him alone.

When a reporter pressed Trump on Thursday about what the president meant when he said he’d “saved” the Saudi leader’s “ass,” Trump replied: “You’ll have to figure that out yourself.”

No, sir, you should be required to explain yourself.

During his January 22 conversation with Woodward, the president said: “Well, I understand what you’re saying, and I’ve gotten involved very much. I know everything about the whole situation.”

Oh yes, he knows everything about everything, and understands it all too.

Trump repeatedly used executive power to block or bypass congressional efforts to cut ties with Riyadh after Khashoggi’s murder.

Last year, he vetoed a bipartisan bill to end US support for the Saudis in Yemen. The war in Yemen has led to a devastating humanitarian crisis, and the Saudi-led coalition has killed civilians using US-made bombs.

The president also bypassed Congress to push through an arms sale worth roughly $8 billion to the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates, and he later vetoed several resolutions blocking the sale.

More recently, Trump has moved to circumvent a decades-old arms-control pact in order to sell weaponized drones to the Saudis and to other countries in the region, sparking backlash from Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

Filth.

Via TheDudeDiogenes, Identity Theft by Zaid Jilani:

He starts with an analogy Apple’s CEO made between Emmett Till and Jacob Blake and points out what a terrible analogy it is.

I don’t write this to justify the shooting. If it turns out [Blake] didn’t pose any imminent threat to the officers or to the kids at the time of the shooting, it wasn’t justified. But there is no universe where it is legitimate to compare what is at worst an incompetent arrest and unjustified nonlethal shooting of someone wanted for an alleged violent crime to a brutal racist killing of an innocent child.

And yet such comparisons are now commonplace. Our contemporary political debates induce us to identify ourselves and those we view as sympathetic as first and foremost members of some group that has suffered historical victimhood. Then, after you have established that you or someone else is a member of this group, you can then use this status to plead for sympathy, prestige, or even power.

And if you can’t establish that you are a member maybe you can fake it.

On some level, we all know this rhetorical technique doesn’t quite make sense. The brilliant Aaron McGruder demonstrated as much in his hit animated series, The Boondocks, back in 2005. In the episode “The Trial of R. Kelly,” the infamous rapper goes on trial for his indecent acts with a minor. In order to defend him in court, Kelly hires an uber-woke white lawyer who turns to the Black jurors and intones, “They don’t want R. Kelly to be free because they don’t want you to be free!” The implication is that Kelly was being prosecuted not for his crimes but for his race; defining him only by his race allows his defense attorney to shield him with the status of historical victimhood—even if he himself is not a victim at all, for his race or for any other reason. Eventually, series protagonist Huey Freeman, an adolescent Black nationalist, loses his cool, reminding the court room that every famous Black person who “gets arrested is not Nelson Mandela!”

Which reminded me of the OJ Simpson trial, which was another classic of this genre – in fact it’s probably the classic of all time.

Another example can be found in The Washington Post’s global opinions editor, Karen Attiah. Attiah’s social media presence consistently features claims of victimization or underprivilege. In one tweet where she complains about the “white patriarchy,” Attiah notes that “Black women in particular find themselves pushed out of workplaces due to sexism and racism. They start their own ventures and rely on social media and branding to—*gasp* Self promote. Because we have to. To survive.”

The “we” is doing a fair bit of work here. Attiah holds a prestigious and secure position at one of the nation’s premier newspapers at a time when the industry is contracting and good reporters and editors are being laid off left and right. Yet by invoking her membership in the group “Black women,” she can situate herself in the same status as say, a housekeeper at a motel who lives a precarious existence.

Which, I think, is not entirely bogus, because even successful black people are still subject to racism, just as even successful women are still subject to sexism. It’s not entirely bogus but there are times when it may seem like a reach.

This sense of victimhood even drew her to tweet in June about the “lies and tears of white women” producing the “1921 Tulsa massacre,” the aforementioned murder of Till, and the election of Donald Trump. “White women are lucky that we are calling them Karens,” she warned. “And not calling for revenge.” Although Attiah later deleted the tweet, it’s instructive that she felt comfortable she could walk right up to the line of implying racial violence would be justified—such is the power of this rhetorical tactic.

And that sexism is ok if it’s against women who can be called Karens.

This very last example is illustrative of why I do my best to never play this rhetorical game. Because it’s a game that involves stealing valor.

The term “stolen valor” is used to describe military impostors—typically, people who exaggerated or lied about their military records. In 1998, investigative journalist Glenna Whitley and Vietnam veteran B.G. Burkett published a book by the same name, chronicling the stories of individuals who wore Vietnam War medals and ribbons who had not earned them. The pair used Freedom of Information Act requests to search the records of a host of individuals, finding that they often exaggerated the terms of their military service in their public statements. 

Certainly a good term for what Jessica Krug did.

He’s not called Don Junior for nothing.

While speaking about 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, charged with homicide in the shooting deaths of two people and the wounding of a third during unrest in Kenosha, Donald Trump Jr. said, “We all do stupid things at 17.”

The president’s son made the comment during an interview with “Extra” host Rachel Lindsay, a former contestant on “The Bachelor.”

Well, lots of us do, yes – things like getting drunk, getting pregnant, scratching the car, failing calculus, not cleaning up the kitchen when asked. We don’t all shoot two people to death.

“If I put myself in Kyle Rittenhouse(‘s shoes), maybe I shouldn’t have been there. He’s a young kid. I don’t want 17-year-olds running around the street with AR-15s,” he said. “Maybe I wouldn’t have put myself in that situation. Who knows? But we all do stupid things at 17,” he said.

It’s not as if the “situation” jumped up and yanked Kyle Rittenhouse into shooting two people to death. It’s also not as if anybody asked him to take an assault rifle to Kenosha, or as if he were employed to do so.

He’s daddy’s son all right.

Trump’s caught in his zipper.

“How dare you accuse me of lying! I never lie!!!” “Sir, that’s a lie right there, sir.”

Uh…what?

Less than a week but still too long.

Less than a week after George Washington University announced Jessica Krug would not resume teaching this semester after the professor revealed she had been lying for years about being Black, the school announced she has resigned.

“Dr. Krug has resigned her position, effective immediately. Her classes for this semester will be taught by other faculty members, and students in those courses will receive additional information this week,” the university said in a statement obtained by CNN on Wednesday.

We need a word for this move – this form of fraud in which a person with more social privilege pretends to be a person with less social privilege. Maybe we already have the word, maybe “appropriation” is good enough, but it doesn’t capture the more/less aspect, or at least it doesn’t explicitly name it.

We don’t feel the same kind of repulsion at the idea of someone with less privilege pretending to be someone with more. Why? Because that’s the natural direction of flow, the reasons are obvious, and privilege is a form of injustice. Stealing other people’s disprivilege is gross. It’s a kind of mockery as well as a kind of theft.

It might make an interesting academic discussion, but let’s not invite Jessica Krug to participate.

The Guardian has some more details on Trump’s compassionate and patriotic desire to shield the American people from the truth about COVID-19.

Specifically asked whether he downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump told reporters, “In order to reduce panic, perhaps that’s so.”

As one does. If the house is on fire, you tell the people in it that it’s not serious, because you don’t want them to panic.

The president insisted his strategy was focused on encouraging Americans to remain calm, as the virus spread across the country.

“You have to show leadership, and leadership is confidence in our country,” Trump said.

Well, see, here’s the thing – the danger is a contagious disease that is lethal to many and permanently debilitating to many more. There are things people can do to try to avoid the contagion, so the first job of a leader showing leadership should be to amplify the messages of health officials on how to do that. It should not be to play down the danger and refuse to do the very things that help us avoid the contagion. That’s where Trump went wrong – not in being cheerful or reassuring or strengthy, but in refusing to wear a mask and refusing to distance and continuing to gather crowds. He also went wrong by constantly telling us it’s no big deal and will disappear any minute now.

Also…

“I’m a cheerleader for this country,” the president said. “I don’t want people to be frightened; I don’t want to create panic.”

Oreally?

That comment would seem to clash with Trump’s repeated warnings about the recent protests against racism and police brutality.

The protests have been mostly peaceful, the president has repeatedly claimed that Democratic-controlled cities are being overrun by “violent anarchists”.

Highly contagious deadly virus, no biggy; people protesting police violence against Black people, AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH be afraid.

A bizarre item this morning.

Penis masks! How creative! But…back to school gifts?

No no, that’s not what they meant, they said.

Whatever. I became curious about who and what “esteem acet UK” even is, so I looked for more. Their Twitter profile says:

We deliver relationships and sex education training, equipping youth workers, teachers and parents to talk to young people about relationships and sex.

United Kingdom acet-uk.com Joined August 2011

What does that mean? Who are they? What is their expertise? So I clicked on the link, and then the About page. You’ll never guess.

acet UK is a Christian charity with a mission to equip and inspire individuals, schools, churches and organisations, in the UK and internationally, to transform culture by promoting healthy self-esteem, positive relationships and good sexual health.

A Christian charity!

I don’t understand how any of this works. Can random groups “equip and inspire” schools just by offering? Is this just another “Catholic League” aka one person and a laptop trying to sound important? It certainly could be – an obscure Twitter account and a website don’t necessarily add up to a real organization really shoving its way into schools to “equip and inspire” them for the greater glory of Jesus and penis masks. But who knows, maybe there are schools that take them seriously and pay them for inspiration?

There was so much stuff yesterday that I never got to the DHS whistleblower. About that:

A senior Department of Homeland Security official alleges that he was told to stop providing intelligence reports on the threat of Russian interference in the 2020 election, in part because it “made the President look bad,” an instruction he believed would jeopardize national security.

Gee, what a wacky belief.

The official, Brian Murphy, who until recently was in charge of intelligence and analysis at DHS, said in a whistleblower complaint that on two occasions he was told to stand down on reporting about the Russian threat and alleged that senior officials told him to modify other intelligence reports, including about white supremacists, to bring them in line with President Trump’s public comments, directions he said he refused.

Brilliant. “Senior officials” told an intel official to manipulate intel reports to fit President Narcissist’s manic tweets. That’s definitely what we want intel officials to be doing. Russia’s fucking with the election in order to stick us with Trump again? We don’t want to hear that, make the reports say that Biden has a scary antifa squad in the basement of a falafel bar in Georgetown.

On July 8, Murphy said in the complaint, acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf told him that an “intelligence notification” regarding Russian disinformation efforts should be “held” because it was unflattering to Trump, who has long derided the Kremlin’s interference as a “hoax” that was concocted by his opponents to delegitimize his victory in 2016.

Mister Wolf? Sir? Intelligence reports aren’t supposed to be “flattering” to Donald Trump. That’s not their purpose. That’s not their purpose at all. Quite the reverse. The state of Donald Trump’s flattery-receptor is of no relevance whatsoever to the need to know how Putin is manipulating this election.

It’s not clear who would have seen the notification, but DHS’s intelligence reports are routinely shared with the FBI, other federal law enforcement agencies, and state and local governments.

People in a position to do something about the information, in short.

Murphy objected to Wolf’s instruction, “stating that it was improper to hold a vetted intelligence product for reasons [of] political embarrassment,” according to a copy of his whistleblower complaint that was obtained by The Washington Post.

“Improper” is a nicely subdued way of putting it.

The president’s political interests were often of greater concern to senior leaders at the department than reporting the facts based on evidence, Murphy alleges. He claims that Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, the department’s second-in-command, on various occasions instructed him to massage the language in intelligence reports “to ensure they matched up with the public comments by Trump on the subject of ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups,” according to the complaint.

We can almost hear it. “Change this so that it makes Trump’s rants about antifa and the Democrats sound true.”

Murphy’s claims that Trump officials tried to downplay the threat from Russia will add to a chorus of complaints on Capitol Hill that administration officials are withholding vital information about election interference from lawmakers and voters. The administration has limited the number of lawmakers who may be briefed on the subject.

Murphy alleges an ongoing effort by senior officials to obfuscate the threat from Russia in particular. He claimed that in May, Wolf told him to stop producing intelligence assessments on Russia and shift the focus on election interference to China and Iran.

As Barr did just the other day.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Murphy’s complaint “outlines grave and disturbing allegations that senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials improperly sought to politicize, manipulate, and censor intelligence in order to benefit President Trump politically. This puts our nation and its security at grave risk.”

And makes it more likely that Putin will succeed in getting Trump re-elected, thus putting us even more at risk.

Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated publicly that Russia, China and Iran were engaged in interference campaigns, an assessment that drew sharp rebukes from Democratic lawmakers, who said the administration was trying to equate the efforts of all three countries, when in fact Russia is the only one actively trying to help Trump by attacking Biden.

Bad.

Golly, there was a big ol’ to-do about a religious fanatic who wanted to throw a religious super-spreader event in a Seattle park on Labor Day (this past Monday) but the Parks Department said no you can’t and closed the park.

A prayer rally was planned for Seattle’s Gas Works Park on Labor Day, prior to the city announcing the park’s temporary closure.

On Friday, Sept. 4, Seattle Parks and Recreation issued a notice that Gas Works Park would be closed Sept. 7 “due to anticipated crowding that could impact affect the public health of residents.”

On Saturday, Sept. 5, worship leader Sean Feucht released a statement on his Facebook page, saying the city announced the temporary closure to “prevent ‘anticipated crowding’ from worship rally organized by local churches.”

“The City of Seattle acknowledged that parks ‘provide critical physical and mental health supports to our community,’ and reiterated their policy guidelines for facilitating ‘first amendment gatherings”, but still chose to temporarily shut down the entire park rather than risk Christians gathering for an open-air worship service,” Feucht wrote. 

Bzzzzt, wrong. The Parks Department has been limiting gatherings in parks all along. There are signs in the parks saying this, and saying that crowded parks lead to closed parks. Those signs are still in place. This is nothing special to self-admiring preacher guy, it’s public health policy and has been since March.

“Seattle Parks and Recreation does not allow unpermitted public events to take place in Seattle parks and asks the public to continue to adhere to current public health guidelines so that we can keep our parks open,” the city said in a statement.  

See, if preacher guy hadn’t pulled his stunt, people could have enjoyed the park (as long as not too many of them did) that day; preacher guy took it away from them.

So, he did his super-spreader event in the street instead.

Gee, thanks, preacher guy.

About these awesome book deals that do nothing to save anyone: Dahlia Lithwick last November:

These books are not necessarily about saving the country. Take, for example, Bolton, Trump’s hawkish former national security adviser, who reportedly just reached a $2 million deal with Simon & Schuster for a book to come out next year. Now, Bolton could certainly serve his nation right now by confirming what Fiona Hill has testified to regarding the effort to extort Ukrainian assistance in cooking up oppo research for Trump in advance of the 2020 election. Hill has said that when the plot unwound around Bolton, he told her, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” and asked her to convey that to a White House lawyer. Bolton could surely testify to these and other facts as part of a time-sensitive impeachment inquiry that starts this week. Bolton’s lawyer said in a letter to House Democrats Friday that Bolton “was personally involved in many of the events, meetings, and conversations about which you have already received testimony, as well as many relevant meetings and conversations that have not yet been discussed in the testimonies thus far.” Which sounds like an elevator pitch for an awesome book-to-movie deal. But it’s also a reason he should appear before Congress. Except he has declined to testify, and presumably will not until a federal judge reaches a decision compelling him to do so, a decision that will be appealed and then appealed again and may come long after the impeachment trial has wrapped. For Bolton, the constitutional imperative lies in locking down the book deal.

And Bob Woodward did the same thing – kept vital life-or-death information to himself until the book was ready.

Now John Kelly has not gotten a book deal yet, but he reportedly uses the threat of his future book deal to ensure that Donald Trump doesn’t go after him personally. Apparently the former chief of staff assured his boss that while he would eventually write a book about his time in the White House, he’d wait until Trump was out of office. So long as Trump doesn’t denigrate him first. Some use books to ease the conscience. Others use them to keep Trump at bay. You know, party before Country. Brand above All.

(Fun fact: Trump did denigrate him the other day, over the story about Trump’s callous questions to Kelly when they went to Arlington Cemetery together. Maybe that book is being typed even now.)

In spite of all of this, “books” have somehow retained their vestigial illusion of seriousness and sobriety and adherence to truth and higher values. But these books aren’t penned to make us a better polity, to bring us face to face with our better angels, or to illuminate and elucidate democratic values. They’re branding opportunities for an age of media personalities. This is George Orwell, if Orwell had slowly built an international luxury bedding empire, with 1984 as just one rung on the ladder.

Woodward put his book ahead of a lot of lives.

Siva has a point.

I don’t know why I overlooked that this morning. Why the hell (obvious selfish reasons aside) did Woodward not report the story at the time instead of saving it for his book launch?

I suppose a likely answer is that Trump agreed to the interviews for a book, not a Washington Post story. But maybe in a life or death situation you ought to break a deal of that kind? Just maybe?