Trump again pretending to think Democrats are mean to “God” and that he gives a shit:

Before playing golf on Saturday, Donald Trump took time to spread a false claim about God on Twitter.

“The Democrats took the word GOD out of the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democrat [sic] National Convention,” the president wrote.

“At first I thought they made a mistake, but it wasn’t. It was done on purpose. Remember Evangelical Christians, and ALL, this is where they are coming from – it’s done. Vote Nov[ember] 3!”

It should be where they’re coming from, but it isn’t. It should be because school children are forced to say the pledge, and nobody should be forced to make avowals about god, including children. But the Dems are never interested in resisting forced religion, least of all now.

Politifact says it’s not true.

“Some Democratic caucus members omitted ‘one nation under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance during [convention] meetings,” the fact-checking website wrote. “But the line was not excluded from any of the convention’s primetime televised spots.

“On the first night … participants sang the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ instead of saying the Pledge of Allegiance. On the second, third and fourth nights, ‘under God’ was included in the pledge.”

It shouldn’t have been. “God” is a fiction. Nevertheless it was.

Under the first amendment to the US constitution, church and state are formally separate.

“Formally,” meaning, actually we mostly ignore that and cheerfully force religion in people whether they like it or not.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Baptist minister in 1892, but it did not then include the words “under God”. They were formally added in 1954, when President Dwight D Eisenhower signed them into law.

To show the Godless Communists a thing or two.

The pledge is widely, though not universally, recited in American public schools, which under a 1943 supreme court ruling cannot force students to say it.

In 2019, an 11-year-old student in Lakeland, Florida was arrested after refusing to stand for the pledge at the start of his sixth-grade day, because he believed the US flag symbolised the oppression of African Americans.

Police said the boy was arrested because he caused a disturbance. The case was eventually dropped.

You will explicitly state your submission to The God whether you believe in it or not and whether you choose to submit to it or not. We have ways of forcing you even if it is unconstitutional.

I saw something yesterday saying Melania Trump would be saying something for the Republican convention from “the newly renovated [by her] White House Rose Garden.” Uh oh, I thought, what’s she done to it.

Ew.

To be fair, the one on the left is obviously spring – the crabapple* trees would not be flowering even if they were still there. But they’re not still there. They’ve been swept away. The vibrant various colors have been replaced by icy blue and white.

It’s funny, in a way, because the minimalism is so unlike the vulgar garishness of that Trump Tower apartment, but it’s still horrible, only in a different way. It’s cold and stiff and empty instead of lush and various and joyous. It’s reminiscent of that gruesome all-silver Xmas decoration of the interior.

And there will be no crabapple blossom next spring.

*Or cherry. I had cherry at first then changed to crabapple because

but then

From a post here last October:

“Attorney General” Bill Barr met with Rupert Murdoch last night; nobody knows what they talked about.

I’m sure it’s all very innocent. I’m sure Barr in no way tried to pressure Murdoch to make Fox even more slavishly adoring of Trump. I’m sure it’s entirely normal for an Attorney General to visit the boss of a notoriously political tv network, just to lift a few beers and shoot the shit.

The Guardian today:

The attorney general, William Barr, told Rupert Murdoch to “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, a prominent Fox News personality who became a critic of Donald Trump, according to a new book about the rightwing TV network.

Barr’s meeting with Murdoch, at the media mogul’s New York home in October 2019, was widely reported at the time, with speculation surrounding its subject. According to Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, subjects covered included media consolidation and criminal justice reform.

“But it was also about Judge Andrew Napolitano.”

The books will be published Tuesday.

Citing an unnamed source, Stelter writes that Trump “was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person … about ‘muzzling the judge’. [Trump] wanted the nation’s top law enforcement official to convey just how atrocious Napolitano’s legal analysis had been.”

…

Though Barr’s words to Murdoch “carried a lot of weight”, Stelter writes, “no one was explicitly told to take Napolitano off the air”. Instead, Stelter reports, Napolitano found digital resources allocated elsewhere, saw a slot on a daytime show disappear, and was not included in coverage of the impeachment process.

There was no need to tell anyone explicitly to take Napolitano off the air, when there were so many more subtle options.

Now that’s funny.

The Times asks a silly question: Who Should Compete in Women’s Sports?

The answer is in the question. Women, duh.

But the full title is: Who Should Compete in Women’s Sports? There Are ‘Two Almost Irreconcilable Positions.’

Only when it comes to women, right? Nobody else is expected to nod compliantly to such a ridiculous set-up. Who should win a prize established for black writers? There Are Two Almost Irreconcilable Positions – I don’t think. But it’s ok to bully women that way, because women are required to be Nice, which includes giving away their own rights and smiling pleasantly while they do it.

While scientific and societal views of sex and gender identity have changed significantly in recent decades, a vexing question persists regarding athletes who transition from male to female: how to balance inclusivity, competitive fairness and safety.

No they haven’t. Scientific and societal views of sex haven’t changed in recent decades, it’s just that a small faction of entitled men has invented a new version of “gender” that has a lot of people confused and intimidated.

The article is long, and pandering, and annoying. It refers to the physical advantage males have as “residual,” as if it’s mostly gone but there’s just this tiny little wisp remaining that stubborn Karens are making a big unwomanly fuss about. Who oh who oh who should compete in women’s sports, I just can’t figure it out.

I think Trump’s throwing a funeral for his brother at the White House is tacky, at best. It’s not normal; it’s not what presidents do. It’s gross. It’s exhibitionist. It’s narcissistic. It’s ick.

Trump on Monday said he wanted to hold a service for his younger brother, who died Saturday, at the White House, telling reporters, “I think he’d be greatly honored. He loves our country. He loved our country so much. He was so proud of what we were doing and what we are doing for our country.”

That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to do his funeral in the building.

It is a rare event for the East Room to be used for funeral events, outside of a ceremony for a deceased president. There is precedent, however. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison utilized the East Room for funeral services for the wife and daughter of his Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Tracy. The two women were killed in a fire.

Different. Someone else’s family, not his.

And in 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt hosted a state funeral in the East Room for his longtime political adviser and close friend Louis Howe.

A little closer, and somewhat gross.

Just don’t.

They all knew.

(Of course they did. How could they not? How could anyone? He’s not subtle about it.)

Trump is trying out a new brand of birtherism: pretending Biden wasn’t born where he was born.

Which is weird because…what? Who cares? What difference does it make what town or city or village or megalopolis someone was born in?

President Trump traveled to Old Forge, Pennsylvania, just miles away from former Vice President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, to deliver a scathing speech in which he claimed Biden ‘wasn’t born’ in Scranton, just hours before the Democratic presidential hopeful was set to accept his party’s nomination.

Oh no, not Not Born in Scranton! The horror!

But perhaps Trump’s most vicious and bizarre attack was on Biden’s claim to be a native son of Scranton, asserting that Biden, who was born in St. Mary’s Hospital in Scranton in 1942, “wasn’t born here.”

Ok so I guess the claim is that Biden wasn’t born? He’s the walking unborn? He’s still a fetus, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding?

Whatever. As far as I’m concerned Scranton is the US Slough, because the US version of The Office was set in Scranton. Both are towns no one dreams of visiting.

This isn’t the approach to the climate crisis, this is the climate crisis. Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano, authors of Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, have the details.

In few places is this as clear as California, where extreme wildfires have become the new abnormal. There is currently a “fire siege” in northern California, with wildfires burning in every one of the nine Bay Area counties except for San Francisco, which is entirely urbanized. Tens of thousands of residents have evacuated and people are choking on smoke.

And that’s not some random inexplicable thing, it’s the climate crisis.

California’s governor announced on Wednesday that there were 367 fires, and conflagrations have grown so rapidly that there are not enough firefighters to tackle them all. Neil Lareau, an atmospheric scientist, told us in an interview that he was watching the current fires with “incredulity”.

“It seems like every year re-ups the previous year in terms of pushing the envelope, in terms of how much fire we’re seeing in the landscape and how severe that fire is,” he said.

There were also, by the by, several fire tornadoes at the weekend. Witnessing these phenomena, another fire expert remarked that California “is the exemplar for climate change extreme events today”.

An exemplar. The fires got pretty extreme in Australia just a few months ago, and China is watching anxiously as water nears the top of the Three Gorges Dam.

Trump is attacking California, again, for being on fire.

“I see again the forest fires are starting,” he said at a rally in swing-state Pennsylvania. “They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”

“Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us,” he added.

He wants to make “them” pay for it because California votes for Democrats plus it’s full of Those people – you know the ones.

“I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen,” Trump said on Thursday. “‘The environment, the environment,’ but they have massive fires again.”

Because of an extended drought and a heatwave and lightning strikes – and, yes, because of long-term patterns of development and agriculture that turn out to be unworkable in an arid state, but that’s not what Trump is talking about.

Trump’s suggestions have prompted head-scratching from experts who say his prescriptions — more raking, less water released into the ocean for environmental purposes — suggest he does not understand the science of wildfires.

Gee, ya think?

Proud to demand the end of women’s sport.

Navalny needs to get out of Russia. Putin has nailed the doors shut.

The Berlin-based Cinema for Peace Foundation organised an air ambulance to pick up Mr Navalny and bring him back to Berlin, where it said the Charite hospital was ready to treat him.

…

At a news conference in Berlin, Mr Navalny’s aide Leonid Volkov said at first doctors at the hospital had been helping to facilitate his transfer but abruptly stopped doing so.

“[It was] like something was switched off – like medicine mode off, cover-up operation mode on – and the doctors refused to co-operate any more, refused to give any information even to Alexei’s wife,” he said.

“The doctors who were helping to do the paperwork to make the transportation of Alexei to Charite possible started to say that he’s not any more transportable, he’s not any more stable, contradicting themselves.”

…

Yulia Navalnaya said she thought the Russian authorities were stalling so that evidence of any chemical substance would be lost.

Chemical substance? What chemical substance?

Ari Berman is reporting on DeJoy’s testimony.

Embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before the US Senate on Friday that he will not reinstall more than 600 mail sorting machines that have been removed under his leadership. Postal workers say the removal of these machines has contributed to major mail delays that could affect whether mail ballots are counted in the 2020 election.

He’s said he’ll stop taking any more out for now, since he got caught, but that’s all he’ll concede. It’s as if someone breaks into your house and the police show up and the intruder says “well ok I’ll leave now but all that stuff I stashed in my car before you got here? I’m keeping it.”

“Will you be bringing back any mail sorting machines that have been removed?” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) asked DeJoy during a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee.

“There is no intention to do that,” DeJoy testified. “They are not needed.”

They’re not needed if you have no desire to get the mail out in a timely fashion. Otherwise…they are.

Many of the machines have been removed in critical swing states: 59 in Florida, 58 in Texas, 34 in Ohio, 30 in Pennsylvania, 26 in Michigan, 15 in North Carolina, 12 in Virginia, 12 in Wisconsin, and 11 in Georgia. (This data was provided to Mother Jones by Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post, who have detailed removal of the machines.)

While some of the removals have been described as routine, many more machines have been removed this year compared to years past. “In 2018, for instance, the agency decommissioned about 3 percent of its Delivery Bar Code Sorters, or 125 machines,” the Post reported. “In 2019, it was 5 percent, or 186 machines. The 671 on this year’s list amounted to about 13 percent.”

Trump of course has come right out and said he wants to kneecap the mail in order to steal the election.

The BBC a couple of weeks ago:

Twelve months into her gender transition, Grace McKenzie was recruited out of the blue to join the Golden Gate Women’s rugby club in San Francisco.

Cue Rebecca Solnit to remind us how awesome and accepting San Francisco is.

McKenzie says playing rugby has given her a platform to “just focus on living and enjoying myself” – but a new proposal to ban trans women from women’s contact rugby could bring that to an end.

Because, oddly enough, women’s safety and right to fair competition is more important than one trans woman’s “platform to enjoy herself.”

“There’s a lot of rhetoric out there about where trans people fit into sports overall, and it really makes you question whether you have a place, especially as a trans woman playing women’s sports,” McKenzie told BBC Sport.

That’s because men are a danger to women in rugby and so should not play on women’s teams. It’s also because letting men play on women’s teams results in unfair competition. Women’s sport is for women, it’s not for giving men the happy. Men can get the happy in other ways.

“I think the fear of losing rugby as a community and supportive space has been weighing on me quite heavily,” said McKenzie. “There isn’t a moment I don’t worry about losing that access.”

Apparently the safety of the women on the team hasn’t been weighing on McKenzie at all. He worries about his access to the women’s team, but not about the women’s access to the women’s team. Let’s not forget that his presence on the team means there’s a woman who missed out. What about her access? Not his problem, apparently.

“I worry that other sporting federations will look at World Rugby and begin to second-guess the existing science that supports trans women’s inclusion in sport, and begin to make policies based out of a place of fear instead of a place of logic and reason,” said McKenzie.

What “existing science” would that be? Anyway the issue isn’t inclusion of trans women in sport, it’s inclusion of trans women in women’s sport. What is the logic and reason that concludes it’s a good idea to add men who identify as women in women’s sports?

“I would ask them to think about what it would be like to have something that you love, cared about and that brought meaning and happiness into your life taken away from you, and you had been told that that you weren’t able to access that based on who you are as a person,” said McKenzie.

Says the guy who is blithely ignoring the woman he is displacing. What if she loved it and cared about it and it brought meaning and happiness into her life? Where is McKenzie’s empathy for her?

Oh and let’s not forget Trump’s tax returns.

A federal judge on Thursday cleared the way for Manhattan’s top prosecutor to get Donald Trump’s tax returns, rejecting a last-ditch attempt by his lawyers to block a subpoena issued to his accounting firm.

US district judge Victor Marrero’s ruling echoes his prior decision in the case, which was upheld by the US supreme court last month. The high court returned the case to Marrero so Trump’s lawyers could get another chance to challenge the subpoena issued by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr.

Trump, through his lawyers, has argued that the subpoena was issued in bad faith, might have been politically motivated and amounted to harassment of him, especially since the wording mimicked the language in congressional subpoenas.

It’s an interesting way to try to shield yourself from the law – get elected president so that you can pretend any attention from the cops is “politically motivated.” Trump is a filthy crook no matter what the Manhattan DA’s motivation is.

What’s the deal with Stephen Miller? How did he get to be a racist fanatic?

Jean Guerrero’s new book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda follows Miller through a conservative media landscape where key figures — including right-wing radio talk-show host Larry Elder; David Horowitz, who founded the David Horowitz Freedom Center; and former Breitbart chief Steve Bannon — propelled the rise of a man who now influences who gets to be an American.

…

“I just became all the more fascinated with trying to understand how a descendant of Jewish refugees who grew up in Southern California — how does that person become the person crafting Trump’s harshest rhetoric and policies, targeting people fleeing violence and persecution, people like his own great-grandparents?” Guerrero tells NPR.

Because he’d rather be doing the violence and persecution than fleeing it?

Guerrero has found that while Miller and Trump seem to work well together, they are different: “Stephen Miller is a true ideologue. He’s a fanatic. He believes this stuff, whereas Trump is a lot more motivated by self-interest. But you do see that these two men coming together … they’ve been able to mutually benefit each other in a very unique way. In part, because Stephen Miller gets Donald Trump.”

Trump is more motivated by self-interest but at the same time he does enjoy the racist taunting for its own sake. He hasn’t done all the Deep Reading Miller has, but he’s all about the contempt and bullying and general trashiness. For him it’s fun, for Miller it’s ideology.

David Horowitz was a big influence.

[It’s] apparent from private correspondence that David Horowitz shared with me for the book, where you could see for years, David Horowitz shaping Stephen Miller’s career throughout college, getting him his first job on Capitol Hill, shaping [Donald] Trump’s rhetoric and policies through Miller. And he introduces him from a very young age to this idea that everything that we hold dear as Americans — you know, equality and freedom — that all of these things are thanks to white men and that there’s this unfair war on whiteness. … Stephen Miller was really taken with this idea.

Equality and freedom like for instance Mississippi in, say, 1850? That kind of equality and freedom? Like the Fugitive Slave Act? Like the Dred Scott ruling? Like the Trail of Tears?

Steve Bannon, he remembers when he met Stephen Miller, he remembered listening to his voice on the Larry Elder show in Los Angeles. You know, like so many other key figures who played a key role in shaping Trumpism, he had heard Stephen Miller. So he decides to help Stephen Miller get a platform for his ideas through the right-wing blog Breitbart, which Bannon was the head of at the time. And so, initially Stephen Miller had had some trouble on Capitol Hill getting his ideas through to journalists. Like, at first, he had been trying to derail the nomination to the Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor — the first woman of Latin American heritage to be nominated — by saying that her Latin American heritage would interfere with her ability to be an unbiased judge. 

Oh? Why would Latin American heritage do that when Euro American heritage apparently wouldn’t? How about Jewish American heritage – does that interfere with people’s ability to be unbiased? How about Japanese American? African American? Russian American? It’s a puzzle.

Miller and Trump both love violence – fantasy violence, but they’re now in positions to translate that into real violence toward other people.

Stephen Miller and Donald Trump really share this morbid fascination with violence. And that’s why you see Stephen Miller contributing these very vivid descriptions of demonizing violence into Trump’s rhetoric, you know, talking about migrants slaughtering little girls and just stuff that is supposed to make you feel afraid, and hatred towards migrants. And the other thing about their relationship is Stephen Miller consistently pushes Trump in the most aggressive direction when it comes to immigration policy and when it comes to his rhetoric. And Trump has learned to appreciate that, because whenever he has listened to a more moderate adviser, he ends up getting ridiculed by his base as — by his very hard-core base — as weak. And Trump hates that. He wants to be seen as a killer. You see him talking about this throughout his life, the importance of being a killer.

In reality he’s a giant marshmallow, but he’s also a sadist. It’s what makes him so intensely repulsive.

It’s saad, saad, he never hurdovum, never hurdovum, showboating, they were showboating, saad, he never hurdovum.

A tweet yesterday:

What proposal? You may think they said what proposal in a preceding tweet but they didn’t. Maybe they deleted something, maybe they’re just sloppy. I searched and found a BBC story from July 20.

World Rugby could ban transgender athletes from playing women’s rugby because of safety concerns.

It would be the first international sports federation to prohibit transgender women from competing.

World Rugby said it had undertaken a review of its “rugby-specific transgender guidelines” in light of the “latest peer reviewed research”.

It said it was committed to “ensuring a safe and inclusive playing environment at all levels of the game”.

You know, it shouldn’t be just safety. There should be zero argument about the safety aspect but safety is not the only reason men should not be allowed to play on women’s teams or compete against women. It should be about fairness as well as safety.

In a statement to BBC Sport, it added: “The latest peer reviewed research confirms that a reduction of testosterone does not lead to a proportionate reduction in mass, muscle mass, strength or power. These important determinants of injury risk and performance remain significantly elevated after testosterone suppression.”

Which is exactly why it should be about fairness as well as safety, but apparently that’s too much to ask.

A World Rugby transgender workshop in February sought a “comprehensive review” for the sport, bringing together experts from across the globe to look at a “rugby-specific framework for all, prioritising athlete welfare, inclusion and fairness”.

One of the experts to attend the workshop was Dr Nicola Williams, director of women’s rights advocacy group Fair Play for Women, who described World Rugby’s position as “trailblazing” if it goes ahead with the decision.

“The sensitivity around this issue around transgender issues, and the fear that people would be called transphobic for raising concerns has meant that most sporting bodies have buried their head in the sand on this,” she told BBC Sport.

In other words it’s not necessarily genuine agreement with the view that trans women should be “included” in everything related to women no matter what, but rather a desire not to be bullied and demonized, that causes so many organizations to jump when trans women say jump.

However, Loughborough University medical physicist and transgender woman Joanna Harper, who also attended the workshop, said she doesn’t feel a ban would be right.

Well it’s not Harper’s safety that’s at stake, is it, just as it’s not Harper’s right to fair competition that’s at stake.

“I certainly understand all of that and I think putting restrictions on trans-women is a reasonable thing to do but I certainly don’t agree with this idea of an outright ban,” she told BBC Sport.

Because hey it’s only the safety of women, and that obviously doesn’t matter enough.

So, International Gay Rugby says it “stands with our Trans & Non-Binary players in solidarity to protect their #RightToPlay” and the hell with women’s right to safety and fairness. Stonewall UK is right there in solidarity with them.

Proud. Stonewall is proud. Stonewall is proud to stand with International Gay Rugby to say fuck women’s safety, fuck fairness to women, let the men trample them into the mud if that’s what they want. Funny thing to be proud of.

Life under a dictator:

The Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny is in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit after a suspected poisoning.

“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into his tea,” his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, tweeted. “That was the only thing he drank this morning. The doctors say that the toxin was absorbed more quickly because of the hot liquid. Right now Alexei is unconscious.”

An outspoken critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Navalny was returning to Moscow by plane from Tomsk in Siberia when he began to feel ill. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk and he was taken to hospital. A mobile video shot on the plane showed medical personnel rushing onboard as a man screamed in agony.

Putin the Poisoner strikes again.

Several opposition figures have been targeted with poison since Putin came to power in 2000. Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer who defected to the UK, died in 2006 of radiation sickness after ingesting a lethal dose of polonium-210 slipped into his tea. One of the men accused in his poisoning is now an MP in Russia’s parliament. The opposition activist Petr Verzilov recently revealed a poisoning attempt against his life in Moscow in 2018.

Not to mention Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Seems to be a busy morning. Steve Bannon has been arrested for fraud, and a breaking news banner at the top of that story says a judge has thrown out Trump’s challenge to the Manhattan DA’s subpoena of his tax records. Also Trump melted down the rest of the way while watching the Dem convention last night.

So, Bannon.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been arrested after being charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through their campaign “We Build the Wall.” 

Bannon, along with three of his associates, w[as] indicted by investigators at the U.S. Southern District of New York on Thursday. They allege that the group of conservative leaders defrauded donors and that led to raising “more than $25 million to build a wall along the southern border of the United States,” according to the press release. 

This must have been written at top speed, because it’s full of mistakes and confusions, but I think we can get the drift.

The campaign was intended to raise money to help President Donald Trump fulfill a campaign promise of building a border wall along the border. Instead, prosecutors allege, that Bannon and his team profited off of the arrangement. 

Jeez, I don’t write that sloppily even when I’m in a hurry. Anyway, upshot is, prosecutors allege that Bannon and co skimmed a lot of the $$ and gave it to themselves, which is not permitted.

“The defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, said in a statement. “While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.

I suppose Trump has already posted the tweet that says he barely knows Bannon and fired him the very instant he realized what a Loser he is.