Sarah Chayes points out that Trump’s corruption is very public for a reason.

In Kabul, Western officials scratched their heads as to why Karzai would want to confess, in an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, to meddling in judicial affairs. The U.S. and other donor nations on which he depended for his very survival would certainly be displeased. So he must have a very good reason, I thought at the time. And then I realized that he was broadcasting a message to his network: Don’t worry. I stand by the deal.

Even a cursory look at the list of Trump’s February 19 beneficiaries suggests that his aim was not to right the wrong of prosecutorial overreach, but to send a similar message to his network—to reinforce and perhaps expand it. More than 2 million people are incarcerated across the United States. By a very rough estimate extrapolated from federal numbers (statistics of any kind on this topic are hard to find), well less than 7 percent of them were convicted of corruption or significant white-collar crimes. Yet no fewer than eight of Trump’s 11 boons went to perpetrators of this stripe: committers of tax fraud, of orchestrating a giant scheme to cheat Medicare, of multiple violations of securities law while creating a speculative bubble in junk bonds (which crashed in 1989 to widespread devastation), or of extorting a children’s hospital and trying to sell the Senate seat Barack Obama left vacant when he was elected president.

Another tell is that Trump’s clemency came not at the end of his time in office, as is sometimes the case with such favors bestowed on cronies and swindlers, but well before that—indeed, ahead of an election in which he is running. The gesture was not a guilty half-secret, but a promise. It was meant to show that the guarantee of impunity for choice members of America’s corrupt networks is an ongoing principle.

I’m guessing that there’s also a less pragmatic reason for doing it openly, which is the joy of rubbing our noses in it. “Haha you can’t touch me, Mitch won’t let you, haha, I can do anything I want to, I can smear poo on my face and you can’t stop me.” But that’s just a parenthesis. The pragmatic reason is far more important.

For this message to be delivered with the utmost clarity, the pardons and commutations had to be seen as the work of Trump himself. They could not result or even appear to result from a formal process carried out by the Department of Justice and the White House, as is normally the case. Pay attention is the point being driven home: The network and its chief are what counts, not the government as an impartial institution.

…

As egregious as Trump’s moves to bolster impunity for a certain type of criminality are, however, the phenomenon predates him, though in subtler guises. Prior presidential pardons have also disproportionately favored white-collar criminals. Thanks to a concerted campaign that lasted decades and several Supreme Court decisions (most unanimous), the definition of public corruption and bribery has been narrowed to the point that an official would almost have to make an effort to commit the infractions. Prosecutions of white-collar crime have been plummeting for decades.

I didn’t know that about the campaign and the Supreme Court rulings.

What a colossal mess.

The jokes write themselves.

Presumably “land a great guy” means “capture the affections of a man for purposes of marriage or commitment or a rewarding temporary relationship”…but isn’t the list kind of bare bones? Even putting feminism aside for a moment, is that really what Great Guys want? Someone sweet and not annoying? That’s it?

On the upside, I guess women in the market for a Great Guy can feel relieved, because meeting the criteria would be a doddle. No need to be thoughtful or curious or clever or widely read or funny or surprising or…anything, really. Just sweet; just not annoying.

I say it’s simpler to get a blow-up doll and a chef.

A Labour Party aide explains that women over 39 are just stupid and clueless:

One senior campaign aide said that the issue was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate and could do long-term damage to the party in an area where it has traditionally been strong.

“I think we are all in a bit of a bind,” the aide said. “We want to be the party of equality but there is a risk that we are seen to be obsessed by this and are tearing ourselves apart. The tone on both sides has been blown out of all proportion.”

Be the party of equality by all means, but you have to be clear that “equality” doesn’t mean “everything I like.”

The aide added that the argument was, in part, born out of a “generational divide” on the left. “On one side you have women in their forties, fifties and sixties who identify with the feminist movement. They find the idea of self-identification very challenging. On the other you have women in their twenties and thirties who are much more relaxed about this and for whom it is an equalities issue.

Ah yes – we old bats are too rigid and unrelaxed to just lie back and enjoy it. That is what feminism has always been about, right? Relaxing?

Also, we don’t “identify with the feminist movement” – we are feminists. Not everything is about identifying as or with.

Also, we don’t find the idea of self-identification very challenging, we find it very wrong and stupid. We’re old enough to know that obfuscation and gibberish are worthless tools in any fight for equality or justice or rights. We’re also old enough to know that people sometimes lie about who they are, and sometimes get it wrong.

Also, if these relaxed young women do think men’s claims to be women are “an equalities issue” in the sense that we have to agree with those men, then they’re way too relaxed and not paying attention.

News from Sweden:

For several days this week the veteran Swedish journalist Malou von Sivers will cover the same topic in every episode of her nightly TV chat show: the extraordinary rise in diagnoses of gender dysphoria among teenage girls.

…

The immediate trigger for Von Sivers’s themed week is a report from Sweden’s Board of Health and Welfare which confirmed a 1,500% rise between 2008 and 2018 in gender dysphoria diagnoses among 13- to 17-year-olds born as girls.

But it also reflects a rapid change in public opinion. Just a year ago, there seemed few official obstacles left in the way of young people who wanted gender reassignment treatment.

Which is to say, puberty blockers, aka an uncontrolled medical experiment on children.

In the autumn of 2018, the Social Democrat-led government, under pressure from the gay, lesbian and transgender group RFSL, proposed a new law which would reduce the minimum age for sex reassignment medical care from 18 to 15, remove all need for parental consent, and allow children as young as 12 to change their legal gender.

Then in March last year, the backlash started. Christopher Gillberg, a psychiatrist at Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy, wrote an article in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper warning that hormone treatment and surgery on children was “a big experiment” which risked becoming one of the country’s worst medical scandals.

And the big experiment rests on the premise that children will reliably continue to want what they say they want right now, for the rest of their lives. That seems like a very shaky premise to base such a drastic experiment on. When I was 11 the closest I could get to having an idea of what I wanted to do with my life was a fantasy of driving around the western US having adventures. I’m glad nobody gave me a car and waved goodbye.

In April, Uppdrag Granskning, an investigative TV programme, followed up with a documentary profiling a former trans man, Sametti, who regretted her irreversible treatment.

In October, the programme turned its fire on the team at Stockholm’s Karolinska University hospital, which specialises in treating minors with gender dysphoria. The unit has been criticised for carrying out double mastectomies on children as young as 14, and accused of rushing through treatment and failing to consider adequately whether patients’ other psychiatric or developmental issues might better explain their unhappiness with their bodies. The Karolinska disputed the claim, saying it carefully assessed each case.

But who is assessing what “carefully” means?

On 20 December, the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment, which the government had asked to review the scientific research into the recent surge in teenagers reporting gender dysphoria, reported that there was very little research either into the reason for the increase or the risks or benefits of hormone treatment and surgery.

First, do no harm.

Originally a comment by Papito on The child deals with life by wearing pink and flowers.

The kids with dysphoria or gender confusion almost always grew up to be homosexual adults, not transsexual adults. Transsexual adult males usually weren’t dysphoric when they were kids….

I think they were all gender dysphoric as kids in a retrospective sense. You know, like all of a sudden, as adults, they discovered that they were always gender dysphoric and that’s what their problem was. But you’re right. All of the guys I know who transitioned were nebbishes who weren’t the least bit feminine before transition. Meanwhile, I knew other guys who were seriously swishy as kids and they mostly turned out gay. The idea that someone wants to intervene with these boys and recruit them into this trans cult and castrate them is nothing short of horrifying to me.

It’s not enough to shut down all the lesbian bars and force adult lesbians out of their own spaces. It’s not enough to screw up women’s sports, and try to get rapists into women’s prisons. They have to meddle with the kids. All those little teenage butches being convinced to mutilate themselves, destroy their voices, destroy their health. All those femme boys being sold a fantasy bill of goods. This magic bean will make you into a woman. No, no it won’t. It will only make you into a eunuch. Has the age of castrati returned?

I’m an ecumenical sort of guy. I’m fine with letting all the kinks have their place to play. I’ll even call some bony geek in a skirt “miss” if it makes him happy. But this TRA crap makes everybody else’s life worse. I’m not a lesbian. I’m not a gay man. I’m not a child. I’m not one of the people whose life is most directly threatened by TRA nonsense. But it makes life harder for parents, which I am, and it makes life harder too for people who just don’t want to play the gender game as hard as others seem to. I find it pretentious and twee to refer to oneself as “gender non-conforming,” but I have always looked forward to a future of loosening gender role strictures, where fewer and fewer people care that women are supposed to do or be X, and men are supposed to do or be Y, and this TRA crap is a giant step back from that.

Hey kids, gather ’round, it’s time to play Invent Your Own Reality!

Fun fact: lots of things do not mean there is a coherent binary thing called “biological sex,” in fact pretty much all things do not mean that except the nine words “there is a coherent binary thing called ‘biological sex.'” BUT – and this is important – that fun fact in turn does not mean that Chase Strangio has successfully established that there is no such thing as biological sex. Chase Strangio is just talking, just blowing hot air, just parroting the fatuous pseudo-technical claims that trans ideology has been shaping on its wheel for several years. It’s just self-important jargon, and it means nothing.

Don’t go to Chase Strangio if you’re looking for informed discussion of what we mean by “gender.”

From the Guardian Live on Trump:

After Trump dismissed reports of Russia’s preference for him in the 2020 race as a Democratic “misinformation campaign,” the former CIA chief of Russian operations tweeted this:

Important point. It’s not about Trump playing “tough on Russia” guy for the camera. It’s about having a corrupt, ignorant, stupid, incompetent, reckless, ludicrous clown playing president for the camera.

Mind you, we’ve already had presidents that make us look foolish and inept, but having a Trump dials it up to a bajillion.

But he’s just one of those wacky far-left types so pay no attention.

Originally a comment by guest on What the specific demands for liberation ARE.

It seems a bit ridiculous to think the stories people tell each other in any culture DON’T influence the behaviour of those people. And don’t forget Harry Potter–I was, I think, possibly too old for it when it hit, and after reading half of the first novel gave it up as boring and derivative, but I’ve read and heard some things that make me think it would be difficult to overestimate its effect on the generation it was aimed at. I never watched the X-Files myself, but your recommendation is making me think I should check it out. It just seems a shame that the stories in our culture are, at base, designed not to teach lessons or preserve culture, traditions or history but to generate income for the tellers.

Here’s something I wrote the other day:

I went to a talk last night in which the speaker mentioned the idea that our narrative is what drives our perceptions and behaviour. I think there’s a lot of truth in that. I’ve thought (and possibly written) before about the kinds of narratives I remember from the media I consumed as a child—stories, movies, Saturday morning cartoons. Two in particular seemed to be persistent/consistent. The first was ‘when you first encounter X it’s frightening/confusing/stupid, but the more you learn about X the more you realise why X is what it is and, if not sympathise, at least understand.’ The example of this narrative that comes to my mind is the Horta in ST:TOS. But there were several stories of ‘the primitive people do X, the white rational invaders show up and say X is a backward superstition so they make people stop doing X, either by neglecting it or forcing them to give up their customs, and horrific consequences ensue.’ Moral of the story: if you don’t understand something then learn about it; every ‘other’ is a subject of its own story, every ‘irrational’ ‘primitive’ behaviour has a reason.

The second was what I call the ‘heist story’ and what a friend called the ‘D&D story’. A random group of people, from different backgrounds, with different histories and different skill sets, come together or are forced together, and each contributes something unique to the success of a project they carry out together. The example of this that comes to my mind, though it wasn’t something I encountered as a child, is Sharon Green’s ‘Blending’ novels (though I wish the two female protagonists weren’t ‘a prostitute’ and ‘a merchant’s daughter’–particularly as, in the pseudo-preindustrial England of typical Anglophone fantasy a ‘merchant’s daughter’ is basically ‘a merchant’), but any ‘quest’ story has this element. Moral of the story: every person, even a marginalised/othered person, has some value if you can find it. People succeed when they contribute to diverse groups.

So what happened to these narratives? As far as I can tell we have different ones now—it seems the most popular narrative now is the superhero story. Moral of the story: some people (a very few special people) are just naturally better than others. They may work as a team occasionally, but they are an elite team. The rest of us can only hope that these elites might do something that benefits us; we have no agency, and can only rely on the good nature and integrity of the ‘good’ elites, who will protect us from the ‘bad’ elites.

My question at the moment is which comes first, the narrative or the reality, and which drives the other?

Originally a comment by iknklast on You there: get out.

though you’ve likely never met a single transgender child

To add: this is a huge assumption on your part. Like the Christians that people my front porch on Saturday mornings, you assume that we would automatically change our minds if we ever met a single person who fits in the group being discussed.

In fact, I have known several. It was the situation of one of those children that caused me to question my support for the trans lobby, which had prior to that been unwavering. When I saw the way that child was ushered into trans while going through therapy for anxiety following a series of tragic events in his life, including the extremely violent accidental death of his father, I started to question the reality of the trans experience. Instead of dealing with the issues this child had (legitimate issues), the therapist declared him a girl, and now the child deals with life by wearing pink and flowers. The number of symptoms of the DSM that the trans advocates have adopted as signs that you are trans appears to be approaching 100%, and the ordinary every day experiences of life that people go through that have been adopted as symptoms of trans also appears to be reaching critical mass. In fact, reading the list of indicators that you might be trans leaves me breathless, and realizing that, if this is true, we are all trans.

I have never forgotten the day my own therapist asked me if I wanted to be male, because of my struggles with the female expectations laid on me by the world. I told him no, I just wanted to be allowed to be a woman in my own way. He nodded, moved on, and worked with me toward reaching my goal. I have now seen things written and speeches made by therapists who are proud of the fact that they do not accept that answer, and will do what they can to persuade the child they are, in fact, wanting to be the opposite sex.

When refusing to wear barrettes is hailed as a sign of being “pre-literate trans” rather than possibly “pre-literate feminist”, I find it questionable. When girls are encouraged to transition because they like short hair and pants, I find it questionable. When men tell me they feel “euphoric” when they are treated like a woman, I find it questionable.

At this point, I think the fact that I know as many trans as I do in my small circle of acquaintances is a red flag for me.

The purge is expanding.

Johnny McEntee called in White House liaisons from cabinet agencies for an introductory meeting Thursday, in which he asked them to identify political appointees across the U.S. government who are believed to be anti-Trump, three sources familiar with the meeting tell Axios.

McEntee, a 29-year-old former body man to Trump who was fired in 2018 by then-Chief of Staff John Kelly but recently rehired — and promoted to head the presidential personnel office — foreshadowed sweeping personnel changes across government.

“Sweeping personnel changes”=a purge.

Trump has empowered McEntee — whom he considers an absolute loyalist — to purge the “bad people” and “Deep State.”

There it is again. This is a random employee of Trump’s, barely old enough to drive, with zero relevant experience, tasked with purging government of people who don’t put Trump first. All that matters is trump trump trump. The other 8 billion of us are so much dandelion fluff.

Lisa Nandy is really digging in on this “self-identification is a right” nonsense.

Sure, people have a right to say “I know better than a psychiatric assessment who I am.” What they don’t have is a right to impose that claim on anyone else, a right to live according to that claimed knowledge in all circumstances without question, a right to lie on official documents, and so on. An absolute right to self-identify, with no stipulations or limitations of any kind, does not exist. Nobody has a right to self-identify as Lisa Nandy MP for example, because Lisa Nandy MP is one specific person who has the documentation (and public profile) to back up her identification.

It’s so Ayn Randy, so libertarian, so trumpian, this insistence that The Sacred Individual has an absolute right to self-identify while all the people who have to deal with The Sacred Individual have no rights. Labour MPs should know better.

And by the way people don’t always know better who they are than others who can see them from the outside. Look (again) at Trump, for example. Look at him. He has no clue.

Yes how dare women think they can ever withdraw from the male presence, even in a rape shelter? They’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

Truth matters:

As she delivered her sentence, Judge Amy Berman Jackson delivered a defense of facts, accusing Roger Stone of disregarding them in his case.

“The truth still exists. The truth still matters,” Jackson said. “Roger Stone’s insistence that it doesn’t, his pride in his own lies are a threat to the very foundation of this democracy.”

Despite America’s current divisions, Jackson said that the condemnation of Stone’s disregard for the truth “should transcend both parties.”

I don’t know why the Guardian decided to downgrade that into “facts.” Truth includes facts but that’s not all there is to it.

House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff said Roger Stone’s sentence was “justified” and warned that a presidential pardon in the case would be a “breathtaking act of corruption.”

All the more reason for Trump to do it, in Trump’s mind. He’s having a blast doing corrupt things every day while we watch in helpless rage.

Updating to add the conclusion: 40 months.

The Guardian live is following the hearing in Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s court.

The federal prosecutors and Roger Stone’s lawyers argued in court over whether the former Trump associate had obstructed his own criminal case by posting about it on social media.

As a reminder, Stone was slapped with an expanded gag order last year after he posted an Instagram appearing to show Judge Amy Berman Jackson and the crosshairs of a gun.

Jackson warned in court today that the post could have incited violence against her and merited a sentencing enhancement, denouncing Stone’s behavior as “intolerable.”

Awww just a bit of boyish fun.

Under questioning from Judge Amy Berman Jackson, federal prosecutor John Crabb defended the original prosecutors who carried out Roger Stone’s case.

Crabb, who signed on to the revised sentencing recommendation last week, blamed the change on a “misunderstanding,” saying the original prosecutors received the proper approvals for their recommendation of seven to nine years in prison.

Is “a misunderstanding” code for “intervention by Trump”? Because that’s what happened. Trump intervened, Barr intervened, all four prosecutors quit the case.

“This prosecution was, and this prosecution is, righteous,” Crabb said.

But Crabb would not directly answer Jackson’s questions about whether he was ordered to sign the revised sentencing recommendation, which came after Trump criticized the original recommendation.

Crabb argued that process was a matter of internal deliberations, but he expressed confidence in Jackson’s eventual sentence. “We are confident the court will impose a fair and just sentence in this matter,” he said.

Law people were asking each other on Twitter if a prosecutor can even do that – refuse to answer a judge’s questions.

Judge Jackson

criticized Trump’s tweets about Roger Stone’s case, calling the president’s comments “entirely inappropriate.”

But the judge made clear she would not be swayed by Trump’s comments or arguments from Stone’s critics calling for a stiffer sentence.

“Roger Stone will not be sentenced for who his friends are or who his enemies are,” Jackson said.

It’s going to be less than what the prosecutors recommended.

None of this is how it’s supposed to be.

It’s easy to think of non-legit reasons though.

The sentencing hearing for Roger Stone is happening now.

Jackson spent much of the first hour of the hearing criticizing Stone’s actions.

Stone’s actions “led to an inaccurate, incorrect and incomplete report” from the House on Russia, WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign, Jackson told the court. She also said she believed Stone’s threats to witness Randy Credico deserved a stronger sentence.

In other words Stone’s actions meant that the Mueller report couldn’t nail Trump. The perjury did what it was meant to do.

Stone also potentially threatened her on social media, the judge said.

“I suppose that I could say Roger Stone didn’t intend to hurt me … it’s just classic bad judgment,” Jackson said, then dismissing that idea. “It wasn’t accidental.”

“Incendiary activity is precisely what he’s known for,” she said. “The court should not sit idly buy, shrug its shoulders and say ‘that’s just Roger being Roger,'” Jackson said as Stone closed his eyes at counsel’s table, fiddling with a pen and shifting his weight.

See also: Trump being Trump. Yes, they’re being what they are, and that’s the problem.

Jackson also delivered a veiled swipe at the President during the hearing.

“For those of you who woke up last week” and decided sentencing guidelines are harsh, Jackson said, courts and defense lawyers have been acknowledging that for some time.

I think there’s some confusion here. No sentence is too harsh when it’s imposed on the poor, the female, the brown, the foreign-born. It’s when it’s imposed on prosperous white men named Smith or Stone that it’s excessive.

Pride parade shuts down a lesbian event. Makes sense.

A lesbian event has been removed from Sydney, Australia’s LGBT Pride after a vocal minority protested the participation of a popular lesbian YouTuber with critical views towards transgender self-ID.

Arielle Scarcella runs an LGBT-centred YouTube channel with over 630,000 subscribers.

She has also spoken out against self-ID laws which have enabled biological males to be transferred to women’s prisons after the commission of serious offences, such as sexual assaults. In 2018, Scarcella collaborated on a video with Blaire White discussing how lesbian sexual preferences that do not include an attraction to biological males who transition to female were not “transphobic.”

Les-Talk was originally planned to be one of the events featured at Sydney Mardi Gras, the local Pride parade and festival. A panel-style discussion also featuring Tania Safi of Buzzfeed, the event began to draw ire from trans rights activists for including Scarcella. A petition was launched on February 15 demanding Scarcella be removed and replaced “preferably by someone of intersectionality.”

In other words they shut her down for talking about the fact that lesbians are being shut down. This loop is getting tedious.

The petition was launched by Johnny Valkyrie, a transman and drag performer most notorious for a January incident at the Brisbane National Library. Valkyrie hosted Drag Storytime at the library, and was one of the two performers confronted by demonstrators from the University of Queensland National Liberal Club chanting “drag queens are not for kids.” The protestors were filmed and dox[x]ed. 

The dox[x]ing resulted in one of the protestors, an openly gay student named Wilson Gavin, committing suicide the next day. Valkyrie used the opportunity at the library to raise funds for his “top surgery,” including a post on the day-of Gavin’s death—later updating the post to claim it was made prior to knowledge of his passing.

And today Valkyrie is flushed with a new triumph.

Les-Talk was not officially cancelled, but was disassociated from Mardi Gras, according to a Facebook post made on the event’s official page.

Sorry, folks, but trans people are in charge of all the things now.