Hmmmm.

If she’s right, “God” has very weird tastes.

Masha Gessen says no, it’s not that Putin is a mastermind of fiendish cunning, it’s that he’s a crook just as Trump is a crook. That’s all. It’s not fancy.

(I kind of knew that, maybe via Masha Gessen. I read or heard someone who would know say that we wildly exaggerate the talents of Putin, that he’s just a very typical and mediocre hack who got lucky.)

We [people who write about Russia] cringed at the characterization of the Russian online influence campaign as “sophisticated” and “vast”: Russian reporting on the matter—the best available—convincingly portrayed the troll operation as small-time and ridiculous. It was, it seems, fraudulent in every way imaginable: it perpetrated fraud on American social networks, creating fake accounts and events and spreading falsehoods, but it was also fraudulent in its relationship to whoever was funding it, because surely crudely designed pictures depicting Hillary Clinton as Satancould not deliver anyone’s money’s worth.

What we are observing is not most accurately described as the subversion of American democracy by a hostile power. Instead, it is an attempt at state capture by an international crime syndicate. What unites Yanukovych, Veselnitskaya, Manafort, Stone, Wikileaks’s Julian Assange, the Russian troll factory, the Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos and his partners in crime, the “Professor” (whose academic credentials are in doubt), and the “Female Russian National” (who appears to have fraudulently presented herself as Putin’s niece) is that they are all crooks and frauds. This is not a moral assessment, or an attempt to downplay their importance. It is an attempt to stop talking in terms of states and geopolitics and begin looking at Mafias and profits.

And the thing is…it doesn’t take sophistication or genius-evil to ruin everything. Hacks can do it. Nasty little shits with stupid mustaches can do it. Puffy big shits with stupid hair can do it. Building is difficult; smashing is easy.

The Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar, who created the concept of the “post-Communist mafia state,” has just finished editing a new collection of articles called “Stubborn Structures: Reconceptualizing Post-Communist Regimes” (to be published by C.E.U. Press early this year). In one of his own pieces in the collection, using Russia as an example, Magyar describes the Mafia state as one run by a “patron” and his “court”—put another way, the boss and his clan—who appropriate public resources and the institutions of the state for their private use and profit. When I talked to Magyar on the phone on Monday, he told me that Trump is “like a Mafia boss without a Mafia. Trump cannot transform the United States into a Mafia state, of course, but he still acts like a Mafia boss.” Putin, on the other hand, “is a Mafia boss with a real Mafia, which has turned the whole state into a criminal state.” Still, he said, “the behavior at the top is the same.”

The Putin-Trump connection has done Russia little good, Gessen argues, but it has been great for Putin personally.

A Mafia boss craves respect, loyalty, and perceived power. Trump’s deference to Putin and the widespread public perception of Putin’s influence over Trump have lifted Putin’s stature beyond what I suspect could have been his wildest dreams. As happens in a Mafia state, most of the benefit accrues to the patron personally. But some of the profit goes to the clan. Over the weekend, we learned that the Treasury Department has lifted sanctions on companies that belong to Oleg Deripaska, a member of Putin’s “court” who once lent millions of dollars to Manafort. If a ragtag team employed by or otherwise connected to the Russian Mafia state tried to aid a similar collection of crooks and frauds to elect Trump—as it increasingly looks like they did—then the Deripaska news helps explain their motivations. The story is not that Putin is masterminding a vast and brilliant attack on Western democracy. The story, it appears, is that the Russian Mafia state is cultivating profit-yielding relationships with the aspiring Mafia boss of the U.S. and his band of crooks, subverting democratic institutions in the process.

What a glorious fate.

Is Trump right that the polar vortex means we need more of that fine fine global warming? Of course not.

The important thing is to look at long-term average temperatures.

The current bone-cracking cold in Chicago is “weather” not “climate”.

The rule of thumb is that weather is what is happening outside your house now; climate is what happens over many years.

So, it can be very cold where you live but the world as a whole could still be getting warmer.

And be in no doubt, says Tim Woolings, the world is continuing to warm.

As Chicago freezes, wildfires are raging in Australia which is in the grip of yet another blistering summer.

And last summer wildfires raged in California.

The 20 warmest years on record have all been in the past 22 years, with 2015 to 2018 making up the top four, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

That’s climate.

Sunset yesterday afternoon was a stunner.

The #Seattle sunset tonight is truly amazing!! #WAwx @KSeattleWeather pic.twitter.com/czdarJ9Pq4

— Thomas (@TRButcher) January 31, 2019

https://twitter.com/AckermannArt/status/1090791662287151104

Note Puget Sound mirroring the sky. I have an even better view of that here, because all those tall buildings aren’t in the way.

Wow! Unfiltered, no effects! This is the #sunset happening right now over Elliott Bay in Seattle! #SoNorthwest #wawx #KOMONews pic.twitter.com/Evkpt911U8

— Preston Phillips (@PrestonTVNews) January 31, 2019

Washington State Ferry Kitsap sails into the Fauntleroy ferry terminal in West Seattle with an UNBELIEVABLE sunset overcasting Elliott Bay on 1/30/19.

Photo © 2019 David Rosen / SlickPix Photography pic.twitter.com/SvZLd0nveC

— West Seattle Herald (@westseattleher) January 31, 2019

Tonight's sunset over the Sound and the Olympics is stupidly gorgeous #seattle pic.twitter.com/baCpxs6FZH

— Magic AF (@Magic_AF) January 31, 2019

Seattle, you so pretty. #seattle #sunset #pnw pic.twitter.com/9jotjMVIGf

— Cassidy Rush (@cassidyhrush) January 31, 2019

Speaking of Mister Coffee and the price of Cheerios, I missed one of Trump’s explosions of stupid a few days ago, before he had to call off the shutdown.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross caused a bit of a stir yesterday during a CNBC interview when he said, in reference to federal workers affected by the government shutdown who’ve turned to food banks. “I don’t really quite understand why.” A few hours later, a reporter asked Donald Trump about Ross’ comments, and the president replied:

“No, I haven’t heard the statement, but I – I do understand perhaps he should set it differently. Local people know who they are when they go for groceries and everything else. And I think what Wilbur was probably trying to say is that they will work along. I know banks are working along of – if you have mortgages, the mortgagees, the mortgage – the folks collecting the interest and all of those things, they work along.

“And that’s what happens in times like this. They know the people, they been dealing with them for years, and they work along. The grocery store – and I think that’s probably what Wilbur Ross meant.”

Ahhh yes. That’s what happens. Your local Safeway or Wegmans or Whole Foods or Piggly Wiggly, which sees hundreds or thousands of grocery-shoppers every day, is eager to “work along.” It fills your shopping cart with Cheerios and steaks and the finest whiskey and it tells you not to worry about paying until you get good and ready. Then the Wizard of Oz comes along and helps you climb into the balloon.

It’s pretty much the story of the day, that Trump issued a statement tweeted that the intelligence people are stupid and wrong the day after they told the Senate the truth as they understand it via evidence collected by professionals, as opposed to telling the Senate what Trump thinks is the truth via the fuzzy moldy rattling slum that is his brain. He’s mad at them for not saying what he says and instead saying what they consider true via chains of evidence. He’s mad at them so he trashes them on Twitter.

Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said it was dangerous for the president to dismiss the findings of his own intelligence agencies.

“If you’re going to ignore that information, then you’re going to make poor decisions,” Mr. Schiff said in an interview on Wednesday. He added, “It means the country is fundamentally less safe.”

That’s all the more true when to “ignore that information” you add “and just make shit up.” If you’re going to ignore evidence-based information and just make shit up instead, then you’re going to make bad bad BAD decisions.

The threat assessment — an annual report to Congress that ranks threats to American national security from around the world — provides the public with an unclassified and up-to-date summary of the most pressing national security threats to the United States.

Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, had told lawmakers that North Korea’s leaders “ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.” He said that there was “some activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization” in the country and that most of what it had dismantled was reversible.

Yeah but Trump had a meeting with Kim, and it was awesome, and Kim loves him, and there’s no way Kim is going to do what Kim thinks is good for Kim instead of what Trump thinks is good for Trump. No way.

Douglas H. Wise, a career C.I.A. official and former top deputy at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Mr. Trump’s criticism of the intelligence chiefs threatened to corrupt the process. Intelligence officers do not like to be at odds with the president, he said, and Mr. Trump’s comments put them in an uncomfortable position.

“This is a consequence of narcissism but it is a strong and inappropriate public political pressure to get the intelligence community leadership aligned with his political goals,” Mr. Wise said. “The existential danger to the nation is when the policymaker corrupts the role of the intelligence agencies, which is to provide unbiased and apolitical intelligence to inform policy.”

Oh my, he mentioned the narcissism. He’ll probably be in prison before the sun sets.

I guess this is why Trump is saying he knows better than the intelligence people: they were telling senators he’s got everything wrong yesterday.

In open testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday morning, leaders of the intelligence community knocked down the president’s talking points about ISIS, the nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea, and the value of NATO.

CIA Director Gina Haspel confirmed to Sen. Angus King (I-ME) that Iran is not currently violating the terms of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Last May, President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that Iran had violated its terms and withdrew the United States from the agreement.

We see reporters saying “President Donald Trump claimed without evidence” a lot, because he does that a lot. He just makes shit up, all the time, with no caution or hesitation or embarrassment or anything else you would expect from a grown-ass adult making shit up in public. It’s weird living under a President Toddler.

Haspel, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Gen. Robert Ashley also told the committee that North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons because Kim Jong Un sees them as essential to protecting his regime.

Duh.

Trump, after a meeting with Kim in Singapore in 2018, claimed without evidence that the country was no longer a nuclear threat to the United States.

Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018

n his opening statements, Coats also laid out the U.S. Intelligence Community’s consensus view that ISIS has not been defeated, knocking down a popular Trump talking point. Trump announced in December that ISIS was defeated in Syria, although he cited no evidence, and said that this success justified pulling U.S. troops out of Syria.

“While ISIS is nearing territorial defeat,” Coats said, “the group has returned to its guerilla warfare roots while continuing to plot attacks and direct its supporters worldwide. ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters.”

But Trump claims without evidence that he knows better.

Coats also emphasized the importance of NATO in countering China and Russia’s growing power and influence as U.S. adversaries. He claimed China and Russia are increasingly aligned and coordinating, an aspect of his opening statements King said was alarming and overlooked. Coats’ 2019 national intelligence strategy, issued the week before the hearing, emphasized that China and Russia would coordinate to expand their global influence as the West became more isolationist.

Trump has actively pushed isolationist foreign policies, and has railed against key U.S. alliances like NAFTA and NATO.

But Coats emphasized the strategic importance of coordinating with NATO allies in countering Russia’s influence efforts. NATO, Coats said, was needed to push back on autocratic tendencies within Europe, but it was also essential for NATO to counter Russia’s goal of destabilizing European unity and the U.S.-European alliance.

With Trump’s eager assistance.

The intelligence leaders, in their testimony, also offered a consensus view that Russia would meddle in the 2020 U.S. election; that the government shutdown was harmful to the intelligence community; and that climate change presents a significant security threat to the United States.

But Trump claims without evidence that he knows better.

Via Screechy Monkey at Miscellany Room, the Root fills us in on what really happened with Donnie Two-scoops and his invitation to gorge on french fries.

When Filet-O-Fish aficionado Donald Trump invited the Clemson Tigers to enjoy the White House’s first Presidential Value Meal, most of Clemson’s national championship football team members jumped at the opportunity to meet the original cheeseburger-swallowing clown. But The Root has learned that Clemson’s black players, some specifically citing racism and their disdain for Trump’s divisive politics, passed on the opportunity to hang out with the real-life Mayor McCheese.

“Filet-O-Fish aficionado” heeheeheehee

The Root spoke with three black Clemson players who each separately confirmed that many players, both black and white, had no interest in making the trip. All three acknowledged that Donald Trump was the reason they chose not to attend. Even more telling, most of Clemson’s white players were in attendance while nearly three-fourths of the school’s black football players took a hard pass on the chance to eat cold fries with the president of people who eat salads from McDonald’s.

I  wish I could be invited to do something at Trump’s behest so that I could take a hard pass. I would love to snub Mayor McCheese.

The ones who did go are younger and less starry.

To Clemson’s credit, all three students individually confirmed that Clemson’s coaches, staff or administration did not pressure them to attend the McNugget buffet nor did any official tell them to keep quiet about their reasons for not going. The players also noted that they harbored no ill feelings towards the players who chose to make the trek to McDonaldland.

“This team is a family,” said the freshman baller. “You don’t always agree with your family on everything but still … that’s my brother, no matter what.”

When asked if they regretted their decision to stay in South Carolina once they saw the piles of cold McMeat their teammates got to enjoy, all three laughed.

“Now if it was some Five Guys, I might feel different,” responded one.

Top athletes and they do excellent sarcasm.

In South Dakota news:

South Dakota lawmakers killed a bill that would [have] required trans student athletes to compete according to their sex assigned at birth.

That is, their physical sex as opposed to their “gender identity.”

“We’re thrilled with the committee’s decision,” said Libby Skarin, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, in a statement. “No one is harmed by allowing transgender people to compete consistent with who they are. The committee’s motion to kill this bill sends a clear message of inclusion and acceptance for our transgender friends and neighbors and that there is no place for discrimination like this in South Dakota.”

Hmm. Is it true that no one is harmed by allowing transgender people to compete consistent with “who they are” in their heads as opposed to their bodies? Is it true that no women or girls are harmed by being forced to compete with male bodies?

A Senate Education Committee hearing preceding the vote Thursday morning streamed live online. Some SB49 proponents, like Family Heritage Alliance director Norman Woods, said that supporting the bill wasn’t about “valu[ing] one student group over another” but about preserving “a basic standard of fairness.” Other proponents, like South Dakota Catholic Conference executive director Christopher J. Motz, used their time before the committee to undermine trans identities and gendered self-determination.

“Being a male or female is a physical reality,” said Motz. “To be male or female doesn’t proceed from one’s inner experience. It comes through one’s physical body.”

Even executive directors of Catholic groups can be right sometimes.

First this.

There are countless photos of Stacey Abrams and her glorious smile.

Axios must have had to search to find an image to fit the “angry black woman” trope. pic.twitter.com/NvH5HrVOlV

— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath) January 29, 2019

Textbook: https://t.co/FSi0PmF4pZ

— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) January 29, 2019

And then an update.

https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1090353193731661828

I’m not sure what I think about it. There is more than one trope, and another trope is “women must not ever look angry or determined or authoritative or anything other than sweet.” To be honest in the first picture she doesn’t really look angry, to me, so much as…well, serious. Serious while talking. Do we want to flinch away from that?

I don’t think I do.

Ah those pesky breasts. What shall we do about them?

An African practice of “ironing” a girl’s chest with a hot stone to delay breast formation is spreading in the UK, with anecdotal evidence of dozens of recent cases, a Guardian investigation has established.

Community workers in London, Yorkshire, Essex and the West Midlands have told the Guardian of cases in which pre-teen girls from the diaspora of several African countries are subjected to the painful, abusive and ultimately futile practice.

…

“It’s usually done in the UK, not abroad like female genital mutilation (FGM),” [an anonymous activist] said, describing a practice whereby mothers, aunties or grandmothers use a hot stone to massage across the breast repeatedly in order to “break the tissue” and slow its growth.

Ouch.

They do it as often as every week.

The perpetrators, usually mothers, consider it a traditional measure which protects girls from unwanted male attention, sexual harassment and rape. Medical experts and victims regard it as child abuse which could lead to physical and psychological scars, infections, inability to breastfeed, deformities and breast cancer.

…

Nyuydzewira, who was herself subjected to the abuse as a girl, said British authorities were not taking the problem seriously, and have not prosecuted those doing breast-ironing on their children on grounds of it being seen as a “cultural practice”.

“The British people are so polite in the sense that when they see something like that, they think of cultural sensitivities,” she said. “But if it’s a cultural practice that is harming children … any harm that is done to a little girl, whether in public or in secrecy, that person should be held accountable.”

It’s politeness toward the “cultural sensitivities” of the adults. What about the girls? How about putting the girls first instead of the adults? Wouldn’t that be a more reasonable way to approach “cultural practices” that more powerful people inflict on less powerful people? Ask cui bono but also ask cui noxa.

Interesting. Public service media report on how Facebook helps advertisers target users of Facebook, and Facebook creates code to stop them. ProPublica is one:

A number of organizations, including ProPublica, have developed tools to let the public see exactly how Facebook users are being targeted by advertisers.

Now, Facebook has quietly made changes to its site that stop those efforts.

ProPublica, Mozilla and Who Targets Me have all noticed their tools stopped working this month after Facebook inserted code in its website that blocks them.

No transparency for you-oo, sorrreee.

“This is very concerning,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who has co-sponsored the Honest Ads Act, which would require transparency on Facebook ads. “Investigative groups like ProPublica need access to this information in order to track and report on the opaque and frequently deceptive world of online advertising.”

…

Facebook has made minor tweaks before that broke our tool. But this time, Facebook blocked the ability to automatically pull ad targeting information.

The latest move comes a few months after Facebook executives urged ProPublica to shut down its ad transparency project. In August, Facebook ads product management director Rob Leathern acknowledged ProPublica’s project “serves an important purpose.” But he said, “We’re going to start enforcing on the existing terms of service that we have.” He said Facebook would soon “transition” ProPublica away from its tool.

Facebook has launched an archive of American political ads, which the company says is an alternative to ProPublica’s tool. However, Facebook’s ad archive is only available in three countries, fails to disclose important targeting data and doesn’t even include all political ads run in the U.S.

ProPublica’s tool regularly found advertisers that Facebook’s missed.

What it all adds up to, said Knight First Amendment Institute senior attorney Alex Abdo, is “we cannot trust Facebook to be the gatekeeper to the information the public needs about Facebook.”

Is that kind of like the way we can’t trust Trump’s family to be impartial government servants?

Time to refresh our memories, again, on why Trump can’t enforce NDAs against people who work in his administration:

But such NDAs for government workers, when they go beyond prohibiting the disclosure of classified information, are unconstitutional on their face. I know, because I have litigated more pre-publication-review classification challenges against the government during the past 25 years than any other attorney. For decades, courts have made it clear that the government may not censor unclassified material, “contractually or otherwise.” Legal challenges during the 1970s and 1980s against the CIA settled the question that the government has no legitimate interest under the First Amendment in censoring unclassified information.

Oddly enough, Trump’s engorged ego doesn’t overrule that.

No known prior administration has relied upon the use of NDAs to try to silence public employees, because any such document was correctly perceived as legally unenforceable and problematic on so many levels. I never came across any similar attempts in my time in Washington during President Bill Clinton’s first term. The only comparable agreement that I’m aware of is one congressional intelligence committee staffers are requested to sign that prohibits post-employment discussion of committee procedures. The constitutionality of such an agreement is also suspect, but no known legal challenge has ever been made.

Trump however is not a fast learner.

A low level staffer that I hardly knew named Cliff Sims wrote yet another boring book based on made up stories and fiction. He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer. He signed a non-disclosure agreement. He is a mess!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2019

Asia Bibi is free to leave, at last.

Asia Bibi, the Christian farm labourer who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy, is expected to leave the country after the supreme court upheld her acquittal.

The court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to October’s ruling brought by an extreme Islamist party, which led violent protests across the country in the autumn and called for Bibi to be killed.

Bibi, who has been held at a secret location since her death sentence was overturned, could be flown out of the country within hours. Two of her children are reportedly already in Canada, which has offered Bibi asylum.

Her lawyer told reporters she will probably leave today. (That seems risky and provocative at first glance, but maybe the idea is to say don’t even bother to riot because you’ll be too late.)

Hafiz Ehtisham Ahmed, an Islamist activist linked to the extremist Red Mosque in Islamabad, said Bibi may not be safe wherever she goes. “She deserves to be murdered according to sharia. If she goes abroad, don’t Muslims live there? If she goes out of Pakistan … anybody can kill her there,” she told AFP.

The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party, which was formed to defend Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and which led violent protests demanding Bibi’s execution after her acquittal, called on Tuesday for its members to be ready for action.

Murder people for the glory of god – one of the most enduring bad ideas humans have come up with.