Sigh.
ALL-MALE HISTORY CONFERENCE. This goes for the GUINNESS BOOK of the century! A team of 30 white male historians will discuss Applied History at @Stanford . What a shame. https://t.co/IXFQqi2eN2 pic.twitter.com/GBRNzIFMvP
— Ana Lucia Araujo (@analuciaraujo_) March 14, 2018
Trump in Missouri yesterday – each day crazier than the last.
The lede is that he lied to Justin Trudeau.
President Trump boasted in a fundraising speech Wednesday that he made up information in a meeting with the leader of a top U.S. ally, saying he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States runs a trade deficit with its neighbor to the north without knowing whether that was true.
“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio of the private event in Missouri obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in — ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed.
“… So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. … I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’ He said, ‘Nope, we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well, in that case, I feel differently,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it.’
You know, we’d do better if we just went to a random bar and found the drunkest guy there and made him president. It has to be a guy for fair comparison, and the drunkest guy at a random bar would be better at presidenting than Donald Trump is.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative says the United States has a trade surplus with Canada. It reports that in 2016, the United States exported $12.5 billion more in goods and services than it imported from Canada, leading to a trade surplus, not a deficit.
Trump rushed to Twitter this morning to say yes we do too so, and to explain his methodology.
We do have a Trade Deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries (some of them massive). P.M. Justin Trudeau of Canada, a very good guy, doesn’t like saying that Canada has a Surplus vs. the U.S.(negotiating), but they do…they almost all do…and that’s how I know!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2018
Erm…what is how he knows? The fact that he says they all do, they almost all do? That’s how he “knows”?
We could go to a random morgue and find a better president than Trump. Prop him up, he’ll do the job better.
In his 30-minute speech to donors in Missouri, Trump made a blistering attack against major U.S. allies and global economies, accusing the European Union, China, Japan and South Korea of ripping off the United States for decades and pillaging the U.S. workforce.
Russia? Anything about Russia? Anything at all?
“Our allies care about themselves,” he said. “They don’t care about us.”
Says the guy who revived the pro-Nazi slogan “America First.” Says the guy who is the most unable to see past his own adored Self of any president in our history.
The president was in Missouri to raise money for Josh Hawley, who is taking on Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) in November’s midterm election. He called McCaskill “bad for Missouri and bad for the country.” But he barely spoke about Hawley. Instead, he talked about himself — bragging about his 2016 election win and lavishing praise on himself while ticking through a list of U.S. allies that he said are taking advantage of the United States.
He cares about himself. He doesn’t care about his allies.
More about Trump’s nice little earner: spending most weekends at one of his clubs or resorts and pocketing the $$$ spent by all the government people who have to go with him.
Defense Department employees charged just over $138,000 at Trump branded properties in the first eight months of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a CNN review of hundreds of records.
Charges on the department-issued Visa cards, which span from Honolulu to Washington, DC, are the most recent evidence that taxpayer money flows to Trump’s company, once again emboldening critics who say these payments violate ethical norms and possibly the US Constitution.
The CNN analysis found military personnel spent more than a third of the total amount, or $58,875.69, on lodging and food at what appears to be Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. Most of the expenses generally align with the 25 days the President spent at his Florida club from February to April.
No wonder he likes to go so often: lots more $$$ for him. Paid for by us.
Some watchdog groups, former government ethics officials and Democrats say the President’s businesses shouldn’t accept any taxpayer dollars. They argue it fosters corruption because government officials could frequent Trump’s hotels and golf courses to gain the President’s favor.
The former head of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, told CNN that, during his time in office, he made “very specific recommendations” the President stop visiting properties owned by his company and announce White House officials would not visit those properties.
“You see him holding financial interests — that leaves us unable to know whether decisions are motivated by policy aims or by personal financial interests,” Shaub said.
Luke Harding and Andrew Roth at the Guardian say that the Russian poisoning was not about the victims but all about the message.
One former employee of the Russian special services said nerve agents were used only if the goal was to draw attention. “This is a very dirty method. There’s a risk of contaminating other people, which creates additional difficulties,” he told the Kommersant newspaper, adding: “There are far more delicate methods that professionals use.”
In other words, novichok was a gruesome calling card. As those who organised the hit must have known, the trail goes directly back to Moscow. The incident even took place down the road from Porton Down, the government’s military research base, which swiftly tested and identified the toxin.
Why? There are various theories. To pick a fight with the UK while playing the victim card, perhaps; to motivate rich Russians to go back to Russia…to scare potential witnesses in the Mueller investigation.
Originally a comment by Maureen Brian on The allegations that convinced him are not public.
I am glad that Jerry Coyne got there because, as Ophelia notes, he has been both dismissive and pretty rude to people many a time in the past. So I’ll modify that: I am glad Jerry Coyne got there at last.
It is interesting to think of the interplay here between incident and pattern. We all have examples, either personal or told to us first hand, of describing an event only to be dismissed. We are told that it is minor, that we are making too much of nothing, that we should be flattered by Big Guy’s interest but whichever of those it is we should just shut up and go away.
Start from the other end, then. We describe a pattern of behaviour – I think here of @docfreeride – involving one person, involving many, which disparages us, puts us at a disadvantage, leaves us struggling to restore our own credibility as a functioning human, opting out of activities which we could do perfectly well and might even enjoy.
Remember Rebecca Watson’s video? The take-away message from that was not that she met a gormless oik in an elevator – we meet so many that the tale would not be interesting. It was supposed to be, “Guys, don’t do that.” A general and mildly expressed admonition, except that 50% of the brains on the planet had already blown a fuse. I now think that some of those fuses were blown quite deliberately to avoid addressing the issue, only to be followed by armies of bandwagon jumpers most of whom had no idea who Rebecca is let alone bothering to see the video. It was, though, actively encouraged by the great thinkers who are now coming to the realisation if a little late.
So, when wearing our “scientist” hats, we can argue that this interplay between incident and pattern is what counts. It doesn’t matter in tackling it whether the “incident” is sexual or simply obstructive, though the sexual ones can be truly nasty and will need a different response. Even Darwin, in a quite different era, realised this. He had his theory in the 1830s, remember, and did decades of research to back it up. He soon realised that where he saw repeats or correspondences, that was where he should be asking why. A point lost on one of his more famous devotees!
So we are in limbo. The men insist that the women fail to understand their own experience. I have been told that in so many words though not, of course, on this blog. What, all 75 years of it? Meanwhile, the women have given up on all but the best of men.
Then along comes Harvey Weinstein. Everybody knew but there was nowhere to go. Now suddenly the whole of Hollywood rises up against him.
Now, suddenly it becomes possible to say that people, both men and women, are capable of behaving badly. If they get away with whatever it is, they will probably do it again. I’ve seen it less with women but I do know that men carve those notches on their metaphorical bed heads and that men mimic each other. The question becomes not whether doing such-and-such is a good idea in itself but whether they can get away with it.
Well, now they can’t and it is good to see some of them asking themselves whether all the “rumour” they have so readily dismissed might be telling them something. It has, though, been a very long wait.
Oops.
A teacher who is also a reserve police officer trained in firearm use ‘accidentally’ discharged a gun Tuesday at Seaside High School in Monterey County, Calif., during a class devoted to public safety, school officials said in a statement. A male student was reported to have sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
The weapon, which was not described, was pointed at the ceiling, according to a statement from the school, and debris fell from the ceiling.
Arm the teachers! Everyone will be safe then!
The teacher was identified by police as Dennis Alexander, who teaches math as well as a course in the administration of justice. Alexander is a reserve police officer for Sand City and a Seaside city councilman. He could not immediately be reached for comment but he has reportedly apologized for the incident.
The Monterey County Weekly, quoting Sand City Police Chief Brian Ferrante, reported that Alexander had his last gun safety training less than a year ago. “I have concerns about why he was displaying a loaded firearm in a classroom,” Ferrante told KSBW. “We will be looking into that.”
Why did he fire a gun into the ceiling? To make sure it wasn’t loaded.
The incident comes amid a national debate on how to protect students from mass shootings like the one that took the lives of 17 people in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14. Among the proposals advanced is training and arming teachers, an approach favored by President Trump, among others, but opposed by a majority of the teachers in the National Education Association, including many who said in an NEA survey that it would make them feel less safe.
I can’t imagine why…
Putin: “would you like some te—“
WE’RE GOOD THANKS pic.twitter.com/hAag3ePzIG
— John Noonan (@noonanjo) March 14, 2018
Trump is in an awkward spot with this whole Putin poisoning people in the UK thing. Britain is supposed to be an ally but Putin is his beloved; what to do?
Mr. Trump, who was visiting California before heading to Missouri on Wednesday, has not personally addressed the attack since London assigned blame to Russia. Aides released a statement in his name on Tuesday evening after he spoke with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain by telephone expressing his solidarity.
“President Trump agreed with Prime Minister May that the government of the Russian Federation must provide unambiguous answers regarding how this chemical weapon, developed in Russia, came to be used in the United Kingdom,” the statement issued in Mr. Trump’s name said. “The two leaders agreed on the need for consequences for those who use these heinous weapons in flagrant violation of international norms.”
That’s about as cold and hands-off as he could be in the circs. “Whatever she says; I gotta go.”
The president made no further comment on Wednesday after Mrs. May expelled 23 Russian diplomats and vowed to crack down on Russian spies, corrupt elites and ill-gotten wealth in Britain.
They’re his friends. He loves them. How can we expect him to make further comment when they helped him get elected?!
Democrats and other critics of the president pressed him to speak out personally and possibly take action to back up Mrs. May.
“Where Prime Minister May has taken bold and decisive initial action to combat Russian aggression, our own president has waffled and demurred,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader. “Prime Minister May’s decision to expel the Russian diplomats is the level of response that many Americans have been craving from our own administration.”
Other critics noted that, under the NATO charter, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.
Yes but Trump hates NATO and will ignore it if he can.
the pattern resembles the way Mr. Trump has responded to the consensus finding of American intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections. He has allowed top advisers to condemn Moscow for its election meddling but personally has used equivocal language in saying he accepts the conclusion — and generally expresses no outrage or criticism of Mr. Putin.
Asked about the meddling last week, after Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, indicted 13 Russians for spreading disinformation and propaganda in a concerted effort to influence the election, Mr. Trump focused on whether it changed the result, and avoided strong words about Moscow.
“Well, the Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever,” he said during a news conference with Sweden’s prime minister. “But certainly there was meddling and probably there was meddling from other countries and maybe other individuals. And I think you have to be really watching very closely. You don’t want your system of votes to be compromised in any way. And we won’t allow that to happen.”
And also, squirrel!
MP Caroline Lucas tweeted.
Pleased that my Urgent Question on bullying and harassment in House of Commons has been granted.
I'd ask MPs please to ensure that their focus is on those affected. This is not about settling old political scores.
— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) March 12, 2018
You’ll never guess what the replies said.
Are you going to table a question about Telford grooming gangs?
Is she heck!
Still out of touch
The prophet Muhammad had a nine year old wife called Ayesha who he was having sex with when he was fifty two years old and if that isn’t peadophilier then I don’t know what is
Its not all about you, look outside the ivory towers of parliament and start doing things in communities. Its why your voted in!!!!!!
Typical mp making it about themselves and ignoring whats actually important
Those are the ones at the top; the rest are nearly all the same. It’s Dear Muslima all the way down.
Glosswitch considers this “it could always be worse” riposte:
A woman – in this instance, Green party co-leader Caroline Lucas – has raised the topic of bullying and harassment in the House of Commons, only to be reminded that worse things happen in less privileged environments.
This is something certain women tend to forget. Thankfully there’s usually a male journalist on hand to remind us of our “not experiencing as much sexism as we could be experiencing” privilege.
Or a male pundit or “thought leader” or sage or Voice of Wisdom or Hero of ScienceAndReason. They’re very dedicated about springing into action whenever a woman objects to local bullying and harassment.
In this case it was Andrew Neil, who managed not only to draw comparisons between middle-class MPs and abused young women in Telford, but to then inform Lucas there was “no comparison […] None. Don’t make it”.
Neil is not the first man to advise women on how best to redirect their feminist efforts. Whether it’s Piers Morgan lecturing Women’s Marchers on the plight of their Saudi sisters, or Fox News’ John Moody reminding #metoo campaigners that FGM is worse than groping, perhaps we should salute the courage of those who have been brave enough to say “look! Over there!” whenever critiques of male power have got a little too close to home.
They would have a point, Glosswitch goes on, if they were the ones actually doing anything about Telford and Rotherham, but they’re not.
When working-class victims and carers in cases such as Rotherham and Telford have spoken for themselves, men in positions of power have disbelieved them. What use is one woman’s testimony if it can’t be used to discredit that of another?
The absolute, stinking lack of sincerity of men who exploit one example of men’s abuse of women to trivialise another would be bad enough if abuse were some free-floating, unavoidable problem that women just had to face. It isn’t, though.
Misogyny is so deeply embedded in society it feels normal, like the weather. Nonetheless, while it would be self-indulgent to complain of the rain when others are facing a tsunami, it is not self-indulgent to tell the man who is harassing you to desist. The fact that other men elsewhere might be doing worse is neither here nor there. Respect for women is not some scarce resource which must be distributed only to those who need it most. There is enough for everyone.
That is, there is potentially enough for everyone. It’s not something that is naturally scarce, like strawberries or diamonds; it’s something that could be infinite, if people simply decided to have it and exercise it.
The first comment objects that that’s “punching down at transgender folks.” But is it? It’s reality that a good many trans activists on social media do threaten women (not men so much) with violence for putative crimes such as “misgendering.” Isn’t that “punching down”?
Scary. Trump is now acting on his impulses more than before.
In the past two weeks, Trump has ordered tariffs on steel and aluminum imports over the fierce objections of his top economic adviser and agreed to an unprecedented meeting with North Korea’s dictator despite concerns from national security aides. On Tuesday, Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had forged a tight working relationship with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to try to rein in some of Trump’s most impetuous decisions.
“I made that decision by myself,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. Though he was talking about North Korea, it is a mantra that has never rung truer in his nearly 14 months as president.
Trump’s moves have shaken and alarmed a West Wing staff who fear the president has felt less restrained about acting on his whims amid the recent departures of several longtime aides…
Yeah. If so, that’s terrifying.
(Also – “I made that decision by myself” – seriously? What’ll it be next, “you can’t stop me!!”? “You’re not the boss of me!”?)
White House allies in Washington suggested that Trump has been liberated to manage his administration as he did his private business, making decisions that feel good in the moment because he believes in his ability to win — regardless of whether they are backed by rigorous analysis or supported by top advisers.
This, they said, is the real Trump — freewheeling by nature, decisive in the moment, unafraid to chart his own course.
But now the stakes are a little bit different. He could do plenty of harm with his private business, by making Fifth Avenue and other bits of geography uglier and more vulgar than they were before, but the harm he can do now is existential and global.
“When he’s under pressure is when he tends to do this impulsive stuff,” said Jack O’Donnell, former president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. “That’s what I saw in the business. When he began to have pressure with debts, when the [Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City] was underperforming, is when he began acting very erratically.”
O’Donnell pointed to the mounting pressure on Trump with the Russia investigation by independent counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the scandal surrounding Trump’s alleged affair with a pornographic film star. “I think he likes the vision of himself being in control,” O’Donnell said. “I doubt he realizes the consequences of North Korea just like he didn’t realize the consequences in business of walking in and firing someone at the Taj without thinking about it. It’s Trump.”
So that’s reassuring.
Oops, Trump’s pick to replace Pompeo at the CIA was involved in torture.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday condemned President Trump’s decision to nominate Gina Haspel to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), saying she was involved in “one of darkest chapters in American history.”
He put out a statement saying she needs to explain her position on torture.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration “squandered precious moral authority” to get intelligence, McCain said.
Haspel joined the CIA in 1985 and faced scrutiny for her role surrounding waterboarding and other interrogation techniques used on detainees at a secret CIA prison in Thailand in 2002.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Haspel was “up to her eyeballs in torture, both in running a secret torture prison in Thailand and carrying out an order to cover up torture crimes by destroying videotapes.”
Progressive foreign policy groups are fighting back against her nomination, saying her direct role in the torture program should “disqualify her” from the position.
Trump, on the other hand, is a big fan of torture as long as we’re the ones doing it.
This is not at all chilling:
Russian state television has warned “traitors” and Kremlin critics that they should not settle in England because of an increased risk of dying in mysterious circumstances.
“Don’t choose England as a place to live. Whatever the reasons, whether you’re a professional traitor to the motherland or you just hate your country in your spare time, I repeat, no matter, don’t move to England,” the presenter Kirill Kleymenov said during a news programme on Channel One, state TV’s flagship station.
“Something is not right there. Maybe it’s the climate. But in recent years there have been too many strange incidents with a grave outcome. People get hanged, poisoned, they die in helicopter crashes and fall out of windows in industrial quantities,” Kleymenov said.
Fake news?
A number of Kremlin critics have met grisly ends in Britain in recent years. Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch turned government critic, was found hanged at his home in Berkshire in March 2013. The coroner delivered an open verdict. Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB security service officer, died in 2006 after being poisoned with polonium-210 in the lobby of a Mayfair hotel, allegedly by Russian hitmen. Vladimir Putin dismissed accusations of Russian involvement.
In 2012, Alexander Perepilichnyy, a former banker who was helping Swiss prosecutors investigate a Russian-linked money-laundering scheme, died after collapsing in Surrey. A pre-inquest hearing heard that traces of a chemical that can be found in the poisonous plant gelsemium were later found in his stomach. The inquest is due to resume next month.
Stephen Curtis, a millionaire lawyer with close ties to the exiled Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, died when his helicopter crashed close to Bournemouth airport in 2004. Curtis is reported to have told a close relative that if he were to die, it would not be an accident. One of Curtis’s associates, Scot Young, who had business links to Berezovsky, was found impaled on railings after falling from his apartment in Marylebone, central London, in 2014. The coroner found insufficient evidence to rule it a suicide, and his family suspect he was murdered.
We get The Sopranos and The Wire, they get threats on the news.
Also…
John McEntee, who has served as President Trump’s personal assistant since Mr. Trump won the presidency, was forced out of his position and escorted from the White House on Monday after his security clearance was revoked, officials with knowledge of the incident said.
Oops.
But don’t worry! He’s ok!
But Mr. McEntee will remain in the president’s orbit despite his abrupt departure from the White House. Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign announced Tuesday that Mr. McEntee has been named Senior Adviser for Campaign Operations, putting him in a position to remain as a close aide during the next several years.
The brass won’t talk about why he was fired, but.
But a senior administration official said that many of the president’s top aides were shocked and dismayed by the abrupt departure, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss personnel issues, said Mr. McEntee had been expected to travel with Mr. Trump — as he always does — when the president departed for a trip to California Tuesday morning.
So it must have been pretty bad then. Late night phone chats with Putin?
Mr. McEntee’s departure has several of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers worried about the effects on the president’s mood. The senior administration official said that the president has been in a “good place” recently, but said that it is hard to overstate the effect of the departure, along with that of Ms. Hicks. Both Mr. McEntee and Ms. Hicks have had offices just outside the Oval Office.
It’s a little bit like working with a grizzly bear.
Next up in the Don-Rex news is the meta-story of how the firing really went down.
President Donald Trump unceremoniously dumped Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by tweet on Tuesday and picked CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take his place, abruptly ending Tillerson’s turbulent tenure as America’s top diplomat and escalating the administration’s chaotic second-year shake-up.
Tillerson was ousted barely four hours after he returned from an Africa mission and with no face-to-face conversation with the president, the latest casualty of an unruly White House that has seen multiple top officials depart in recent weeks.
And, apparently, with no official notification: no letter, no phone call, no message sent by courier – only a tweet declaring the fact. A tweet. A tweet.
In an illustration of the gulf that has long separated Tillerson and Trump, the White House and the State Department vigorously disagreed about the circumstances of his firing.
Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein and other State Department officials said Tuesday morning that Tillerson hadn’t learned he was dismissed until he saw Trump’s early-morning tweet, and hadn’t discussed it directly with Trump. Goldstein said the former Exxon Mobil CEO was “unaware of the reason” he was fired and “had had every intention of staying.”
A tweet.
The president fired the secretary of state in a tweet.
A tweet.
Then Goldstein, hours after making those comments, was fired, too.
But, being an underling, he didn’t get even a tweet.
Multiple White House officials said that Tillerson had been informed of the decision Friday, while he was in Ethiopia. One official said chief of staff John Kelly had called Tillerson on Friday and again on Saturday to warn him that Trump was about to take imminent action if he did not resign and that a replacement had already been identified. Tillerson canceled his entire schedule that Saturday in Ethiopia, with the State Department telling reporters he was sick.
When Tillerson didn’t step aside, Trump fired him, that official said.
A distinction without a difference.
On Tillerson’s plane trip back from Africa, he had told reporters he had cut short his mission by one night because he was exhausted after working most of the night both Friday on Saturday and falling ill. He mentioned that after his 2:30 a.m. call with Trump on Friday about North Korea, the next night he “got another call at 2:30 that woke me up,” but declined to say what that call was about.
“I felt like, look, I just need to get back,” Tillerson said.
So that at least he wouldn’t be in Nigeria when The Tweet fell, having to buy his own plane ticket back.
Nothing to see here folks, don’t worry.
Good morning Chaos.
As is typical of His Rudeness, he told the world without telling Tillerson.
Mr. Tillerson learned he had been fired on Tuesday morning when a top aide showed him a tweet from Mr. Trump announcing the change, according to a senior State Department official.
Well at least His Rudeness didn’t wait until Rex was in Ulan Bator and then expect him to make his own way home.
Oh wait, yes he did.
But he had gotten an oblique warning of what was coming the previous Friday from the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who called to tell him to cut short a trip to Africa and advised him “you may get a tweet.”
So if Kelly hadn’t warned him, Tillerson would have been stranded somewhere in Africa the way Comey was stranded in LA when HR fired him. Trump is a sadistic pig on top of everything else he is. I have no brief for Tillerson, I think he’s awful, but that doesn’t justify Trump’s behavior.
Also that “you may get a tweet” – what kind of garbage is that?
Let’s look at the tweet that Rex “got”:
Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018
That is a very strange way for a president to tell the Secretary of State “you’re fired.”
In even worse news, Pompeo is replacing Tillerson, so everything will get more terrible still.
“We were not really thinking the same,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House, explaining his decision to replace Mr. Tillerson.
What Trump does can’t be called “thinking.”
The move caught even the White House staff by surprise. Just the day before, a White House spokesman berated a reporter for suggesting there was any kind of split between Mr. Tillerson and the White House because of disparate comments on Russian responsibility for a poison attack in Britain.
But a senior administration official said that Mr. Trump decided to replace Mr. Tillerson now to have a new team in place before upcoming talks with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader he plans to meet by May. The president also wanted a new chief diplomat for various ongoing trade negotiations.
Of course none of that explains the insanely abrupt and informal way the “replacement” was put into effect.
The White House’s purge extended to Mr. Tillerson’s inner circle. The under secretary of state for public affairs, Steve Goldstein, was fired, and the status was unclear of Mr. Tillerson’s chief of staff, Margaret Peterlin, and his deputy chief of staff, Christine Ciccone.
Mr. Tillerson, who was at the State Department on Tuesday morning, may speak to the staff around 2 p.m.
Or he could just do a couple of tweets on his way out the door. Whatever.
While other cabinet officers made their goals plain, Mr. Tillerson never set clear diplomatic priorities other than to pursue Mr. Trump’s slogan of “America First,” a term he never really defined. In an odd admission more than eight months into the job, Mr. Tillerson told employees in September that his top priority was to make the State Department more efficient. Yet he never fully addressed what diplomats should be doing with that greater efficiency.
Congress rebelled, declining to endorse his suggested 30 percent cuts in the State Department’s budget. But the message of his tenure seemed clear: At a moment when money was being poured into the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, diplomacy seemed less valued than at any time in recent American history.
He’s no loss, but Pompeo will probably be even worse.
But perhaps the most puzzling part of Mr. Tillerson’s tenure was his poor oversight of the State Department. As a former top business executive, his managerial skills were thought to be his chief asset.
But he failed to quickly pick a trusted team of leaders, left many critical departments without direction and all but paralyzed crucial decision making in the department.
He approved one global conclave in Washington just eight days before the event was to start, ensuring that few leaders from around the world were able to attend. He rarely sat for comprehensive briefings with many of his top diplomats and often failed to consult the State Department’s experts on countries before visiting.
Foreign diplomats — starting with the British and the French — said Mr. Tillerson neither returned phone calls nor, with much advance warning, set up meetings with his counterparts. Strategic dialogues with many nations, including nuclear weapons powers like Pakistan, were ended without explanation.
The State Department’s policymaking process devolved into conversations between Mr. Tillerson and a lone top aide, neither of whom had much experience or knowledge about many of the countries they discussed.
The State Department’s policymaking process devolved into conversations between Mr. Tillerson and a lone top aide, neither of whom had much experience or knowledge about many of the countries they discussed.
Utterly shambolic.
Worse to come.
Jacob Tobia’s tweets about how we need to stop talking about women and feminism were a short version of an article he wrote explaining that we need to stop talking about women and feminism. It’s good to get his full article in all its profundity.
This month is Women’s History Month. From Oprah’s speech at the Golden Globes, to the fervor of the #TimesUp movement, to Women’s Marches across the country and around the world, women’s power has been growing and spreading and amplifying like whoa. Which is, obviously, something I am thrilled about.
Obviously. But. We can tell there’s a “but” coming. We’d be able to tell even if we hadn’t read his tweets.
But amid all of this pussypower, I’ve found myself struggling to communicate with feminist allies, organizers, colleagues, and friends about something that’s been putting me off: the word “woman” itself.
That’s one hell of a “but”! Weeeeeee I’m thrilled about all this women’s power only there’s just this one tiny thing…the “women” part. Other than that I’m over the moon!
I don’t want to be difficult or anything, but I’m just not sure that the word “woman” can hold all of the political weight that we need it to in 2018. Try as I might, I can’t shake the feeling that organizing solely around “womanhood” is also organizing solely around the gender binary. In an era when so many genderqueer and nonbinary young folks are throwing off the idea of manhood and womanhood altogether — the idea that people can be reduced to one of two gender categories in the first place — “woman” as a sole identity around which to organize feels, I dunno, retro? Counterproductive? A touch off-base?
When many of my organizer friends use the term “woman,” I know that they don’t mean it in an exclusionary way. They use it as an abbreviation for a more complex, nuanced set of identities. In their minds, “woman” is just shorthand for “transgender women, cisgender women, and feminine-of-center gender nonconforming/nonbinary people.” But the trouble with this shorthand is that, in the public imagination, it can quickly feel like erasure.
Whereas getting rid of the word that names half of fucking humanity is the kind of erasure that is A-ok.
Though contemporary, enlightened, intersectional feminists understand the term “woman” as a wide and all-inclusive net, that understanding gets lost more often than not.
If it’s “all-inclusive” then what does it mean? And why isn’t Jacob Tobia yammering at men about being inclusive and intersectional? Why does Jacob Tobia take it for granted that it’s women who have to move over and shut up and stop talking about their rights?
Most people don’t realize that the term “woman” could even be shorthand in the first place. We have to face the fact that, to most people, the term “woman” doesn’t paint a rainbow picture of all people on the feminine spectrum. When the average person hears “woman,” they hear only “person born with a vagina.” So when we say “woman,” they assume it means the same thing as “female.”
Again – what about men? Why aren’t men being rebuked and lectured for using the word “men”? Why aren’t we being splained how rainbow and spectrumy the word “men” is? Why aren’t we being told that when the average person hears “man,” they hear only “person born with a penis”? Why is it only women who are told to make way?
As much as folks want to claim an intersectional approach, organizing that occurs solely under the label of “woman” always feels to me — a genderqueer, male-assigned, feminine-of-center cutie with facial hair and a bold lip — like something of a fuck-you.
Well you know what, Jacob? Your eagerness to get rid of the word “women” feels to us like a massive, calculated, impudent, entitled, male-centered fuck-you.
I look around a room full of Women’s March supporters and I wonder to myself, “Do they understand me as a woman? Do they really get how much I belong here? Or do they just think that I’m some sort of cute ally?” I look around a room full of celebs proclaiming time’s up and I wonder if they really see me in their movement. I listen to Oprah talking about “every woman who chooses to say, ‘Me too.’ And every man who chooses to listen” and I wonder: What doesshe mean by “woman” and “man”? How does she understand those terms? What do they mean to her?
Is she thinking about me enough? Is she thinking only about herself and the other women? How can I stop her?
Naturally, it’s scary to bring this up. As a nonbinary trans person whose femininity is invalidated and attacked at every turn, I often lack the courage to talk with cis women about the way that their language feels to me.
Because he realizes how outrageous it would be?
I’m afraid (and reasonably so) that the moment I open my mouth to critique language used by the women’s movement, I’ll have my femininity attacked all over again.
Oh. I see. It’s all about his “femininity,” and the women’s movement has a hell of a nerve not putting him first.
He offers the “elegant” women and femmes solution.
Think about it. What if, in her Golden Globes speech, Oprah had instead said, “I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women and femmes who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories.” What if she’d declared loudly and for all of America to hear, “For too long, women and femmes have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.”
Everyone who watched her speech would’ve been productively challenged, perhaps even confused. There would be questions, sure: “What does femmesmean?” “Why did she say that?” but those questions would be a good thing for feminism. Overnight, the entire Internet would’ve exploded with essays about what “and femmes” meant. It would prompt an outpouring of discussion, the likes of which we have never seen, about exactly what it means to welcome trans women and gender-nonconforming femmes into the fold.
If, as trans-inclusive feminists, we stop saying “women” and start saying “women and femmes,” I think we might be able to ensure that our message is no longer lost in translation. I mean, “The March for Women and Femmes” has a nice ring to it, no? Or, better yet, FemmeMarch. Now that is a sexy, overtly-trans-and-nonbinary-inclusive title I can get behind.
There it is. In the first post I said it would happen next year, but there it is already – no more women, just “femmes” – and not real femmes, not girly lesbians, but men appropriating the word for themselves.
You couldn’t make it up.
Bannon is in Europe hoping to make it as horrible as he helped make the US. The guy dreams big.
“All I’m trying to be,” he said, “is the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement.”
“Populist” is code for sexist racist belligerent hateful and far-right.
On Saturday, he is set to headline the annual conference of France’s far-right National Front in the northern city of Lille, where he will be introduced by its leader, Marine Le Pen. People with knowledge of Mr. Bannon’s itinerary suggested that he might meet later in the weekend with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, but Mr. Bannon declined to say whether or not he would, only saying that he admired Mr. Orban as a “hero” and “the most significant guy on the scene right now.”
In Zurich, Mr. Bannon says, he had a “fascinating” meeting on Tuesday with leaders of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party.
Former White House senior staffer Stephen K. Bannon addressed France’s far-right National Front on Saturday, heralding the global populist tide and attacking the “opposition party media.”
Bannon’s surprise visit to the party’s conference in Lille — announced via Twitter late Friday — was his most recent stop on a European tour that has included Switzerland along with Italy, where last week, voters abandoned establishment parties and opted for a hung Parliament dominated by right-wing anti-immigrant populists.
“I came to Europe as an observer and to learn,” Bannon said, wearing his typical rugged attire before a cadre of the party elite dressed in suits.
“What I’ve learned is that you’re part of a worldwide movement, that is bigger than France, bigger than Italy, bigger than Hungary — bigger than all of it. And history is on our side,” he said. “The tide of history is with us, and it will compel us to victory after victory after victory.”
He also encouraged the party to stick to its nationalistic roots. “Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists,” he said.
Racism Pride.
Well this is appalling. NBC reports:
Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to special counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions.
Kushner and other Trump minions did corrupt things but Qatari officials opted not to tell Mueller because they want to have good relations with the corrupt administration and its corrupt family members and their corrupt minions. Corrupt enough yet?
Lebanese-American businessman George Nader and Republican donor Elliott Broidy, who participated in the meetings, have both been the focus of news reports in recent days about their connections to the UAE and Trump associates.
…
NBC News previously reported that Qatari officials weighed speaking to Mueller during a visit to Washington earlier this year, and has now learned the information the officials wanted to share included details about Nader and Broidy working with the UAE to turn the Trump administration against Qatar, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
It is so dirty.
I still cannot believe this is our government.
Qatari officials believe the meetings — as well as fallout from Qatari business dealings with Kushner — may have influenced President Donald Trump’s public endorsement of a blockade of Qatar by its neighbors that began last year.
But! Then they came to DC last month to talk to Trump minions and the talks went well so they decided not to tell Mueller about all the filth.
A spokesperson for the Qatari embassy in Washington said in a statement last week that Qatar won’t be providing materials to the Mueller investigation.
The Qataris also met with FBI Director Chris Wray while they were in Washington, but never shared their information about the UAE’s alleged influence on the administration.
Corruption wins the round.
Let’s just stop talking about women, mkay? Can we do that now finally at last? It’s so excluding.
I don’t want to be difficult, but I’m just not sure that the word “woman” can hold all of the political weight that we need it to in 2018. Organizing solely around 'womanhood' is also organizing solely around the gender binary #InternationalWomensDay https://t.co/PV1OAUHMyL
— Jacob Tobia (@JacobTobia) March 8, 2018
Yeah and organizing around anti-racism excludes white people. Organizing to protect immigrants’ rights excludes people who were here all along. Anti-poverty campaigns exclude rich people. Organizing workers excludes bosses. Won’t somebody please think of the bosses?
I look around a room full of Women’s March supporters and I wonder to myself, “Do they understand me as a woman? Do they really get how much I belong here? Or do they just think that I’m some sort of cute ally? #InternationalWomensDay
— Jacob Tobia (@JacobTobia) March 8, 2018
I look around a room full of women and I wonder why they’re not focusing on me.
I look around a room full of celebs proclaiming time’s up and I wonder if they really see me in their movement. #InternationalWomensDay
— Jacob Tobia (@JacobTobia) March 8, 2018
I look around and wonder why they’re not looking at me.
I listen to @Oprah talking about “every woman who chooses to say, ‘Me too.’ And every man who chooses to listen” and I wonder: What does she mean by “woman” and “man”? How does she understand those terms? What do they mean to her? #InternationalWomensDay
— Jacob Tobia (@JacobTobia) March 8, 2018
I listen to Oprah and I wonder why she’s not talking about me.
So for fuck’s sake let’s finally stop talking about women, OKAY?
I want to propose what I think is an elegant solution. What if, instead of mobilizing solely around “Women,” we mobilize around “Women and Femmes.” It sorta does the trick, no? #InternationalWomensDay
— Jacob Tobia (@JacobTobia) March 8, 2018
That’s a step on the way to talking about me instead of those stupid boring women.
By the way it’s not Jacob Tobia’s solution. Jacob Tobia is late on the scene. Sincere Kirabo treated it as established way back in October 2016:
Huh. It turns out that Women in Secularism isn’t about women. It’s about “women and femmes.” I have no real idea what that’s supposed to mean, since it obviously doesn’t mean femme lesbians, because they are of course women so there’d be no need for an “and.”
At least, it’s about that according to Sincere Kirabo, who attended the one last weekend. It’s not about that according to CFI, which holds the conference, but hey what do they know.
This past weekend, my colleague Jessica Xiao and I had the honor of attending the Center For Inquiry’s Women In Secularism 4(WIS).
The honor? Attending isn’t an honor. That sounds like having the honor to ride the bus or see a movie. Buying a ticket to something doesn’t confer honor.
Anyway – on to the femmes.
This conference brought together a diverse lineup of speakers—including American Humanist Association President Rebecca Hale—to address both the progress and challenges uniquely related to the lives of women and femmes.
I didn’t understand then and I still don’t understand why Sincere Kirabo thought it was up to him to claim that Women in Secularism was really Women and Femmes in Secularism, but anyway, he was there well before Jacob Tobias’s “elegant” solution.
By adding "and femmes," we'll no longer have to worry about being misconstrued as trans-exclusive. We'll acknowledge by default that womanhood and femininity live on a spectrum of bodies, shapes, genitals, and people. #InternationalWomensDay
— Jacob Tobia (@JacobTobia) March 8, 2018
We’ll take women’s movement away from them while pretending we’re doing it to be more “inclusive.” It’s only women who are stupid enough and accommodating enough and kind enough to let this be done to them…which is why they need to organize, but we’re taking that away from them, so, score!
So say it loud and say it proud: HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN AND FEMMES' DAY Y'ALL! #womenandfemmes #InternationalWomensDay
— Jacob Tobia (@JacobTobia) March 8, 2018
Next year we’ll drop the “WOMEN” part.
