Donnie the Grifter:

Donald Trump says the Trump National Golf Club in Florida is worth more than $50m. Palm Beach County property tax appraiser Dorothy Jacks disagrees, saying the Jupiter course, where Trump plays when he visits nearby Mar-a-Lago, is actually worth $19m.

Oh burn. She’s dissing his valuable golf club resort luxury escape.

The president’s lawyers are now suing Jacks, saying her estimate and the nearly $400,000 property tax bill it generates are too high, even if her appraisal is only 40% of what the president listed in his 2017 financial disclosure form.

Oh so he’s saying it’s worse less than 50 million…and less than 19 million too. Or I suppose that it changes value depending on whether we’re talking about taxes or selling price.

Trump’s company, Jupiter Golf LLC, does not say in the lawsuit how much it thinks the course is currently worth, but it sent the county nearly $300,000 as a good-faith estimate of what it believes the tax bill should be. That would make the course worth $15m.

Well that’s quite similar to 50. Less than a third of it, yes, but still quite similar.

Also? He cheats at golf.

Suzann Pettersen, the 15-time LPGA Tour winner and a golfing partner of Donald Trump, says the president “cheats like hell” on the golf course.

Pettersen, who has known Trump for a decade and says she is fond of the president even though she does not agree with his policies, was speaking to the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.

“He cheats like hell … so I don’t quite know how he is in business,” said Pettersen. “They say that if you cheat at golf, you cheat at business. I’m pretty sure he pays his caddie well, since no matter how far into the woods he hits the ball, it’s in the middle of the fairway when we get there.”

Maybe God moves it.

Originally a comment by Anna Y on Top lobster.

Yet another guy who thinks he’s very “Alpha” spouting off about how all the feeeemales should be irresistibly attracted to him (and conveniently picking a species where this is the case; admittedly lobsters are a novel choice, normally this sort goes for lions; funny how no one talks about hyenas, or elephants, or bonobos, etc, with a female topped hierarchy). But, even accepting his premise that all women should be irresistibly (and exclusively) attracted to Alphas, I don’t think he’d like that in practice.

For one, in the animal kingdom, high status males don’t just magically spring forth full-formed: they rise up through the ranks by competing with other males, often violently, sometimes with deadly consequences. Once they’ve achieved the “top lobster” status, they continue to have to defend it against challengers. Eventually (which, in practice, can mean “almost immediately”) they are deposed (often fatally) by the next in line. The reward for this high-stress existence is also fairly fleeting: the Alpha gets to mate with the most females while holding the title. These females then lose all interest in him, once they received what they wanted: sperm from an ostensibly fit donor, that makes it more likely their offspring will have a better shot at survival. The females don’t then stick around to make the Alpha sandwiches, and listen to him endlessly prattle on while pretending to be utterly fascinated, and nodding in the right places. In fact, just as soon as he gets his ass handed to him by the next guy, his popularity is history: it’s brilliant strategy after all, for the females to move on to the best and brightest, not stick around to soothe the loser’s bruised ego. There’s also no mention whatsoever of beauty contests among the lobster females to get a shot with the top guy, so presumably our Alpha is happy to fertilize grandma lobster and morbidly obese lobster, or whatever passes for unattractive in lobster terms. In other words, the brightest females in the animal kingdom (according to Peterson), behave precisely like human gold-diggers: they zero in on the male with the most to offer, take him for everything he’s worth (in exchange for a little nookie, sure), and as soon as they get what they want from him, they move on to the up-and-comer. Brilliant strategy indeed, but I’m gonna bet Peterson has something unflattering to say about it when properly applied by members of his own species.

Also, I’m kind of curious how he squares the “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today” rule (which ostensibly invites a person to forgo competition and focus on fostering one’s personal virtue as an end in itself) with his ideas on dominance hierarchies (and their corollaries re: sex and reproduction).

No. I think this is completely wrong, however highminded it sounds.

I understand the decision of some members to boycott the SOTU but I don’t agree with it any more than I did when a member disrupted a speech in the House chamber by @BarackObama. The fact that this @POTUS flouts norms and denigrates institutions doesn’t mean others should follow.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) January 30, 2018

Yes it does. The fact that the norms this POTUS flouts are the norms that say we should treat other people with respect and fairness and basic empathy does mean that we should not reward him with attention and deference. This POTUS is an evil bullying monster, and he should not be treated as normal or naughty-but-acceptable.

The state of the union address has been puffed into what now looks like a royal ceremony, which is embarrassing. The tv networks are giving it all the solemn awe and hype they bestow on the Oscars, another pseudo-royal ceremony hyped out of all recognition.

Plus there’s the fact that this POTUS has shown us all that the famous checks and balances are worthless, so what else are we supposed to do? What else are legislators supposed to do? Just go on acting as if he’s normal, and wrong but otherwise ok? He’s not in any way ok and we get to say so.

The shithole Trump has made:

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include strong denials from pro-Trump protesters of allegations they singled out dark-skinned individuals, as well as video links showing their interactions during a protest at the Capitol on Jan. 25.

Supporters of President Donald Trump singled out dark-skinned lawmakers, legislative staffers and children at the Capitol on Jan. 25 as they protested congressional efforts to pass immigration reform, according to staffers of the Arizona Legislature and two Democratic legislators.

Waving large flags in support of Trump while standing between the House and Senate buildings, the protesters, who were also armed, asked just about anyone who crossed their path if they “support illegal immigration.”

They called some “illegal” and told them to “go home,” barbs they reserved for those with brown skin, according to the staffers.

Two women who said they were part of the protest against illegal immigration at the Capitol vehemently denied accusations that they singled out dark-skinned people and accused them of being illegal immigrants.

But Lisette Flores and Selianna Robles, policy advisors for Senate Democrats, said they were yelled at when they walked from the Senate to the House lawn, directly passing the Trump supporters, to get lunch at a farmers market. Three white coworkers offered to escort Flores, Robles, and Democratic staffer Dora Ramirez back to their offices, Robles said.

We’ve seen this before – groups of people whipping up hatred of other groups of people. Rwanda, Bosnia, Burma, Bangladesh…we’ve seen it before. Trump has awoken a monster.

Lawmakers said they were also questioned based on their appearance. Rep. Eric Descheenie, D-Chinle, said he was confronted by Trump supporters while helping defend a young student that he said was being harassed.

They asked Descheenie, a Navajo lawmaker, if he was in the United States illegally.

“I’m indigenous to these lands,” Descheenie said. “My ancestors fought and died on these lands. I just told them, ‘Don’t ask me that question.’”

…

A 14-minute video of yesterday’s protest uploaded on YouTube shows several interactions initiated by the anti-illegal immigration protesters. Near the beginning of the video, one protester could be heard assuming that members of a group are staying illegally in the U.S.

“No, they’re not legal. They’re illegal,” a woman can be heard saying.

“Yeah, we know they’re illegal. Get legal or get out of America … They’re illegal, see that?” another woman shouted at the group.

Mind you, it seems to be a tiny group of people, and from the way they talk they sound not right in the head…But without Trump they might be contentedly shouting at clouds instead of at other human beings.

Peak hate-mongering xenophobic immigrant-bashing racism?

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), an immigration hardliner, announced this afternoon that he has asked the U.S. Capitol Police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to check the identification of all State of the Union attendees and arrest any illegal immigrants.

Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress. Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported.

— Rep. Paul Gosar

Why it matters: At least 27 members of Congress plan to bring immigrants with DACA or Temporary Protected Status as their guests to Trump’s address, per CNN.

He proudly posted on Facebook:

Today, Congressman Paul Gosar contacted the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking they consider checking identification of all attending the State of the Union address and arresting any illegal aliens in attendance. Additionally, Congressman Gosar asked that they arrest those using fraudulent social security numbers and identification to pass through security.

“Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress. Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported,” said Congressman Gosar.

The Phoenix New Times:

On Twitter, outgoing senator Jeff Flake responded, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Though a number of Democrats are boycotting Trump’s State of the Union address, plenty of others are bringing guests intended to send a political statement. According to the Huffington Post, nearly 30 Democratic lawmakers plan to bring Dreamers.

That includes Arizona congressmen Ruben Gallego and Raul Grijalva.

Gallego will be bringing Antonio Valdovinos, a 27-year-old DACA recipient from Phoenix who was unable to join to the Marine Corps due to his legal status. Valdovinos went on to work in grassroots activism, leading get-out-the-vote efforts for Phoenix City Council candidates. He now owns his own business, La Machine Field Operations, which works to get progressive candidates elected in Arizona.

Grijalva plans to bring Arisaid, a Dreamer from Arizona who now attends Georgetown University, he wrote in a tweet.

This country has become a racist shithole.

Julian Baggini has a droll review of a new book by Jordan Peterson on the 12 eternal truths or something.

It’s not difficult to see why Peterson’s rules sold in the online marketplace, where attention spans are short and repackaged clichés pass for original insights. In headline form, most of his rules are simply timeless good sense. “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)”; “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” The problem is that when Peterson fleshes them out, they carry more flab than meat.

Actually I would say the problem comes before that, the problem is with his “rules” themselves. They’re too self-conscious, too composed, too pseudo-Chesterfieldish. Writing like that brings me out in a rash. He’s not some guy in the smoking room of a club in St James Square in 1875, he’s an internet-famous academic in 2018. He should relax and get over himself…or else go back to being a real academic who writes academic prose. Attempted aphoristic Wisdom is just embarrassing, though I have no doubt his fans will think it’s genius. They think Peter Boghossian is a genius after all.

Although he advocates a balance between the two, most of the time he argues that we need more order. In practice, this means a conservative return to tradition and what is “natural”. Dominance hierarchies, for example, are said to be “older than trees”, a “near-eternal aspect of the environment”. But since when has “natural” meant “good”, or “is” meant “ought”? If we cannot move beyond dominance hierarchies, then his apparently empowering advice to stand tall has the chilling corollary that others will have to stoop.

…

Peterson, who has become one of the most prominent critics of anything that can be labelled as “political correctness”, is especially conservative on gender and family roles. “Female lobsters . . . identify the top guy quickly, and become irresistibly attracted to him,” he writes. Generalising from the crustacean to the human he adds, “This is brilliant strategy, in my estimation.”

Ah so that’s why there are jokes about Peterson and lobsters. I’ve seen them around but not known why they were a thing. He fancies himself the top lobster.

Peterson has a knack for penning sentences that sound like deep wisdom at first glance but vanish into puffs of pseudo-profundity if you give them more than a second’s thought. Consider these: “Our eyes are always pointing at things we are interested in approaching, or investigating, or looking at, or having”; “In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.”

My point exactly, except for the part about sounding like deep wisdom at first glance; to me even at first glance they sound like someone trying to sound like deep wisdom.

What about when artists have histories of abusing women? Should we care? Should museums care?

When the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery was preparing the wall text in 2014 to accompany an image of the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., the museum decided to note that Mr. Mayweather had been “charged with domestic violence on several occasions,” receiving “punishments ranging from community service to jail time.”

Such context is common for controversial subjects in art. But far less so for artists themselves — centuries of men like Picasso or Schiele who were known for mistreating women, but whose works hang in prominent museums without any asterisks.

Now, museums around the world are wrestling with the implications of a decision, by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, to indefinitely postpone a Chuck Close exhibition because of allegations of sexual harassment involving potential portrait models that have engulfed the prominent artist in controversy. Mr. Close has called the allegations “lies” and said he is “being crucified.”

It’s a quandary. If the allegations are false, the postponement is unfair to Close. If they’re true…then what? Should we decide it’s just about what’s on the canvas?

It is a provocative moment for the art world, as the public debate about separating creative output from personal conduct moves from popular culture into the realm of major visual artists from different eras and the institutions that have long collected and exhibited their pieces.

“We’re very used to having to defend people in the collection, but it’s always been for the sitter” rather than the artist, said Kim Sajet, director of the Portrait Gallery, which has a large body of Mr. Close’s work. “Now we have to think to ourselves, ‘Do we need to do that about Chuck Close?’”

It partly depends on what the allegations are, I think. If we’re looking at paintings of people who were abused by the artist, I want to know that. (Balthus’s young neighbor in Paris for instance: we wondered what he did to her.)

“How much are we going to do a litmus test on every artist in terms of how they behave?” said Jock Reynolds, the director of the Yale University Art Gallery, which collects Mr. Close’s work. “Pablo Picasso was one of the worst offenders of the 20th century in terms of his history with women. Are we going to take his work out of the galleries? At some point you have to ask yourself, is the art going to stand alone as something that needs to be seen?”

But one is tempted to think that’s easy for him to say.

Whatever museums ultimately decide to do about Mr. Close, some say they can no longer afford to simply present art without addressing the issues that surround the artist — that institutions must play a more active role in educating the public about the human beings behind the work.

“The typical ‘we don’t judge, we don’t endorse, we just put it up for people to experience and decide’ falls very flat in this political and cultural moment,” said James Rondeau, the president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, which has Close works in its collection.

Maybe so, but then again this political and cultural moment could have it all wrong – it could be a moment of moral panic and overreaction.

Anything for sport, right? Anything to win.

The Larry Nassar scandal is the biggest sexual abuse scandal in sports history. Nassar’s victims, who include some of the most famous female athletes around today, including Simone Biles and McKayla Maroney, outnumber the alleged victims of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby combined. The abuse was global: he abused girls in London at the 2012 Olympics; at the Károlyi Ranch, USA Gymnastics’ training centre in Texas; at gymnastics meets in Rotterdam.

Over the course of the week-long sentence hearing, more than 150 women made impact statements in which they described lives crushed by trauma and shame. Shy little girls who briefly found self-confidence through sport became deeply self-loathing teenagers and adults because the man who was supposed to help them do the sport they loved instead molested them, over and over again.

The most obvious word this case sparks is “how”: how could this have ever been allowed to happen? How could USA Gymnastics have required hundreds of girls under its care to submit to mandatory treatment from a man who would give them “pelvic exams” in their hotel or dorm beds at night, wholly unsupervised? And how could the complaints about him have been dismissed for so long, as detailed by the gold medallist Aly Raisman in her unforgettably blistering testimony? “It’s easy to put out statements talking about how athlete care is the highest priority. But [USA Gymnastics] has been saying that for years, and all the while, this nightmare was happening,” Raisman said in court.

Because winning was all. Gold medals were all. The teenagers doing the winning didn’t matter.

“There is no other sport in which this could have happened but gymnastics,” says Joan Ryan, whose 1995 book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, about the physical and psychological toll gymnastics takes on girls and young women, is still regarded as one of the seminal books about the sport. “These girls are groomed from an incredibly young age to deny their own experience. Your knee hurts? You’re being lazy. You’re hungry? No, you’re fat and greedy. They are trained to doubt their own feelings, and that’s why this could happen to over 150 of them.”

Ryan’s excellent book is also about figure skaters – the other athletes who are dressed and made up like dolls to do their sport.

Ryan wrote about the notoriously brutal regime at the Károlyi Ranch, run by Béla and Márta Károlyi and where Nassar worked, detailing how girls were so deprived of food and water they would beg their male teammates to smuggle them snacks. Yet as long as the Károlyis brought in medals the media loved them.

Anything to win, baby.

I did not know this.

As Director, Robert Mueller began the practice of sending every new agent class @FBI to the Holocaust Museum to understand what happens when police become complicit in authoritarian regimes. https://t.co/NyC1aAtYLW

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) January 28, 2018

Wow. So I looked for more. CNN in July 2014:

The FBI is well aware about the threat to your civil liberties — especially in an age of unwarranted, mass surveillance of our emails and video calls.

It’s why all FBI academy trainees learn about the rise of Nazi Germany and the transformation of law enforcement into a tool of oppression.

“We send every one of our agents to the Holocaust Museum before they’re agents to know and understand what happens when an agency goes rogue,” ex-FBI director Robert Mueller explained recently.

Agents take a private, guided tour of the museum. Then there’s a specialized class that highlights how everyday law enforcement played a key role in Germany’s descent into authoritarianism. It wasn’t only elite military units, like the infamous Schutzstaffel, or SS.

The presentation includes the slide below, which shows how German police accompanied Nazi bureaucrats as they compiled information about minorities who would later be hunted down and killed. That information was tabulated as punch cards by some of the earliest computers.

Very professional, very technologically sophisticated.

A portion of the class at the museum is led by the program’s creator, David Friedman, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of law enforcement initiatives. He asks the agents point blank: What makes you different? Pointing at the U.S. Constitution isn’t enough.

“Look, it’s an amazing document. But sometimes there’s a separation between the principles expressed and how law enforcement conducts itself at the street level,” Friedman said.

Then he brings up dark moments in American history. Japanese-Americans were sent to World War II internment camps. Civil Rights protestors were beaten by cops. And the FBI’s own covert surveillance program, COINTELPRO, targeted athletes, journalists, politicians and grassroots movements for being “subversive.”

Exactly, which is why many of us have very mixed feelings about the FBI’s role in the effort to keep Donald Trump from destroying everything. It’s good to know they’re thinking about it and including it in their training.

From the FBI archive 2010:

Every year, the FBI Training Academy graduates about 1,000 new special agents following 20 weeks of intense preparation. In countless tactical and analytical scenarios, the trainees learn how to respond appropriately under the most trying conditions.

But there is also a rigorous moral and ethical component to the training. In a poignant culmination of 21 hours spent defining the line between right and wrong, all new agents are escorted through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. to see in horrific detail what can happen when law enforcement loses sight of what is right. The program—called Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust—is a joint partnership between the Anti-Defamation League and the museum.

“It makes our people think about morality, ethics, and how to maintain those during turbulent times,” said Special Agent Douglas B. Merel, who teaches the Academy’s ethical leadership course for new agents that includes the museum program. “It shows how important it is for law enforcement to maintain their core values.”

In one visit on a recent Friday morning, about 50 agents-to-be filed into the museum. Over the next four hours they toured the exhibits—led in some cases by Holocaust survivors—and discussed what separates them from the law enforcement officers in Germany who were systematically co-opted by the Nazis.

In a museum conference room, Elise Jarvis, associate director of Law Enforcement Outreach for the Anti-Defamation League, whose mission is in part to secure justice and fair treatment for all citizens, is purposefully blunt in her line of questions. “So the question I’m putting out there is: What makes you different?” Jarvis asked the class. “What, at the end of the day, is going to keep you all anchored? What keeps you from sliding down that slippery slope? What keeps you from abusing your power?”

As answers bubble up—the Constitution, personal morals, compassion, laws—instructors challenge the students to support and defend their positions.

“It’s really our hope that the law enforcement officers who come to the museum see this program, see this history, and really reflect on their professional core values and their role in society today,” said Marcus A. Appelbaum, who coordinates the museum’s community and leadership programs.

The law enforcement program was developed in 1999 after D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Charles Ramsey toured the museum and recognized the value of teaching trainees about law enforcement’s integral role in the Nazis’ rise to power. In 2000, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh incorporated the tour into the Bureau’s new agent training. In 2005, Director Robert S. Mueller said the training has never been more relevant. “At a time when law enforcement must be aggressive in stopping terror, these classes provide powerful lessons on why we must always protect civil rights and uphold the rule of law,” he said.

So it was Freeh rather than Mueller who started it, but either way it’s good to know.

In the latest news causing SurpriseOMeters to break all around the world, Trump shyly confides that he’s not a feminist. My god who could have seen that coming?!

In an interview airing Sunday, Trump unapologetically told British journalist Piers Morgan that he is not a feminist.

Morgan, a former “Celebrity Apprentice” winner, tweeted: “BREAKING NEWS: President Trump has declared he is NOT a feminist.”

Morgan continued: “He tells me: ‘No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.’ “

He’s such a kidder. He’s for himself. He’s a Donald First guy.

He’s also, of course, stupid and uninformed. Being a feminist ≠ being against men or being Not For men. Feminism doesn’t translate as “for women to the exclusion of everyone else.” But it’s silly even to bother pointing that out, because Morgan was trolling and Trump trolled back. Nobody on earth has ever thought Trump was a feminist.

Morgan’s announcement was a bit tongue in cheek, as the president’s words weren’t breaking news to anyone who has paid attention. Trump has repeatedly criticized the Women’s March and other initiatives protesting and critiquing his presidency on the basis that his policies and worldview harm women.

Trolling, in other words. It’s not a joke, it’s not “tongue in cheek” – it’s that the president of the US has noisy, vocal, explicit hostile contempt for women along with a history of assaulting them. That’s not actually funny.