A judge has revoked Martin Shkreli’s bail. I guess offering to pay people to grab Hillary Clinton’s hair wasn’t such a good idea after all.

A federal judge on Wednesday revoked the $5 million bail of Martin Shkreli, the infamous former hedge fund manager convicted of defrauding investors, after prosecutors complained that his out-of-court antics posed a danger to the community.

While awaiting sentencing, Shkreli has harassed women online, prosecutors argued, and even offered his Facebook followers $5,000 to grab a strand of Hillary Clinton’s hair during her book tour.

Those aren’t “antics.” Those people who punched a woman in the face and knocked her down at a discussion on gender weren’t performing “antics” and neither was Martin Shkreli. Threats and intimidation are not “antics.”

Shkreli, who faces up to 20 years in prison for securities fraud, apologized in writing, saying that he did not expect anyone to take his online comments seriously, and his attorneys pleaded with the judge Wednesday to give him another chance.

“The fact that he continues to remain unaware of the inappropriateness of his actions or words demonstrates to me that he may be creating ongoing risk to the community,” said U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, in revoking his bond.

His actions were threatening, intimidating, and harassing. “Inappropriate” is a mild word for that.

“This is a solicitation of assault. That is not protected by the First Amendment.”

There you go. That’s how to say it.

Shkreli, wearing a lavender button-down shirt and slacks, was taken into custody immediately after the hour-long hearing. He did not appear to react at the judge’s decision though he appeared more nervous than when he entered court and refused to ride the elevator with one reporter because they were “fake news.” He will be sent to a maximum-security prison until his sentencing hearing in January.

I think he’s more fake news than the reporters are.

Shkreli’s lawyers compared his online comments to the political humor of Kathy Griffin, who once held up a photograph of a faux bloody head of President Trump. They also compared him to Trump himself. During the campaign, Trump used “political hyperbole,” Shkreli’s attorneys said, when he said that Clinton, his Democratic opponent, would abolish the Second Amendment if elected. “By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know,” Trump said.

“He did not hold up the severed head of the president of the United States like Kathy Griffin,” Brafman said.

But prosecutors argued that Shkreli already had been given plenty of opportunities to act appropriately. His posts about Hillary Clinton and female journalists show an “escalating pattern of violence against women that is incredibly disturbing,” Jacquelyn Kasulis, the lead prosecutor said. “It is clear that he is reckless. He knew exactly what he was doing. He has to go in. … He doesn’t respect the rule of law.”

And it’s not as if nobody ever acts on threats against women.

Matsumoto appeared particularly concerned that one of Shkreli’s Facebook followers could take his offer of $5,000 for a strand of Clinton’s hair seriously. Shkreli said he wanted the hair — with a follicle — to compare Clinton’s DNA to a sample he already had. His attorneys said the post was satire and could not be taken seriously.

“What is funny about that,” a visibly frustrated Matsumoto said. “He doesn’t know who his followers are. He doesn’t know if someone is going to take his offer seriously. … He is soliciting an assault on another person for $5,000.”

And it’s not as if nobody ever acts on threats against women. It’s really not.

There was a talk / discussion event scheduled this evening in London, Miranda Yardley and Julia Long on the meaning of gender identity. It was originally scheduled to be held at New Cross Learning, which used to be New Cross People’s Library which is a much cooler name…but yesterday NCL canceled.

At NXL Management Committee meeting of 12 Sep the decision was taken not to host the “What is Gender” event due to take place here on 13 Sep

— New Cross Learning (@newxlearning) September 12, 2017

After completing a risk assessment the Mgmt believe the potential risks 2 the library, volunteers, public & building are too great

— New Cross Learning (@newxlearning) September 12, 2017

Discussions of gender are scary things.

Tonight’s talk is going to be amazing. A quick teaser of what to expect from me:

‘gender identity’ is just thoughts and feelings. pic.twitter.com/f35KEfsemX

— Miranda Yardley (@TerrorizerMir) September 13, 2017

Someone found a new venue, so the speakers and attendees arranged to meet at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park and go to the (undisclosed) venue from there.

When they did, this happened:

A 60-year-old woman has just been beaten up by 4 Trans Rights activists. To smash up her camera originally, but was then set upon by at least 4 men and women who punched her and kicked her to the floor and continued. Footage out soon.

Do you think this is liberationary? Beating up a grandma. Really?

This left photo is the side of her that got punched repeatedly and you can also see her cut hand. She was also strangled as you can see round the base of her neck on the right photo.

“Activists” followed the scary feminists to the venue, tried to rush the door, and then stood outside shouting throughout the talk. The women inside were afraid to leave.

All because some people think “gender identity” is thoughts and feelings. I don’t see the need to punch women in the face for that.

About Trump’s candidate to be “chief scientist” at the Department of Agriculture – Pro Publica last May:

The USDA’s research section studies everything from climate change to nutrition. Under the 2008 Farm Bill, its leader is supposed to serve as the agency’s “chief scientist” and be chosen “from among distinguished scientists with specialized or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.”

Does that describe Sam Clovis? No.

Clovis has never taken a graduate course in science and is openly skeptical of climate change. While he has a doctorate in public administration and was a tenured professor of business and public policy at Morningside College for 10 years, he has published almost no academic work.

Plus public administration and business are not sciences. Also…what’s Morningside College?

Morningside College is a private, liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church located in Sioux City, Iowa.

Ok, it’s a small bible college in Iowa, so not obviously the sort of credential that puts one in a top government job.

Clovis is better known for hosting a conservative talk radio show in his native Iowa and, after mounting an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2014, becoming a fiery pro-Trump advocate on television.

So in other words his nomination is insultingly random.

Catherine Woteki, who served as undersecretary for research, education and economics in the Obama Administration, compared the move to appointing someone without a medical background to lead the National Institutes of Health. The USDA post includes overseeing scientific integrity within the agency.

“This position is the chief scientist of the department of agriculture. It should be a person who evaluates the scientific body of evidence and moves appropriately from there,” she said in an interview.

Which should be someone qualified to do that. It’s insulting to the citizenry to nominate someone who is in no way qualified to that sort of job.

Clovis has a B.S. in political science from the U.S. Air Force Academy, an MBA from Golden Gate University and a doctorate in public administration from the University of Alabama. The University of Alabama canceled the program the year after Clovis graduated, but an old course catalogue provided by the university does not indicate the program required any science courses.

Clovis’ published works do not appear to include any scientific papers. His 2006 dissertation concerned federalism and homeland security preparation, and a search for academic research published by Clovis turned up a handful of journal articles, all related to national security and terrorism.

As undersecretary for research, education and economics, Woteki directed additional resources to helping local farmers and agricultural workers address the impacts of severe drought, flooding and unpredictable weather patterns. She chaired the “Global Research Alliance to Reduce Agricultural Greenhouse Gasses,” which brings together chief agricultural scientists from across the globe. Under her leadership, the USDA also created “Climate Hubs” across the country to help localized solutions for adapting to climate change.

Clovis has repeatedly expressed skepticism over climate science, and has called efforts to address climate change “simply a mechanism for transferring wealth from one group of people to another.” He has indicated the Trump administration will take a starkly different approach at the USDA. Representing the campaign at the Farm Foundation Forum in October, Clovis told E&E News that Trump’s agriculture policy would focus on boosting trade and lessening regulation and not the impact of climate change.

Trump clearly hates knowledge and expertise of any kind. He’s a bluffer, and he wants to fill his entire administration with bluffers. That’s a funny way to make America great again.

The USDA’s undersecretary for research, education and economics has historically consulted on a wide range of scientific issues. Woteki, for example, said she was asked for input on the Zika and Ebola outbreaks because of the USDA’s relevant research and was frequently called upon to offer guidance on homeland security issues related to food safety.

“Access to safe food and clean air and water is absolutely fundamental to personal security,” she said, adding that a scientific understanding of food safety is critical to success in the job. “Food systems are widely recognized by the national security community as being part of critical infrastructure.”

Clovis’ academic background includes years of study on homeland security, but focused almost exclusively on foreign policy. A biography he provided to the 2016 Fiscal Summit at which he was a speaker indicates he is “a federalism scholar” and “an expert on homeland security issues,” with “regional expertise in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East.” Neither this biography nor any other publicly available biographies list any experience in food safety, agriculture or nutrition.

Whatever. It’s just agriculture. Who cares, right?

From June but still of interest:

Rep. Terese Berceau, a Madison Democrat, was quizzing Rep. Jesse Kremer, her Republican colleague from Kewaskum, at a hearing for his proposed Campus Free Speech Act before the state Assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities recently.

Berceau wondered what would happen under the bill — which requires University of Wisconsin System institutions to be neutral on “controversies of the day” — if a student in a geology class argued the Biblical theory that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

“Is it okay for the professor to tell them they’re wrong?” Berceau asked during the lengthy session on May 11.

“The earth is 6,000 years old,” Kremer offered.  “That’s a fact.”

Jacob Tobia in Playboy explains the wonders of being objectified. There was this bar Tobia used to go to as a Duke undergraduate.

It was the place where basketball players, sorority queens, frat stars, gay boys and queer girls alike congregated to bump, grind and…bump-n-grind.

I didn’t go all that often, but when I did choose to grace Shooters with my presence, it was an all-out affair. I’d wear my shortest skirt, a crop top, and, if you were lucky, my biggest heels. I’d arrive just a touch after midnight, strut in already buzzed, head straight to the bar and climb on top of it. On any given visit, I’d spend at least 50-percent of my time dancing on the bar: swaying my hips, dropping it low, tearing it up and trying not to kick off anyone’s drink.

Halfway through my year, I started to notice something. When my friends who were women or gay men danced on the bar, they’d get a lot more bang for their buck (literally) than I did. When they danced, people were watching. Upon their dismount from the bar, they’d get approached by potential partners, fielding propositions and advances left and right. Fast forward ten minutes, and half of them were grinding up on a partner, mid-DFMO (dance floor make-out). Fast forward an hour, and they’d be leaving together to hook up.

While my savvy dance moves and expert gyrations were appreciated by my classmates on a performative level, they never seemed to lead to anything. Unlike my peers, when I dismounted the bar, I rarely had the opportunity to mount anything else. Instead of attracting potential hook-ups, I only seemed to attract drunken cries of “YES QUEEN!” and “YOU BETTER WERK!”

My friends were being looked at in a different way than me. I was being appreciated as entertainment; they were being appreciated sexually. I was being watched; they were being sexually objectified.

Ok, but…isn’t that something to think about before you get up on the bar and start dancing? Tobia presents all this as if he’s completely unaware that only some people are considered sexy and attractive, and that therefore only some people are a welcome sight dancing on a bar. It’s not as if everybody can just hop up on the bar and expect to please. It’s as if Tobia thinks the shortest skirt, the crop top, and the (if you’re lucky) biggest (highest?) heels are all that’s required. It’s not so.

The message that being considered as a “sex-having and desiring” individual is universally negative is mostly based in the experiences of white, cis, thin, able-bodied people who have regular, and often too much, experience with sexual objectification.

Well, whether that’s true or not, it’s not really relevant when talking about people who dance on bars and those who hook up with them. That bar is clearly not a place to go if you don’t like sexual objectification. But that doesn’t seem to be relevant to Tobia.

As a trans person, that has never been my experience and I’m not alone in that. So how do we retool the conversation about objectification to more accurately represent the experiences of everyone?

We…don’t?

It’s not possible to “represent the experiences of everyone.” That’s a ludicrous question, and also a stunningly entitled one. Tobia would like to be objectified, please, so how do we take the conversation feminists want to have about objectification and make it more pleasing to Tobia? We don’t, because the conversation feminists want to have about objectification isn’t about Tobia, and doesn’t need to be, and shouldn’t be. Tobia’s experience doesn’t change women’s experience of unwanted objectification.

Tobia explains what his “feminist training” (his wot?) has taught him about objectification. He seems impatient – yeah yeah, interruption at work, yadda yadda. Sorry to bore you.

As such, my feminist training taught me that sexual objectification is categorically undesirable, categorically patriarchal. Therefore, we must fight against sexual objectification in any form and create a world where no one is sexually objectified again.

Yet, here’s the rub: if sexual objectification is so categorically awful, then why do I want it so badly?

Probably because you’re not a feminist, and because you’re horny, and because you’re not attractive to the people you want to be attractive to.

The idea that being seen as a “sex object”–at any time, ever–is universally a bad thing is too simple, like many tenets of straightforward, non-intersectional feminism. As a gender nonconforming person, I’m sexually objectified basically, well, never. When it comes to being viewed as a purely sexual being, I don’t get any.

Well ok then, let’s change feminism to make it about Jacob Tobia. Why not after all?

In a society that either desexualizes or hypersexualizes trans and gender nonconforming people, my whole existence is pretty much devoid of good sexual energy. While many of my cis women friends are trying to figure out how to drain out a swamp of unwanted male attention, I’m stuck in a desert trying to suck water from a cactus.

I can show literally my entire leg and get nothing. I can wear a skimpy dress to a club and people just look the other way. I can wear five inch heels and, while I might get lots of attention, it won’t be sexual attention.

And that is apparently the fault of feminism, the “straightforward, non-intersectional” kind as opposed to the kind that’s for Jacob Tobia.

I want to be sexually objectified and it never happens. I want people to appreciate the time and effort that I put into my body and my look. I want people to look at my perfectly applied lipstick and want me because of it. I want my long legs to give people feels. I want to dance on the bar and leave boys breathless, panting, and desperate to talk to me.

In other words he wants to be an extraordinarily sexy gorgeous woman. I suspect a lot of women want that too, especially when very young, but guess what, they don’t get what they want either. Life is like that. Disappointment and frustration happen. They’re not unique to Jacob Tobia or to trans people.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been explaining to the assembled journalists what a dangerous criminal James Comey is and why the Justice Department should arrest him immediately.

The Justice Department should consider prosecuting former FBI director James B. Comey for actions that “were improper and likely could have been illegal,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday.

“I think if there’s ever a moment where we feel someone’s broken the law, particularly if they’re the head of the FBI, I think that’s something that certainly should be looked at,” Sanders said.

Mind like a steel trap, she’s got.

Asked to clarify, Sanders said this:

“Anybody that breaks the law, whatever that process is that needs to be followed, should certainly be looked at,” Sanders said. “If they determine that that’s the course of action to take, then they should certainly do that, but I’m not here to ever direct DOJ in — in the actions that they should take.”

Nonetheless, Sanders ticked through a list of actions or alleged actions by Comey that she said justified his firing by Trump, in May, and some of which, she said, may be illegal.

Sanders got her tertiary education at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. I haven’t been able to find any source that says she has any legal training.

“The president is proud of the decision that he made. The president was 100 percent right in firing James Comey. He knew at the time that it could be bad for him politically, but he also knew and felt he had an obligation to do what was right, and do what was right for the American people, and certainly the men and women at the FBI,” Sanders said at a White House press briefing.

Ah what a liar. Her narcissistic boss must be so pleased with her.

“I think there’s no secret. Comey, by his own self-admission, leaked privileged government information weeks before President Trump fired him. Comey testified that an FBI agent engaged in the same practice, they’d face serious repercussions,” Sanders continued. “I think he set his own stage for himself on that front. His actions were improper, and likely could have been illegal.”

Comey leaked memos to the New York Times, and “politicized an investigation by signaling he would exonerate Hillary Clinton before he ever interviewed her or other key witnesses,” Sanders added. She also asserted that Comey had given false testimony to Congress.

She’s been studying Trump’s tweets too closely.

Sanders’ comments left unclear what federal law she thought the former FBI director might have violated. She mentioned the disclosure of a memo by Comey to a law professor friend,  but at the time that happened the memo was not classified.

She also cited his apparent preparation of remarks explaining his decision not to charge anyone in the case months before that decision was announced, and before Clinton herself had been interviewed about the matter. It was unclear from Sanders’ comments what about that conduct might constitute a crime.

Again – too much Trump’s Twitter, not enough anything else. She’s as ignorant as Trump, and as willing to lie. Mystery solved.

The Campaign Legal Center reports:

Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) learned through a response to a FOIA Request from Feb. 15, 2017 that an employee with the Heritage Foundation pushed back on naming a single Democrat to the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity.

The employee wrote personally to Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushing back on even a single Democrat being named to the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity and discouraging the White House from naming mainstream Republican officials and/or academics to the commission.

You remember what this presidential commission is, right? It’s a faked-up pseudo-commission to dig up bogus “evidence” of massive voter fraud, so that Trump and his enforcers can get new voting restrictions passed that will keep Undesirables from voting.

The Heritage Foundation employee, whose name has been redacted by the Department of Justice, complained that the White House did not consult with their “experts” who “have written more on the voter fraud issue than anyone in the country on our side of the political aisle.” A few months later, President Donald Trump appointed Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation to the Pence-Kobach Commission. Mr. von Spakovsky is widely considered the architect of the voter fraud myth. These emails add to the mounting evidence that the commission has no interest in true bipartisanship or an open discussion of how to solve the real problems in our elections.

As if we ever thought they did. Trump has been lying about this issue since before he decided to run.

“Any commission tasked with looking at the integrity of our elections should be bipartisan and should not be trying to make voting harder,” said Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC), and a former Republican Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). “Yet Secretary Kris Kobach, the vice-chair of the commission, continues to use his position to further his quest to undermine citizens’ right to vote. His demonstrably false claims about election results in New Hampshire leading up today’s meeting impugned the dignity of that state and were clearly intended to undermine our democracy rather than strengthen it.”

“Instead of addressing the numerous serious issues facing our democracy, the commission met today for a second time to discuss the same tired anecdotes and debunked methodology that it has already decided to use to justify new restrictive voting laws. These farcical meetings continue to validate the worst suspicions about the commission: that it is designed to shrink the electorate for partisan advantage.”

“One of the stated goals of this meeting was to discuss the effect of election integrity issues on voter confidence. If the commissioners were really interested in pursuing this, they might look at a genuine, demonstrated threat to American election integrity, such as foreign interference. For example, the recent revelations about Russian nationals illegally buying political ads on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign raise a serious issue that could legitimately undermine public confidence. This is a true issue of election integrity.”

This commission has no meaningful bipartisan credentials and its purpose is based on false charges of voter fraud that have already been repeatedly disproven.

A five-year long search during the George W. Bush administration turned up ‘virtually no evidence of voter fraud,’ according to the New York Times.

H/t Ari Berman:

Heritage Foundation wrote to Sessions & said voter fraud commission should exclude Dems & "mainstream Republicans" https://t.co/WV6DLEpfkA pic.twitter.com/X6lbOZWyqk

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) September 12, 2017

Hey, it turns out the Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t like it when someone lies about them.

The SPLC is currently facing a coordinated attack by far-right extremist groups we’ve named as hate groups because they vilify the LGBT community, immigrants and Muslims. Their latest megaphone is none other than FOX News.

On the show The Five, the FOX pundits made the outrageous claims that we spend only $61,000 on legal work, that we, indeed, do “hardly any law,” and that we’re “laundering money.” Anyone remotely familiar with our work, including our tax returns and audited financial statements on our website, would know that these claims are false. You can read the full letter to FOX News demanding a correction below.

Interesting, because anyone remotely familiar with the work of Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali would not put them on a list of “Anti-Muslim Extremists” – yet the SPLC did exactly that.

The SPLC tweeted its indignation, and got quite a lot of replies that pointed out the relevance of what the SPLC did to Maajid and Ayaan.

SPLC is demanding a correction from FOX News. https://t.co/aIESkf988X

— SPLC (@splcenter) September 8, 2017

I demand that you admit you were wrong to name @MaajidNawaz & @Ayaan as Anti-Muslim Extremists.

— Chris (@CenterLeftist) September 9, 2017

@MaajidNawaz and @Ayaan should be supported not targeted. You've lost my support.

— Ned Farr (@Ned_Farr) September 9, 2017

You lost all integrity when you put @Ayaan & @MaajidNawaz on your "anti-muslim" list. Correct and apologize!

— Morten H. Andersen (@Mortenha1) September 9, 2017

You demand corrections & refuse to correct a grossly negligent error you made with @MaajidNawaz. Your organisation is a sham.

— Peadar ⭐ (@slinafirinne) September 9, 2017

There are many more like that.

Last week the public radio show On the Media did a segment on the SPLC, and Bob Garfield mentioned the lie about Maajid and Ayaan, but unfortunately he left it at that – mentioning it. He interviewed Richard Cohen but talked only about the endowment and fundraising issue on the one hand, and the Family Research Council on the other.

The profundity of Peter Boghossian.

The same people pleading to have honest conversations about climate change aren’t willing to have honest conversations about other issues.

— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) September 11, 2017

The same people pleading to have honest conversations about climate change aren’t willing to have honest conversations about other issues.

That’s a strikingly stupid thing to say, especially for someone who actually teaches philosophy (despite not having a PhD in the subject) at a college. It’s so obviously something he doesn’t know and can’t know, and something that has pretty much zero likelihood of being true.

I mean, what – all the scientists who work in the field and would like people like Trump to stop lying about it are unwilling to have honest conversations about other subjects? How would Peter Boghossian know that? Even if it were true how would he know it? But it’s too sloppily worded to be true.

You can see what he thinks he’s thinking. People who want to have honest conversations about climate change tend to be on the left, and the left doesn’t want to have honest conversations about anything except climate change. The left is a hypocrite; gotcha, lefties!

That’s what he thinks he’s thinking, but of course it’s ludicrous. Not all people who want to have honest conversations about climate change are on the left, and not all people on the left are reluctant to have honest conversations about issues other than climate change. To put it mildly.

He’s trying to be a kind of academic Limbaugh or Hannity, but he’s just embarrassing himself.

We’ve been hearing a lot about how Hillary Clinton should just sit down, just shut up, just go away. That thought has an oddly familiar ring to it, somehow…

There’s still a brutal fight, 10 months after Election Day 2016, for control of the narrative of what happened. On one side, you have Hillary and her supporters pointing to the media’s overt hostility, Russian interference, 25 years of Republican smears, James Comey’s ill-timed letter to Congress, and, last but not least, Bernie’s scorched earth war on the Democratic Party. There is a mountain of irrefutable evidence that these things happened and, combined, they cost Hillary just the tiny amount of votes needed to put Trump in office.

On the other side, you have Bernie’s followers (and a good deal of the press) that look at that mountain of evidence and, like climate change deniers, howl that it’s all a lie.

Even though you had on the one hand an intelligent, informed, experienced, educated, responsible adult with a mix of liberal views and corporate loyalties, and on the other hand a stupid, ignorant, sadistic child who had no views but only self-serving urges. There’s something badly wrong with a population that even comes close to choosing the second.

Biut still journalists are lining up to tell her to shut up.

CAN HILLARY CLINTON PLEASE GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT? – Vanity Fair

Cluelessness, thy name is Hillary Clinton – New York Post

Democrats are not looking forward to Hillary Clinton’s upcoming book tour– AOL news

Bernie Sanders Tells Clinton to ‘Move Forward’ on ‘Colbert’ – RollingStone

That last one is particularly rich as Bernie says, with a straight face, “[Clinton] ran against the most unpopular candidate in the history of this country, and she lost,” Senator Sanders said. “But our job is not to go backwards.”

This is coming from the man who lost to Hillary by 3-4 million votes in the primary. What does that say about his ability to win elections? (Hint: Everything. None of it good) Curiously, when Bernie put out his post-primary book that he spent time writing instead of campaigning to keep Trump out of office, there was very little discussion about whether or not the losing primary candidate should fade away into the background. In fact, the cable news shows still regularly have him on to lambaste the Democratic Party. Truly, he is the picture of good will and unification.

Well that’s different. Because he’s…good, and she’s…annoying.

Right?

But the double standard is, well, standard when it comes to Hillary. Bernie has been bashing Hillary and the Democratic Party for the past two years and that is acceptable. Hillary takes a mild, and verifiably true, swipe at Bernie and, somehow, she’s the most divisive figure in modern political history.

…

After the election, a study showed that the press went insane with reporting on the nothingburger of Hillary’s emails. They put very little effort into the Trump-Russia scandal, his numerous crimes, conflicts of interest and boorish behavior but every tiny detail of those emails was covered exhaustively. In light of the how huge the Russia story is, how corrupt and dangerous Trump is, and how little the email story amounted to, it is inarguable that we witnessed the worst journalistic malpractice in American history.

If you were Chris Cillizza and wrote 50 different articles attacking Hillary over smoke and mirrors, you’d favor the narrative that Hillary lost the election all on her own, too.

But she didn’t lose all on her own. She didn’t even really lose. So why, exactly, should she sit down and shut up? Her vision was supported by the majority of Democratic voters. The primaries, despite the phony horse race generated by the press and Bernie’s supporters, wasn’t even close.

…

The answer, of course, is “I hate her so she should shut up” which is to say there is no real answer at all.

Well, there is, but it’s not very respectable.

David Simon, creator of The Wire, has a new series about the birth of the porn industry in the 70s.

Simon also has a lot to say about pornography. Whereas his critically lauded The Wire was ostensibly about the drugs trade in Baltimore but subliminally about race, The Deuce could be seen as ostensibly about the sex industry in New York but subliminally about gender.

Pornography “affected the way men and women look at each other, the way we address each other culturally, sexually,” he says. “I don’t think you can look at the misogyny that’s been evident in this election cycle, and what any female commentator or essayist or public speaker endured on the internet or any social media setting, and not realise that pornography has changed the demeanour of men. Just the way that women are addressed for their intellectual output, the aggression that’s delivered to women I think is informed by 50 years of the culturalisation of the pornographic.”

He admits: “I don’t have any real way to prove that, but certainly the anonymity of social media and the internet has allowed for a belligerence and a misogyny that maybe had no other outlet. It’s astonishing how universal it is whether you’re 14 or 70, if you’re a woman and you have an opinion, what is directed at you right now. I can’t help but think that a half century of legalised objectification hasn’t had an effect.”

I think he got entangled in his negatives in that last sentence – he clearly means he can’t help but think the legalised objectification has had an effect.

Simon’s collaborator George Pelecanos also sees it that way.

“Personally, I think pornography has had a crude effect on society,” he says. “I’m a first amendment [freedom of speech] guy but I really feel it’s kind of like racism in the last few years: we’ve had a wake-up call because everybody thought, ‘Wow, it went away’. Same thing with misogyny, right?”

Pelecanos, 60, thinks about the two sons he raised and the conversations he overheard when their friends came to the family home. “The way they talk about girls and women is a little horrifying. It’s different from when I was coming up. It’s one thing what was described as locker-room talk, like, ‘Man, look at her legs. I’d love to…’ – that kind of thing. But when you get into this other thing, calling girls tricks and talking about doing violence to them and all that stuff, I’d never heard that growing up, man. I just didn’t.”

It’s not a little horrifying. None of this is a little horrifying.

“I think the culture’s changed because of the way women are depicted in popular culture. Pornography’s a big part of that. You can say nobody’s getting hurt, it’s just a masturbation fantasy and all that stuff, but these women are trafficked, man.”

He believes there is a through line to Trump’s stunning victory in last year’s presidential election. “There’s no doubt if Hillary Clinton had been a man, she would be president now. The code words that were used against not just her but female journalists and everybody that was involved peripherally in the campaign was awful. Never seen anything like it.”

And the actual president of the US is a guy who brags about grabbing women by the pussy, and tells us all that’s “just locker room talk.”

Yes Irma is creating the predicted havoc in the Florida Keys and will go on to chew up the rest of Florida today and tonight and tomorrow, but never mind, Trump and his goons are still intent on destroying all federal efforts to deal with climate change, because hey, immediate profit for a few is far more important and valuable than the long-term survival of the environment we all depend on.

The news was hard to digest until one realized it was part of a much larger and increasingly disturbing pattern in the Trump administration. On Aug. 18, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine received an order from the Interior Department that it stop work on what seemed a useful and overdue study of the health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining.

The $1 million study had been requested by two West Virginia health agencies following multiple studies suggesting increased rates of birth defects, cancer and other health problems among people living near big surface coal-mining operations in Appalachia. The order to shut it down came just hours before the scientists were scheduled to meet with affected residents of Kentucky.

Now these are the very people Trump pretends to speak for and defend and rescue – the Forgotten people, the working stiffs, the people who live in coal country. He’s their pal, their ally, their honcho…that is, he’s a big fan of racism and sexism and he figures they have that in common. That’s enough isn’t it? No one would expect him to also give a damn about their health and well-being and safety?

The Interior Department said the study was killed because they need to count the pennies.

This was not persuasive to anyone who had been paying attention. From Day 1, the White House and its lackeys in certain federal agencies have been waging what amounts to a war on science, appointing people with few scientific credentials to key positions, defunding programs that could lead to a cleaner and safer environment and a healthier population, and, most ominously, censoring scientific inquiry that could inform the public and government policy.

Even allowing for justifiable budgetary reasons, in nearly every case the principal motive seemed the same: to serve commercial interests whose profitability could be affected by health and safety rules.

Well yes, because there’s a principle involved. Immediate profit for a few is far more important and valuable than the long-term survival of the environment we all depend on. That’s the principle. It’s pretty much the only one they have. They would give up even racism, even pussy-grabbing, for that one.

This is a president who has never shown much fidelity to facts, unless they are his own alternative ones. Yet if there is any unifying theme beyond that to the administration’s war on science, apart from its devotion to big industry and its reflexively antiregulatory mind-set, it is horror of the words “climate change.”

This starts with Mr. Trump, who has called global warming a hoax and pulled the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change. Among his first presidential acts, he instructed Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, to deep-six President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, and ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to roll back Obama-era rules reducing the venting from natural gas wells of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas.

Why? Because of the all-important first word of The Principle: immediate. Profit is immediate, climate change is slow (although it’s speeding up) and gradualish (but speeding up). Profit is today, climate change is maybe tomorrow…or actually maybe right now, if you’re in the Keys, but you can’t actually show us the fingerprints of climate change right on Irma now can you, so climate change is still always tomorrow.

Trump and his goons are carefully ignoring the causal issues of all these exciting hurricanes that give Trump a chance to pretend to be compassionate.

Mr. Pruitt and his colleagues have enthusiastically jumped to the task of rescinding regulations that might address the problem, meanwhile presiding over a no less ominous development: a governmentwide purge of people, particularly scientists, whose research and conclusions about the human contribution to climate change do not support the administration’s agenda.

Well what would you do? If you wanted to put immediate profit for a few ahead of the long-term survival of the many, what would you do? The same exact thing. Well all right then.

Mr. Pruitt, for instance, is replacing dozens of members on the E.P.A.’s scientific advisory boards; in March, he dismissed at least five scientists from the agency’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, to be replaced, according to a spokesman, with advisers “who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community.”

Ah yes the regulated community – such a warm, friendly bunch, always at the door with a casserole when anyone’s in trouble. Much better than those pesky scientists explaining what’s causing all this crazy weather.

Last month the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dissolved its 15-member climate science advisory committee, a panel set up to help translate the findings of the National Climate Assessment into concrete guidance for businesses, governments and the public.

In June, Mr. Pruitt told a coal industry lobbying group that he was preparing to convene a “red team” of researchers to challenge the notion, broadly accepted among climate scientists, that carbon dioxide and other emissions from fossil fuels are the primary drivers of climate change.

Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, called the red team plan a “dumb idea” that’s like “a red team-blue team exercise about whether gravity exists.” Rick Perry, the energy secretary, former Texas governor and climate skeptic, endorsed the idea as — get this — a way to “get the politicians out of the room.” Given his and Mr. Pruitt’s ideological and historical financial ties to the fossil fuel industry, it is hard to think of a more cynical use of public money.

“Cynical” is a harsh word. “Principled” would be a kinder word. Somebody has to take care of the immediate profits for the few, and those goddam climate scientists sure aren’t going to.

At the E.P.A., a former Trump campaign assistant named John Konkus aims to eliminate the “double C-word,” meaning “climate change,” from the agency’s research grant solicitations, and he views every application for research money through a similar lens. The E.P.A. is even considering editing out climate change-related exhibits in a museum depicting the agency’s history.

The bias against science finds reinforcement in Mr. Trump’s budget and the people he has chosen for important scientific jobs. Mr. Trump’s 2018 federal budget proposal would cut nondefense research and development money across the government.

The president has proposed cutting nearly $6 billion from the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s single largest funder of biomedical research.

Why would we want to spend federal money on biomedical research? Immediate profit, remember? Biomedical research can take years to deliver profits.

It is amazing but true, given the present circumstances, that the Trump budget would eliminate $250 million for NOAA’s coastal research programs that prepare communities for rising seas and worsening storms. The E.P.A.’s Global Change program would be likewise eliminated. This makes the budget director, Mick Mulvaney, delirious with joy. He complains of “crazy things” the Obama administration did to study climate, and boasts: “Do a lot of the E.P.A. reductions aim at reducing the focus on climate science? Yes.”

As to key appointments, denial and mediocrity abound. Last week, Mr. Trump nominated David Zatezalo, a former coal company chief executive who has repeatedly clashed with federal mine safety regulators, as assistant secretary of labor for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. He nominated Jim Bridenstine, a Republican congressman from Oklahoma with no science or space background, as NASA administrator. Sam Clovis, Mr. Trump’s nomination to be the Agriculture Department’s chief scientist, is not a scientist: He’s a former talk-radio host and incendiary blogger who has labeled climate research “junk science.”

So if he’s not a scientist how can he be the Agriculture Department’s chief scientist? Even my fanatical support for the Immediate Profit Principle can’t quite get a handle on that one.

From the beginning, Mr. Trump, Mr. Pruitt, Mr. Zinke and Mr. Perry — to name the Big Four on environmental and energy issues — have been promising a new day to just about anyone discomfited by a half-century of bipartisan environmental law, whether it be the developers and farmers who feel threatened by efforts to enforce the Clean Water Act, oil and gas drillers seeking leases they do not need on federal land, chemical companies seeking relaxation from rules governing dangerous pesticides, automakers asked to improve fuel efficiency or utilities required to make further investments in technology to reduce ground-level pollutants.

But look on the bright side: a few people will get a lot richer. A good swap, wouldn’t you say?

The Senate Appropriations Committee has issued a report criticizing the Trump administration’s proposed State Department budget for being too damn low.

The unusually harsh language appeared in the report attached to spending legislation for the State Department and foreign operations that totals $51 billion, roughly $11 billion more in funding than the administration had requested. The Trump administration had proposed a budget that slashed State Department spending for fiscal year 2018 by about 30 percent from the previous year.

Because Trump and his buddies are so thick they think we can do everything by shooting and bombing.

“On May 23, 2017, President Donald Trump submitted to the Congress the fiscal year 2018 budget of the United States government entitled, ‘A New Foundation for American Greatness,’ and asserted in ‘The Budget Message of the President’ that ‘[i]n these dangerous times, our increased attention to public safety and national security sends a clear message to the world — a message of American strength and resolve,'” the report said. “This message is not reflected in the International Affairs budget request of $40,521,826,000, a 30 percent cut below the fiscal year 2017 enacted level.”

“The lessons learned since September 11, 2001, include the reality that defense alone does not provide for American strength and resolve abroad,” the report continued. “Battlefield technology and firepower cannot replace diplomacy and development. The administration’s apparent doctrine of retreat, which also includes distancing the United States from collective and multilateral dispute resolution frameworks, serves only to weaken America’s standing in the world.”

Trump thinks standing=the biggest guns.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has defended the proposed cuts to the State Department.

“It is an unmistakable restatement of the needs the country faces and the priorities we must establish,” Tillerson said in a letter to the department’s 75,000 employees in March. “It acknowledges that U.S. engagement must be more efficient, that our aid be more effective, and that advocating the national interests of our country always be our primary mission.”

What would he know about it? He was an oil executive, not a diplomat or foreign policy scholar.

Draining the swamp.

People at the CIA say the agency is becoming more white, male, and Jesus.

For those who have worked inside the agency, the backtracking on diversity represents a threat to the workforce and national security, according to Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst who helped track high-level terrorist targets like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The agency needs employees from different backgrounds and orientations to effectively recruit agents abroad. “What if you have to recruit someone who’s gay and that’s the only reason they’re talking to you?” she asked.

“This isn’t just about today’s diversity issue. It’s about tomorrow’s lack of diversity that will erode the agency,” Bakos told FP. “You can’t hire someone who’s typically white American to walk around Baghdad.”

Mind you, it took them a long time to figure that out.

In 1995, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order that prevented intelligence officers from losing their clearances on the basis of their sexuality, kicking off what was to be a long and hard-fought shift in agency culture.

In March 2013, John Brennan was appointed director under President Barack Obama, and the new CIA head moved to make diversity and employee rights a priority. Senior leaders competed for spots to speak at employee gay pride events and accompanied the director to diversity events and celebrations.

While embraced by many, Brennan’s policies drew the ire of right-wing publications like the National Review, which claimed his diversity and inclusion strategy was just a way to make the agency more “politically correct.”

Or to put it another way, was “just” a way to make the agency more open to people other than middle class white men. It’s really not self-evident that that goal is something to be disparaged as “politically correct.” It’s neither self-evident nor true that only middle class white men have useful talents and skills.

But for Brennan, the changes were a matter of building a better workforce, as well as national security. “I believe strongly that diversity and inclusion [are] what this country is all about,” Brennan said in a phone interview with FP. “I can think of no organization that can make a better business case for diversity and inclusion than the CIA. We have the responsibility of covering the globe, understanding all societies, cultures, and backgrounds.”

But that was then.

Things changed quickly with President Donald Trump’s pick for CIA director, Mike Pompeo. A West Point graduate and former small-business owner, he never made a secret of his conservative social viewpoints during his time as a lawmaker. He has visited college campuses to talk about his disapproval of same-sex marriage, arguing that “the strength of these families having a father and a mother is the ideal condition for childbearing.” He has sponsored several pieces of legislation that would have weakened the rights of gay couples and supported organizations that champion those same beliefs.

Kamala Harris, a Democratic senator from California, pressed Pompeo during his confirmation hearing on whether he’d support the rights of his LGBTQ employees. He promised that he would treat all his employees in a way that is “appropriate and equal.”

But when he entered the building in late January, the former Republican lawmaker from Kansas publicly and privately snubbed calls for his commitment to diversity, according to multiple sources.

Plus also he’s a Jesus freak.

The concerns are not that Pompeo is religious but that his religious convictions are bleeding over into the CIA.

According to four sources familiar with the matter, Pompeo, who attends weekly Bible studies held in government buildings, referenced God and Christianity repeatedly in his first all-hands speech and in a recent trip report while traveling overseas. According to a profile by the Washington Post’s Greg Miller, Pompeo is working on starting a chaplaincy for the CIA campus like the military has.

The CIA did not dispute these events. “Director Pompeo is a man of faith,” the spokesperson said. “The idea that he should not practice his faith because he is Director of CIA is absurd.”

Oh stop that. The idea is not that he should not “practice his faith”; it’s that he should not practice it on the job.

Michael Weinstein, a former Air Force officer who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says he has been seeing increasing complaints from those inside the intelligence community. Weinstein’s foundation, which focuses on preventing religious pressure from creeping into the military, also has clients in the intelligence community, mostly from the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

According to Weinstein, agency employees don’t want to go public with their complaints because of fear of retribution or being labeled as “leakers.” They don’t typically file formal complaints within the government. But certain things are making them especially uncomfortable, such as officials signing off with the phrase “have a blessed day.”

That’s something “straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale,” Weinstein said.

…

The foundation’s intelligence community clients have doubled since the July 2016 Republican National Convention, Weinstein said. While he wouldn’t specify the number of intelligence community clients he works with, Weinstein said it was in the hundreds — the majority of them working out of Langley. “In the intelligence community, we see supervisors wanting to hold Bible studies during duty hours [and] inviting lower-ranking individuals to their homes for Bible studies,” Weinstein told FP.

Have a blessed day.