Speaking of Ivanka Trump’s pretensions to being a supporter of women’s “empowerment” and a legitimate senior adviser to a head of state – she endorses Trump’s intervention on the equal pay front.

The Trump administration, with the backing of first daughter Ivanka, has suspended a policy proposed by President Obama that would have made it easier for women and people of color to identify whether they were being paid less than white male counterparts at work.

Under the scheme, private employers with over 100 workers would have had to disclose pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on top of information on gender, race, and ethnicity already provided to the agency.

The policy was intended to help close the pernicious gender wage gap, which sees women and people of color paid far less than white men for the same jobs.

Ivanka Trump, who has built a brand off the claim that she supports working women, issued a statement supporting the move by the Office of Management and Budget.

“Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results,” said the first daughter, who recently published a book called ‘Women Who Work’ and markets a clothing and accessories line to working women.

How the hell does she know? Who is she to make that claim? What is the source of her expertise?

Activists who focus on pay equality have blasted this decision, with the executive director of Make It Work, a nonprofit aimed at improving women’s economic lives, calling it “a blatant attack on women.”

“To suspend a crucial Obama-era initiative aimed at increasing pay transparency and reducing the gender and racial pay gap is an unacceptable and deliberate attack on women in the workplace, especially black and Hispanic women who are currently paid only 63 cents and 54 cents to the dollar white men are paid, respectively,” said Tracy Sturdivant, who cofounded the Make It Work campaign.

But Ivanka Trump knows better because…what?

Oh wait, I know – it’s because she’s an employer and a purchaser. She doesn’t want to pay her employees more and she doesn’t want to pay more for the merch she sells. It’s not that she actually thinks it wouldn’t work; she’s lying just like Daddy about that – it’s that she thinks it will cost her money.

The CEO of the nonprofit National Women’s Law Center called the decision to halt the pay data disclosure initiative a “tremendous setback.”

“What they have said is that they thought this was ‘burdensome,'” said Fatima Goss Graves, who leads the organization aimed at advancing women’s equality. “That language has been used to halt all progress on civil rights — it’s not a new term.”

Goss Graves added that Ivanka Trump’s support of the administration’s move “entirely blows up the notion that she’s a champion of women’s issues.”

To put it mildly.

Even going to the scene of the disaster can’t take Trump’s mind off Trump.

As rescuers continued their exhausting and heartbreaking work in southeastern Texas on Tuesday afternoon, as the rain continued to fall and a reservoir near Houston spilled over, President Trump grabbed a microphone to address hundreds of supporters who had gathered outside a firehouse near Corpus Christi and were chanting: “USA! USA! USA!”

‘Thank you, everybody,” the president said, sporting one of the white “USA” caps that are being sold on his campaign website for $40. “I just want to say: We love you. You are special. . . . What a crowd. What a turnout.”

Yet again, Trump managed to turn attention on himself. His responses to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey have been more focused on the power of the storm and his administration’s response than on the millions of Texans whose lives have been dramatically altered by the floodwaters.

He has talked favorably about the higher television ratings that come with hurricane coverage, predicted that he will soon be congratulating himself and used 16 exclamation points in 22 often breathless tweets about the storm. But as of late Tuesday afternoon, the president had yet to mention those killed, call on other Americans to help or directly encourage donations to relief organizations.

He could probably watch people struggling in the water right in front of him and still not give a damn.

Since Harvey slammed into the Texas coast Friday night, the president has made his awe of the powerful storm clear and used almost admiring terms to describe it — as if he were describing a sporting match or an action movie instead of a natural disaster.

“125 MPH winds!” the president tweeted Friday as the hurricane made landfall.

“Record setting rainfall,” he noted the next day, along with telling his FEMA director, “The world is watching!”

“Wow — Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood!” he tweeted on Sunday, following tweets promoting a book written by a conservative sheriff and announcing a Wednesday trip to Missouri, a state that “I won by a lot in ’16.”

At a news conference Monday, Trump continued to gush over the storm. “I’ve heard the words, ‘epic.’ I’ve heard ‘historic.’ That’s what it is,” he said, adding that the hurricane will make Texas stronger and the rebuilding effort “will be something very special.”

By focusing on the historic epicness of the hurricane, Trump has repeatedly turned attention to his role in confronting the disaster — a message reinforced by comments and tweets praising members of his administration.

Not to mention wearing self-advertising headgear throughout.

While Trump’s top aides gathered with Vice President Pence at the White House over the weekend, Trump videoconferenced in. On Saturday, he wore a white campaign hat. On Sunday, he opted for a red version. As of Tuesday evening, both hats — which feature “USA” on the front, “45” on a side and “Trump” in the back — were being sold on Trump’s campaign website, prompting ethics watchdogs to accuse the president of trying to profit off the crisis.

I’m trying to imagine Obama doing that. Can’t.

Trump wore one of the hats on his trip to Texas, too. I bet he sold quite a few. Congratulations, Mr President!

On the ground in Corpus Christi, Trump and his entourage traveled to a firehouse for a brief meeting with local and national officials, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the state’s two senators, Republicans Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. He praised everyone for working together so well and referred to his FEMA director, Brock Long, as “a man who’s really become very famous on television over the last couple of days.”

What a stroke of luck this hurricane has been for Brock Long! Isn’t it exciting?!

“It’s a real team, and we want to do it better than ever before. We want to be looked at in five years and 10 years from now as this is the way to do it,” Trump said. “This was of epic proportions. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this. And I just want to say that working with the governor and his entire team has been an honor for us.”

He then thanked the governor and added: “And we won’t say congratulations. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to congratulate. We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished.”

Won’t that be exciting??

The president’s comments, which lasted mere minutes, angered many of those who served in President Barack Obama’s administration and could not imagine their former boss ever acting like this.

“It’s not a time for showboating,” said Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff for Obama. “It’s not a time for crowing about crowds. This weather event isn’t even over yet.”

Before Trump traveled to Austin for another briefing, Trump addressed supporters gathered outside, climbing a ladder positioned between two firetrucks and behind a black SUV. With his wife at his side, he sounded as if he were addressing a political rally instead of a state struggling to start to recover — but it was a tone that matched the screaming crowd. Some there carried pro-Trump signs and flags.

“I will tell you, this is historic — it’s epic, what happened,” Trump told them. “But you know what? It happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything.”

Also, Texas has really become very famous over the last few days. It’s terrific!!

CNN offers a little vignette illustrating how routinely horrible Trump is to everyone around him.

President Donald Trump was fuming as he sat in his Phoenix hotel watching news coverage ahead of his rally.

The venue for his first rally in nearly three weeks looked empty.

That’s when George Gigicos, Trump’s longtime advance man, got a call from Keith Schiller, the director of Oval Office operations who is almost always at Trump’s side, asking Gigicos why the crowds were scarce. Gigicos explained that while TV correspondents were live early from the venue, the rally wouldn’t start for several more hours and crowds had just begun to trickle in.

Oddly enough people don’t want to arrive at events hours early so that they can hang around doing nothing for hours. But Trump apparently thinks they ought to when he’s the one they’re coming to cheer.

Soon after, Gigicos heard from Trump himself. The President was irate, warning his former director of White House advance who had since returned to his private contracting business, that the venue better be full by the time he arrived, two sources familiar with the discussions told CNN as they described the scene and the President’s reaction.

Then after the rally Trump gave him the boot.

“George will be back,” one source familiar with the matter said, noting that Trump’s angry tirades are “not uncommon.” “This is what (Trump) does. He tries to get under your skin.”

“It wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t the worst thing I had ever seen,” another source said.

In other words, Trump is such an asshole that his firing someone because a venue was empty hours before an event is just ho hum, no big deal.

He was a nightmare throughout the campaign, too.

Trump would regularly call Gigicos before rallies to ensure the rally would deliver the crowd size he had come to expect. And if it didn’t meet those expectations, Gigicos would get upbraided by Trump, sources familiar with the Trump campaign said.

It wasn’t just the crowd sizes. Trump would also get upset during the campaign if the venue for the rally were too small, the sources said.

The fire marshals were also frequent targets of Trump’s ire, with Trump frequently calling them out from the stage and urging them to allow more people into the venue in spite of fire safety statutes.

During a January 2016 rally, Trump angrily complained about the faulty microphone at his podium, complaining about the “son of a bitch” who installed it.

And then, Trump added: “Do you hear that George? Don’t pay him. Don’t pay him,” Trump said. “And you gotta be tough with your people because they’ll pay, they don’t care. They’ll pay.”

A chronic habitual bully and narcissist.

I thought I remembered seeing a 60 Minutes about Arpaio long ago. Sure enough – in 2001.

While Arpaio has received nationwide attention in the last few years for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration — and for promoting the lie that President Obama was born outside the U.S. — he made a name for himself in Arizona years ago.

60 Minutes profiled Arpaio in 2001, when he was eight years into his tenure as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. At the time, correspondent Morley Safer called him a “big-time publicity hound” who had “become famous ’round the world as just about the meanest man in the West.”

His reputation in 2001 was that of a tough-as-nails jailer who believed in punishment more than rehabilitation — and above all, in the humiliation of prisoners, reported Safer.

The Phoenix jail 60 Minutes visited with Arpaio was something of tent city, comprised of old Korean War tents with nothing to assuage the Arizona heat beyond holes in the canvas. Arpaio bragged to Safer that he spent more money on food for the jailhouse dogs than for inmates.

“They have to lose weight, too,” he said of the inmates. “They’re kind of heavy in there. I don’t see anybody dying around here.”

Arpaio got rid of the standard jailhouse uniform, dressing inmates in old-fashioned striped uniforms instead, and he used chain gangs for both male and female inmates.

Arpaio’s unorthodox approach turned more than a few heads; by 2001, Amnesty International, the ACLU and the Justice Department all condemned his methods. Donna Hamm, a former judge and then-prison reform advocate, told 60 Minutes the atmosphere of humiliation in Arpaio’s jails would only breed a meaner criminal.

Plus it’s wrong in itself.

SAFER: (Voiceover) It’s life under the big top in Phoenix’s tent city, one circus that never leaves town. Joe Arpaio, the P.T. Barnum of sheriffs, is an equal-opportunity jailer. Men and women are treated to the same miserable conditions.

ARPAIO: You’re in jail; you’re not in a hotel. You’ve got to pay your debt and that’s it. That’s what you’re here for. I’m tired of hearing about your complaints.

Unidentified Woman #1: We are human beings.

SAFER: (Voiceover) The place festers away between a dog pound and a local garbage dump. Since he was elected sheriff eight years ago, Arpaio has made tent city into one of the strictest jails in the country…

ARPAIO: All right, gentlemen. I need to see your IDs.

SAFER: (Voiceover) …which means no cigarettes, no coffee, no girlie magazines. Even National Geographic is doubtful. And then, of course, there’s the food.

Unidentified Man #2: For two days, we’ve been having cheese sandwiches.

ARPAIO: Grilled cheese?

Unidentified Man #2: No, it’s fake cheese.

Unidentified Man #3: No, it’s vegetable oil. It doesn’t even melt.

Unidentified Man #4: It turns to oil when it melts.

ARPAIO: I’m not a cook.

SAFER: You’ve boasted that you spend more on food for your jailhouse dogs than you do on your prisoners.

ARPAIO: I’m not going to lie about that. It’s $1.15 a day for the dogs. It’s only 90 to 95 cents a day for the inmates. But they get 3,000 calories. I’m on a 1,400-calorie diet. I think they can get by with 3,000.

SAFER: Yeah, because you wanted to lose a lot of weight.

ARPAIO: Well, they have to lose weight, too. They’re kind of heavy in there.

I don’t see anybody dying around here.

SAFER: (Voiceover) The food may not be so hot. How about the weather? As high as 120 degrees in the shade. Inmates live in old Korean War tents. The only air conditioning are the holes in the canvas.

ARPAIO: Uh-oh. Is that one there?

SAFER: That’s a big hole in that one.

ARPAIO: I don’t see any rain.

SAFER: (Voiceover) For prisoners who want to get away from this sweaty tedium, he offers outside work on the chain gang.

ARPAIO: (Voiceover) It’s the only time they ever work together. Of course, they have to. They’re hooked together. They learn discipline. They get up at 5. They have to clean their shoes. They have to have haircuts. They march, and they get on a chain gang. A great program.

SAFER: (Voiceover) And, of course, there’s the flashing neon vacancy sign, a constant reminder to inmates and visitors that there’s always room for one more.

ARPAIO: I will never change it to No Vacancy. Any cop or deputy sheriff wants to lock someone up, I will find room for them. There’s a lot of desert from here to Mexico.

SAFER: (Voiceover) An attitude that has proved irresistible to a string of get-tough Republicans: Bob Dole, Pete Wilson and George W., all perhaps suffering from poll envy. Joe’s approval rating hovers at 85 percent. And a delegation that doesn’t give a damn about polls: Chinese law enforcement officials drop in for some tips from Joe, who just brushed up on his Mandarin.

That’s former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the guy lionized by the current US president.

The Independent:

Eight of Donald Trump’s cyber-security advisers have resigned, warning the President had “given insufficient attention to the growing threats” facing the US.

A quarter of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council’s 28 members quit with a joint letter in which they claimed Mr Trump “threatened the security of the homeland”.

They cited his response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the vulnerability of the US election process.

Well hey, it’s only 8 out of 28. That’s not so bad.

The eight departing members accused Trump’s administration of failing to be “adequately attentive to the pressing national security matters” or “responsive to sound advice received from experts”.

“Your actions have threatened the security of the homeland I took an oath to protect,” said their letter, obtained by IT news website Nextgov.

…

“When asked about the horrific violence in Charlottesville, you failed to denounce the intolerance and violence of hate groups, instead offering false equivalences and attacking the motives of the CEOs who had resigned from their advisory roles in protest,” said the cyber-security experts’ resignation letter.

It added: “The moral infrastructure of our nation is the foundation on which our physical infrastructure is built.”

Or it was. Now we no longer have a moral infrastructure, and it’s not a good feeling.

The resignation letter added: “Additionally, your decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, your intent to revoke flood-risk building standards, and your many other actions to ignore the pressing threat of climate change to our critical infrastructure also point to your disregard for the security of American communities.”

To sum up: you’re a reckless shit and we can’t stand to work for you any more; please step down.

Yet another cringe-inducing Trump press conference with a fellow head of state, in which we’re forced to compare the grown-up on the left with the flailing grimacing aphasic toddler on the right.

A very rough and incomplete transcription of his response to the question about Arpaio – whom he insists on calling “Sheriff Joe” over and over and over and over…

“Well a lot of people think it was the right thing to do, and during a hurricane I thought the ratings would be a lot higher…[he thought it was very very unfair what they did to him] When I mentioned him the other night, you saw what a big crowd we had, the people went crazy…the place went absolutely crazy when I was in Arizona last week…Sheriff Joe is a great veteran of the military, great law enforcement official, won many many elections in the state of Arizona [then he gives a list of Clinton’s pardons, Obama’s pardons]…criminal LEEEAKER – you’ve heard the word leeeaker?…horrible horrible thing…Sheriff Joe is a patriot, Sheriff Joe loves our country, Sheriff Joe protected our borders, and Sheriff Joe was very unfairly treated by the Obama administration.”

The reporter laughs at him for bragging about having prepared remarks, because the question was a pretty obvious one.

Another step on the road to fascism.

The Trump administration plans to reinstate in full a program that provides local police departments with military surplus equipment such as large-caliber weapons and grenade launchers, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

Sure. Why would we not want a completely militarized police force? We have no history at all of cops abusing their power, so why not trust them with tanks, missiles, machine guns?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to announce the changes to the program on Monday when he speaks at a Fraternal Order of Police conference in Nashville. It was not immediately clear why Mr. Sessions would announce changes to a Pentagon program, but he has rolled back several Obama-era policing reforms and helped bolster the Trump administration’s support among law enforcement.

President Barack Obama put limits on the program in 2015, when several high-profile cases of police officers killing black men inflamed tensions between law enforcement and local communities.

The Times is coy because it’s the Times, but I don’t have to be coy. Of course it’s clear why Sessions would do this: he’s a thoroughgoing racist and always has been, and he wants to make the police even more terrifying to those Other races than they already are. Sessions, like Trump, loves force and violence and Authority, and wants to strengthen it at the expense of the citizenry.

The shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 by a white police officer triggered protests and a heavily armed police response that many in the community saw as unnecessary. Images of the police with sniper rifles on top of armored cars or wearing riot gear to watch over protests set off a debate about whether police departments had lost sight of their missions to serve and protect.

“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like they’re an occupying force,” Mr. Obama said in announcing that he was placing curbs on the program.

But for Trump and Sessions that’s a feature, not a bug, and they want more of it not less.

Mr. Obama prohibited transfers of weaponized vehicles, certain large-caliber ammunition and other equipment. He also added restrictions on transferring some weapons and devices, explosives, battering rams, riot helmets and shields.

Mr. Trump plans to sign an executive order to reverse those limits, a “policy shift toward ensuring officers have the tools they need to reduce crime and keep their communities safe,” according to the document, which described the president’s coming order and the rationale behind it.

It cited two academicarticles that said the program helped reduce crime and did not lead to an increase in police-involved deaths. It also said that a military-style helmet saved the life of an officer who responded to the 2016 shooting that killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

And it called much of the equipment provided through the program “entirely defensive in nature,” a characterization certain to draw the ire of those opposed to the police deploying certain heavy weapons and vehicles in tense but not clearly dangerous situations.

Remember, kids: when in doubt, shoot.

Trump this morning. No tweets of his own yet, but he pointedly retweeted these three items.

Finally, as if by accident, the @washingtonpost breaks down & admits the truth about where the violence is coming from https://t.co/n9L1XclpDg

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) August 28, 2017

DSouza was retweeting the Post:

Black-clad antifa attack peaceful right wing demonstrators in Berkeley https://t.co/M5OxN2vaBR

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 28, 2017

Geddit? It’s not the far-right, it’s not white supremacists, it’s THE LEFT, just as he said at that press conference. There are no white racists, there are only Very Fine People; the bad people are all on the left.

Next.

Your boss pardoned a traitor who gave U.S. enemies state secrets, he also pardoned a terrorist who killed Americans. Spare us the lecture. https://t.co/90jZcPXYqx

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) August 27, 2017

Pavlich was retweeting Ben Rhodes:

Obama used his pardon and commutation power to give a second chance to people who deserved empathy, not racists who showed none. https://t.co/KXhBQk5MHu

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 26, 2017

And then he finished it off with a pious deepity from the reactionary nun.

No color, no religion, no nationality should come between us, we are all children of God. – Mother Teresa

— Inspirational Quotes (@Inspire_Us) August 27, 2017

A few days ago the UN condemned Trump’s racist outbursts since Charlottesville.

Without mentioning Mr. Trump by name, a body of United Nations experts on Wednesday denounced “the failure at the highest political level of the United States of America to unequivocally reject and condemn” racist violence, saying it was “deeply concerned by the example this failure could set for the rest of the world.”

Mr. Trump’s wavering responses to the violence — he has blamed “many sides,” but also singled out the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups and white supremacists for condemnation — has roiled his administration, but also unsettled rights advocates around the world.

“We were shocked and horrified by what happened,” the committee’s chairwoman, Anastasia Crickley, said in an interview, expressing disgust at the televised images of white supremacists’ torchlit parade through Charlottesville. “I was horrified as well by the way leaders of that movement were able to state afterwards that they felt secure in their support.”

In a two-page decision that was dated Aug. 18 but released on Wednesday, a day after Washington was informed, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination invoked “early action and urgent warning procedures” in deploring the violence and urging the United States to investigate.

The urgent-warning procedure allows the committee to draw attention to situations that could “spiral into terrible events” and require immediate action, Ms. Crickley said.

A proud moment for the US, isn’t it?

Today on Fox News Chris Wallace asked Tillerson about the UN statement.

Asked by the host, Chris Wallace, about a United Nations statement condemning the president’s words, Mr. Tillerson said that “I don’t believe anyone doubts the American people’s values” or the government’s commitment to them.

Mr. Wallace then inquired about Mr. Trump’s own values.

Tillerson’s reply: “The president speaks for himself.”

After Mr. Tillerson’s pointed response, Mr. Wallace asked whether he was separating himself from the president on the issue.

Mr. Tillerson answered: “I have spoken. I have made my own comments as to our values as well in a speech I gave to the State Department this past week.”

He’s still got Roger Stone.

Elizabeth Williamson at the Times on Pres-i-dent Trump and the babysitters.

The epigraph:

“You treat me like a baby! Am I like a baby to you? I sit there like a little baby and watch TV and you talk to me?”

— Donald Trump to Paul Manafort in “Devil’s Bargain,” by Joshua Green.

Why yes, Don, of course you’re a baby to us. You act like a baby. You talk like a baby, you have no idea how to think, just as a baby does.

He lives in the White House, where he gets two scoops of ice cream instead of one for dessert. He is commander in chief, eating “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake” with the Chinese president while he fires missiles at Syria. As he told the Russians, “people brief me on great intel every day,” with lots of pictures and “tweet-length sentences.” He has a “beautiful Twitter account.” Uh-oh!

Mr. Trump’s staff can’t control him, so they coddle him. They make sure he starts his day with a packet of good news about himself, compiled by Republicans who get up early to search for positive stories, headlines, tweets or, failing those, flattering photos.

It’s a full-time job for one of his aides, who makes a very nice salary for doing it.

Mr. Trump likes “unstructured time” to watch TV. His favorite station is Fox News Channel but he’ll watch any show where they talk about him. If they say something bad about him, he tweets. That makes everyone nervous. His staffers try to limit his screen time during the day and keep him from “calling old friends and then tweeting about it.” But then it’s off to bed with his phone, and “once he goes upstairs, there’s no managing him.” Uh-oh!

Trump says the job is hard. People yell at him. He gets cranky.

He screams at the television, at staffers, and at Republican legislators, demanding that somebody make it stop. But when Mr. Trump’s advisers tell him what he might do, he likes doing the opposite — like when he fired James Comey, the director of the F.B.I., or stared at the solar eclipse. After he blurted out secrets to Russian officials in the Oval Office, his team worried about “leaving him alone in meetings with foreign leaders.” H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, tries to correct the president and keep him out of trouble. The president calls General McMaster “a pain.”

When Mr. Trump has one of those “moods where sometimes he wants to blow everything up,” his staff takes him outside. He sat in an 18-wheeler in the White House driveway one time. “Honk, honk!” went the horn. He sat in a red fire truck, too. “Where’s the fire?” Mr. Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence. “Put it out fast!” Mr. Trump went to Saudi Arabia, where they gave him steak and ketchup and put his photo on the side of a building. But most of all Mr. Trump likes when his staff plans field trips to rallies in red states, where he can campaign for president again.

But even that nice military General Kelly can’t control Trump himself. Uh-oh!