Golly. Planned Parenthood Ottawa tweets:
PPO supports the right of every person to determine their identity for themselves. We fully support implementation of #BillC16. pic.twitter.com/15Gj2IXGcn
— PPO (@KnowPPO) May 17, 2017
Teaching about sexual and reproductive anatomy
May 24th, 2017 11:55 am | By Ophelia BensonHe is something
May 24th, 2017 11:41 am | By Ophelia BensonSo now Trump is sucking up to the pope, and we’re being nudged to do the same.
Pope Francis welcomed President Trump to the cradle of Roman Catholicism on Wednesday, delivering a message of peace even as the pontiff emphasized his role as the world’s moral counterpoint to the president’s nationalist agenda.
No. The pope is not “the world’s moral counterpoint to the president’s nationalist agenda” or the president’s anything else. The pope is not the world’s anything. He’s the top official of a global organization, but many people can claim that title. There’s no such thing as a single human moral counterpoint to Trump or Trump’s agenda, and if there were it most certainly would not be the boss of the Catholic church. The Catholic church is the Catholic church; it doesn’t speak for the population of the world.
Furthermore, much of the morality of the Catholic church is bad.
Moving on.
A brief Vatican communique later called the meeting “cordial,” and expressed hope for collaboration with the administration on “health care, education and assistance to immigrants.”
Health care should be right out. The Catholic church wants to prevent women from having access to contraception and abortion in all circumstances without exception no matter what. I don’t know what use they are on education, either, especially if the education is laced with religious dogma.
It said Trump and Francis had exchanged views on “international affairs and the promotion of peace in the world through political negotiation and interreligious dialogue, with particular reference to the situation in the Middle East and the protection of Christian communities.”
Ah but Trump doesn’t know where or what the Middle East is. He said in Israel that he’d just left the Middle East…
The president told the pope that their states share “many fundamental values,” such as promoting human rights, combating global famine and protecting religious freedom, the White House said.
Well then he told yet another lie. He doesn’t promote human rights. He just told the Saudis he doesn’t care about human rights.
Trump called the meeting “great” and “fantastic.”
“He is something,” Trump said of Francis. “We’re liking Italy very, very much, and it was an honor to be with the pope.”
Eloquent as always.
Trump is now morally complicit in future killings
May 24th, 2017 11:07 am | By Ophelia BensonThere was disgust over the loving exchange with Duterte at the time.
“By essentially endorsing Duterte’s murderous war on drugs, Trump is now morally complicit in future killings,” said John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. “Although the traits of his personality likely make it impossible, Trump should be ashamed of himself.”
Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Twitter, “We are watching in real time as the American human rights bully pulpit disintegrates into ash.”
…
Mr. Duterte’s toxic reputation had already given pause to some in the White House. The Philippines is set to host a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in November, and officials said there had been a brief debate about whether Mr. Trump should attend.
It is not even clear, given the accusations of human rights abuses against him, that Mr. Duterte would be granted a visa to the United States were he not a head of state, according to human rights advocates.
But Trump doesn’t care. Trump likes that sort of thing.
Mr. Trump’s affinity for Mr. Duterte, and other strongmen as well, is firmly established. Both presidents are populist insurgent leaders with a penchant for making inflammatory statements. Both ran for office calling for a wholesale crackdown on Islamist militancy and the drug trade. And both display impatience with the courts.
After Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Duterte called to congratulate him. Later, the Philippine leader issued a statement saying that the president-elect had wished him well in his antidrug campaign, which has resulted in the deaths of several thousand people suspected of using or selling narcotics, as well as others who may have had no involvement with drugs.
Whatever. Obama just didn’t get it. Trump gets it.
Mr. Trump has a commercial connection to the Philippines: His name is stamped on a $150 million, 57-floor tower in Manila, a licensing deal that netted his company millions of dollars. Mr. Duterte appointed the chairman of the company developing the tower, Jose E. B. Antonio, as an envoy to Washington for trade, investment and economic affairs.
Ah. Of course he does.
Take care of yourself, Rodrigo
May 24th, 2017 10:51 am | By Ophelia BensonMore from the Trump files: last month he phoned Duterte to tell him “awesome job with all the extrajudicial killings, dude.”
President Trump praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines in a phone call last month for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem” in the island nation where the government has sanctioned gunning down suspects in the streets. Mr. Trump also boasted that the United States has “two nuclear submarines” off the coast of North Korea but said he does not want to use them.
Did he boast about his dick size at the same time?
There’s a Philippine transcript of the call which was circulated yesterday by the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. A senior administration official vouched for the transcript, on the now-familiar condition of anonymity. Getting hot there, is it?
The Philippine rendering of the call offers a rare insight into how Mr. Trump talks to fellow leaders: He sounds much the way he sounds in public, casing issues in largely black-and-white terms, often praising authoritarian leaders, largely unconcerned about human rights violations and genuinely uncertain about the nature of his adversary in North Korea.
The same brutal callous stupid egomaniacal shithead we all know and loathe.
Mr. Trump placed the call and began it by congratulating Mr. Duterte for the government-sanctioned attacks on drug suspects. The program has been widely condemned by human rights groups around the world because extrajudicial killings have taken thousands of lives without arrest or trial. In March, the program was criticized in the State Department’s annual human rights report, which referred to “apparent governmental disregard for human rights and due process.”
Mr. Trump had no such reservations. “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem,” he said. “Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
A great job murdering thousands of people without trial. The president of the US is praising that and saying it’s a great thing. It’s sickening.
Mr. Duterte responded that drugs were “the scourge of my nation now, and I have to do something to preserve the Filipino nation.” Mr. Trump responded that “we had a previous president who did not understand that,” an apparent reference to President Barack Obama, “but I understand that.”
He understands mass murder by the state.
Thanks for the warning.
The end of the conversation centered on a first meeting between the two men, perhaps when Mr. Trump is in Manila later this year. But Mr. Trump twice invited Mr. Duterte to “come to the Oval Office.”
“I will love to have you in the Oval Office, anytime you want to come,” Mr. Trump said.
“Take care of yourself, Rodrigo,” he concluded. “God bless you.”
They have every right to be furious
May 24th, 2017 9:51 am | By Ophelia BensonAnd despite being told to stop, they’re still doing it.
US officials disclosed fresh details of the investigation into the Manchesterbombing to journalists within hours of Amber Rudd warning them to stop the leaking.
The steady drip of details from the US – as well as from France – is hampering the investigation by British police, who are trying to control the release of information for operational reasons.
The home secretary reflected the frustration and dismay of the UK security services in a series of interviews on Wednesday morning. She described the leaks as “irritating” and said she had made it clear to the US that it should not happen again.
However, within hours, American reporter Richard Engel of NBC tweeted details not released by the UK.
Imagine the reaction here if the UK intelligence people did that to us.
The intelligence community has long been uncomfortable about revelations from its recent past made in books and articles, but the release of details of a live investigation on the scale of those by the US and France is a relatively new phenomenon.
It comes on top of Donald Trump’s release of intelligence to Russia that had been passed on by Israel, which had obtained it from an Arab country.
The leak of the British information, as well as demonstrating a lack of respect for a US ally at an emotional time, will have hindered the investigation, where it is essential to control the release of details.
Hindering the investigation is surely in no one’s interest.
Anger about the extent of the leaks is not confined to the UK. Senior members of the US Congress also expressed concern.
The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Adam Schiff, said he did not know the source but insisted it was not from Congress, as members and their staffs had not been briefed.
Schiff, who is a driving force behind the congressional investigation into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia, said: “We should have been very careful and respectful of the British investigation and the timing which the British felt was in their investigative interests in releasing that. That should have been their discretion not ours. If that is something we did, I think that’s a real problem.”
The UK intelligence agencies, he said, would have passed on information about the bomber and possible associates to see if the US had any further intelligence on them.
“If we gave up information that has interfered in any way with their investigation because it tipped off people in Britain, perhaps associates of this person that we had identified as the bomber, that’s a real problem and they have every right to be furious.”
…
Chris Coons, a Democratic member of the Senate foreign affairs committee, said questions were being raised about whether the Trump administration understood what it meant to treat highly classified intelligence responsibly.
He told MSNBC: “Our alliance with the people of Great Britain is one of our closest, strongest, oldest – and our prayers are with them, the families who lost loved ones in Manchester … We’ve got a very close intelligence and defence partnership with the UK and that news is troubling and it suggests that we have even more close allies who are questioning whether we can be trusted with vital intelligence.
“This is a key part of what keeps us safe, a global network of allies with whom we share intelligence and strategic and planning and defence resources … I am hearing real questions raised about whether this administration, in particular President Trump, understands what it means to treat highly classified intelligence carefully and responsibly.”
He’s draining the swamp.
The British had wanted to control the flow of information
May 24th, 2017 9:30 am | By Ophelia BensonYes, the US really did blab the name of the Manchester suspect yesterday even though they’d been told not to. Yes the UK really is pissed off at us. Yes that really is a staggeringly stupid and irresponsible thing to do. Yes I really am ashamed of this country; yes so are most of us.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said she is irritated with the US for releasing information about the Manchester bomber before UK police would have liked.
Ms Rudd said the British had wanted to control the flow of information to “keep the element of surprise”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she had been very clear with Washington “that it should not happen again”.
I’m sure Washington listened, but Trump and his people, not so much.
Counter-terrorism detectives have spoken in the past about how important it sometimes is for them that names of suspects do not make it into the media. They say a delay of around 36 hours, before the public know who they are investigating can allow them to arrest known associates of the suspect before they know police are looking for them.
Information about the bomber’s identity first emerged in the US – with American TV networks CBS and NBC naming Abedi as the suspect.
Ms Rudd was asked whether she would be looking at how information sharing may have resulted in the premature release of details the British police and security services had not wanted in the public domain.
The home secretary told Today: “Yes, quite frankly.
“The British police have been very clear they want to control the flow of information in order to protect operational integrity – the element of surprise – so it is irritating if it gets released from other sources, and I’ve been very clear with our friends that that should not happen again.”
With friends like us, who needs enemies?
There with all his friends
May 23rd, 2017 11:06 am | By Ophelia BensonOh gawd. Trump went to Yad Vashem today. He wrote an entry for the guest book, in all caps:
IT IS A GREAT HONOR TO BE HERE WITH ALL OF MY FRIENDS — SO AMAZING & WILL NEVER FORGET!
"So amazing," Trump describes Yad Vashem visit as only he canhttps://t.co/qezNcuuIcM pic.twitter.com/qGo7ZielBA
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) May 23, 2017
The guest book entry provides an opportunity to contrast Trump’s style with that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, who spent an hour at Yad Vashem and gave an emotional speech in 2013. Obama had already visited once, in 2008, when he was an Illinois senator running for president. On that trip, he left this note in the guest book:
“I am grateful to Yad Vashem and all of those responsible for this remarkable institution. At a time of great peril and promise, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man’s potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world. Let our children come here, and know this history, so that they can add their voices to proclaim ‘never again’. And may we remember those who perished, not only as victims, but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us, and who have become symbols of the human spirit.”
I’m not crazy about that one either, frankly. Saying we’re “blessed” to have the reminder implies the Holocaust was itself a blessing, or at least a necessary step to attaining that blessing. Still, it’s orders of magnitude less grating than Trump’s little ego-pirouette.
The fact is that it was ideologically impeccable
May 23rd, 2017 10:38 am | By Ophelia BensonHenry Farrell at Crooked Timber on the dud gender studies “hoax”:
[T]he research design, if you take it at face value is fundamentally inept. The authors of the spoof claim to be both illustrating the problems of review by gender studies academics, and the problems of predatory access journals. But you can’t really do two for the price of one – if you demonstrate that a bad piece got published, you have no way of distinguishing between the two causal hypotheses that you are proposing – that gender journals will publish more or less anything as long as it has the right politics, and that predatory journals will publish more or less anything as long as you come up with the money. Indeed, given that there is already compelling evidence that predatory journals in the sciences will publish all sorts of shite for cash, and that the authors report themselves that their article was rejected by the journal they first submitted it to, it’s hard to come up with a convincing rationale for how the ‘gender studies will publish anything’ rationale is doing any explanatory work at all.
Yeah. I think they started out just claiming to be illustrating the problems of review by gender studies academics, and then added the problems of predatory access journals after a lot of people pointed out that they’d simply published in a predatory access journal and that that demonstrated nothing except the obvious. (Pay to play journal will publish any old dreck. You don’t say!)
Second, my own pretend-social-science prediction (which may of course be disconfirmed) is that Steven Pinker and other prominent ‘skeptics’ are not going to rush to acknowledge that the hoax has gone horribly wrong, even though it obviously has. On the one hand, the skeptics’ own theory of themselves is that they are cool headed, rational assessors of evidence, who hew to scientific standards of proof in developing and testing their personal beliefs while their enemies are prepared to believe in all sorts of gobbledygook. If this theory were to hold true, then one would have expected either (a) that skeptics would have rejected the hoax immediately (perhaps treating it with particular suspicion given that it fit so closely with their political priors about postmodernism and academic feminism) or (b) that if they couldn’t quite get there on their own, they would acknowledge the flaws in the spoof and recalibrate their own beliefs and public arguments as soon as the problems had been pointed out to them.
And yet that isn’t what happened. In comments on the Bleeding Hearts Libertarians post we get this exchange:
Free, loud, public girls
May 23rd, 2017 10:18 am | By Ophelia BensonSoraya Chemaly nails it in one paragraph.
Ariana Grande’s audiences aren’t just filled with children but specifically with free, loud, public girls. This is a strategy and it’s explicit. It’s not only about targeting spaces filled with young people in hedonistic settings but very focused on the role and presence of girls in these spaces. Recruiting disaffected young men is enabled by misogyny and toxic masculine ideals everywhere. Most of the on-air public commentary that I’m hearing is ignoring what this means and what it means in terms of our own governance and lack of women in our governance. It’s very frustrating and one of the reasons why our attempts to address the threats represented by all kinds of extremist violence, include white male supremacist violence in the US, are anemic. Am also adding here, because it’s related and pertinent that she also has a large gay male following. Several people have pointed that out and there is zero doubt that homophobia and misogyny are two sides of the same coin. #ManchesterBombing
Slash slash slash
May 23rd, 2017 9:31 am | By Ophelia BensonI guess the principle of Trumpism and most of the contemporary Republican party in the US is: destroy everything good. Trump’s budget slashes not only Medicaid and anti-poverty programs, but also scientific and medical research. Booya.
President Trump’s 2018 budget request, delivered to Congress on Tuesday with the title “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” has roiled the medical and science community with a call for massive cuts in spending on scientific research, medical research, disease prevention programs and health insurance for children of the working poor.
The National Cancer Institute would be hit with a $1 billion cut compared to its 2017 budget. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute would see a $575 million cut, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases would see a reduction of $838 million. The administration would cut the overall National Institutes of Health budget from $31.8 billion to $26 billion.
It’s especially ironic that that’s dubbed “A New Foundation for American Greatness” when scientific and medical research constitute one of our major claims to greatness.
The proposed cuts to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drew an unusually sharp rebuke from former CDC director Tom Frieden, who went on Twitter to describe the administration’s CDC request as “unsafe at any level of enactment. Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs.”
In a separate tweet, Frieden listed what he sees as the dire ramifications of the Trump proposal, saying, for starters, that it “Devastates programs that protect Americans from cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and other deadly and expensive conditions.”
Steven Houser, president of the American Heart Association, called Trump’s budget “devastating” and “unconscionable.” He urged Congress to boost funding for NIH by $2 billion rather than cut it by nearly $6 billion.
Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said the Trump budget is short-sighted, particularly in assuming that economic growth won’t be hampered by cuts in government-funded research.
Seriously. Did no one tell him that the research makes possible a lot of thriving industries? Does Trump think flogging real estate is the only profit-making enterprise there is?
Slashing programs that normally have enjoyed bipartisan support is part of the Trump administration’s effort to trim trillions of dollars in spending over the next decade while at the same time paying for tax cuts and increases in military spending.
Because that’s Trump. Money for rich people and weapons good, everything else bad and for losers.
Russian efforts to suborn such individuals
May 23rd, 2017 8:42 am | By Ophelia BensonMeanwhile, as Trump struggles to act like an adult overseas, another intel official has said he was worried about the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia.
John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, said Tuesday that he became concerned last year that the Russian government was trying to influence members of the Trump campaign to act — wittingly or unwittingly — on Moscow’s behalf.
“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals,” Mr. Brennan told lawmakers. “It raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”
…
Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, opened questioning at a hearing Tuesday by asking Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, about a Washington Post report that Mr. Trump had asked him — along with Adm. Michael S. Rogers of the National Security Agency — to publicly dispute that any evidence exists of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. According to the report, Mr. Coats and Admiral Rogers both turned down his requests, deeming them inappropriate.
“Is that an accurate reporting, Director Coats?” Mr. McCain said after summarizing the report.
Mr. Coats said he could not publicly discuss what was in the report.
Hence the need for Deep Throats.
Mr. Brennan became so concerned last summer about signs of Russian election meddling that he held urgent, classified briefings for eight senior members of Congress, speaking with some of them over secure phone lines while they were away on recess. In those conversations, he told lawmakers there was evidence that Russia was specifically working to elect Mr. Trump as president.
Mr. Brennan was also one of a handful of officials who briefed both President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump in January on a broad intelligence community report revealing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered an “influence campaign” targeting the presidential election.
But her emails…
Trump says stop standing for the slaughter of innocent people
May 23rd, 2017 8:10 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Manchester bomb is of course a gift to Trump: now he can yell that he was right right right about keeping out all the Mooslims except the ones from Saudi Arabia and other not at all Islamist places like that.
“This is what I’ve spent these last few days talking about in our trip overseas,” Mr. Trump said after a meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. “Our society can have no tolerance for this continuation of bloodshed. We cannot stand a moment longer for the slaughter of innocent people.”
As if everyone else were standing for it, and only Trump thinks we should make it stop. The problem is that it’s not easy to make it stop, and just saying we won’t stand for it isn’t the magic solution.
Yaakov Peri, a former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, said on Israeli television Tuesday morning that “the tragic attack in Manchester plays favorably for Trump, who in Saudi Arabia said that we will fight terror together.”
But the attack also poses some risks for Mr. Trump, whose responses to fast-moving events — sometimes dashed off in a tweet with a hashtag and an exclamation point — can sound off-key. In his first comments Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump used a playground epithet to describe people like the assailant in the bombing.
“I will call them from now on losers, because that’s what they are,” Mr. Trump said after the meeting with Mr. Abbas. “They’re losers. And we’ll have more of them. But they’re losers. Just remember that.”
I flinch. I hate the word “losers” and I hate it all the more coming from Trump, because to him it means men who don’t grab women by the pussy.
But.
But all the same I kind of know what he’s getting at and this one time I even kind of agree with him. I think disdain is the right reaction, or part of the right reaction. They want to be feared and hated; they don’t want to be seen as pathetic. The reality is it doesn’t take courage or genius or greatness to set off a bomb in a crowded place. It’s all too easy. Any schmuck can do that.
22 killed 59 injured
May 23rd, 2017 7:28 am | By Ophelia BensonTwenty-two people, including an eight-year-old girl, have been killed and 59 were injured in a suicide bombing at Manchester Arena, at the end of a concert by US singer Ariana Grande.
A man set off a homemade bomb in the foyer at 22:33 BST on Monday…
Armed police have arrested a 23-year-old man in Chorlton, south Manchester, in connection with the attack.
Mancunians did what they could to help:
As hundreds of people fled Manchester Arena following the explosion, taxi drivers began taking people to safety.
Driver AJ Singh said he tried to help wherever he could.
“I’ve had people who needed to find loved ones. I’ve dropped them off to the hospital. They’ve not had any money, they’ve been stranded,” he told Channel 4 News.
“We should come out and show whoever’s done this that it doesn’t matter because Manchester, we’re glue and we stick together when it counts.”
Sam Arshad, from StreetCars Manchester asked his drivers to give free rides to anyone stranded after the Ariana Grande concert.
“The audience was a very young audience, and there were a lot of people there without their parents,” he told the BBC.
“And it’s then that people were requesting taxis but they didn’t have money.
“It was at that point that I made the decision that money isn’t everything in life and we’re part of Manchester and we need to do our part to make sure these people get home safe and sound.”
…
As news of the attack spread, locals soon began offering spare rooms on social media, under the hashtag #RoomforManchester.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham tweeted: “If you are stranded in the area you can also follow #RoomForManchester where hotels and local people of our great city are offering refuge.”
There’s not much you can say, is there.
Is there anyone Trump didn’t try to strongarm?
May 22nd, 2017 6:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt wasn’t just Comey that Trump tried to strongarm into squashing the investigation, the Post reports.
President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.
Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.
Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.
He thinks he’s a monarch. He thinks he can do anything he wants, and that that applies retroactively too. He understands nothing.
Current and former senior intelligence officials viewed Trump’s requests as an attempt by the president to tarnish the credibility of the agency leading the Russia investigation.
…
In addition to the requests to Coats and Rogers, senior White House officials sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening directly with Comey to encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, according to people familiar with the matter. The officials said the White House appeared uncertain about its power to influence the FBI.
“Can we ask him to shut down the investigation? Are you able to assist in this matter?” one official said of the line of questioning from the White House.
Of course you can’t ask anyone to shut down an investigation, and especially not one of you. It’s Trump who was under investigation, so no he doesn’t get to tell people to shut down the investigation. It’s so basic.
The new revelations add to a growing body of evidence that Trump sought to co-opt and then undermine Comey before he fired him May 9. According to notes kept by Comey, Trump first asked for his loyalty at a dinner in January and then, at a meeting the next month, asked him to drop the probe into Flynn. Trump disputes those accounts.
Trump is a habitual liar. What he disputes is neither here nor there.
Current and former officials said that Trump either lacks an understanding of the FBI’s role as an independent law enforcement agency or does not care about maintaining such boundaries.
Yeah, we’ve noticed.
Trump and his allies in Congress have similarly sought to deflect scrutiny over Russia by attempting to pit U.S. intelligence agencies against one another.
In December, Trump’s congressional allies falsely claimed that the FBI did not concur with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House. Comey and then-CIA Director John Brennan later said that the bureau and the agency were in full agreement on Moscow’s intentions.
Trump is such a lying cheating fraud in every way.
Years of misogynist Reddit posts
May 22nd, 2017 5:26 pm | By Ophelia BensonInteresting. A New Hampshire legislator has resigned after being outed as one of those misogynist men who spend their free time talking shit about women on Reddit.
The beginning of the end for Rep. Robert Fisher, a New Hampshire state lawmaker, took root just three weeks ago, when an investigation by the Daily Beast chronicled in painstaking detail years of anonymous, “misogynistic” and “woman-hating” Reddit posts from the user pk_atheist.
It focused on the Red Pill, a popular online forum that describes itself a place to discuss men’s rights and male sexual strategy, where founder pk_atheist commented breathlessly. His words disparaged feminism, insulted women’s “sub-par intelligence” and called their personalities “lackluster and boring, serving little purpose in day to day life.” He revealed a fear of being falsely accused of rape so extreme that he recommended men should install video cameras in their bedrooms. He admitted he already had.
A familiar type.
While he continues to deny some of the accusations, Fisher ultimately admitted that he was behind the user name pk_atheist.
On Wednesday, after weeks of changing his story and defending his crusade for men’s rights, Fisher resigned from the legislature.
“Unfortunately, the falsehoods, lies and comments of an overzealous blogger and some of my colleagues have created a situation where I must genuinely consider the safety and well-being of my girlfriend, my family, and myself,” he wrote in an email to the Associated Press.
Fisher’s resignation came less than an hour after a Republican-led committee in the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted 8-6 along party lines to recommend no disciplinary action because the comments attributed to him, while “reprehensible,” were still constitutionally protected free speech.
“Shame! Shame! Shame!” chanted women in the audience.
Yes but women are inferior, so it doesn’t matter what they chant.
Manchester
May 22nd, 2017 3:54 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnother Bataclan?
Police are responding to a “serious incident” in Manchester amid reports of an “explosion” following a pop concert.
Witnesses reported hearing a “huge bang” following an Ariana Grande gig at Manchester Arena.
Network Rail said train lines out of Manchester Victoria station, which is close to the concert venue, were blocked.
Greater Manchester Police tweeted to urge people to stay away from the area.
I know where that station is. I got off one of the circulating buses there. I have friends in Manchester.
Screened for their loyalty to Trump
May 22nd, 2017 3:26 pm | By Ophelia BensonApparently Amy Siskind does a weekly list of things to keep an eye on in Life Under Trump. The one she did for last week has 105 items on it. 105 items! That’s a full-time job. I’m finding a lot I missed. Hoping to track down some of the more startling ones – like # 9:
9. NY Magazine reported that candidates for FBI director were being screened for their loyalty to Trump.
What? But according to Sally Yates the DoJ is supposed to operate completely independently of the Executive Branch…although how that is possible when the executive chooses the top people I don’t know. Our supposed “checks and balances” aren’t.
So here is NY mag on that subject a week ago:
Last week, Donald Trump fired James Comey because the FBI director had lost the trust of the American people — and because he refused to comport himself as the president’s private detective. According to Comey’s confidantes, Trump asked his FBI director to pledge personal loyalty to him, seven days into his presidency. According to Trump, he was thinking about how much he despised the FBI’s investigation into his campaign when he “decided to just [fire Comey].”
These developments have led some to wonder if the Trump administration might be less-than-wholeheartedly committed to the independence of federal law enforcement. Democrats have responded to such concerns by calling for concrete actions to safeguard the independence of the probe into Trump’s campaign. Meanwhile some Republicans have issued statements assuring the American people that they are deeply concerned and principled (and not committed to doing anything, in particular).
This is what I’m saying. Checks and balances – what checks and balances? They’re not working.
Over the weekend, the White House demonstrated just how seriously it takes concerns about the erosion of public trust: To quell bipartisan fears about the politicization of the FBI, Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who had recused himself from all matters pertaining to the investigation of the Trump campaign (of which he was a member) — interviewed a sitting GOP Senator for the position of FBI director (and thus, for the role of leading the investigation into the Trump campaign).
That senator was Texas’s John Cornyn, a man so invested in an impartial investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, he didn’t ask a single question about that subject at last week’s Senate hearing with James Clapper and former acting attorney general Sally Yates. Instead, Cornyn devoted the entirety of his speaking time to echoing the Trump administration’s concerns about leaks, “unmasking,” the imaginary Susan Rice scandal, and Yates’s traitorous refusal to defend the president’s quasi-Muslim ban.
The Justice Department also interviewed former Republican congressman Mike Rogers for the position. Rogers served as an FBI special agent before leaving the bureau to enter politics in 1995. He held a House seat from 2001 to 2014. On Saturday, Rogers won the endorsement of the FBI Agents Association.
It’s hopeless.
Yet another demonstration of disrespect
May 22nd, 2017 11:27 am | By Ophelia BensonNow the Trump admin is trying to cut the Office of Government Ethics off at the knees.
The Trump administration, in a significant escalation of its clash with the government’s top ethics watchdog, has moved to block an effort to disclose any ethics waivers granted to former lobbyists who now work in the White House or federal agencies.
The latest conflict came in recent days when the White House, in a highly unusual move, sent a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the head of the Office of Government Ethics, asking him to withdraw a request he had sent to every federal agency for copies of the waivers. In the letter, the administration challenged his legal authority to demand the information.
Dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers are working in the Trump administration, which has hired them at a much higher rate than the previous administration. Keeping the waivers confidential would make it impossible to know whether any such officials are violating federal ethics rules or have been given a pass to ignore them.
Typical Trump in its brazenness. Dear Mr Shaub, please stop trying to make sure we don’t violate ethics rules all over the place, thanks, Donnie.
Shaub says he has no intention of complying with that outrageous demand.
“It is an extraordinary thing,” Mr. Shaub said of the White House request. “I have never seen anything like it.”
It’s called “draining the swamp.”
Marilyn L. Glynn, who served as general counsel and acting director of the agency during the George W. Bush administration, called the move by the Trump White House “unprecedented and extremely troubling.”
“It challenges the very authority of the director of the agency and his ability to carry out the functions of the office,” she said.
The OMB said no you are.
President Trump signed an executive order in late January — echoing language first endorsed by Mr. Obama — that prohibited lobbyists and lawyers hired as political appointees from working for two years on “particular” government matters that involved their former clients. In the case of former lobbyists, they could not work on the same regulatory issues they had been involved in.
Both reserved the right to issue waivers, but in a rather different manner.
Mr. Obama, unlike Mr. Trump, automatically made any such waivers public, offering detailed explanations. The exceptions were typically granted for people with special skills, or when the overlap between the new federal work and a prior job was minor.
Ms. Glynn, who worked in the office of government ethics for nearly two decades, said she had never heard of a move by any previous White House to block a request like Mr. Shaub’s. She recalled how the Bush White House had intervened with a federal agency during her tenure to get information that she needed.
Trump has his eye on history. He wants to outdo all his predecessors in brazen corruption and self-dealing.
Norman Eisen, the top White House ethics lawyer in the first years of the Obama administration, said he believed that the Trump administration was trying to intimidate federal ethics officers, who are career appointees, without actually ordering them to ignore the directive from the ethics chief.
“It is yet another demonstration of disrespect for the rule of law and for ethics and transparency coming from the White House,” Mr. Eisen said.
It’s yet another truckload of slime.
Just so you understand
May 22nd, 2017 11:10 am | By Ophelia BensonAfter an appearance alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, President Donald Trump paused to push back against reports that he had disclosed highly classified information to the Russians.
“Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel’,'” Trump told reporters in Jerusalem. “Never mentioned it during that conversation. They were all saying I did. So you had another story wrong. Never mentioned the word ‘Israel’.”
He told them it using his tiny stunted repertoire of gestures – the pinch on “never mentioned,” the point on “during that conversation.” The two little hands pushing at the invisible barrier on “Never mentioned the word ‘Israel’.” The gestures always underline how stupid he is.
The story Trump was reacting to was this one, which ran a week ago in the Washington Post. And the thing about that story is that, well, the word “Israel” is never mentioned. Not one time.
Of course it’s not. If it had been I wouldn’t have guessed Saudi Arabia. The fact that it was Israel was kept under wraps for some hours after the story appeared.
In a follow-up story, the New York Times reported — citing anonymous sources — that the information that Trump had passed along had come to the United States from Israel. But even in that piece there is no allegation that Trump mentioned the word “Israel” in his Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Trump is the denying an allegation that, literally, no news organization made. He’s also implicitly confirming that, yes, he did talk to the Russians about classified information.
But that’s ok, because he’s Trump, and his “base” will think he made a meaningful point, and it will go on this way until he kills us all.
To enshrine a system of racially polarized voting
May 22nd, 2017 10:27 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Supreme Court has put the kibosh on North Carolina’s attempt to sort voters by race.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature unlawfully relied on race when drawing two of the state’s congressional districts.
The decision continued a trend at the court, where justices have found that racial considerations improperly predominated in redistricting decisions by Republican-led legislatures in Virginia, Alabama and North Carolina. Some involved congressional districts, others legislative districts.
The states had contended their efforts were partisan attempts to protect their majorities, which the Supreme Court in the past has allowed, rather than attempts to diminish the impact of minority voters, which is forbidden.
But the justices declared North Carolina had relied too heavily on race in their efforts to “reshuffle,” in the words of Justice Elena Kagan, voters from one district to another. They were unanimous in rejecting one of the districts, and split 5 to 3 on the other.
Ari Berman wrote about racial redistricting in the Nation in 2012:
And it’s not just happening in North Carolina. In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans—to protect and expand their gains in 2010—have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats. “What’s uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage,” says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “The bigger picture is to ultimately make the Democratic Party in the South be represented only by people of color.” The GOP’s long-term goal is to enshrine a system of racially polarized voting that will make it harder for Democrats to win races on local, state, federal and presidential levels. Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.
The consequences of redistricting in North Carolina—one of the most important swing states in the country—could determine who controls Congress and the presidency in 2012. Democrats hold seven of the state’s thirteen Congressional seats, but after redistricting they could control only three—the largest shift for Republicans at the Congressional level in any state this year. Though Obama won eight of the thirteen districts, under the new maps his vote would be contained in only three heavily Democratic districts—all of which would have voted 68 percent or higher for the president in 2008—while the rest of the districts would have favored John McCain by 55 percent or more. “GOP candidates could win just over half of the statewide vote for Congress and end up with 62 percent to 77 percent of the seats,” found John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation.
Did Trump win in North Carolina? Yes he did. We have racist gerrymandering in North Carolina to thank for this terrifying unhinged narcissist in the White House.
