Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • They don’t look Indian to him

    1993. This is 1993, 26 years ago. This is Donald Trump.

    https://twitter.com/AntonioArellano/status/1094794911910633472

  • The league of harassers

    BuzzFeed reports:

    A secret group of mainly male French journalists have been accused of coordinating a sprawling, yearslong campaign of harassment abusing women writers, feminist activists, people of color, and LGBT people.

    The group, Ligue du LOL, or LOL League, has been operating for about a decade. So far, three journalists have been suspended, one has resigned, and one has been fired since the accusations were made public online. People working at four of France’s biggest news outlets have been implicated.

    Journalists – you know, people who help shape our opinions and worldviews.

    The LOL League started as a Facebook group in 2009 by journalist Vincent Glad, who now works at one of France’s largest newspapers, LibĂŠration. The group operated as a shitposting space for people in French journalism and advertising who were popular on Twitter.

    The current controversy started when Slate France journalist Thomas Messias tweeted cryptically last week about a “model reporter” who “used to have fun in a pack of feminist stalkers.”

    That is, not feminist stalkers but feminist-stalkers, i.e. stalkers of feminists.

    Messias’s tweet was quoted by LibĂŠration journalist and LOL League member Alexandre Hervaud, who sarcastically called it a “brave subtweet” and said he wasn’t sure whom Messias was talking about. Then another Twitter user, @IrisKV, asked Hervaud directly about harassing her. Her tweets were the first recent mention of LOL League. Everything seems to have kicked off from here.

    …

    By Friday, the #ligueduLOL hashtag was trending throughout France.

    Hundreds of testimonies from victims who say they were targeted by the group flooded Twitter all weekend. Slate France contributor Lucile Bellan accused them of years of systemic harassment that undermined her confidence as a journalist. A French marketing manager named Benjamin LeReilly wrote a Medium piece accusing them of anti-gay and anti-feminist harassment that started eight years ago and has gone on for years.

    I wonder how many American groups of the kind there are – specifically of journalists, I mean; I know there are plenty of generic ones.

    Journalist Melanie Wanga tweeted that she was chased off Twitter by the LOL League in 2013. She described an inner circle of LOL League members surrounded by “cool girls” in French media who protected them and helped them pretend to be liberal and progressive in public.

    It’s all so very familiar.

    Currently, the main outlets implicated are all liberal and left-leaning: LibĂŠration, Les Inrocks, Slate France, and TĂŠlĂŠrama. Glad, the founder of the LOL League, wrote in a statement on Twitter that the group was “a monster that he had lost control of” and apologized for his involvement. He was suspended this week from the magazine he’s currently writing for. Doucet was also suspended from Les Inrocks as a precautionary measure.

    As the scandal has grown over the weekend, private sexist groups similar to the LOL League have been outed. Similar groups were revealed to have been operating at Vice France and HuffPost France.

    The more powerful setting up little online enclaves for the purpose of harassing the less powerful. So that’s what humans are like.

    Bellan, the Slate France contributor who has since come forward about her years of abuse by the LOL League, published a piece this week about her experience watching LOL League member Christophe Carron become the editor of Slate France in 2017.

    Bellan in her piece writes that Carron becoming editor made her fear for the column she was working on at the time.

    “Over the years, the LOL League has become a terrifying kind of hydra,” she wrote. “If we decided to never collaborate with people who had been connected to all of this, it would have been easier to just change jobs.”

    Sound familiar? Sounds like the debacle of New Atheism, to me.

  • We have been dropping enough hints

    Oh come ON.

    Oooooooh yes I guess you could systematically study whether or not women are subject to more disparaging commentary than men are, why has no one ever thought to do that???

    Much acid rejoindering.

    https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1094978799316422657

  • Crossing the line

    Priorities. On the one hand, permanent brain damage; on the other hand, profits. We all know which one wins; it’s The American Way.

    Former NBC sports commentator Bob Costas says the network pulled him from its football coverage after he criticized the NFL and its handling of the concussion crisis. In an interview with ESPN’s E:60, Costas revealed that NBC executives removed him from its Super Bowl LII broadcast after he spoke at a 2017 journalism symposium. “The reality is that this game destroys people’s brains,” he said during that discussion. After an ensuing series of media appearances, Costas says NBC Sports’ executive producer texted him, “You’ve crossed the line.”

    What line? I guess it’s the line between rah-rah coverage of football and factual reporting on how football as currently played features a great deal of head trauma.

    Costas had been at NBC since 1979 and often used his platform to discuss controversial topics. He had covered concussion-related illnesses on Football Night in America before, but the ESPN story notes that NBC nixed a monologue he intended to read during a 2015 Sunday Night Football game relating to the release of the Will Smith movie Concussion. “I remember the reaction almost verbatim,” he tells ESPN. “They said, ‘This is a very well-written piece, wouldn’t change a comma. We can’t air it.’ ” Shortly thereafter, Costas drew ire from NBC executives by mocking the NFL’s “Football is Family” ad campaign in outside interviews.

    After his 2017 appearance at the University of Maryland journalism symposium, NBC released a statement saying, “Bob’s opinions are his own, and they do not represent those of the NBC Sports Group.” Costas was subsequently informed that he would not be part of the network’s Super Bowl broadcast at the end of that season, which was already slated to be Costas’ last Sunday Night Football appearance.

    Well now who matters more here? The workers or the bosses? The players or the owners? Silly question, isn’t it, this is America, where unions have faded to ghosts and the boss always wins.

  • Guest post: Still no foresight, beyond the quarterly statement

    Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Hurtling down the path to extinction.

    In War of the Worlds, the Martians meet their demise through lack of foresight, because they have no resistance to Earth germs; they are killed “after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.” Now, with our devices and technology working all too well, and plenty of warning (but still, no foresight, beyond the quarterly statement), we may bring about our own end by killing off the insects. Who knows, this might have a bigger, faster impact on human thought (and numbers) than the comparatively slow motion disaster that is climate change.

    Time to nationalize agriculture.

    I’m not sure that would really help at this point. We would probably have to internationalize agriculture. For the time being, because of our numbers, I think we are trapped in industrialized, mechanized, chemical and energy intensive agriculture. Shifting over to methods that are less destructive would likely require more people working in the agricultural workforce. It would take time, and a lot more state intervention in the economy than many are going to welcome, but whatever we do, whatever happens, there is going to be massive societal and economic disruption as knock on effects of the ongoing ecological and climate disruption we have loaded the system with. The longer we wait to act, the less we will be able to control or mitigate that disruption, and the worse it is going to be. We are racing headlong into crisis and the earth is going to slough off a few billion humans (and countless other species) before it reaches some new equilibrium.

    Too few people (and certainly too few people in power) are aware of the fundamental connections between the human sphere and the biological foundations from which it arises and upon which it depends. We’re still learning about those connections in our slow, halting way. Traditional societies that are/were more immediately tied to the cycles of the living world around them might have had some awareness of this, but perhaps in too much of a mythological or metaphorical sense (where propitiation of spirits might be seen as more important than not actually overhunting an animal or exhausting the land), rather than the nuts and bolts causality that the scientific method offers. Whatever traditional awareness of the intimate bond humans have to all other life, that awareness was lost, set aside or ignored as we adopted agriculture and adapted our ways to it.

  • Moon and earth

    Bad Astronomy:

    The far side of the Moon and the Earth seen together from the Chinese lunar satellite Longjiang-2. Credit: CNSA / Dwingeloo

    That lovely photograph was taken on February 3, 2019, by the Chinese Longjiang-2 satellite, which is orbiting the Moon. It’s a small photo, just 640×480 pixels, but what it shows belies its size; that is the Earth and Moon in one shot, a single image framing all of humanity.

    Doesn’t the Moon look strange? That’s because you’re seeing the far side — in fact, the geometry dictates the only way to see the Earth and Moon together in one shot from lunar orbit is if you are over the far side at the time.

    But that’s the side forever pointing away from Earth, so we cannot see it from the ground, or even low Earth orbit. To see this terrain you have to go to the Moon and then a bit past it; this view is a gift of the space age.

    As is the famous earthrise photo.

    It’s sad, isn’t it. We start to discover amazing things about space and even land research vehicles on Mars, and at the same time we wipe out all the insects and keep racing down a path leading to environmental disaster.

  • Hurtling down the path to extinction

    Oops.

    The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

    More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

    That’s not good. Lots of mammals, birds and reptiles eat insects, so you do the math.

    The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.

    The human species turns out to have been just intelligent enough to destroy planetary life but not intelligent enough to stop doing that.

    The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors.

    More efficient (intensive) agriculture–>more people–>need for even more efficient agriculture–>repeat repeat repeat–>goodbye insects–>goodbye everything.

    One of the biggest impacts of insect loss is on the many birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish that eat insects. “If this food source is taken away, all these animals starve to death,” he said. Such cascading effects have already been seen in Puerto Rico, where a recent study revealed a 98% fall in ground insects over 35 years.

    The way to stop the decline would be to stop intensive agriculture. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where that would go well.

  • Might spark protests which might spark physical violence

    This again. University of Bristol Free Speech Society:

    We are saddened to inform you that due to Student Union bureaucracy we have been forced to cancel the invitation we extended to Angelos Sofocleous to be on our panel discussion on free speech. We have given the SU plenty of notice for this event. But they felt it proper to cancel his attendance in the last minute, citing “security concerns”. For context, Angelos is a full time student at Durham University who lives amongst students on campus. We leave it to the public to reach their own conclusions with regards to the SU’s intentions.

    In the government’s guidance for students on free speech released last year it states, “Students should not be deterred from organising events due to over-bureaucratic procedures”. Ironically, the first question we intended to put before our panel – ‘is there a problem with free speech on campus?’ – has been answered for us loud and clear.

    Our event will still be going ahead with the other panellists and will be open for students as well as to the public. We encourage anyone who cares about free speech to turn up to show their support for the cause. Tickets are free, but mandatory.

    We are happy to give statements to the press. Message us on our page.

    That “citing ‘security concerns’” is an especially nice touch. What security concerns? The ones about the rumpus we will raise if you don’t cancel the invitation to Sofocleous. We know there will be a fuss because we will create one. Nice little place you got here, would be a shame if you provoked me into smashing it up.

    Angelos comments:

    https://twitter.com/Sofocleous_A/status/1094631188789149696

    Which, being interpreted, means not so much that his appearance might spark anything, as that people there would see to it that his appearance met with boisterous opposition. If opposition is boisterous enough it can be said to be a security concern, and boom, there’s your pretext for telling this person whose ideas you dislike to stay away.

  • Spotted

    Let’s see, can we improve on that at all? Matt Whitaker after that grotesque performance at the hearing going to the Trump Hotel and…ordering the dolphin steak, painting “Mueller is a witch-hunter!!” on the wall, wearing a “Bring Back Rape!” T shirt?

  • The person teaching us the difference between right and wrong

    They just don’t get it.

    The bishop, who has maintained his innocence, will be charged and face trial by a special prosecutor on accusations of rape and intimidation, the police investigating the case said. But the church acknowledged the nun’s accusations only after five of her fellow nuns mutinied and publicly rallied to her side to draw attention to her yearlong quest for justice, despite what they described as heavy pressure to remain silent.

    “We used to see the fathers of the church as equivalent to God, but not anymore,” said Darly, her voice shaking with emotion. “How can I tell my son about this, that the person teaching us the difference between right and wrong gave him his First Communion after committing such a terrible sin?”

    The church is an institution that divides humanity into two halves for the purpose of making one half subordinate to the other. If you do that, there is going to be abuse. It can be the Mafia or the church, it makes no difference; telling people that these other people over here are your inferiors is an invitation to abuse the putative inferiors. That’s how humans work. An institution that not only does that but makes it sacred and holy and mandated by an all-powerful god who belongs to the superior caste is making it all but mandatory. Of course priests rape women; priests have been trained to look down on women, under instruction from Mister God Himself.

    “The church is losing its moral authority,” Father Vattoly said. “We are losing the faith of the people. The church will become a place without people if this continues. Just like in Europe, the young will no longer come here.”

    Good. Find a better source of moral authority, one that doesn’t carve people up into superior and inferior.

  • People are crocheting beanies as fast as they can

    Via clamboy – a long thread on Seattle and SOME INCHES OF SNOW OMIGOD.

    That’s only a small sample. Guy has a fertile brain!

  • But the president had no involvement

    Princess Ivanka says Daddy had nothing to do with her security clearance. My god she must be stupid if she thinks that’s credible. Daddy had everything to do with it; nobody else on earth would hire her for a menial job, let alone one requiring a security clearance.

    President Trump’s oldest daughter, who serves as a senior adviser in the White House, denied on Friday that her father was involved in issuing security clearances for her or her husband, Jared Kushner.

    Ivanka Trump made the remarks during an interview with the ABC News host Abby Huntsman in an interview for “The View.”

    “There were anonymous leaks about there being issues,” Ms. Trump said. “But the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband’s clearance, zero.”

    Oh go away, Princess. You’re an empty-headed nothing, and your family is destroying the country. Go away.

    She said the delay in her clearance was just because there was a backlog. A person who knows something said no that’s not true.

    Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in security clearances, said that Ms. Trump was citing a backlog that does not apply to her or her husband, given their special status as presidential family members and the ability of the White House to ask for expedited clearances for high-ranking advisers.

    She learned lying from a professional.

  • Trump Doc says he’ll live forever

    Where do they find these talking doll doctors??

    What kind of medical doctor says “I anticipate he will remain [in very good health] for the next two years and beyond”? What kind of human says that? How can anybody “anticipate” any such thing? Does Trump make these people out of papier machĂŠ and peanut butter, or what? Where does he find them and what does he do to them to convince them to make ridiculous reckless predictions of that kind?

    Of course it’s all the more reckless and idiotic when the subject is Trump, who spends most of his time sitting like a lump, eats garbage in large quantities, and has temper tantrums every few minutes, but it would be reckless and idiotic to say of anyone.

    They’re trolling us.

  • Buy all the salt

    This is hilarious.

    Seattle hears snow forecast, descends on grocery stores like the apocalypse is coming

    The weatherman said that, worst-case scenario, 14 inches of snow might blanket Seattle over the weekend.

    Hearing this, Seattle made like Supermarket Sweep and bought, literally, all the things.

    Cue photo of empty shelves.

    I can confirm. I went (on foot) up to the shopping street of my neighborhood a couple of hours ago (when the snow was well under way) because I needed milk and orange juice. Safeway: no milk, no orange juice, bare shelves all over the place! Trader Joe’s: one last carton of orange juice, which I grappled to my soul with hoops of steel; no milk, empty shelves! Bartell Drugs: milk at last! But gallons when I wanted a half gallon, but never mind, I got the gallon. Also: traffic at a complete standstill. A line of cars stretching as far as I could see, not moving.

    People, come on. This is a city, not the prairie. We’re not going to be pinned helplessly inside for weeks. It will be ok.

    (Granted it is a little tougher where I am, because the delivery trucks can’t get up the hill, as the guy at Trader Joe’s explained to me. There might be more milk on Sunday but don’t count on it. I’m glad I remembered Bartell carries milk.)

    At the Trader Joe’s in the University District a few hours earlier, lines stretched to the back of the store. Produce was still doing fine around 5 p.m., we heard, but sweet yums were out. We see you, college students.

    At the Fred Meyer in Greenwood, shoppers vying to get into the parking lot caused a small traffic jam around 7 p.m.

    At the Safeway in the University District, salt was completely sold out. “And it’s not just the rock salt,” said Steve Bailey, who was stocking shelves. “What was weird is that every single table salt was bought in one day.”

    That makes me laugh and laugh.

    Soup! Soup!! Snow is on the way, we have to have plenty of soup!!!

  • Why Whitaker is panic-stricken

    Jennifer Rubin on Whitaker’s delaying tactics:

    “This is outrageous,” said constitutional scholar Larry Tribe. “Whitaker seems to think he is entitled to dictate the terms on which he is invited to testify. He is not. It is anti-constitutional for a member of the Article II branch, not to mention an unconfirmed acting officer whose initial appointment was of dubious legality, to insist that he will not appear to give testimony properly sought by the Article I branch, acting through a duly constituted committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, unless that Article I committee first sacrifice one of its statutory and constitutional prerogatives.”

    In other words they’re allowed to subpoena him, and he doesn’t get to refuse to testify unless they promise promise promise not to subpoena him. That’s not how any of this works.

    We don’t know why precisely Whitaker is panic-stricken over the prospect of testifying. He might be so unqualified and ignorant that he fears public humiliation. He might have engaged in improper collaboration with Trump in trying to slow down the investigation or ferret out information helpful to Trump or Trump cronies. We simply do not know.

    But we do know the whole thing is sleazy af.

    “There are obviously questions Matt Whitaker is terrified to answer, and so DOJ is grasping for excuses to avoid appearing,” said former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “I think they’ve wanted to push this appearance until after Barr is [installed] all along, and now they’re setting up a court fight that could delay it for months, when they must hope anything he says will be old news.” He added: “It is terrible behavior by the Justice Department and an ominous sign of how the Trump administration intends to treat legitimate Congressional oversight.”

    In other words, Trump and Whitaker have corrupted an unknown number of lawyers, who took an oath to the Constitution and who operate under professional ethics rules, to thwart the legitimate interests of Congress and more important, the American people.

    It’s a dirty business. Speaking of dirty business…a reporter asked Princess Ivanka if she isn’t worried about all of this.

    Watch her placidly lie, every hair in place. Ice cold criminal.

     

  • Scrutiny

    Paul Waldman at the Post argues that Whitaker and Barr are under such fierce scrutiny now that they can’t obstruct the investigation, however much they want to.

    Democrats are trying to do two things simultaneously with this hearing in particular and their broader efforts with regard to the Mueller investigation. The first is to discover whether there has been any improper interference from the White House to limit the probe. The second is to apply enough pressure that even if Whitaker — or the White House, or William Barr — wanted to hinder Mueller, they’d decide that doing so would be too much of a risk.

    The truth is that Democrats have probably succeeded in the latter goal, which must be spectacularly frustrating for President Trump…

    All evidence suggests that after pushing Sessions out he appointed Whitaker in an acting capacity precisely because Whitaker had been publicly critical of the Mueller investigation. Yet Whitaker was under so much scrutiny on this question from the moment he took that position, he was almost certainly prevented from doing anything significant to impede Mueller. The same is likely to be true of Barr, who despite being critical of the investigation before his appointment now knows that if he really tries to protect Trump, eventually everyone will know and he’ll be disgraced.

    If Trump had actually persuaded anyone to obstruct the Mueller probe on his behalf, he wouldn’t be tweeting “Witch hunt!!!” every few days. Those are the desperate cries of a man who wishes his underlings would obstruct justice on his behalf, but isn’t getting what he wants.

    Well…I’m not so sure. Trump tweets what he feels like tweeting, just as he says what he feels like saying. He doesn’t have a whole lot of impulse control, and he keeps flying into rages at the shocking way some people persist in not bowing to him.

    But I hope Waldman is right about the larger point.

  • Your humor is not acceptable

    The Whitaker hearing is happening today. The tweets emanating from there are startling.

    https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status/1093889880260780032

    https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status/1093917121564811264

    https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1093921143789142023

    https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1093922006381330433

  • When a sister becomes pregnant

    Well now what do you think is going to happen in a secretive all-male organization that employs women to do the scut work?

    In his typically free-associating riff, Francis acknowledged “there have been priests and bishops” who have committed sexual abuse against nuns, and that “it’s continuing because it’s not like once you realize it that it stops.” He said the church needed to do more.

    Priests and bishops in the Catholic church are all, by definition, men. Women are officially barred from being priests and bishops. That’s step one right there, or steps one and one. It’s a double whammy: women are an inferior caste who may not hold the important jobs, and women are all subordinate to the superior caste who do hold the important jobs and are thus free (and entitled, and inspired) to prey on the inferior caste whenever the mood takes them.

    But while attempting to show that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, took tough action on the issue of sexual abuse against nuns, he recalled a separate case of a religious order marred with sexual and economic corruption, but apparently was not one involving nuns.

    Francis recounted that Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the church’s doctrinal watchdog, marshaled all his evidence against the complicit order in a meeting with Pope John Paul II. Francis said Benedict returned defeated and told his secretary, “The other side won.” Francis added in an aside, “We should not be scandalized by this — it’s part of a process.”

    His point seemed to be that pursuing justice in the church takes time and he said that when Benedict became pope he immediately told his secretary to get him the files “and he began.”

    But his example confounded advocates of nuns abused by priests, who noted that the pope is the single person within the church with absolute authority to take action at any time.

    I guess by “process” he meant “waiting for the current pope to die or resign”?

    Many members of the church, experts said, suffer from a medieval mind-set and consider the priests who commit abuse against nuns to be the victims of seductive temptresses. Since the victims in these cases are adults, the experts say, there is also a reflexive tendency to blame them. The reductive public image of the nun as existing to serve the priest and to pray quietly also undercuts those who speak up.

    As does the fact that all women are officially an inferior caste within the church, vide supra.

    In 1994, Sister Maura O’Donohue sent the Vatican the results of a multiyear, 23-nation survey about such abuse, which was especially rampant in Africa where nuns were considered safe sexual partners for priests who feared infection by H.I.V.

    One 1998 report focused on Africa observed that “sexual harassment and even rape of sisters by priests and bishops is allegedly common.”

    “When a sister becomes pregnant, the priest insists that she have an abortion,” the report added. ‘‘The sister is usually dismissed from her congregation while the priest is often only moved to another parish — or sent for studies.”

    Let’s hear that again.

    “When a sister becomes pregnant, the priest insists that she have an abortion,” the report added.

    Oh does he. Does he really.

  • Bezos to Pecker: No

    Jeff Bezos. Today. Reporting attempted blackmail and extortion by the National Enquirer, owned by American Media, Inc (AMI).

    Something unusual happened to me yesterday. Actually, for me it wasn’t just unusual — it was a first. I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Or at least that’s what the top people at the National Enquirer thought. I’m glad they thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all in writing. Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten.

    AMI, the owner of the National Enquirer, led by David Pecker, recently entered into an immunity deal with the Department of Justice related to their role in the so-called “Catch and Kill” process on behalf of President Trump and his election campaign. Mr. Pecker and his company have also been investigated for various actions they’ve taken on behalf of the Saudi Government.

    And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together:

    “After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions…”

    Federal investigators and legitimate media have of course suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used the Enquirer and AMI for political reasons. And yet AMI keeps claiming otherwise:

    “American Media emphatically rejects any assertion that its reporting was instigated, dictated or influenced in any manner by external forces, political or otherwise.”

    Other media say otherwise.

    Then, whaddya know, The National Enquirer published some texts of Bezos’s, and Bezos hired a lawyer to investigate.

    Here’s a piece of context: My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me. It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy.

    President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.

    (Even though The Post is a complexifier for me, I do not at all regret my investment. The Post is a critical institution with a critical mission. My stewardship of The Post and my support of its mission, which will remain unswerving, is something I will be most proud of when I’m 90 and reviewing my life, if I’m lucky enough to live that long, regardless of any complexities it creates for me.)

    Back to the story: Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is “apoplectic” about our investigation. For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.

    A few days after hearing about Mr. Pecker’s apoplexy, we were approached, verbally at first, with an offer. They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn’t stop our investigation.

    So Bezos has published the whole correspondence. Read on.

  • “Speaks for itself” in all caps superimposed on the photo

    From the “oh come on now” files:

    Yes, running the country like a mob boss is just fine as long as you wear a Flag Pin™ while you do it.