Siri, what is Taiwan?

Dec 2nd, 2016 3:22 pm | By

The latest in Trump has no fucking clue what he’s doing.

Trump: What does the President do?

The New York Times reports:

President-elect Donald J. Trump spoke by telephone with Taiwan’s president on Friday, a striking break with nearly four decades of diplomatic practice that could precipitate a major rift with China even before Mr. Trump takes office.

Mr. Trump’s office said he spoke with the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, “who offered her congratulations.”

He is believed to be the first president or president-elect who has spoken to a Taiwanese leader since 1979, when the United States severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan after its recognition of the People’s Republic of China.

He thinks he’s been elected dictator. He thinks he has no need to find out what he should be doing, because hey, he’s the Big Cheese.

The White House was not told about Mr. Trump’s call until after it happened, according to a senior administration official. The official spoke on ground rules of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic relations.

But the potential fallout from the conversation was significant, the administration official said, noting that the Chinese government issued a bitter protest after the United States sold weapons to Taiwan as part of a well-established arms agreement.

Mr. Trump’s call with President Tsai is a far bigger provocation, though the Chinese government did not issue an immediate response. Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has adamantly opposed the attempts of any country to open official relations with it.

So this won’t be any kind of problem at all.

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Is it just folks vs. folks?

Dec 2nd, 2016 3:09 pm | By

Meghan Murphy points out what should be obvious: it’s misogyny to tell women to move over and shut up, but it’s the hip new thing to do.

Feminism! A movement by women, for women. Or is it something about… Equality…? For… People?

Depends on who you ask. According to a recent article at Bustle, it’s all pretty hard to pin down.

Suzannah Weiss, “A large part of feminism is obtaining equal treatment for women, so understandably, a lot of feminist efforts and rhetoric focus on women.”

You don’t say. Similarly, basketball players play basketball, and bankers work in banks, and bus drivers drive buses. Of course feminist efforts focus on women; what should they focus on, frogs?

Weiss goes on to explain that the way women talk about women’s subordination under patriarchy (also known as the reason feminism exists) can “unintentionally erase trans and non-binary people.” It’s a funny way of framing things… Similar to saying, for example, that Black Lives Matter “unintentionally erases” white people. Or that the labour movement’s focus on the working class “unintentionally erases” the upper class. Does the animal rights movement “unintentionally erase” non-animals? Do Indigenous rights activists “unintentionally erase” other groups marginalized by white supremacy and colonialism?

No. It’s only women. It’s only women who aren’t allowed to focus on their own issues in their own movements.

None of this is to say that the feelings and rights of people who identify as trans or “non-binary” don’t matter, it is only to say that the purpose of the women’s movement is to liberate the class of women, who are oppressed, as females, under patriarchy. (In other words, if you are female and you also identify as trans or “non-binary,” yes, this is still about you.) This should not be a controversial statement for anyone who claims interest in the feminist project, but nonetheless countless do-gooders have taken it upon themselves to condescendingly explain to women that they need to sit down and shut up about their own material reality, within their own movement.

Is that because everybody, deep down, secretly does think that women are stupid and feeble and really shouldn’t liberate themselves from oppression?

Your identity is your own choice, but that doesn’t change the fact that patriarchy exists as a means to legitimize male power over females (i.e. the class of people capable of giving birth). The notion that we should degender conversations about feminism suggests we pretend not to know who is oppressing whom, and why — a mindfuck if there ever was one. (Is it just folks vs. folks? Who are the folks? Why are some folks raping other folks?! It’s a mystery…)

Power to the folks.

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As if they were so bound

Dec 2nd, 2016 12:30 pm | By

The Office of Government Ethics has been joining Trump in the Twitter game.

It started Wednesday morning, when President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter to address concerns about his ability to lead the U.S. government while also holding massive business interests around the world.

“While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses,” Trump tweeted, adding that “legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations” and that he will be leaving his “great business in total.”

More than “visually.” Much more. The “visual” part flows from the substantive part. Conflicts of interest are a problem for very clear, substantive reasons. Public servants are supposed to work for the public good, not their personal profit. That’s not a mere image issue.

What exactly that means remains unclear. But the verified Twitter account of the typically decorous federal ethics office chimed in with statements that appeared to goad Trump about divesting his businesses — something he hasn’t specifically promised to do.

“Bravo! Only way to resolve these conflicts of interest is to divest . Good call!” the agency tweeted, mimicking Trump’s own tweeting style. And: “OGE is delighted that you’ve decided to divest your businesses. Right decision!”

Then the tweets disappeared for awhile, and there was speculation they were a hack, or a tease, or who knows what.

But then they all came back, and a spokes sent NPR a statement:

An OGE spokesman, Seth Jaffe, who is the chief of the agency’s ethics law and policy branch, emailed a statement to NPR:

“Like everyone else, we were excited this morning to read the President-elect’s twitter feed indicating that he wants to be free of conflicts of interest. OGE applauds that goal, which is consistent with an opinion OGE issued in 1983. Divestiture resolves conflicts of interest in a way that transferring control does not. We don’t know the details of their plan, but we are willing and eager to help them with it.”

The statement suggested that the tweets have been deliberate all along. And, in fact, the OGE later confirmed to NPR that this was not a hack.

So then people wondered if the OGE had insider information about what Trump meant by his bizarro tweets.

Almost two hours after the first statement, the OGE issued another one:

“The tweets that OGE posted today were responding only to the public statement that the President-elect made on his Twitter feed about his plans regarding conflicts of interest. OGE’s tweets were not based on any information about the President-elect’s plans beyond what was shared on his Twitter feed. OGE is non-partisan and does not endorse any individual.”

The tweets are all there to see: here is their Twitter.

I followed the link on this one:

I found a letter from the OGE from October 1983:

You have requested us to confirm our oral advice of
October 18, 1983 regarding whether or not the conflict of
interest laws (18 U.S.C. §§ 202-209) and the standards of conduct
regulations (see 3 C.F.R. Part 100) would prohibit the President
from taking part in official matters relating to the
entertainment industry which may from time to time arise.
In brief, the Department of Justice’s views, with which we
agree, are that the President and the Vice President are not
legally subject to the restrictions of (1) the conflict of
interest laws, Title 18 U.S.C. §§ 202-209, and (2) the standards
of conduct as set forth in Executive Order No. 11222 of
May 8, 1965 and the regulations thereunder, 5 C.F.R Part 735
(pertaining to the whole executive branch) and 3 C.F.R. Part 100
(pertaining specifically to the Executive Office of the
President), but as a matter of policy, the President and the Vice
President should conduct themselves as if they were so bound.

Emphasis added. Yes they should. Please start now.

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$365 million in loans

Dec 2nd, 2016 11:00 am | By

Ok this one seems massive – Trump owes Deutsche Bank some $365 million dollars, and Deutsche Bank is in big trouble with the US Department of Justice.

Uh oh.

In 2013, Trump signed a 60-year lease for the building, once the headquarters of the U.S. Post Office, and began a $200 million renovation to turn it into an upscale hotel with the help of loans from Deutsche Bank, a large German bank.

Trump’s financial disclosure reports, viewed by NPR, show he currently owes Deutsche Bank roughly $365 million in loans for the Washington hotel, another one in Chicago and a Florida golf course.

Deutsche Bank is one of the large global banks investing in and betting on real estate around the world. So it makes some sense it would be exposed to Trump, says Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT’s Sloane School of Management. He says Trump has had a relationship with the Frankfurt-based bank spanning nearly two decades, and it is his largest financial backer.

But Johnson says Deutsche Bank is in deep trouble with the Justice Department over a number of allegations.

And Donald Trump will be overseeing that very department.

“The tip of the iceberg is a particular fine by the Department of Justice, a large fine with the opening numbers around $14 billion, with regard to how they created and sold mortgage-backed securities before 2008,” he says.

There are private negotiations underway over the amount of that fine, Johnson says, with the bank and the German government pushing back.

He says this sets up a huge conflict of interest for the president-elect: Once Trump takes office, he will be overseeing the Justice Department, which in turn is negotiating a fine with his biggest lender.

“Does it look bad? Does it look like exactly someone might cut Deutsche Bank a deal because they want their boss’s boss to be happier? Yeah, absolutely, of course,” Johnson says. “And that’s why we try to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

There’s that extra three words again – the appearance of. Couldn’t “we” try to avoid conflict of interest, period, and assume the appearance will naturally follow? I don’t want the fuckers to hide the payoffs and backroom deals, I want them to not have them.

Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, says it would be best if the case were resolved under the Obama administration.

Well, no, it would be best if Trump and all his relatives simply got out of his business – sold it off and invested in Treasury bonds.

But Painter, now a law professor at the University of Minnesota, says even if the case against Deutsche Bank can be resolved, there are a host of other potential conflicts surrounding the Trump International Hotel — such as guests staying there as a way to curry favor with Trump.

“The foreign diplomats who are coming in to stay at the hotel at the expense of their governments could create a very serious issue for the president [-elect] under the emoluments clause of the Constitution,” he says.

But the Republicans will refuse to do anything about it, and get away with it for at least a couple of years, and this squalid situation will go on and on and on. It’s disgusting.

Steven Schooner, with the George Washington University Law School, says Trump’s lease with the hotel — which NPR has seen — should be terminated immediately, because the terms of that lease say so.

“The contract specifically says that no elected official of the United States government shall be party to, share in or benefit from the contract. It couldn’t be any more clear than that,” he says.

But will the lease be terminated? I doubt it. The people in charge seem to be letting this proceed without let or hindrance.

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Oops, missed a bit

Dec 2nd, 2016 10:25 am | By

The Independent reports another study that finds global warming is happening faster than thought because researchers hadn’t taken into account the carbon in soil.

The report, by an exhaustive list of researchers and published in the Nature journal, assembled data from 49 field experiments over the last 20 years in North America, Europe and Asia.

It found that the majority of the Earth’s terrestrial store of carbon was in soil, and that as the atmosphere warms up, increasing amounts are emitted in what is a vicious cycle of “positive feedbacks”.

The study found that 55bn tonnes in carbon, not previously accounted for by scientists, will be emitted into the atmosphere by 2050.

“As the climate warms, those organisms become more active and the more active they become, the more the soil respires – exactly the same as human beings,” said Dr Crowther, who headed up the study at Yale Climate & Energy Institute, but is now a Marie Curie fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology.

He says it’s definitely already happening, and will make a difference…not in a good way.

Dr Crowther, a 30-year-old Cardiff University Phd graduate originally from North Wales, predicts climate change will lead to widespread migrations and antagonism among communities.

It will you know. Coastal flooding; rivers drying up; crop failures; more and worse hurricanes and typhoons – all of it will mean mass migration, and that will mean unimaginable levels of violence – what the Indy delicately calls “antagonism among communities.”

“This study is very important, because the response of soil carbon stocks to the ongoing warming, is one of the largest sources of uncertainty in our climate models,” said Prof Janssens, of the University of Antwerp.

“I’m an optimist and still believe that it is not too late, but we urgently need to develop a global economy driven by sustainable energy sources and start using CO2, as a substrate, instead of a waste product.

“If this happens by 2050, then we can avoid warming above 2C. If not, we will reach a point of no return and will probably exceed 5C.”

Good luck, people of the future.

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The Nazi on the road

Dec 2nd, 2016 8:50 am | By

The Führer tweeted an action shot.

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Product placement comes to the Oval Office

Dec 1st, 2016 5:35 pm | By

Last July the Independent went to Macy’s in New York to look at Ivanka Trump’s line of clothes.

One of the people at the Republican National Convention who received praise from all corners was Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka.

People liked her sharp comments, and admired her stylish line of clothes, which she highlighted during her performances. When she tweeted a link the morning after delivering a speech about how her father would fight for America, the $139 (£106) pink dress she had worn sold out online.

Ok wait, she what? She promoted her clothes during her “performances” – meaning her appearances at a political convention which nominated her father as a candidate for president? She flogged her clothes there? How grotesque, how tacky, how inappropriate, how gross.

That’s disgusting.

Yet many will be surprised to learn that the vast majority of Ms Trump’s clothes are not manufactured in US, but in China and Vietnam, two countries under the spotlight for human rights abuses and poor labour conditions.

So she uses a political convention to market her product, and she makes her product cheaply by doing it in China and Vietnam.

An inspection by The Independent of more than 25 different items of Ms Trump’s range at the Macy’s flagship store in New York city, found not a single one was produced in the US. A sales assistant confirmed that no items in the collection were made at home.

Donald? Any comment?

A number of commentators have favourably reflected on how Ms Trump used her moment in the spotlight last week in Cleveland to promote her own line of products, which includes clothing, accessories, shoes and fragrances.

Wtf? Why would anyone comment favorably on that? It’s so fucking sleazy.

During his campaign Mr Trump has spoken repeatedly about “bad trade deals” that have seen American jobs go to countries such as Mexico and China. When he was campaigning in Indiana he vowed to tax a producer of air conditioners, Carrier, which had announced it was moving 1,400 jobs from Indianapolis to Mexico.

Likewise, when he learned that the food giant RJR Nabisco had also relocated a factory to Mexico, he said he would stop eating Oreos, despite his love of the chocolate biscuits.

Later, speaking in the battleground state of Ohio in June, he declared: “We’re getting the hell beaten out of us. We’re going to stop. We’re going to bring jobs back to this country.”

Except in our companies. Everyone else’s, but not ours.

Harvard Trade and Investment Professor Robert Lawrence said earlier this year he had inspected a total of the 838 Ivanka Trump products that were advertised on the Trump.Com website. He said 628 were said to be imported and 354 were made specifically made in China. Her father’s products were also produced overseas.

“Trump castigates American companies like Apple, Ford, Carrier and Kraft that use their brands to sell goods in the US, but produce them in other countries,” he wrote in a column for PBS. “Yet despite these deep convictions, when it comes to his own businesses, Trump doesn’t exactly walk the walk.”

Why it’s almost as if he’s completely hollow.

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And he’s gonna make the faucets run ice cream, too

Dec 1st, 2016 5:11 pm | By

Trump says he’s going to “punish” companies that move their factories to places with lower wages. Yeah sure he is – right after he sells all that he has and gives to the poor.

Trump’s remarks came as he triumphantly celebrated a decision by the heating and air conditioning company Carrier to reverse its plans to close a furnace plant here and move to Mexico, helping keep 1,100 jobs in Indianapolis. About that many Carrier positions at that plant and another facility in the area will still be cut, however.

Plus Trump bribed them with tax breaks, thus providing an incentive for all other companies to threaten to run away from home unless Trump bribes them too.

In remarks delivered inside the Carrier facility, the president-elect said more companies will decide to stay in the United States because his administration will lower corporate taxes and reduce regulations.

Yay! Get ready for more pollution, more workplace injuries and deaths, more contaminated food, more bogus product claims, more workers fired for being too ugly or old or fat or all of those.

“Companies are not going to leave the United States any more without consequences,” Trump declared Thursday. “Not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen.”

His verbal flair is such a joy.

Trump said he decided to intervene after watching a television news report that reminded him that he had vowed during the campaign, “We’re not going to let Carrier leave.”

Maybe next he’ll watch Thelma and Louise and drive off a cliff.

The Carrier deal was sharply criticized by some conservatives, who viewed it as government distortion of free markets, as well as liberals, who derided it as corporate welfare.

“I think it sets a pretty bad precedent,” said Dan Ikenson, director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “I don’t think we should be addressing issues like this on an ad hoc basis. It certainly incentivizes companies to make a stink and say, ‘We’re going to leave, too. What are you going to do for me?’ ”

Aw poor Republicans. They’re starting to see the downside already.

Privately, some business leaders were also unnerved.

“It is uncharted territory for a president-elect to get involved personally in social engineering with a single company,” said an adviser to major corporations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order not to anger the new administration.

Because if the adviser angered the new administration, the new administration might pull out the adviser’s fingernails.

People in Indianapolis are saying what a great guy Trump is, he keeps his promises, wotta pal.

In fact, by Trump’s own telling on Thursday, he had no plans to intervene in the Carrier case until he watched an evening news segment featuring a worker who expressed confidence that the president-elect would save the Indianapolis plant. He said his campaign vow to save the plant was “a euphemism” for other companies.

Hahahahahahaha that’s not what euphemism means oh lord he’s such a joke…until he kills us all.

Regardless, Trump — known for his tendency to react to TV news reports — said he immediately picked up the phone and called Gregory Hayes, the chief executive of Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies.

“I said, ‘Greg, you gotta help us out here. You gotta do something,’ ” Trump recalled Thursday.

I’m picturing William Macy as Jerry Lundegaard.

Standing in front of a wall blanketed with Carrier’s blue-and-white logo, Trump lavished praise on the company for its decision, promising that the sales of its air-conditioning units would soar “because of the goodwill you have engendered.”

Experts said no modern president has intervened on behalf of an individual company. While Obama stepped in to rescue car manufacturers after the 2008 financial crisis and President John F. Kennedy intervened to prevent steel producers from increasing prices, these actions affected entire industries — not decisions at a specific plant, Bartik said.

Jeff Windau, an analyst at the investment firm Edward Jones in St. Louis, said that Trump may not have the “bandwidth” to keep up this kind of deal-making once in the Oval Office.

Hahahahahaha that’s such a tactful way of putting it. No, it probably won’t work very well for him to try to schmooze every CEO he glimpses on the news, one at a time.

“Having a current president-elect focus on a specific company and a specific location — it’s a pretty micro view of the world,” he said.

But Trump said Thursday that he planned to personally call other companies contemplating moving operations out of the country, even, as he said, if critics felt such outreach was not “presidential.”

“I think it’s very presidential. And if it’s not presidential, that’s okay because I actually like doing it,” Trump said. “But we’re going to have a lot of phone calls made to companies when they say they’re leaving this country, because they’re not going to leave this country.”

“That’s okay because I actually like doing it” – of course he does, he loves calling people up, and he thinks that’s what the job is – calling the CEO of Pakistan and telling him how great he is, and calling up each CEO personally…he’s hilarious. As long as you don’t focus on the damage he’ll do.

Trump’s aggressive stance toward outsourcing comes despite the fact that his family companies profit from low-wage laborers around the globe who produce Trump-branded merchandise. His daughter Ivanka has her own separate brand of jewelry, shoes and clothing, much of which is produced in China.

But that’s completely different because…Is that a squirrel?

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To the dogs

Dec 1st, 2016 11:26 am | By

Some people in Saudi Arabia think a woman who goes outside with naked hair should be killed. Killed.

A woman in Saudi Arabia pictured without a hijab is facing calls for her execution.

Some social media users reacted with outrage after the emergence of the image taken in capital city Riyadh, with one man calling for the state to “kill her and throw her corpse to the dogs”.

Not for murder or torture or abuse or otherwise harming others – but for not wearing a black tent that conceals everything but her eyes.

An unnamed student who reposted the image told the website that Ms Al Shehri had announced she was going out to breakfast without either a hijab or abaya; a traditional Saudi body covering.

The student said she started receiving death threats after posting proof in response to followers who had asked to see a photo.

She got so many threats she deleted the tweets, but she still got more, so she deleted her account.

A hashtag which translates into English as “we demand the imprisonment of the rebel Angel Al Shehri” subsequently went viral.

One user wrote “we propose blood”, while another demanded a “harsh punishment for the heinous situation”.

Despite the outrage, many more users in Saudi Arabia came out in support of the woman’s actions.

Religion: teaching people to be hateful for thousands of years.

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Amazing work which is visible in every way

Dec 1st, 2016 10:29 am | By

Nawaz Sharif phoned Trump yesterday, and Trump responded by flinging himself down belly-up and squirming.

Donald Trump has heaped praise on Pakistan, traditionally a troublesome US ally, saying it is a “fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people” according to an official statement released by Islamabad.

The US president-elect made his effusive comments in a phone conversation on Wednesday with Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of the nuclear-armed state, whom Trump hailed as a “terrific guy”.

He had no idea who Sharif was, did he. He couldn’t remember what Pakistan was. He had no clue. He was vamping in place.

The statement by the government’s Press Information Department quoted Trump saying: “As I am talking to you prime minister, I feel I am talking to a person I have known for long. Your country is amazing with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people.”

It’s probably not a verbatim transcript, the Guardian points out. But if that’s the gist…somebody needs to put the baby back in the playpen, and never let it answer the phone again.

It is unlikely Sharif was expecting such a torrent of praise when he phoned Trump to congratulate him on his election victory.

Relations between the two countries have been fraught for years, with the Obama administration despairing at Pakistan’s harbouring of the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network, two insurgent groups that have used Pakistan soil to launch attacks on US and Nato troops in Afghanistan for more than 15 years.

Yes yes yes but Trump is an outsider, remember? His job is to ignore all that and just do what occurs to him when the phone rings.

Current rows between the two countries include US demands for the release from prison of Shakil Afridi, a doctor who helped lead the CIA to the hiding place of former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden; the withholding of $300m in “reimbursements” to the Pakistani army; and the holding up of a financing deal that would have allowed Islamabad to by US F16 fighter jets.

But none of those issues appeared to weigh on Trump, who reportedly told Sharif: “You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way.”

Pakistan will be cock-a-hoop over Trump’s apparent enthusiasm for engaging with a country that has few firm international allies.

“I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems,” Trump was reported as saying.

This will go well.

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How’s that for standing up to corporate greed?

Dec 1st, 2016 7:04 am | By

Bernie Sanders points out that Trump has just signaled to every corporation in the US that it can get big tax benefits and incentives if it threatens to go offshore.

In exchange for allowing United Technologies to continue to offshore more than 1,000 jobs, Trump will reportedly give the company tax and regulatory favors that the corporation has sought. Just a short few months ago, Trump was pledging to force United Technologies to “pay a damn tax.” He was insisting on very steep tariffs for companies like Carrier that left the United States and wanted to sell their foreign-made products back in the United States. Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut. Wow! How’s that for standing up to corporate greed? How’s that for punishing corporations that shut down in the United States and move abroad?

In essence, United Technologies took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shock wave of fear through all workers across the country.

Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe in the United States. Why? Because he has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives.

Wouldn’t you think a brilliant deal-maker like Donnie from Queens would have figured that out?

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System One wallops System Two

Nov 30th, 2016 4:49 pm | By

AC Grayling notes that the hijackers of Brexit and the Trump win may be using the research of Daniel Kahneman and others to grab public opinion.

What Kahneman and other researchers have empirically confirmed in their work is that the majority of people are ‘System One’ or ‘quick’ thinkers in that they make decisions on impulse, feeling, emotion, and first impressions, rather than ‘System Two’ or ‘slow’ thinkers who seek information, analyse it, and weigh arguments in order to come to decisions. System One thinkers can be captured by slogans, statements dramatised to the point of falsehood, and even downright lies, because they will not check the validity of what is said, but instead will mistrust System Two thinkers whose lengthier arguments and appeals to data are often regarded as efforts to bamboozle and mislead.

That certainly fits Trump himself. He clearly wouldn’t know System Two thinking if it bit him on the ass. He thinks System One is all there is.

I hesitate to use the term, but ‘coup’ comes to mind in relation to what has happened with the Brexit referendum. UKIP and the minority of the Tory party in Parliament knew they would never get a Brexit by Parliamentary means or at a general election; but at long last, having made life hell for every Tory Prime Minister since Edward Heath, they succeeded in getting one of their leaders to promise a referendum. And they then went to town with those manipulating lies and distortions – such as the £350million promise for the NHS, and massive misinformation about immigration – helped by their non-resident billionaire newspaper-owner allies. Having achieved a very small majority of votes cast on the day, actually constituting only 37% of the total electorate (26% of the British population), they have run with it as vigorously as they can, claiming it as an ‘overwhelming’ demand by ‘the people’ that both mandates and binds the Government to take the UK out of the EU.

And Trump and his gang are doing the same thing.

In effect, Farage, Gove, Johnson, Fox and Davis, with their 60 or so supporters in the Tory party, are trying to stampede the UK out of the EU on the basis not just of the falsehoods and distortions of the Leave campaign and the 40 years of tabloid venom against the EU, but by continuing to lie about what the referendum really means, deliberately ignoring challenges over its advisory nature and the lack of effective mandate it offers, among other things ignoring the Remain vote entirely and the fact that nearly three-quarters of the British population did not vote to leave the EU.

One of many examples was provided by Leaver Tory MP Owen Patterson on the BBC Today programme recently. Describing the Leave vote in the referendum as ‘huge’ – which is dishonest use of language by any standard – he made a veiled threat that there would be trouble on the streets if the Leavers did not get their way.

Again, exactly like Trump and Co! Veiled threats and unveiled threats.

Patterson put this point obliquely by saying that disgruntled Leave voters would feel ‘betrayed by the Establishment’ if Brexit does not happen – thus aligning himself with one aspect of Leave rhetoric which is as risible as it is dangerous: figures of the Establishment and the elite such as himself and his Oxford-educated leader, the Prime Minister, who is married to a wealthy hedge-fund manager but who has claimed that she is championing the cause of the System One demographic against ‘the elite,’ aka the Establishment, of which she and Mr Patterson are shining examples.

Again. Trump the “populist” with his Solid Gold Living Room.

Pardon me while I lapse into despair again.

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Hotcha

Nov 30th, 2016 3:46 pm | By

A little break from Trumpnews:

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8 for men, 0 for women

Nov 30th, 2016 3:31 pm | By

Again with the push to erase women and delete them from all places and movements and discussions.

Why in Portland—one of the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in America, and home to the nation’s first bisexual governor and its first lesbian House speaker—is there no lesbian nightlife?

It’s been six years since the Egyptian Club, better known as the E-Room, lowered its rainbow flag in Southeast Portland, and in that time no brick-and-mortar lesbian bar has emerged to fill its space. (By contrast, Portland has eight gay bars for men.)

Moreover, the city doesn’t have a single dance night or recurring party that caters exclusively to women seeking women.

So what happened?

Genders multiplied and proliferated until there were 97 varieties, but it just so happened that “women” somehow got dropped along the way.

“I’ve never felt comfortable with the term lesbian,” says Llondyn Elliott, 19, who identifies as non-binary. “It’s really restricting to me to say I’m a lesbian. That means I’m a girl who likes girls. But am I a girl? And do I only like girls? No.”

The result? Announcing that a Portland party is intended exclusively for lesbians is stepping into a minefield of identity politics.

In the past two years, events catering to lesbians, like the monthly meet-up Fantasy Softball League, have been targeted online as unsafe spaces for trans women and others who don’t identify with feminine pronouns. This past summer, semi-regular parties for lesbians, like Lesbian Night at Old Town’s CC Slaughters, changed their names and focus to avoid controversy and be more inclusive. And lesbian-owned bars that draw lesbian customers, like Escape, shun the label so as not to offend.

And yet bars that self-describe as being for gay men don’t. Isn’t that interesting.

Trish Bendix, former editor of AfterEllen, an online publication about lesbian, queer and bisexual women in the media, lived in Portland from 2011 to 2014. She says she has never been around so many queer people in her life, but she was often among a minority who identified as lesbian.

“I often feel like lesbians are forgotten or left behind,” she says, “and sometimes it feels lonely.”

Not to mention unfair.

Emily Stutzman, 31, tried to create a space for lesbians. It ended poorly.

A producer for a Portland ad agency, Stutzman says she couldn’t find places in the city to hang out with other lesbians after moving here from Indiana in 2008.

In 2014, after ending a romantic relationship, an unsettling thought struck her: “How do I find somebody else?”

So that year she decided to create her own social gathering for lesbians, calling it Fantasy Softball League, a winking nod to stereotypes about lesbians. The “league” had nothing to do with softball, and instead was a monthly meet-up at Vendetta, a bar on North Williams Avenue.

“Hey ladies,” an ad beckoned. “Cool girls, drinking cool drinks in a cool bar, talking about cool stuff.”

But all was not cool.

In summer 2015, Stutzman, who has wavy red hair and wears an enameled “I Love Cats” pin on her jean jacket, recalls walking through Vendetta greeting people when someone she’d never met—someone who didn’t identify with traditional female conventions like the pronoun “she”—confronted her.

“The person was hostile, and wanting to pick a fight,” Stutzman recalls. “This person was offended and said they would tell their friends that we were a group of people that were non-inclusive and not respectful of their gender.”

The person—Stutzman never got a name—left the event, and Stutzman was left feeling confused. As she looked around, she saw many people who fell between male and female. She thought her event was inclusive, even if the vernacular wasn’t.

“What we wanted to say is, if you’re a straight dude, don’t come to this event,” she says. “Everyone else was fine.”

Stutzman adjusted her language, no longer calling Fantasy Softball League a lesbian event. Instead, she called it an event for queer women. But even with the change, Stutzman still worried.

“Everything I tried, someone was offended,” she says. “It got weird and political, and I wanted it to be a fun thing.”

It’s funny how women turn out to be the universal enemy, isn’t it.

That fall, Stutzman handed responsibility for the event to Alissa Young, who renamed the event Gal Pals, relocated it to the Florida Room on North Killingsworth Street, and ran into more trouble. Some people took offense at the event’s new feminine name.

So Young folded the event. Now she mourns the loss: “Can’t we have spaces that are just for lesbians?”

No, because lesbians, like feminists, are required to “center” trans women. Rules are rules.

In September, a monthly party for queer women in Portland drew rebukes because it called itself a “dyke party” that catered to women and “female-identified folk.”

“Everyone who is female-identified is a woman,” wrote one critic on Facebook. “Are you saying that you believe there are people who identify as women who aren’t women?”

Are you saying there are sheep who identify as goats who aren’t goats?

The debate over naming identities and creating spaces for them isn’t limited to women. However, Byron Beck, WW‘s former Queer Window columnist, says the conversation is not as prevalent in gay male culture. “It’s easy to find gay events for men in town,” he says.

Quite so. Men aren’t told to erase themselves the way women are. Funny how that works, isn’t it.

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How to manipulate Donnie from Queens

Nov 30th, 2016 11:24 am | By

William Saletan has advice on how to deal with the pathetic needy narcissist that is Trump.

To understand Trump, you have to set aside the scripted speeches he gave before his election and the canned videos he has released since. You also have to set aside the caricature of him as a Klan-loving, Nazi-sympathizing woman hater who will deport every immigrant he can find. Instead, look at the four interviews he has given since his election: to the Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, and a group of TV anchors and executives. In these exchanges, all of them conducted outside the behavior-warping context of the campaign, you’ll see how squishy he is. Trump did run a despicable campaign, and he’s a menace to the country and the world. But it’s not because he’s a strongman. It’s because he’s a weakling.

That’s the short version. The longer story is more complicated.

Narcissism is complicated. Trump demands universal love and adulation.

Emotionally, he’s a child. He can love others, but only if they love him first. And that’s how he sees his presidency. In his interview with the Times on Nov. 22, he explained that his job is “taking care of the people that really have proven to be—to love Donald Trump.”

He’s vindictive. His ego is terribly fragile.

To understand how central this is to Trump’s sense of himself, check out the first 19 paragraphs of his interview with the Times. Invited by the publisher to give opening remarks, Trump spoke at length, not about the future but about his genius and prowess on the campaign trail. In his Nov. 11 interview with 60 Minutes, he bragged about the number of Twitter followers he had gained.

I did marvel at his opening remarks to the Times – at the self-obsession and irrelevance.

He craves approval. Trump often comes across as indifferent to the feelings of others. That’s misleading. He cares intensely about being respected and loved.

That’s an odd way to put it. That is being indifferent to the feelings of others. If your only concern about the feelings of others is how much they love you, then you are indifferent to their feelings. Trump doesn’t give a flying fuck how others feel when he insults them; that’s being indifferent to the feelings of others.

He’s easily soothed by flattery. Trump is a champ at nursing grudges when he feels cheated, threatened, or disrespected. But his grudges, like his commitments, can be washed out by small doses of affection. He speaks glowingly of generous post-election phone calls he received from the Clintons and the Bushes. He has praised both families in return. Those threats to prosecute Hillary? Never mind. Trump also can’t stop clucking about his Nov. 10 meeting with President Obama. At least three times, Trump has claimed to have “great chemistry” with the man he had never previously met and had repeatedly denounced as the worst president ever. That’s how easily Trump’s wrath can turn to warmth—and vice versa.

It’s also another illustration of his indifference to the feelings of others – his ability to forget all about the years he spent pretending to believe Obama was born in Kenya and the revolting way he talked about Clinton. To put it another way, it’s one more illustration of his total lack of a theory of mind. Obama was nice to him during their meeting, so Obama must love him; nothing that went before has any relevance.

He’s a softie. If Trump hurts a lot of people as president, it won’t be out of malice.

That one seems dead wrong to me. Trump boils with malice.

He’s obtuse to the pain he inflicts. If Trump cares so much about feelings, why doesn’t he see all the fear and stress he has caused? Because that would require him to accept criticism, and his ego can’t handle it. On 60 Minutes, he batted away questions about his invective during the campaign, insisting that “my strongest asset is my temperament” and that he “can’t regret” anything he’d said. If some folks are upset by his election, that can’t be his fault, so it has to be theirs. “There are people, Americans, who are scared, and some of them are demonstrating right now, demonstrating against you, against your rhetoric,” Stahl told him. Trump seemed baffled. “That’s only because they don’t know me,” he said.

Trump is virtually lobotomized. Unable to acknowledge his role in stirring up hatred and fear, he blames others. When Stahl told him that “African Americans think there’s a target on their back,” and “Muslims are terrified,” he shrugged that such fears were “built up by the press, because, frankly, they’ll take every single little incident … and they’ll make [it] into an event.” In his interview with the Times, Trump claimed that low black turnout showed how popular he was: “A lot of people didn’t show up, because the African-American community liked me.” The vanity of this man is bottomless.

He cares about his friends but not people he considers enemies. That’s universal, in a sense, but in Trump it’s absolute.

12. He’s easily manipulated. Having a fragile, approval-craving narcissist as president isn’t the end of the world. It just means that to get him to do the right thing, you have to pet him. In Trump’s post-election exchanges, we have several useful models. The first is Obama, who gave Trump a tongue bath in their 90-minute meeting on Nov. 10 and may have saved his signature legislative achievement in the process. Three days after that meeting, Trump told the Journal he was reconsidering his pledge to abolish Obama’s health insurance program: “Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced.”

Well, all I can say is, I’m glad I’m not one of the people in a position to manipulate him that way. I’m glad I’m free to keep saying what an awful shit he is.

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Puffing the name

Nov 30th, 2016 10:53 am | By

Damn, I missed one. Too busy documenting his tweets, no doubt. Ten days ago he met with three business partners from India, who tweeted a photo of the four of them thumbs-upping.

President-elect Donald J. Trump met in the last week in his office at Trump Tower with three Indian business partners who are building a Trump-branded luxury apartment complex south of Mumbai, raising new questions about how he will separate his business dealings from the work of the government once he is in the White House.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump described the meeting as a courtesy call by the three Indian real estate executives, who flew from India to congratulate Mr. Trump on his election victory. In a picture posted on Twitter, all four men are smiling and giving a thumbs-up.

The tweet seems to be gone now. At any rate – there’s no such thing as a “courtesy call” in this context. You can’t brush it off or polish it up by calling it that. This is the pres-elect putting his business interests ahead of his job as president.

The three Indian executives — Sagar Chordia, Atul Chordia, and Kalpesh Mehta — have been quoted in Indian newspapers, including The Economic Times, as saying they have discussed expanding their partnership with the Trump Organization now that Mr. Trump is president-elect.

Sagar Chordia did not respond to a request for a telephone interview. But in a series of text messages with The New York Times early Sunday, he confirmed that the meeting with Mr. Trump and members of his family had taken place, and that an article written about it in the Indian newspaper, which reported that one of his partners said they had discussed the desire to expand the deals with the Trump family, was accurate.

Washington ethics lawyers said that a meeting with Indian real estate partners, regardless of what was discussed, raised conflict of interest questions for Mr. Trump, who could be perceived as using the presidency to advance his business interests.

It’s pretty hard not to see it that way. What he’s selling here is his name, his brand, and it would be fatuous to try to claim that name and brand are not worth more after his election. Of course he’s using the presidency to advance his business interests.

“There may be people for whom this looks O.K.,” said Robert L. Walker, the former chief counsel of the Senate Ethics Committee, who advises corporations and members of Congress on government ethics issues. “But for a large part of the American public, it is not going to be O.K. His role as president-elect should dictate that someone else handles business matters.”

In an account of the meeting that appeared in The Economic Times, Mr. Trump was quoted as praising the United States’ relationship with India and its prime minister, Narendra Modi.

…

Internationally, many properties that bear Mr. Trump’s name are the result of marketing deals — like the one in India — in which he is paid by someone for the use of his name but does not actually own the underlying property. He has such marketing agreements in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, the Philippines and Turkey, according to a list published by his company.

So that’s a major conflict of interest with all those countries.

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Trump vows to cover his ass

Nov 30th, 2016 9:06 am | By

The Times has another cruel headline about Trump, although this one won’t bother him because he won’t get it.

Trump Vows Steps to Avoid Appearance of Business Conflicts

Precisely. He’s throwing a damp kleenex over his business conflicts, but not, of course, actually terminating them. He’s hoping to conceal them; he’s not in the least hoping to do away with them.

The headline is pretty funny, really, despite the horror of the reality behind it. Trump promises to try to hide how corrupt he is. Cool, bro, thanks.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday said he would take steps to separate himself from his vast, global business empire in the hopes of preventing the appearance of a conflict of interest as he becomes president.

But Mr. Trump’s announcement, delivered in a series of early-morning posts on Twitter, drew an immediate rebuke from legal and ethics experts in Washington, who said that a close reading of the actual words in the posts suggests that Mr. Trump is not planning to take sufficient steps to eliminate the conflicts.

The president-elect provided few details, but promised to hold a “major news conference” with his adult children in two weeks to reveal legal documents that will remove him from what he called the “business operations” of his company. He vowed to leave the Trump Organization “in total” to focus on running the country from the White House.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803931490514075648

That last sentence is so grotesque…as if we need to be told that the presidency is more important than his profits, when he’s the only one who’s confused about it. He’s such a goon.

The emphasis on “business operations,” not on ownership, hinted that Mr. Trump is not ruling out retaining a financial stake in the Trump Organization or putting his children in control of the company. Ethics experts said such moves would leave Mr. Trump vulnerable to accusations that his official actions are motivated by personal financial interests.

More to the point, such moves would leave all of us vulnerable to the fallout from Trump’s corruption.

Reince Priebus, who will be the White House chief of staff, said on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” that he was not ready to provide any more information about the legal discussions.

“You should know that he’s got the best people in the world working on it,” Mr. Priebus said, adding that the American people were aware of Mr. Trump’s business entanglements when they elected him.

Well that’s outrageous. No they weren’t. Some were, if they took the trouble to look into it, but it’s ludicrous to say they all were, since it’s not as if Trump and his campaign made a point of talking about them, is it. It would be fair for Priebus to say the information was available before the election, but it’s insulting to claim everyone was aware of the information.

But hey, it’s appearance that counts.

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Inspired by Trump

Nov 30th, 2016 8:27 am | By

In Florida:

A white Florida man has been charged with battery after he was accused of punching an Hispanic man in the back of the head “for Donald Trump.”

It happened in a parking lot behind a grocery store in Gainesville.

According to a police report obtained by Egberto Willies, Caleb Joseph Illig arrived at the parking lot at around 1:10 a.m. and began punching Pablo Echevarria in the back of the head.

The report said that Illig shouted, “Let’s Trump down,” as he punched Echevarria. When Echevarria asked why he was being attacked, Illig reportedly replied, “This is for Donald Trump.”

Trump the warrior against political correctness. Now that political correctness has been defeated, it’s cool for white guys to beat up people with names like “Echeverria.” It’s so PC and SJW to fail to beat up people with Spanish surnames.

Police said that security footage “clearly shows [Illig] striking [Echevarria] in the back of the head, and completely corroborates the [victim] and [witness’] accounts of the incident.”

Illig said he didn’t remember a thing about it.

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To address any issues

Nov 30th, 2016 8:16 am | By

Trump is going to be in violation of his lease with the GSA the minute he becomes president.

The new Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., is in a historic federal building. A government agency called the General Services Administration, or GSA, negotiated the lease with the Trump Organization. And that lease includes this language: No elected official shall be admitted to any share or part of this lease or to any benefit that may arise there from.

Steven Schooner is a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University Law School; he read the lease and says it means what the words say.

I think that the only logical or reasonable reading of that language is that the president of the United States may not be admitted to a share of the lease and may not benefit from it. So come January 20, it seems to me the president-elect is in breach of the contract. And quite simply, I believe the GSA should end the contract. They should simply terminate it.

But will they? I’m getting the feeling that nobody is going to do anything about Trump’s many violations except whine about them.

To the extent that he is going to appoint the head of the GSA and the head of the GSA will serve at his pleasure and he’s going to be basically the tenant, there’s no way there can be an arm’s length relationship between the two parties – more importantly, that GSA employees have to demand financial information from the Trump Organization on an annual basis and then renegotiate the pricing.

There’s no way a GSA civil servant is going to be able to negotiate with the president or the president’s children with the government and the public’s interest at heart.

But will anybody do anything about it?

 

SHAPIRO: Trump recently settled a lawsuit over Trump University for $25 million or so, and you argue that under ordinary circumstances, that would be a red flag for GSA and that in fact it might be enough to prevent the office from ever doing business with the Trump Organization again.

SCHOONER: Absolutely. If you read the New York attorney general’s press release, basically what they said is that among other things, there was fraud. If this was any other contractor, there would be members of Congress screaming at the GSA suspension and debarment official, basically saying, you must ensure to protect the government’s interests that the government never does business with this type of contractor again.

And Trump of course isn’t this type of contractor but the actual contractor – the fraud himself in person.

Shapiro (the NPR reporter) asks what would happen if the GSA did terminate.

SCHOONER: Well, the obvious solution would be a transfer or what in government contracts we call innovation. GSA could go to some other firm and basically say, run the hotel for us. It’s just another lease. So that’s easy enough.

But let’s also be clear. GSA could simply tomorrow – and I believe they should – terminate the contract because the president-elect has breached a material or a significant or important term in the contract. If they terminate, look; we know the Trump organization is notoriously litigious, so maybe they sue. But in terms of contract interpretation 101, we think the GSA wins that case.

But even if they lose – and this is so important – it’s only money. The principle here, the idea that federal procurement is supposed to be free from these types of conflicts, is much more important than a little bit of money.

That’s that line near the end of Fargo – “and all for a little bit of money.”

The GSA says it’s not going to do anything about it.

SHAPIRO: We requested an interview with the head of GSA. They declined and sent us a statement that says in part, it is the Office of Government Ethics that provides guidance to the executive branch on questions of ethics and conflicts of interest. GSA plans to coordinate with the president-elect’s team to address any issues that may be related to the Old Post Office building, which is the home of the Trump hotel. What do you make of that statement?

SCHOONER: Well, the Office of Government Ethics is a policy shop. They specifically make clear that they don’t solve these kinds of problems. They don’t investigate. They don’t prosecute. They make policy.

It’s GSA’s contract. They had plenty of time to figure out a solution. They can’t foist their problem off on anybody else, and it’s time for them to step up to the plate and do the right thing.

But they won’t. This is how it’s going to go – everybody will just say that’s someone else’s job, and Mr Corrupt Thieving Fraud will do whatever he wants to.

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The Fascist rallies start tomorrow

Nov 30th, 2016 7:34 am | By

Trump’s Triumph of the Will tour has a shiny pretty logo.

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