Jeff Sessions: Parents and children illegally crossing the U.S. border will be separated https://t.co/AWmbyUi7YE

— TIME (@TIME) May 8, 2018

Talia Lavin notes with what a light heart men can ask hey now if we talk about fairness in the distribution of wealth, income, health care, housing, why can’t we talk about it in the distribution of access to women’s genitalia?

Let’s reconstruct this sequence of events, shall we?

Shortly before he committed mass murder on April 23, Alek Minassian, 25, logged on to Facebook. “Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161,” he posted. “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”

It looks like typical online bullshit, but he wasn’t joking or playacting or bullshitting; he meant it.

A few days later, a tenured professor of economics at George Mason University, Robin Hanson, published a post entitled “Two Types of Envy” on the blog Overcoming Bias arguing that incels might have a salient point to contribute to the national discourse. As Hanson put it, “Those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.”

By the same token, those with much less access to domestic servants to scrub their toilets and get rid of all the dust might like redistribution along this axis.

Yesterday, Douthat — that incorrigible chinstrap-bearded prophet of pedantic reason — published his own thoughts on the issue, entitled “The Redistribution of Sex,” positing that the idea of sex as a redistributable resource is “entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern sexual life,” and blaming “sexual liberation” for inceldom and its victims.

It appalls but does not surprise me that neither of these august ideologues sought even once to examine a primary source on the issue. That neither of them bothered to emphasize that it is not incidental that incel ideology has led to multiple massacres. It is far easier to write an abstract consideration of the economics of sex and a generalized bemoaning of contemporary mores than to face the glaring and obvious truth: Inceldom is an ideological system premised in its entirety on a poisonous, irrational, and thoroughgoing hatred of women.

Along with a conception of women as not fully human in the way men are fully human.

Do you want to know how incels would like to redistribute sex?

Take them at their word. Here’s a quick segment from an incel manifesto that began making the rounds this weekend after it appeared on r/badeconomics, and which lays out a few clear principles for a sex-redistribution matrix. Among the ideas on offer are banning makeup – a means of feminine deceit – and suggesting a system of state-mandated “sexual-market value cards” measured on a one-to-ten scale. The proposal culminates in the following: “Women with more than 9 sexual partners and single moms should be forced by the state to date and have sex with incels that can’t get any women despite the above changes.”

I wonder if an open program of state-mandated mass rape, à la The Handmaid’s Tale, would make it into the crisp pages of the New York Times. It’s a good thing these ideas were laundered to smell a bit better.

The Times launders terrible ideas through Ross Douthat the way Trump launders money through compliant lawyers.

I wish Ross Douthat had had my weekend: After tweeting about incels — in a state of fairly earned horror, I tweeted a screenshot of the mass rape manifesto mentioned above — a number of them discovered my Twitter account.

(That is, after she tweeted about incels, a number of them discovered her Twitter account. Watch those dangling participles, folks.)

That’s when I found out what incels like to call women they consider slutty. The term is “roastie,” and it’s short for “roast beef,” and it derives from a physics-and-anatomy-illiterate understanding of female genitalia. Their theory, you see, is that a woman who has too many sexual partners (perhaps even more than nine!) suffers from an excess of friction, and her labia begin to resemble the folds of a roast beef sandwich.

And so, dear reader, for hours and hours, incels tweeted photos of roast beef at me, intending to shame me for my distended pudenda. I was disgusted at first. Then I got angry. Then I wanted Arby’s.

But if women are so gross, why do the incels want to use them for sex? Why not just put all that talent to work creating a hand-held vagina instead?

But that’s by the way. The real point is why is the Times laundering incel ideology?

Scott Pruitt has been hiding his activities and schedule from public view.

But a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club, the environmental group, has resulted in the release of 10,703 pages of documents that detail Mr. Pruitt’s plans for travel and appearances nationwide. The documents offer visibility for the first time not only into many of his appearances but into the agency’s pursuit of secrecy as well.

The emails — concerning events like a closed-door speech to power plant owners in Missouri, a secret visit to Toyota’s auto plant in Texas and a town-hall style speech to farmers in Iowa where organizers clamped down on questions — show the E.P.A.’s chief concern was about controlling who would be in the room with Mr. Pruitt and what could be said.

The EPA said in the past that it was because of an unprecedented number of death threats.

However, the documents provide new indications — supported by interviews with current and former aides to Mr. Pruitt at the E.P.A. — that the concern with secrecy is less about security than a desire by Mr. Pruitt to avoid criticism from detractors or even unexpected questions from allies.

“The security aspect is smoke and mirrors,” said Kevin Chmielewski, Mr. Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff for operations, who is one of several former E.P.A. officials who have said that they were fired or sidelined for disagreeing with Mr. Pruitt’s management practices.

…

Breaking with all of his predecessors at the E.P.A. for the last 25 years, as well as other members of President Trump’s cabinet, he does not release a list of public speaking events and he discloses most official trips only after they are over. Mr. Pruitt doesn’t hold news conferences, and in one episode, journalists who learned of an event were ejectedfrom the premises after an E.P.A. official threatened to call the police.

The E.P.A. also declined to make public a copy of Mr. Pruitt’s detailed calendar until it was sued by The New York Times and other organizations.

This is the EPA, not the Manhattan Project. Its work is not supposed to be secret.

A driving concern among E.P.A. officials, the emails show, is to separate potential guests into two camps: “friendly” and “unfriendly.” Events can be reorganized at the last minute if there are concerns that people who are considered unfriendly might show up.

“Sixteen friendly Industry leaders will be invited to attend they will arrive at 8:30 with the Administrator expected to arrive at 9:00 a.m.,”said one memo, shared among top E.P.A. officials last September, in advance of a visit by Mr. Pruitt to Colorado Springs, where Mr. Pruitt was scheduled to speak with the National Association of Homebuilders. The event was closed to the public and not announced publicly ahead of time.

Gerald M. Howard, the organization’s top executive, “will moderate Q&A on Industry issues set forth in advance and possibly from the audience — who are all industry friendly and supportive of Mr. Pruitt and his efforts,” the description said.

No dissent allowed – no dissent even allowed to attend, or be aware there is anything to attend. Dissent systematically and secretly ruled out in advance by not being invited or informed.

Norm Eisen sums it up.

https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/993498711685844992

Life near Kilauea right now:

#BREAKING This is video just into our newsroom. It was shot 5 acres in on Makamae St. on the Kalapana side. #Kilauea pic.twitter.com/BbXK15eCG0

— Allyson Blair (@AllysonBlairTV) May 5, 2018

One has to wonder why anyone was allowed to build there.

Mark Townsend and Julian Borger report:

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal.

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

Watergate much?

Although sources have confirmed that contact and an initial plan of attack was provided to private investigators by representatives of Trump, it is not clear how much work was actually undertaken, for how long or what became of any material unearthed.

Neither is it known if the black ops constituted only a strand of a wider Trump-Netanyahu collaboration to undermine the deal or if investigators targeted other individuals such as John Kerry, the lead American signatory to the deal. Both Rhodes and Kahl said they had no idea of the campaign against them. Rhodes said: “I was not aware, though sadly am not surprised. I would say that digging up dirt on someone for carrying out their professional responsibilities in their positions as White House officials is a chillingly authoritarian thing to do.”

Trump is every inch an authoritarian.

Maddow did a rather brilliant exposition yesterday about Rod Rosenstein’s admiration of FDR’s Attorney General Robert Jackson and how that ties in to Rosenstein’s resistance to Republican demands for documents from an ongoing investigation. Rosenstein has a big portrait of Jackson in his Deputy AG conference room, hung so that it’s over his right shoulder when he sits at the head of the table for meetings. Jackson went from AG to the Supreme Court, from which he took a leave (a most unusual thing for a supreme to do) to be the prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.

She drew on a story the Times did on May 2 about those Republican demands for docs from a live investigation. I’ve been thinking all along that it sounds very like Devin Nunes’s tipping off of the administration last year – that in fact they want the documents because they want to tip off the White House about what’s in them. The Times story spells that out, cautiously.

President Trump plunged into an angry dispute on Wednesday between conservative House Republicans and the deputy attorney general, siding with hard-line lawmakers over his own Justice Department as they pressed for access to sensitive documents related to the special counsel’s investigation and other politically charged cases.

…

Distrust between Mr. Rosenstein and Congress has been building over months. In recent weeks, he has made significant gestures to release documents demanded by prominent congressmen, only to be threatened with impeachment by lawmakers from the far right.

Mr. Rosenstein responded on Tuesday to that threat by declaring that the Justice Department would not be “extorted.”

Officials at the department believe that the conservatives have now gone too far with document requests related to continuing investigations that the lawmakers clearly do not support, including the inquiry led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russia’s election interference. A former federal law enforcement official familiar with the department’s views said that Mr. Rosenstein and top F.B.I. officials have come to suspect that some lawmakers were using their oversight authority to gain intelligence about that investigation so that it could be shared with the White House.

Ya think?

That’s probably cautious reporterese for “they have assumed all along that some lawmakers are trying to see the documents so that they can share the contents with Trump’s lawyers.”

The way Maddow and the people she chose to interview put it, it’s a core principle of DoJ investigations that they don’t share information from them while they are in progress. Other sources put it somewhat more tentatively. On the other other hand Maddow showed a clip of Rosenstein speaking at an event yesterday, a rather obscure event for a busy Deputy Ag, which seems to hint that he’s speaking at these things to make his case in public – in the clip he mentioned the separation of powers and then that he has a rather strong interest in it at the moment, and then slyly asked why everyone was laughing. Wink wink nudge nudge. In short he gave a big shoutout to the separation of powers at a moment when some House Republicans are trying to undermine that in their efforts to help the mob boss in the White House.

Mr. Trump’s threat on Wednesday to intervene bolstered those voices and could undermine the Justice Department’s ability to protect some of its most closely held secrets. Lawmakers conducting oversight are usually given summaries of the information, but not the intelligence collected directly from wiretaps and sensitive sources.

Similar standoffs between law enforcement officials and Congress have resulted in compromise dating back decades, but in those cases, the Justice Department had the support of the president. Without Mr. Trump’s support, Congress is gaining the advantage.

Republican lawmakers, for their part, argue that Mr. Rosenstein’s department has slow-walked important requests and withheld crucial details from documents they do turn over — material they say is necessary to doing their jobs. And their threats are hardly veiled.

It’s a trap.

Democrats fear that the Republican requests — many of which call on the department to ignore longstanding policy about what it shares with Congress — are meant as a trap. Either Mr. Rosenstein can turn over information that could be used to undermine the special counsel’s inquiry, or he could refuse, giving Mr. Trump cover, or even cause, to fire the deputy attorney general.

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the latest Republican efforts were “clearly trying to sabotage” Mr. Mueller’s investigation and court a confrontation with Mr. Rosenstein.

“All of this noise is aimed at undermining the special counsel’s work as the investigation closes in on the president,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement. “The president’s attacks on the Department of Justice grow more paranoid by the day. The case for obstruction of justice — and the complicity of these House Republicans — grows day by day as well.”

Mr. Rosenstein, who has already given the Republican lawmakers access to hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, has made clear in recent days that he does not intend to go further.

On Monday, the Justice Department wrote to Mr. Meadows and Mr. Jordan to deny them access to the document about the scope of the Russia inquiry, citing department policy against sharing information on a continuing investigation.

“The department recognizes the keen interest that Congress has in the special counsel’s investigation, but, respectfully, we must adhere to the longstanding position of the department that congressional inquiries pertaining to ongoing criminal investigations threaten the integrity of those investigations,” Stephen E. Boyd, an assistant attorney general, wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times.

“We hope you can respect our position,” he added.

And on Tuesday, Mr. Rosenstein, reacting to reports that Mr. Meadows had drafted articles of impeachment to use against him if needed, pushed back hard.

“If we were to just open our doors to allow Congress to come and rummage through the files, that would be a serious infringement on the separation of powers,” Mr. Rosenstein said at an event in Washington. “It might resolve a dispute today, but it would have negative repercussions in the long run, and we have a responsibility to defend the institution.”

And on Friday he said it again.

Now Toby Young gets in on the act – hey all you lefty types think money should be more equitably shared so how come you don’t think the same thing about access to women, huh huh huh?

Robin Hanson, Alek Minassian, incel rebellion, Elliot Rodger, Chad and Stacy, blah blah.

Hanson wasn’t defending these two mass murderers, but querying why incels had been dismissed in the media as ‘self-pitying’ and ‘lonely weirdos’ in the aftermath of the Toronto attack, often by the same journalists and commentators who decry other forms of inequality. Why are terrorists who murder people in the name of redistributing wealth, like Che Guevara, lionised by the left, whereas terrorists whose aim is to draw attention to sex inequality are detested? A columnist on the Scottish Daily Record said Minassian was a ‘pathetic little boy who can’t get a girlfriend’. I don’t suppose the same journalist would describe the late socialist hero Jimmy Reid as a ‘pathetic little man who couldn’t afford a nice car’.

Sigh.

One can never tell – is he (whichever – Hanson, Douthat, Young) really that stupid or just pretending to be to wind us up? It’s right there in the words – girlfriend versus car. Now do you see what we’re getting at? A girlfriend is not like a car. How? A girlfriend is a person and a car is a thing. A girlfriend has thoughts and plans and ideas and feelings; a car has an engine and windows and wheels.

It works the same way with women on the one hand and money on the other. Women have minds; money does not.

Women are not things to be distributed. You’d think this would be too fucking obvious to say, yet they keep ignoring it, either genuinely or ad arguendo. Neither is acceptable.

The New York Times introduces us to a fascinatingly original and independent-minded couple in a large west coast city:

When Amanda Davidson, a 42-year-old Los Angeles-based artist and writer, welcomed her firstborn child in December — a boy named Felix — with her partner Isaac Schankler, 39, a composer, she chafed at the assumptions the medical staff members made about how the pair wanted to identify themselves as parents.

“‘Hi, Mommy! Where’s Daddy? Mommy needs to know this, but so does Daddy,’” she said with a big laugh. The binary clashed so much with how the couple sees themselves and exists in the world — she’s queer-identified, and her partner goes by pronouns they/their/them and uses the gender-neutral title Mx. — she refrained from calling herself anything vis-à-vis Felix for the first two weeks of his life.

Oh, my, that must have been awful. Couldn’t the medical staff members see at a glance how not Mommy and Daddy our eccentric pair are?

Isaac Schankler, left, and Amanda Davidson are among a wave of gender-nonconforming parents reconsidering the labels of “mommy” and “daddy.”

CreditChris Schell

So…that’s Isaac on the left in the suit and tie and short hair, and that’s Amanda on the right in a dress and long hair and lipstick…so…uh…how could medical staff possibly call them Daddy and Mommy respectively? Don’t they…uh…realize that Isaac and Amanda are queering all the things?

Naming is particularly important to the pair as a means of signaling their queerness, since they “pass” as a straight couple. “We don’t look visibly queer,” Ms. Davidson said, “So in some ways, our choice of names helps us affirm our identities.”

…

Ellen Kahn, the director of the Children, Youth & Families Program at the Human Rights Campaign, said the gender binary that underlies “mother” and “father” doesn’t jibe with some parents’ self-understanding and self-presentation: “For queer parents who don’t think of themselves as gender conforming, ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’ may be a little discordant with the way they think about themselves.”

Which is what, exactly? More special than everyone else? More thoughtful and rebellious and quirky and interesting than all those stupid “binary” couples with their suits and dresses and short hair/long hair?

Katie Herzog at The Stranger finds the whole thing rather annoying.

Now, I will admit that my first reaction to this article was to roll my eyes back in my head and pull out my application to a lesbian seperatist commune in Taos, but then I remembered that it’s against the rules to question other peoples’ identities (unless that person is Rachel Dolezal) so I reigned in my annoyance.

But then I read it again, and I thought about some lesbian friends of mine back in North Carolina who just had a kid last year. Unlike Davidson and Schankler, who, I presume, used the body parts they were born with to make a kid, my friends had to go about it the old fashioned ways: turkey baster, with sperm purchased from a sperm bank.

That was the easy part.

The hard part was the adoption, which they had to do if they wanted both parents to have parental rights.

It’s a cumbersome, stressful, and expensive process, but many attorneys specializing in LGBTQ family law recommend it. And so, this married couple who conceived a child together had to get background checks, have home visits with social workers, get reference letters, sign affidavits attesting to how their child was conceived, and have meetings with the county clerk—all so that Heather, who literally has two mommies, could legally have two mommies.

Now, same-sex adoption laws vary by state, but in many places, it’s still an arduous, time-consuming process that no heterosexual couple who birthed a child together would have to engage in. And, in most countries, it’s not even an option. It’s also something that Davidson and Schankler would never have to deal with, because, regardless of their pronouns, they are still, in the eyes of the law (and, lets be real, society) a plain old heterosexual couple. While I’m sure it is painful for them to be seen as straight when they feel they are queer, every time the New York Times or New York mag or whoever else elevates couples like this, they ignore the very real trials and tribulations that actual same-sex couples go through in a legal system that isn’t equipped to handle us.

That plus there’s the whole thing of what looks like deliberately creating a kind of “oppressed” status for themselves so that they can hang with the cool kids who already have actual oppression. It looks, in short, like exactly what people mean by “appropriation,” in a strikingly obnoxious form. Davidson and Shankler “pass” as exactly what they are, so they claim to be “queer” in the most nebulous and indeed meaningless sense possible. Herzog sums up:

I realize that I’m not the LGBTQIAS (the “s” stands for “straight”) hall monitor, but while everyone and their abba has decided that queerness is more about haircuts and pronouns than who you bone, actual queer people are still second class citizens under the law. As of 2018, only 22 states have full protections preventing housing, employment, and public accommodation discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people. And yet, the Times devotes column inches to a “queer” couple whose big struggle was resolved by adopting the Hebrew word for dad. Just an idea, but perhaps the next time the paper of note writes about LGBTQ families, maybe they could actually talk to a few.

Won’t somebody please think of the queer straight people?

Maryam Namazie writes:

Egyptian Atheist and Youtube Vlogger Sherif Gaber has disappeared and is most likely arrested when trying to leave the country on Wednesday 2nd May. He sent a message to friends telling them he was stopped and taken to an interrogation room at Cairo airport and his passport confiscated. No one has heard from him since. The last message from Sherif on Wednesday 2nd May at 11:08 am Cairo time:

“I am suppose to be traveling to Malaysia at 12:05 Cairo Time, an hour from now. The police took me and made me wait in this room for 2 hours and I’m still waiting> they took my belongings and my passport. If I don’t update you in one hour know that I was arrested.”

We demand Gaber’s release. Atheism, Blasphemy, Apostasy are not crimes. #FreeSherifGaber
#AtheismNotACrime
#BlasphemyNotACrime
#ApostasyNotACrime

Guest post by Bruce Everett

I’ve always had a lingering suspicion about the rule to “never punch down/only punch up”. What started out as a heuristic for comedians seems to be apt at morphing into a kind of social contagion along the lines of what Bertrand Russell wrote about in ‘The Superior Virtue of The Oppressed’.

Yes, people are oppressed to varying extents. No, that’s not good. Neither is taking advantage of people’s social standing to enact sadism for shits and giggles. Conflict occurs across the power differentials. That’s not disputed.

But in practice, and especially in groups of people, this rule doesn’t always seem to work so well.

For one, it appeals to people’s sentiments and naturally, people forget why the rule exists and just try and wing the spirit of it, whatever the fuck that may be. Eventually you can wind up with things like “the most oppressed in the room can do whatever the fuck they want, including not putting up with any doubt that they are the most oppressed in the room, which is LITERAL VIOLENCE!”

Pretty soon after things metastasize this far, without reference to any material fact you wind up with people in unassailable positions, irrespective of whether or not they as an individual or as a member of a social group, are actually most oppressed, effectively with license to do anything to members of any other oppressed group. And when they actually do “anything”, people act all surprised and then make excuses.

I can’t help but notice this also seems more pronounced when the person on the receiving end is a woman, and the person dishing it out is a man. Maybe that’s just my biases.

Then there are the pile-ons. The first step is for the purported or actually most oppressed person to have a go at someone who may very well have actually done something wrong, who may actually be an oppressed person themselves… and then a bunch of usually white, upper-middle class shits will come along and harangue the person on the receiving end for “punching down”. Never mind if they’ve just condescended to someone more disadvantaged than them – they’re doing it in alliance with The Most Oppressed, so all’s good.

“Oh, it does feel ever so good to be able to condescend to someone less advantaged than me, and for it to make me such a good ally, Tarquin. This system licenses it!”
“Oh, I know. It’s especially good when I do it to old feminists. It’s like calling them “bitch” or “feminazi”, but without the fear of being seen as a sexist pig. Just be sure to bring someone along who is able to punch up first – you only need to bring one of them. #TokenismYay“

Even people who are aware that social justice causes/activist circles attract narcissists like ants to a picnic, will fail to realize that the mere prospect of the status of unassailability within such a milieu is all that much more attractive. There is inherent vagary in “don’t punch down” and don’t think for a second narcs won’t weaponize it if they can.

“Which way’s down in this case?”
“I’m not sure. Better be cautious and assume the shouty person knows.”
“Oh, yes. And we’d better not doubt them, because that’d be punching down too!”
“True. We must signal our support by following through when their voice is too hoarse to repeat themselves!”
“Oh dear, they just kicked the shit out of that lesbian.”
“That’s not good. But remember, we can’t expect people to be perfect in their activism and it is difficult to be a activist and suffer from the social stigma of Morgellons at the same time. Perhaps if we give them more time and attention in future, this kind of thing won’t happen again. We need to love them more!”
“Yes. Is it time tell the lesbian off now?”
“Of course. But I don’t think we use the word “lesbian” anymore.”
“[At lesbian] DAMN YOU… THING!?! You provoked them! How would you like to be a Furry with Morgellons? Non-human animals are the most oppressed group!”
“COSPLAY ISN’T A JOKE, L… THING! SHOW SOME FUCKING EMPATHY YOU PIECE OF SHIT!”
“You’re such a good feminist, Tarquin. #woke“

And of course, just addressing this is practically impossible. The terms of the problem preclude discussing it from any angle other than that of the outsider.

And there’s the bait and switch between strict and equivocal definitions as the last barrier. For decision making within the group, the definition is equivocal, and made up on the fly for the convenience of whoever is in power. For criticism from outside the group, any questioning of “don’t punch down” is defined into literally excusing abusing disadvantaged people – end of story.

I can’t think of any solution other than to step away and start again once this shit takes hold. At least, not outside of groups that allow you to clear house with elections. Even then, that’s hard and requires the opportunity to organize.

I don’t envy people who don’t have the option to walk away.

Yesterday it was hooray god, today it was hooray guns.

President Trump on Friday addressed the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting here in a speech that served as a rallying cry to his base, an attack on his detractors and a signal of his strong support for the gun rights group after suggesting months earlier he was open to some firearm restrictions.

For a few hours after Parkland he pretended to care, then it was back to normal.

But any streak of independence from the NRA was gone Friday, as Trump allied himself with some of the gun group’s biggest priorities in a rambling, 45-minute speech that focused as much on his foreign policy agenda, approval ratings and the latest in the Russia investigation as it did on gun policy.

His speeches are all rambling, because he’s that insufferable guy who thinks every word he utters is fascinating no matter how trivial and self-involved.

“Your Second Amendment rights are under siege,” Trump told the NRA members, whom he referred to as patriots. “But they will never ever be under siege as long as I’m your president.”

That’s “rambling” all right – i.e. a flat contradiction.  Your rights are under siege, but they will never ever be under siege as long as I’m your president, and I’m your president now, but your rights are under siege. QED.

To bolster his case for arming teachers and adding guards, Trump argued “there is no stronger deterrent for a sick individual than the knowledge that their attack will end their life and end in total failure.”

Wrong. Lots of shooters intend the attack to end their lives.

While Trump used the speech to firmly embrace the NRA’s agenda, he also treated it like a campaign rally — urging members to vote in the midterm elections, boasting about the improving unemployment numbers, touting the recent tax cuts, criticizing the media and lambasting the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election.

The campaign part is secondary really; the reason he loves doing this is because it’s a chance to brag about himself and get cheers and applause in response. It’s his happy place.

What’s that thumping sound? The bus wheels rolling over Rudy Giuliani.

President Trump undercut his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Friday, and said the former New York mayor will eventually get the facts right regarding a payment to a pornographic actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

Everything “has been said incorrectly,” Mr. Trump said, blaming the media coverage and Mr. Giuliani’s short time on the job.

Oh yes, he was an intern until just the other day, he’s a total novice, he can’t possibly be expected to know all the facts yet, and that’s why it was a great idea for him to talk to Sean Hannity.

Mr. Giuliani, who joined Mr. Trump’s legal team last month, “started a day ago,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to reporters on Friday as he left Washington to attend a National Rifle Association convention in Dallas.

“He’s a great guy,” Mr. Trump said. “He’ll get his facts straight.”

So Trump told a ridiculous boob lie – what, in order to illustrate how unimportant it is to get the facts straight?

And then, note the trip to hang out with the extremely right-wing National Rifle Association, in callous disregard or outright contempt for Parkland and all the other mass shootings since the last NRA convention.

Mr. Giuliani kicked off the confusion with an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, surprising even some of Mr. Trump’s other attorneys.

In a series of Twitter posts the following morning, the president backed up what Mr. Giuliani said. But, on Friday, Mr. Trump said that everything said about the transaction “has been said incorrectly.”

“It’s actually very simple,” the president said, without elaboration.

Presidents don’t elaborate. You’re supposed to listen, and believe. That’s it.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Are they objective?

He’s implying that that’s not “objective”…But an objective observer (who hadn’t just popped out of an eggshell fully mature yesterday) has a million reasons to think Comey is more likely to be telling the truth than Trump is. An objective observer can remember that clip on Air Force One when Trump lied about who paid Stormy Daniels and whether he knew about it, to name just one item. Trump lies constantly; Comey not so much.

No, no, that’s not how it works. You can’t go using evidence to reach an uncomfortable conclusion. “Objective” means that you either (1) are “keeping an open mind” and refusing to decide whether you believe the allegations; or (2) have decided, like Giuliani, that the allegations are false. Disagreeing with Rudy is, ipso facto, proof of a lack of objectivity.

Have you learned nothing from sexual assault and harassment cases?

“I can’t possibly come to any sort of opinion on the allegations against Famous Dude. All I have to go on is detailed eyewitness accounts from the victims and other witnesses, corroborating accounts from people they complained to, documentary evidence, and Famous Dude’s generally skeevy attitude towards women. As a true skeptic, I couldn’t possibly form an opinion until all of these witnesses are brought before me in a courtroom, which I know will never happen.” = OBJECTIVE

“Although I remain open to further evidence, and any actual criminal punishment would have to await a prosecution and conviction, it appears from the detailed eyewitness accounts from the victims and other witnesses, corroborating accounts from people they complained to, documentary evidence, and Famous Dude’s generally skeevy attitude towards women, that Famous Dude has harassed women. And so perhaps that should have some social consequences.” = NOT OBJECTIVE

“I’ve had beers with Famous Dude, and I believe him when he says these women are all lying bitches.” = OBJECTIVE