"The multi-million-dollar lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court says that 'In the Trump campaign, Russia found a willing and active partner in this effort' to mount 'a brazen attack on American Democracy,' which included Russian infiltration of the Democratic Party computer network... The suit alleges claims that include conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, misappropriation of trade secrets, trespass and other violations of the law."
CNBC Reports.
Now that there's a lawsuit, it's time to think about counterclaims. I'd like to see what the defendants would come up with using an equally aggressive, far-reaching approach to using the courts to promote your political cause.
April 20, 2018
"Orthodox and other dox."
The word "dox" came up in the comments, here, so I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which was useless in defining the present-day verb, but amusing on the subject of the old noun (click to enlarge):
"Free advice for any pol who has to visit the Holocaust Museum to prove he's not anti-Semitic: Just assume the Nazis are the bad guys in all the exhibits."
"First Congregational Church of Oakland... has joined a small handful of like-minded congregations with a radical goal: to stop calling the police."
"Not for mental health crises, not for graffiti on their buildings, not even for acts of violence. These churches believe the American police system, criticized for its impact especially on people of color, is such a problem that they should wash their hands of it entirely," The Mercury News Reports.
One answer to my question "Why 'bodies'?" is that it's the rhetoric of Ta-Nehisi Coates. (Do a search the page for "body"/"bodies" on his Atlantic article "Letter to My Son/'Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage'" and you'll see what I mean.) But that simply restates the question.
“Can this actually be reformed, when it was actually created for the unjust distribution of resources or to police black and brown bodies?” [volunteer leader Nichola] Torbett asked. For her and for her fellow church members, the answer is no – the police don’t just need reform. The police need to be abandoned altogether.No mention of the #MeToo movement, which seems to be on a collision course. In this light, notice Torbett's rhetoric about policing "black and brown bodies." Why "bodies"? It seems that women are being called to subordinate their bodies to the even more vulnerable bodies of men — more vulnerable because the violence they encounter comes from the government. And yet it is women who are quoted in the article — Nichola Torbett and Anne Dunlap. For many many years, women were discouraged from calling the police on their men. Are we circling back to that position? How can that be, given the intensity of #MeToo?
The churches call their drastic approach “divesting” from policing... The project of divesting is organized by Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a nationwide organization that tries to get white Americans working on behalf of racial justice....
“It’s a challenging ask,” acknowledged the Rev. Anne Dunlap, a United Church of Christ minister who leads SURJ’s outreach to faith communities. “It’s a big ask to invite us, as white folks, to think differently about what safety means. Who do we rely on? What is safe? For whom? Should our safety be predicated on violence for other communities? And if not, what do we do if we’re confronted with a situation, because we are, as congregations? . . . How do we handle it if there’s a burglary? How do we handle it if there’s a situation of violence or abuse in the congregation?... In the case of interpersonal violence, for the survivors as well as the perpetrators, we want to look at transformative justice... Would a punitive police and legal system actually bring us the desired outcome for everyone involved? What are our actual values? What do our traditions teach us about redemption?”
One answer to my question "Why 'bodies'?" is that it's the rhetoric of Ta-Nehisi Coates. (Do a search the page for "body"/"bodies" on his Atlantic article "Letter to My Son/'Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage'" and you'll see what I mean.) But that simply restates the question.
What he did for love: "Maybe Trump did it all for Melania..."
Here's a far-out theory, designed to test the credulity of nearly everyone, by Martha Ross in The Mercury News.
What if Donald Trump just quite simply loves Melania?
What if Donald Trump just quite simply loves Melania?
Perhaps the 71-year-old Trump was worried his wife Melania would hear these stories and think he had cheated on her.... At least that’s the story Trump reportedly tried to tell Comey in their now heavily scrutinized conversations... With regard to the “pee tape,” Comey wrote in his book: “It bothered (Trump) if there was ‘even a one-percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true.”...Other evidence marshaled at the link, but I won't try your patience. Here, let's just have a quick vote:
During a February 8, 2017 conversation in the Oval Office, Comey recounted in one of his memos, Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that his country “had some of the most beautiful hookers in the world.”
But Trump also said that the “hookers thing is nonsense” and repeatedly told Comey he wanted the FBI to debunk the pee tape claim. His reason? Yes, Trump told Comey in a March 30, 2017 phone conversation that he was concerned that the “golden showers thing” would cast a “cloud” over his presidency. Trump insisted the claim wasn’t true, asking Comey: “Can you imagine me, hookers?”
Comey then writes in his book: “In an apparent play for my sympathy, (Trump) added that he has a beautiful wife and the whole thing has been very painful for her. He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’ ”...
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral argument on the case of the Marquette polisci prof who was suspended for something he wrote on his blog.
WPR reports:
After the argument, McAdams said: "Well, three justices completely savaged Marquette's lawyer... However, I need more than three votes." And McAdams says he wants to return to teaching at Marquette: "Because while I have essentially zero respect for the people who are running the place, the students are pretty good." he said.
Marquette suspended [John] McAdams after he wrote a blog attacking Cheryl Abbate, a graduate student and philosophy instructor, for telling students that everybody agrees with gay rights, and there was no reason to discuss it.McAdams was represented by Rick Esenberg, of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty President, who based his argument on academic freedom: "If academic freedom means anything at all, it has to mean that he can't be fired for writing that blog post." McAdams told what was apparently an accurate story and did not threaten Abbate. You can see that Marquette's lawyer is forced to talk about how the blog post could inspire others to threaten Abbate.
Abbate was confronted after class by a student who disagreed, and in a conversation he recorded, Abbate said the student didn't have a right to make homophobic comments in her class. The student then shared the recording with McAdams, who blogged about the exchange.
McAdams included a clickable link to her contact information and personal website, and Abbate began receiving negative, threatening emails. She has since left the university.
"This is not a case about free speech, it's about safety," Marquette attorney Ralph Weber told reporters after arguments. "You don't paint a target on the back of a student — put her out in front of a hostile audience so that she can receive vile and horrific threats — and claim that that is somehow consistent with your obligations as a professional."
After the argument, McAdams said: "Well, three justices completely savaged Marquette's lawyer... However, I need more than three votes." And McAdams says he wants to return to teaching at Marquette: "Because while I have essentially zero respect for the people who are running the place, the students are pretty good." he said.
Marquette's attorney noted that McAdams was suspended by a unanimous vote of seven of his peers on the Marquette faculty. McAdams said a process like that would always work against conservatives like him because most professors are liberal.
"Images showed cash laying out in the open, on desks, drawers, as well as wads of money stuffed in envelopes and brown bags..."
From "Newly released images show glimpse of life inside Prince's Paisley Park" at CNN Entertainment, which is too shoddy an operation to bother with the laying/lying distinction:
The investigation into Prince's death has ended — there will be no criminal charges — and the file became public, including 100s of photographs of the strange enclave where he lived, worked, and died. The photographs, not lit for publicity purposes, make the place look very sad.
ADDED: Under the "wads of money," there's a CD, "The Best of Missing Persons." This is a band I don't remember, but Wikipedia says it was an L.A. band that combined new wave and hard rock. The singer (Dale Bozzio) was married to the drummer (Terry Bozzio) and they met while working with Frank Zappa in the 1970s.
AND: The other CD — harder to read, because it's upside down — is The Chambers Brothers, "The Time Has Come." And the time had come for Prince. Lyrics:
The investigation into Prince's death has ended — there will be no criminal charges — and the file became public, including 100s of photographs of the strange enclave where he lived, worked, and died. The photographs, not lit for publicity purposes, make the place look very sad.
ADDED: Under the "wads of money," there's a CD, "The Best of Missing Persons." This is a band I don't remember, but Wikipedia says it was an L.A. band that combined new wave and hard rock. The singer (Dale Bozzio) was married to the drummer (Terry Bozzio) and they met while working with Frank Zappa in the 1970s.
Dale's quirky voice and heavy makeup made the band a favorite on MTV in the early 1980s. Her revealing outfits played a pivotal role in moving the culture of music videos towards that of overt sexual exhibitionism.Let's listen (and look):
AND: The other CD — harder to read, because it's upside down — is The Chambers Brothers, "The Time Has Come." And the time had come for Prince. Lyrics:
Now the time has come (Time)I've heard "The Time Has Come" many times. I even saw The Chambers Brothers in concert (in 1969), but never before googling the phrase just now had I associated it with Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter":
There's no place to run (Time)
I might get burned up by the sun (Time)
But I had my fun (Time)
I've been loved and put aside (Time)
I've been crushed by tumbling tide (Time)
And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time)
'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'
"President Trump spoke in intimate and candid terms to the former F.B.I. director James Comey about some of the most sensitive matters before the agency..."
"... including the salacious dossier detailing Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia and the investigation into Michael T. Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, according to Mr. Comey’s closely guarded memos. The redacted and declassified memos — running 15 pages in total, and sent to Congress from the Justice Department on Thursday night — detail a series of phone calls and encounters between the two men in the months leading up to Mr. Comey’s firing.... The memos are exacting in their specificity, including details about who was sitting where, the precise times that conversations began and their durations. In some cases, Mr. Comey shared his accounts with others immediately afterward. These details add credibility to Mr. Comey’s account of events. Mr. Trump has disputed some parts, including asking Mr. Comey to shut down an investigation into Mr. Flynn.... The three Republican chairmen... issued a joint statement Thursday night [saying that w]hile Mr. Comey 'went to great lengths to set dining room scenes, discuss height requirements, describe the multiple times he felt complimented and myriad other extraneous facts, he never once mentioned the most relevant fact of all, which was whether he felt obstructed in his investigation'..."
Comey Memos Provide Intimate Look Into Trump Presidency" (NYT). And here's the link to PDFs of the 15 pages of memo.
There's also an interview with Comey on the NYT "Daily" podcast, which begins with Comey openly confessing to egomania (and stressing his conscious efforts to keep it under control). From Michael Barbaro's description of the interview:
Comey Memos Provide Intimate Look Into Trump Presidency" (NYT). And here's the link to PDFs of the 15 pages of memo.
There's also an interview with Comey on the NYT "Daily" podcast, which begins with Comey openly confessing to egomania (and stressing his conscious efforts to keep it under control). From Michael Barbaro's description of the interview:
I started the interview where Mr. Comey begins his book — actually before he begins his book, in the author’s note, with a strikingly candid observation about his own personality. “All people have flaws and I have many,” he wrote. “Some of mine, as you’ll discover in this book, are that I can be stubborn, prideful, overconfident and driven by ego.”
It seemed like his decision to itemize his own shortcomings before recounting his role in the investigation of Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump over the past two years might be an acknowledgment that those flaws help explain his conduct. But Mr. Comey quickly rejected the idea that his ego had played a role in how he managed the investigation into Mr. Trump....
Mr. Comey said his ritual of writing memos about conversations with Mr. Trump began after a meeting inside Trump Tower on Jan. 6, 2017 — but not because Mr. Trump, then president-elect, had said something especially alarming. Instead, Mr. Comey said, from the very first moments of their relationship, he believed Mr. Trump could not be trusted.
"I knew it. I knew this would happen to me. They were never going to let me be president."
Said Hillary Clinton, on election night, "a couple of inches" from the face of Robbie Mook, who'd just informed her she'd lost the election, quoted in "Hillary Clinton On Election Night: ‘They Were Never Going to Let Me Be President’/A new book from Amy Chozick has revelations and rumors about a doomed campaign" (The Daily Beast).
Also:
Also:
From early on, the Clinton camp saw Trump as an enemy to encourage, Chozick writes.... “An agenda for an upcoming campaign meeting sent by [Campaign Manager] Robby Mook’s office asked, ‘How do we maximize Trump?’” Chozick writes, describing a time when the GOP primary was still crowded.
Even as Trump surged in the polls, the Clinton camp still saw him as a danger to stronger candidates rather than such a candidate in his own right, Chozick reports, so that in August 2015, “when the main GOP debate came on, everyone pushed their pizza crust aside and stared transfixed at the TV set… [Campaign Manager] Robby [Mook] salivated when the debate came back on and Trump started to speak. ‘Shhhhh,’ Robby said, practically pressing his nose up to the TV. ‘I’ve gahtz to get me some Trump.’ Robby thought Rubio would be the nominee. Podesta was bullish on Kasich. Bill and Hillary, still stuck in the 1990s, feared the Bush surname most of all.”...
April 19, 2018
"Ultimately, it’s the right thing to do. Freedom. If smoking marijuana doesn’t hurt anybody else, why shouldn’t we allow people to do it and not make it criminal?”
Said Chuck Schumer, who is introducing a bill to decriminalize marijuana, as reported in Vice, which doesn't mention Trump's recent statements in support of getting the federal government out of the marijuana control business.
And here's a new article in The Atlantic by Reihan Salam, "Is It Too Late to Stop the Rise of Marijuana, Inc.?/America is on the path to legalization, but as pot becomes a big business, lawmakers aren't yet wrestling with how to regulate it effectively."
And here's a new article in The Atlantic by Reihan Salam, "Is It Too Late to Stop the Rise of Marijuana, Inc.?/America is on the path to legalization, but as pot becomes a big business, lawmakers aren't yet wrestling with how to regulate it effectively."
A sequence of museum rooms.
Photos from the Blanton Art Museum on the University of Texas Austin campus. The picture at the right in the first photo is Andy Warhol's portrait of Farrah Fawcett. In the second and third photo, the "Blue Woman in Black Chair" is by George Segal. The brownish squares on the right of the bottom photo is "Synecdoche" by Byron Kim. The painting all the way in the back in the first photo is "Painter and Loid Struggle for Soul Control" by Trenton Doyle Hancock.
IN THE COMMENTS: FWBuff said, "Isn't that the Farrah Fawcett portrait that Ryan O'Neal fought UT for?" Ah, yes! Thanks for reminding me. Blogged on October 22, 2013:
Apparently, it's right-wing to find the "Hotep Jesus" Starbucks reparations video hilarious.
I had no idea that I was evincing right-wingery by laughing, but now I am learning, reading "Right-Wing Media Promote An Anti-Semitic Extremist To Mock Starbucks Controversy" (at Right Wing Watch).
I thought it was kind of a Saul Alinsky/Yippie move, but I guess nothing is supposed to be funny anymore. Oh, yeah, I'm remembering I have a tag for these times — the Era of That's Not Funny.
Here's the original video — high-level comedy:
Brilliant! So much to talk about. It's really a Borat-style stunt. I assume the barista isn't playing a role but spontaneously responding to Hotep Jesus's demand for "reparations" and embodying all the empathy she's learned to show, even as she's videoed doing something that must be a firing offense, handing out free coffee.
Yes, there is something wrong with making light of reparations, but that's what makes it funny. It's transgressive. I'll group this with the story of Randa Jarrar, who extracted dark humor from the death of Barbara Bush. Oh, no! Death is super-serious. Don't laugh at death!
These are the very things we should be laughing about — death, racism — not because they aren't serious but because they are.
Help me, Randa.
I thought it was kind of a Saul Alinsky/Yippie move, but I guess nothing is supposed to be funny anymore. Oh, yeah, I'm remembering I have a tag for these times — the Era of That's Not Funny.
Here's the original video — high-level comedy:
Starbucks is racist https://t.co/fPf3ERMlXX
— Hotep Jesus 🧠 (@VibeHi) April 15, 2018
Brilliant! So much to talk about. It's really a Borat-style stunt. I assume the barista isn't playing a role but spontaneously responding to Hotep Jesus's demand for "reparations" and embodying all the empathy she's learned to show, even as she's videoed doing something that must be a firing offense, handing out free coffee.
Yes, there is something wrong with making light of reparations, but that's what makes it funny. It's transgressive. I'll group this with the story of Randa Jarrar, who extracted dark humor from the death of Barbara Bush. Oh, no! Death is super-serious. Don't laugh at death!
These are the very things we should be laughing about — death, racism — not because they aren't serious but because they are.
Help me, Randa.
"Men outnumber women by 70 million in China and India. The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age, are far-reaching..."
"... Out of China’s population of 1.4 billion, there are nearly 34 million more males than females — the equivalent of almost the entire population of California, or Poland, who will never find wives and only rarely have sex. China’s official one-child policy, in effect from 1979 to 2015, was a huge factor in creating this imbalance, as millions of couples were determined that their child should be a son.... Among men, loneliness and depression are widespread. Villages are emptying out. Men are learning to cook and perform other chores long relegated to women.... Bachelors are furiously building houses in China to attract wives, and prices are soaring. But otherwise they are not spending, and that in turn fuels China’s huge trade surplus. In India, there is the opposite effect: Because brides are scarce, families are under less pressure to save for expensive dowries... Trafficking of brides is on the rise. Foreign women are being recruited and lured to China, effectively creating similar imbalances in China’s neighbors... With the increase in men has come a surge in sexual crime in India and concerns about a rise in other crimes in both countries. Harassment of schoolgirls in India has in some towns sparked an effort to push back — but at a cost of restricting them to more protected lives...."
From "Too Many Men" (WaPo).
From "Too Many Men" (WaPo).
"Trump's 'great man' play on North Korea."
I just like the graphic. That and the fact that the writer (at Axios) has a name that is also a bird — Jonathan Livingston Seagull... I mean, Jonathan Swan.
"Who’s Afraid of the Female Nude? Paintings of naked women, usually by clothed men, are suddenly sitting very uncomfortably on gallery walls."
By Michael Slenske and Molly Langmuir (New York Magazine)(interesting artwork at the link — warning: nudes!!):
While feminist art critics have for decades pointed out the shortcomings of the “male gaze,” the post-#MeToo reckoning with the art world’s systemic sexism, its finger-on-the-scale preference for male genius, has given that critique a newly powerful force. And the question of the moment has become: Is it still an artistically justifiable pursuit for a man to paint a naked woman?...IN THE COMMENTS: JPS said: "Who knew John Ashcroft was so woke?"
For emerging artists, there is the fear of a possibly career-derailing gestalt fail. “I’ve been in conversations with other [male artists], and they were just like, ‘I quit working with the figure. I’m only doing abstract work, because I don’t want to touch it,’ ” says Marty Schnapf while walking me through his recent solo show “Fissures in the Fold” at Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles. He thinks we could be living through “a new Victorian age”....
Randa Jarrar, the California State University at Fresno professor who mouthed off about Barbara Bush and got suddenly famous.
We're just looking for trouble these days, it seems. I was taught as a child not to react to attention-seekers because you'll only encourage them, and Jarrar's tweeted remarks on the death of Barbara Bush were, to me, the perfect example of the sort of thing you really ought to ignore. I ignored it yesterday, but I'm not going to ignore the failure to ignore, which I'm reading about in here, in WaPo.
Jarrar, whose area of expertise is creative writing, popped off a couple edgy tweets:
Jarrar, whose area of expertise is creative writing, popped off a couple edgy tweets:
“Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal”...People got mad and actually incited the university to "review" Jarrar, who is a tenured professor. Lame. Jarrar apparently doesn't feel threatened, or so she tweets — "I will never be fired" and:
“I’m happy the witch is dead. can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. byyyeeeeeee.”
“You should tag my president @JosephlCastro. What I love about being an American professor is my right to free speech, and what I love about Fresno State is that I always feel protected and at home here,” Jarrar wrote. “GO BULLDOGS!”What?! Freedom of speech excludes disrespect!??
On Wednesday, Castro told the Bee that Jarrar’s comments were “beyond free speech. This was disrespectful.”
“A professor with tenure does not have blanket protection to say and do what they wish,” he said. “We are all held accountable for our actions.”...Absolutely pathetic. It's really a wonder we've kept the idea of freedom of speech.
As the controversy swirled, Fresno City College said Jarrar had dropped out as the featured reader at an upcoming literary festival. Jarrar had been scheduled to headline Lit Hop on Saturday, but informed organizers this week that she was withdrawing, the college said.
“While we respect the right to free speech, even objectionable speech, Jarrar’s statements are her own and do not reflect the values of LitHop or Fresno City College,” the statement said. “We acknowledge the severity of her statements and take very seriously the concerns expressed throughout the community. The safety of each individual, including Jarrar’s, and all members of the LitHop and Fresno City College community is our paramount concern. We do not support violence or threats on social media or elsewhere; rather, we value civil discourse and look forward to the necessary healing ahead.”
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