When he saw that people were desperate

Jun 4th, 2017 4:54 pm | By

Goddam immigrants, right?

A Romanian chef thought on his feet when he hit an attacker over the head with a crate and let 20 terrified people into the bakery where he works during the terror attack on Borough Market.

Florin Morariu has been hailed on social media as a hero after taking in the people and apprehending the attacker.

The baker, who works at the Bread Ahead bakery in the market, told The Associated Press: “We were looking out of the window because we saw that everyone was agitated, everyone was running, people, women… they were fainting, falling and we went outside to see what was happening.”

He said when he went outside and saw two people stabbing others, he at first “froze” and didn’t know what to do. But then he went and hit one of the attackers on the head with a crate.

“There was a car with a loudspeaker saying ‘go, go’ and they (police) threw a grenade…. and then I ran.”

He added that when he saw that “people were desperate,” he let about 20 people into the bakery and pulled the shutters down.

Well, yeh, ok, he did all that, but he’s still a bloody foreigner, right?

Goddam political correctness.



More Limbaugh than Lincoln

Jun 4th, 2017 4:43 pm | By

Chris Cillizza on Trump’s non-presidential quality in light of his grotesque tweets last night and this morning.

Trump tweeting things to forward his own agenda in the wake of terrorist attacks is nothing new. Following shootings in an Orlando nightclub that left 49 people dead, Trump offered this: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!” After an incident of a knife-wielding man at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Trump tweeted: “A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.”

In short, the tweetstorm following the London attacks isn’t the exception, it’s the rule for Trump. Using these attacks to prove his political point is his default position not a one-time popping off.

Trump’s responses are the latest example of how he is radically altering the idea of what it means to be “presidential.” During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s attacks on John McCain’s war hero status, his savaging of a Gold Star family, his wild exaggerations about his wealth and his seeming disinterest in the truth were all taken, at one point or another, as signs that he simply wasn’t “presidential” enough to actually win anything.

That he wasn’t “presidential” enough because he wasn’t adult enough, or thoughtful enough, or decent enough. That he wasn’t “presidential” enough because he was deficient on every criterion you could think of – literally every single one. He was and is reckless instead of responsible, rude instead of civil, hostile instead of affable, ignorant instead of informed, belligerent instead of restrained…I could go on this way all night. Every moral and intellectual quality needed for the job, he has the opposite of, up to and including mere appearance – that godawful nightmare hair.

And Trump has never stopped. His quintet of tweets on London are not only something that no previous American president would ever have said, they’re also statements that it’s hard to imagine any other leader in any other democracy around the world saying.

They are more the statements of a conservative talk radio show host than they are of what we have come to think of as a president — bombastic, over the top and out of context. They are, by traditional standards, anti-presidential.

Which, come to think of it, is a good way to describe Trump. He is sort of an anti-president — at least in terms of how we have always defined those terms. Trump’s attitude and approach in office is closer to Jerry Springer than to Gerald Ford. He’s more Limbaugh than Lincoln.

And he, of all people, is in that chair.



Plunging to a new depth

Jun 4th, 2017 1:03 pm | By

Philip Rucker at the Post underlines how disgustingly out of control and malevolent Trump is.

A traditional president would have reacted carefully to the London Bridge terrorist attack by instilling calm, being judicious about facts and appealing to the country’s better angels.

Donald Trump, of course, is no traditional president. He reacted impulsively to Saturday night’s carnage by stoking panic and fear, being indiscreet with details of the event and capitalizing on it to advocate for one of his more polarizing policies and to advance a personal feud.

He started by retweeting a brainless headline from the Drudge Report.

Before offering his condolences to the British people, the victims of three gruesome attacks in as many months, Trump pecked out a second tweet. “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough,” the president wrote, calling on U.S. courts to affirm his administration’s “travel ban” on people from six majority-Muslim nations.

After that he sent a “God bless!” But he took it back after a night’s sleep.

On Sunday morning, however, once the breadth of the horror in London was clear, Trump was back on Twitter. He criticized the city’s mayor — Sadiq Khan, a liberal Muslim and an old Trump foil — for not being tough enough protecting his citizens.

“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” Trump tweeted.

Trump took Khan’s quote out of context. The mayor had urged Londoners, in a BBC interview that was replayed, not to be “alarmed” by an increased police presence in the city. He said that after condemning the “deliberate and cowardly attack” as “barbaric.”

That’s how our president helps out after a hideous terror attack – by lying about the mayor in order to attack him for not doing enough.

White House officials did not respond to questions about Trump’s response on Sunday.

With Trump spending another day at his private golf club in Sterling, Va., the White House’s social media director, Dan Scavino, revived an old Trump-Khan feud on Twitter and scolded the mayor to “WAKE UP!!!!

Yes, he really did.

These people are the worst. They’re like drunken frat boys who have taken Sadism pills.

Chris Lu, who served as White House Cabinet secretary under President Obama, was aghast.

“The fact that the White House social media director is commenting before the national security leadership has spoken is yet another example of Trump’s ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ attitude towards handling international incidents,” Lu said.

Historian Robert Dallek said Trump is exhibiting an entirely new style of presidential leadership. “Trump rubs everything raw,” he said. “He makes it more acerbic, more contentious.”

Dallek, who has studied former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who steered the country through Pearl Harbor, was unsparing in his critique of Trump’s response to the London attack.

“There’s something so petty about this man,” Dallek said. “What we’re dealing with is someone who is, and I think this is the best term, an egomaniac. Everything has to revolve around him — he knows better, he’s right, he one-ups everything.”

And it’s not because he’s “insecure” or has “low self-esteem.” It’s because he’s far too secure and has way too much self-esteem. Some people just are mean shits, and Donald Trump is one of them.



Trump reaches out by attacking London’s mayor

Jun 4th, 2017 12:48 pm | By

Trump of course made everything worse by being an asshole on Twitter.

Not what a decent head of state is supposed to do.

Naturally people in the UK – once our closest ally, would you believe it?! – are not much pleased.

 

Donald Trump has sparked fury after hitting out at Sadiq Khan over his response to the London terror attack.

 

Following the atrocity, Sadiq Khan said he was “grieving” for the victims and said the terrorists “would not win”.

But the US President slammed that response on Twitter, saying: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”

He caused confusion with a further tweet, saying: “Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now? That’s because they used knives and a truck!”

Tottenham MP David Lammy told him: “Stop commenting on what has happened in my city. Put your phone down.”

Funny coincidence, I told him the same thing early this morning when I read his stinking tweets.

“As an international politician, he should know better than taking cheap and unwarranted shots at the people actually on the ground,” a follower agreed.

He should know better and, even more basically, he should be a minimally decent enough human being not to take cheap and unwarranted shots at the people actually on the ground. He has a repulsive instinct for doing the nastiest thing possible in any given situation.

Mr Khan’s statement appeared to have been taken out of context by Mr Trump. The Mayor had said this morning: “Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days.

“There’s no reason to be alarmed.”

A spokesman for Mr Khan later branded Mr Trump’s comment “ill-informed” and said the president had deliberately taken out of context remarks made by the mayor to reassure people about the increased police presence in the wake of the attack.

He said: “The mayor is busy working with the police, emergency services and the Government to co-ordinate the response to this horrific and cowardly terrorist attack and provide leadership and reassurance to Londoners and visitors to our city.

“He has more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks urging Londoners not to be alarmed when they saw more police – including armed officers – on the streets.”

But our ugly squalid malevolent president has nothing better to do than insult the mayor of the city dealing with the attack.

We apologize to Sadiq Khan, to the people of London, to the world.



Running and crying

Jun 4th, 2017 12:30 pm | By

The NY Times has a lot of first-person accounts.

It was a warm, drizzly Saturday night, and the bars at Borough Market here were packed, as usual. Tucked below an offramp of London Bridge, near the banks of the Thames, the market is a warren of narrow streets populated with trendy bars and restaurants, where some people had just finished watching the Champions League soccer final.

Then came the loud bang of a crashing van. Then came three men slashing at patrons with knives. Then screams, sirens, chaos — and, finally, gunfire as arriving police officers shot the three assailants dead.

“A huge group of people started running towards us,” said Graham Forester, who was in a taxi arriving at Borough Market as the attack unfolded. “One woman screamed at my cabby, telling him to turn around. One guy fell over really badly, while he was running, and I saw a pool of blood on the pavement.

“A group of young girls, dolled up for the night, were running in their high heels, crying.”

That’ll be what the killers wanted. Allah hates women.

“We heard a massive bang,” another witness, Andrew, told the LBC news channel late Saturday night. He had been standing under an umbrella outside a bar when the attackers rushed in. “I turned around on the right, and there was a guy with a big knife, I mean a big knife.”

Andrew said he jumped over a small fence, ran a distance and then hid behind a bush. “There was already a dead guy laying on the floor,” he said. He set out running again, shouting at people to flee. “I told every bar and restaurant on the way: ‘Get out of here! Everybody, out! Out! Out!’”

Helicopters hovered over the Borough Market area as crowds of people continued to evacuate. Witnesses described scenes of horror as ambulances rushed to treat the wounded and people fled in panic.

Les Hunter, 33, was among the crowds that had managed to get away. Mr. Hunter, from Liverpool, was visiting a friend in London and stepped out of a pub about 10:15 p.m. He saw people fleeing and heard gunshots.

“We went back into the pub and people starting running in telling us to get down and hide,” he said. “I ran up to the gents and hid, but when I looked out the window, I saw a guy with blood all over his face and T-shirt.”

Gods hate human beings.



Updating

Jun 3rd, 2017 3:38 pm | By

24:19

A security guard who oversees a number of pubs in the area has told the BBC he saw four people stabbed by three attackers.

The man, who was deeply shocked and asked not to be named, said he was at the Market Porter pub when a colleague at another bar said there was a stabbing at the Borough Bistro pub nearby.

He said he went towards this pub and saw that “everybody started running” and there was screaming.

The eyewitness added that he saw three attackers, one of whom had a long knife and stabbing people, including a girl in her early 20s.

24:14

Natalie and Ben were coming up to the entrance of the underground on Borough High Street when they saw lots of people running.

The married couple witnessed someone being stabbed.

Ben said: “I saw a man in red with quite a large blade, I don’t know the measurement I guess maybe 10 inches. He was stabbing a man…he stabbed him about three times fairly calmly.

“It looked the man had maybe been trying to intervene but there wasn’t much that he could do he was being stabbed quite coldly and he slumped to the ground.

The attacker and another man walked off quite “boldly”.

“A table was thrown, a bottle was thrown at the individual with the knife and then we heard three gunshots and we ran,” he added.

It’s getting worse.

(These things never do get better, do they. It never turns out “just some bumps and bruises but everyone ok.” No. Deaths being reported now.)

23:51

The BBC’s Nick Quraishi at the scene says he is now able to corroborate earlier reports of gunshots being fired.

Reports suggest it may have been more than one incident:

– A van hitting people at London Bridge and three people then jumping out of the vehicle and attacking members of the public;

– A separate incident at Borough Market

– Police have now said they are responding to a third incident in Vauxhall

It is understood that police are looking for three suspects who may be armed.

23:47

An eyewitness told LBC radio what he saw tonight.

The taxi driver said: “A van came from London Bridge itself, went between the traffic light system and rammed it towards the steps. It knocked loads of people down.

“Then three men got out with long blades, 12 inches long and went randomly along Borough High Street stabbing people at random.”

Via Twitter:

Via the Beeb.

23:47

An eyewitness told LBC radio what he saw tonight.

The taxi driver said: “A van came from London Bridge itself, went between the traffic light system and rammed it towards the steps. It knocked loads of people down.

“Then three men got out with long blades, 12 inches long and went randomly along Borough High Street stabbing people at random.”

23:33

Will Orton was at a pub nearby when the incident happened.

The 25-year-old said: “Lots of people came running inside, we didn’t really know what was going on.

“We thought maybe there was a fight or something outside. And then there were almost hundreds of people coming inside.

“The bouncers did a really good job, they shut the doors and locked everyone in,” he added.

“There was panic – it seemed like it was literally outside the door.

“People were coming inside and saying they had witnessed people being stabbed.

“It seemed like it was happening immediately outside the entrance.”

Police are searching for three suspects – reports
Posted at
23:27
Police are now searching for three suspects, a BBC reporter at the scene says.

He says there are also reports that some people have been stabbed.

The priority for the police is now to get people – many whom where enjoying a nightout in central London – out of the area.

The police cordon is being moved further and further out, our reporter adds.



London Bridge

Jun 3rd, 2017 3:32 pm | By

Again.

Pedestrians have reportedly been hit by a van on London Bridge in Central London.

An eyewitness told the BBC several people were injured.

Armed police officers and paramedics are now working at the scene, in what Transport for London describes as a “major police incident”.

Vehicle ‘mounted pavement’

23:01
BBC reporter Holly Jones, who was on the bridge at the time of the incident, said the van was driven by a man and was “probably travelling at about 50 miles an hour”.

About five people were being treated for injuries after the vehicle mounted the pavement and hit them, she said.

She said the van, which was travelling from the direction of central London, headed towards the south side of the river.

Ms Jones later reported seeing a man being arrested by police. She said he was handcuffed and had his shirt off.

Police boats ‘searching river’

23:07
The BBC’s Holly Jones spoke to a French woman who had been injured in the incident.

She told Ms Jones: “I don’t know where those other two people are. So the police are checking the Thames.

“They were right near the edge of the bridge. It looks potentially they could have been thrown over.”

‘Run as fast as you can’ – police advice to public

23:21
Police are reported to be treating injured people and carrying them away at the end Thrale Street, near London Bridge.

Members of the public were told by police to “run as fast as they could” westbound.

Nick Archer, who was in the London Bridge area, told Sky News: “We came out (of a bar) on to the road and looked and looked to my left and there is a guy, I thought he was just drinking but he was lying on the floor.

“And then a couple of seconds later, about three police vans flew past. “He looked in a bad way.”



Hot dogs not daube de bœuf à la provençale

Jun 3rd, 2017 12:46 pm | By

Trump doesn’t have time to fill vacancies at FEMA and NOAA because he’s so dang busy planning things like a “Pittsburgh not Paris” rally in Lafayette Park. (Wait, Lafayette? Isn’t that some damn frog name? Couldn’t they have found a good Murikan-name park to hold a rally at?)

President Donald Trump’s campaign announced a “Pittsburgh, not Paris” rally across from the White House on Saturday to celebrate the United States’ withdrawal from a global climate agreement.

The Fairfax County Republican Committee and the Republican Party of Virginia are sponsoring the rally in Lafayette Square, which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, according to an announcement from the Trump campaign.

Yeeah! And while we’re at it, Detroit not Dijon, Buffalo not Berlin, Milwaukee not Milan, Akron not Athens. Those stinking Yurrupeeans got nothing to teach us.

“As you know, the President has been under siege from the mainstream media and the Democrats, especially now that he put American jobs first by withdrawing from the Paris Accord. Therefore, we are organizing a group to demonstrate our support for President Trump and his fearless leadership,” the invitation reads.

Liars. Informed word is that the Paris Accord and the efforts to improve energy technology will result in more jobs, not fewer. It’s only if you think that mining coal is good for its own sake that you object to this transition.

Trump didn’t even go to the rally outside his back door. He went – you’ll never guess – golfing.

While Trump is at his golf club, the “Pittsburgh, not Paris” rally has kicked off with “dozens” of Trump supporters who gathered to express their support for Trump’s decision to pull out of the landmark Paris Agreement.

Whole entire dozens.



Can we offer you a flotation device?

Jun 3rd, 2017 12:23 pm | By

Here’s a fun idea – let’s cut funding and stop hiring for agencies that deal with weather disasters at a time when weather disasters are more frequent every year. That should work out well.

This year, key federal agencies that state and local governments and the public depend on still don’t have leaders. Nearly five months after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, NOAA, the agency that oversees the government’s weather forecasting, is still without an administrator, as is the agency that responds to disasters, FEMA.

Well, Donnie’s been very busy. All that golf, all those tweets, all those fascist rallies, all that phoning up dictators to tell them where the subs are at the moment – that eats up the time.

FEMA’s last director, Craig Fugate, who stepped down in January, says day-to-day operations at the agency are in good hands, so he is not concerned about a temporary vacuum at the top. He says, “The bigger challenge is longer term, is setting the tone and direction of the agency; being able to represent the agency in the policy discussions at the highest level of government.”

With no permanent administrator in place for those discussions, FEMA is one of the agencies that have been targeted for significant cuts under the budget the president submitted to Congress. Under that budget, a program that helps states and communities take long-term measures to reduce losses from disasters, the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, has been cut by more than 60 percent. The budget also eliminates funding for an ongoing effort to improve and redraw the nation’s flood maps.

“This is a very harmful approach that’s essentially saying that states are on their own, communities are on their own in terms of responding and recovering from these disasters,” says Rachel Cleetus, a climate policy expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And the reality is, states just don’t have the budgets.”

And disasters are increasing.

Mind you, the good news is that Congress probably won’t approve the cuts. The bad news is that Trump thinks they’re a good plan.



Prince Vanity

Jun 3rd, 2017 11:00 am | By
Prince Vanity

Oh christ. Donnie has given himself a new cover photo on Twitter. It betrays what a vain self-absorbed idiot he is.

Capture

As if the whole point of being president is flying around in the big blue plane to work up crowds of people.

Every day we learn afresh what a child he is.



Dry and tight

Jun 3rd, 2017 10:11 am | By

There’s always the old “what daft thing can someone suggest women stick up themselves to make everything dryer and tighter” standby. Jen Gunter found one suggesting oak galls.

Sometimes to distract myself from the hot mess in the White House I Google unusual vaginal therapies and today’s BINGO comes from that gynecological gem that is Etsy, purveyor of not only vaginal herb balls but also of balls of wasp detritus and bark meant for the vagina.

Screen Shot 2017-05-16 at 8.43.22 PM.png

What, you ask, are oak galls? Well my friend they are balls of bark and wasp excreta that once nurtured a wasp larva (so I suppose there may also be wasp larval residue, not sure what that might be but an image of saliva dripping from the Alien Queen comes to mind).

It’s an astringent. Astringents have their uses, Dr Jen points out, but vaginal improvement is not one of them.

This product follows the same dangerous pathway of other “traditional” vaginal practices, meaning tightening and drying the vagina which is both medically and sexually (for women anyway) undesirable. Drying the vaginal mucosa increases the risk of abrasions during sex (not good) and destroys the protective mucous layer (not good). It could also wreak havoc with the good bacteria. In addition to causing pain during sex it can increase the risk of HIV transmission. This is a dangerous practice with real potential to harm.

Why the hell would anybody think vaginas are supposed to be dry? Do people think throats are supposed to be dry? Eyes? Arteries? Body interiors in general?

GYNO Etsy seems all about dry tight vaginas. I’m thinking they should back away from the medicinal products, you know? It’s promoting a both a bad sexual ideal, that something must be wrong if your vagina is damp, and a dangerous practice. While many women won’t buy this product it’s just one more bullshit message about vaginal health. It’s no wonder there are so many useless and/or harmful products on drugstore shelves designed to dry and clean vulvas and vaginas.

Sometimes everything seems to be about dry tight vaginas and/or vagina-substitutes. Can’t the tech sector come up with one so that women can be allowed to have the ones they were issued?



Citing human rights abuses as justification

Jun 2nd, 2017 4:34 pm | By

Trump has found another Obama action to reverse.

President Trump is considering reversing major pieces of the Obama administration’s opening with Cuba and reinstating limits on travel and commerce, citing human rights abuses by the Castro government as justification for a more punitive approach.

That’s funny, because just the other day he was telling the Saudis that he wasn’t there to “tell them how to live” – by which he meant, to tell them not to imprison, flog, or kill people for being atheist, or to tell them not to treat women as helpless brainless children, or to tell them not to treat foreigners like so much garbage. He went on to all but crawl into their arms and dribble. In short he made it very clear that he doesn’t give a flying fuck about human rights abuses. Of course we knew that anyway, since he’s so indifferent to them right here in the US of A.

In seeking to justify his changes on human rights grounds, Mr. Trump would be taking an approach far different from the one he has applied to other parts of the world, where he and his advisers have viewed human rights considerations as an impediment to trade and partnerships that create jobs in the United States.

“Given their complete lack of concern for human rights around the world, it would be a tragic irony if the Trump administration uses that to justify policies that harm the Cuban people and restrict the freedom of Americans to travel and do business where they please,” said Benjamin Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama who negotiated the 2014 announcement. “It’s clear that the Cuban and American people want to move forward, and nothing can change that reality.”

Yes but Obama.



Guest post: A big shout-out to the laws of physics

Jun 2nd, 2017 2:13 pm | By

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on A classic post-truth policy.

The orange incarnation of infinite stupidity and evil certainly deserves all the hate and contempt in the known universe and beyond, but let’s not talk as if everyone else were suddenly performing admirably on the climate issue. The truth of the matter is that there are no good guys in this story (or, if they exist, they’re as marginalized and on the fringe as you can possibly get).

If actions speak louder than words there is practically a universal consensus across the industrialized parts of the world that we are definitely going to emit more – a lot more – carbon than even the most optimistic scientific assessments deem compatible with the goal of limiting global warming to 2 °C. We are still going to reach the target, however, and the way that is going to happen is that the laws of physics are going to grant us a special dispensation for the sake of the economy. Of course nobody is going to come out and say that, but that’s what the prevailing view amounts to in practice.



Imagine

Jun 2nd, 2017 11:38 am | By

I mentioned the other day I don’t like Kathy Griffin’s severed head photo. I don’t like threatening imagery of that kind, no matter who’s doing it and no matter who’s the target. (On the other hand if she’d released it yesterday right after the Rose Garden announcement, instead of Tuesday, I might have lost sight of that dislike.) But that doesn’t mean outrage from Trump and co is anything other than bullshit.

Imagine? Imagine??! We don’t have to imagine, lots of people did that to Obama. Donald Junior’s own father spent years publicly lying about Obama’s citizenship. Donald Junior’s own father demanded the execution of the Central Park 5, and he insisted they were guilty after DNA evidence had shown they were not. Donald Junior’s own father in other words called for the murder of five non-white teenagers. That’s a good deal worse than Kathy Griffin’s photo.



A reprieve

Jun 2nd, 2017 10:21 am | By

Better news for CEU:

Central European University announced Tuesday that it will remain in Budapest for the 2017-18 academic year, amid hope that it will be able to do so for the long run as well.

The university, founded in 1991, has American and Hungarian accreditation and offers graduate education in the social sciences and various professional fields. The university has won international praise for the quality of its academic programs. But a law passed in Hungary in April has endangered the university by requiring that it offer programs in New York State, where it is chartered but does not offer programs. The law has been condemned by academics worldwide as an attack on the university…While the exact motives are unclear, many say that the Hungarian government is trying to attack George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who founded the university.)

Andrew Cuomo has authorized negotiations with the Hungarian government to allow CEU to keep operating in Hungary. (Maybe a hologram CEU in Albany or Syracuse while the real one continues in Budapest?)

But seriously, that seems to be good news.



Such a maneuver would likely draw a backlash

Jun 2nd, 2017 9:48 am | By

More bogus “suspense” from the Trump camp. Will he invoke “executive privilege” to stop Comey testifying, or won’t he? Stay tuned to find out.

Legal experts say Trump could invoke a doctrine called executive privilege to try to stop Comey from testifying. But such a maneuver would likely draw a backlash and could be challenged in court, they said.

Just a tad. What would that look like? Trump fires FBI director to prevent him from investigating Trump’s ties to Putin, then invokes “executive privilege” to prevent him from testifying. Self-incriminating much?

Also, checks and balances. What checks and balances are there if a Trump can hide behind executive privilege to protect the very crimes that need to be investigated?



When women go outside

Jun 2nd, 2017 8:47 am | By

Speaking of bullies – a news show host in Australia tore a strip off the Daily Mail for its habit of degrading and shaming women. One of the examples he gave was so bizarre I googled it and found the details.

To be fair, this weekend’s Daily Mail Australia story about Channel Seven television host Sam Armytage wearing granny underwear didn’t set out to demean and humiliate me. It only set out to demean and humiliate Armytage, and Armytage alone.

How else would you explain taking a photo of her on the street, from behind, without her consent, and plastering the results on the internet: “Sam Armytage dares to bare with her giant granny panties showing visible line in Sydney”. (Firstly, she didn’t “dare to bare” anything. She was wearing a dress over her underpants. That is why they are called underpants.)

Wow. What can you even say about that?

Armytage has told Buzzfeed Australia that the matter is now with her lawyers. I hope this means they won’t continue shaming every semi-famous woman who wears normal underwear to the shops.

But the whole tawdry exercise speaks to a wider issue. There has been much talk in the past few weeks of ideas that seemed unacceptable a few short months ago slowly being normalised.

In an essay for the New York Times Magazine, Teju Cole wrote about the days following Donald Trump’s US election win: “All around were the unmistakable signs of normalisation in progress. So many were falling into line without being pushed. It was happening at tremendous speed, like a contagion.”

Normalisation is a choice. When you are part of the chain of production that enables a story like Armytage’s undies to even exist – when you commission, write, click, consume – you are normalising cyberbullying, stalking, sexism and just all-round general creepiness.

It’s not “teasing.” It’s not “irony.” It’s not “free speech.” It’s not “criticism.”

Updating to add the smoking gun:



In all things

Jun 2nd, 2017 8:30 am | By

In small things as well is in large, Trump is consistent: he’s a mean, sadistic, bullying asshole who enjoys belittling and shaming people because he likes to see people feeling bad. He insults Merkel and Obama and Warren and Curiel, and he insults people who work for him.

In Trump’s White House, aides serve a president who demands absolute loyalty — but who doesn’t always offer it in return. Trump prefers a management style in which even compliments can come laced with a bite, and where enduring snubs and belittling jokes, even in public, is part of the job.

That right there? That’s an asshole. That’s a 100% brass-plated irredeemable asshole. We’ve all known them, and they suck.

Allies say the president’s quips are simply good-natured teasing, part of an inclusive strategy meant to make even mid-level staff members feel like family.

Fuck that shit. Fuck it up one side and down the other. Families that do that are crap families, and bosses who do it are terrible bosses.

And during the transition, Trump would make a point of noting that Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s crowds paled compared to his, teasing that even his daughter Ivanka and son Eric attracted more attention, said two people familiar with the comments, which they considered demeaning. (Pence offered a similar quip on the campaign trail.)

“Teasing” is a sneak-word. It pretends that sadistic verbal bullying is mere joking, but it isn’t.

Critics say the president often demeans those in his orbit, a tendency they say reflects a broader fragility beneath his bluster.

“Trump is so deeply insecure that not even becoming president of the United States quenched his need to make others feel small to build himself up,” said Tim Miller, a former spokesman for an anti-Trump super PAC. “Choosing to work for him necessitates a willingness to be demeaned in order to assuage his desire to feel like a big, important person.”

That’s that self-esteem thing again. Maybe it’s not that he’s so deeply insecure, maybe it’s that he’s a mean bullying piece of shit. Maybe there’s nothing more to it that that: he’s a mean fucker who likes to make people feel like crap.

During an early call with Australia, one of nation’s staunchest allies, the president got into a testy exchange with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, blasting him over a refu­gee deal, bragging about the size of his electoral college win and abruptly ending the call.

When news from the conversation emerged, Trump’s team readily confirmed details of the exchange. The president was livid about the leak — but had no problem being viewed as a bully, believing he was simply standing up for his nation’s best interests.

What I’m saying. He likes being a bully, and he thinks it makes him awesome.



A classic post-truth policy

Jun 2nd, 2017 7:29 am | By

The Trump show.

Canceling the Paris deal is a classic post-truth policy. Based on the outright denial of overwhelming scientific reality — and telegraphed in suspense-building gameshow style this week via Twitter and conflicting media teasers — it is Trump at his most callous, ignorant and attention-seeking.

That “suspense” bullshit was enraging. He treated it like just another “reality” show twist, which is so disgustingly frivolous it makes me go cross-eyed.

As a former reality TV star, Trump cares about how things look, not how they really are. Torpedoing climate efforts is the ultimate “up yours” to liberals — after all, that’s the point. The aim is symbolic, but faced with higher carbon emissions and consequent disastrous global warming, our children may not see it that way.

The whole drought-starvation-mass migrations-wars thing will make it difficult.

China will pick up what Trump threw away.

China’s leaders have long recognized the economic opportunities in moving aggressively into clean energy technologies. Solar is now cheaper — as well as cleaner — than coal in many developing countries.

Trump, who likes to pose as a successful businessman, seems not to understand the value of innovation. Instead he seeks to turn the clock back to an imagined golden age of fossil fuels. If America falls behind in the clean energy revolution, it is not Trump who will pay the price.

Trump never does pay the price.



He started with a conclusion

Jun 2nd, 2017 7:06 am | By

The Post tells us about the exhaustive and exhausting efforts to get Trump to act like a responsible adult.

Silicon Valley titans, such as Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, contacted the White House directly, making clear just how seriously they viewed the issue of climate change — and how important it was to them that the president not withdraw from the international pact.

European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, used a private summit of the Group of Seven world powers to repeatedly and urgently prod Trump to stay true to the climate deal.

But of course Trump is both stupid and conceited, so he never for a second thinks that these people are more intelligent and informed than he is and therefore he should pay attention to what they tell him. He just thinks they’re losers because, you know, not American, not tv personalities, not property tycoons. He’s way too stupid to understand how stupid he is.

Trump had never liked the Paris accord. He viewed it as a “bad deal” and during the campaign had promised his base he would “cancel” the climate pact that he believed was hurting American workers.

His final, deliberative verdict was the same as his initial, gut-level one, according to this account of Trump’s decision-making process, which is based on interviews Thursday with more than a dozen administration officials, Trump confidants, Republican operatives and European diplomats. Even so, the president listened and moderated months of often heated, and at times downright contentious, discussions among his own advisers, as well as scores of outsiders.

He likes that. It’s part of the game of playing president, and in the end he gets to do what he wants and laugh at all those people who tried so hard to make him think like a grownup.

“He’s stayed where he’s always been, and not for a lack of trying by those who have an opposite opinion,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “He started with a conclusion, and the evidence brought him to the same conclusion.”

A ringing testimonial to his obstinate stupidity and incompetence.

Ivanka Trump, meanwhile, helped lead the effort to stay in the deal. In meetings, she argued that withdrawing could hurt the United States’ global image and weaken its moral authority abroad. She and her allies pushed the case that the president would have more leverage if he remained part of the agreement and negotiated from within.

The opposing camp, however, dismissed the substance of her appeal, brushing off her concerns as a hand-wringing question: “What will the world think of us?”

Right, because that doesn’t matter at all and never has. We can get whatever we want just by demanding it and mentioning the nukes if anyone balks. It’s that simple and easy.

Some of the efforts to dissuade Trump from withdrawing actually had the reverse effect, further entrenching his original position. When Trump heard advocates arguing that the era of coal was coming to an end — something Cohn told reporters on last week’s foreign trip and also a frequent talking point by some cable news pundits — Trump only became more adamant that pulling out of the Paris pact could help rescue the U.S. coal industry, said a Republican operative in close contact with the White House.

Well there’s one thing you can say about coal. Ok it’s dirty, and it burns dirty, and it creates smog that corrodes people’s lungs and deposits layers of soot on everything, and it’s terrible for global warming, and it’s dangerous work, but – at least you can understand it. Lump of coal: fire: energy. It’s not all confusing and puzzling and invisible like nuclear energy or those weird solar panels. Energy should be simple and easy to understand at a glance. That’s a big plus for coal in our Donnie’s book.

Pressure from leaders abroad also backfired. One senior White House official characterized disappointing European allies as “a secondary benefit” of Trump’s decision to withdraw.

Naturally. They’re all smarter than he is, also politer. Naturally that makes Donnie from Queens angry. How dare any pesky European be smarter and more decent than Donnie the Boss?

When Trump touched down at a humid Sicilian air base last week, European leaders were already girding up for an argument at the G-7 summit. In Brussels, the president had just castigated NATO allies for their defense spending. But as leaders spoke during a closed-door NATO dinner, not one directly confronted him, seeking to save their political capital for a contentious discussion about climate change in Italy.

In the end, several officials said, the Group of Seven summit felt more like a Group of Six against One, at least on climate issues, as every other leader went around the table urging Trump to remain in the Paris accord.

“There is a situation where six — if you take the E.U., seven — stand against one,” Merkel said after the meeting.

Merkel, who might be the ­second-most powerful leader in the world after Trump, also pressed a moral-based argument, according to one official who was in the room. If the United States pulled out, what would be the message to countries in Africa that could suffer most from global warming and nations like Fiji that are drowning under rising sea levels?

The official added that another leader brought up political arguments: Does the United States want to preserve the U.S. lead on the topic or hand it off to China and India? And a third made an economic pitch: By encouraging renewable energy, you boost the economy, you boost innovation and you stay competitive.

But Trump seemed unmoved by any of the appeals, instead telling the group that this was what he had promised during his election campaign and that he was protecting his voters, according to the official.

On the plane back from Sicily, Merkel did little to hide her disappointment, according to someone who traveled with her. She raved about Macron and his “keen perception.” There was no such praise for Trump, of whom she could only say, “He listened for hours.”

Well obviously. She wasn’t going to be raving about Donnie’s keen perception, was she. The man is dumb as a stump.

People who made the mistake of deciding to work for Trump are also glum.

Among administration aides who wanted Trump to stay in the agreement, there was growing frustration, bordering on despondency, that they had been unsuccessful in their effort.

Many had given up high-paying jobs outside the administration, sacrificed their quality of life, and were facing daily leaks and palace intrigue stories — only to feel as if they had been unable to influence the president on an issue of top importance.

Silicon Valley executives and other CEOs were also upset. Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, where he led the firm along with Cohn, took to Twitter for the first time ever Thursday to criticize the Paris withdrawal, writing, “Today’s decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.’s leadership position in the world.”

Musk, the CEO of Tesla, who had worked closely with Kushner on several of his key initiatives, also used Twitter to announce his departure from White House advisory panels: “Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”

Donnie don’t care. Donnie got his revenge.