Posts Tagged ‘ Trump ’

The right to refuse to do your job

Jan 17th, 2018 2:18 pm | By

Trump has a new bit of evil to spring on us.

The Trump administration is considering a new “religious freedom” rule that would allow healthcare workers to refuse to treat LGBT patients. The move would also allow workers to deny care to a woman seeking an abortion or any other service they morally oppose.

Roger Severino, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, has actively opposed civil rights protections for minority communities. In his previous role as Director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society for the conservative Heritage Foundation, Severino spoke out against the regulations he is now tasked with upholding.

He’s head of the office of civil rights … Read the rest



A bleak global climate for press freedom

Jan 17th, 2018 8:35 am | By

I never expected to be quoting John McCain, but heyho we live in strange times.

[Trump] has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit the free press by bestowing “fake news awards” upon reporters and news outlets whose coverage he disagrees with. Whether Trump knows it or not, these efforts are being closely watched by foreign leaders who are already using his words as cover as they silence and shutter one of the key pillars of democracy.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 2017 was one of the most dangerous years to be a journalist. Last year, the organization documented 262 cases of journalists being imprisoned for their work. Reporters around the world face intimidation,

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A house is not a hole

Jan 16th, 2018 11:15 am | By

Oh gee, there’s even more. It turns out those two lying dogs aka two Republican senators who say Trump didn’t say “shithole countries” meant (but didn’t tell us they meant) he said “shithouse” instead.

Just when you thought the lawmakers involved in that “shithole countries” meeting at the White House on Thursday hadn’t covered themselves in enough shame, here comes a new development.

The Washington Post reported Monday night that the source of the dispute is less about the thrust of President Trump’s “shithole” comment and more about the second syllable of that vulgar word. It turns out that the statement Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) issued that sounded as though it was crafted by a dozen

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You can never be racist enough for the base

Jan 16th, 2018 10:39 am | By

The Post has a detailed account of that meeting at the White House last week. It turns out “shithole” wasn’t the sum total of all the president’s racism.

Trump talked with Durbin on the phone that morning, all cheery about the prospects for a bipartisan deal on immigration; he invited Durbin and Lindsey Graham over for a meeting to do the deal.

But when they arrived at the Oval Office, the two senators were surprised to find that Trump was far from ready to finalize the agreement. He was “fired up” and surrounded by hard-line conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who seemed confident that the president was now aligned with them, according to one person with knowledge of

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Fourth grade

Jan 15th, 2018 9:28 am | By

Newsweek reported last week – confirming what we all know – that Trump has the worst language skills of any of the last 15 presidents.

The analysis assessed the first 30,000 words each president spoke in office, and ranked them on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale and more than two dozen other common tests analyzing English-language difficulty levels. Trump clocked in around mid-fourth grade, the worst since Harry Truman, who spoke at nearly a sixth-grade level.

At the top of the list were Hoover and Jimmy Carter, who were basically at an 11th-grade level, and President Barack Obama, in third place with a high ninth-grade level of communicating with the American people.

I think the ones at the higher end … Read the rest



The wrong button

Jan 14th, 2018 11:41 am | By

Yesterday people in Hawaii were minding their own business when suddenly many of them were informed there was an incoming ballistic missile.

According to a timeline released by the state, the alert was triggered at 8:07 a.m. local time when, during an internal drill, an employee hit the wrong button. For 13 minutes it went uncorrected, until the emergency management agency sent an update on social media.

So that was an unpleasant 13 minutes for those people.

Many reported first hearing that the alert was a mistake from the Twitter account of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii).

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Why did North Korea get left on Trump’s desk?

Jan 13th, 2018 3:57 pm | By

The Wall Street Journal did an interview with Trump on Thursday.

About that repetition thing…

He was asked how helpful China has been.

Mr. Trump: Not helpful enough, but they’ve been very helpful. Let’s put it this way, they’ve done more for me than they ever have for any American president. They still haven’t done enough. But they’ve done more for me than they have, by far, for any—I have a very good relationship with President Xi. I like him. He likes me. We have a great chemistry together. He’s—China has done far more for us than they ever have for any American president. With that being said, it’s not enough. They have to do more.

That’s three times, within … Read the rest



That time has come

Jan 13th, 2018 10:12 am | By

The US ambassador to Panama has resigned because he can’t work for Trump.

[John] Feeley’s departure had been communicated to State Department officials on Dec. 27 and was not a response to Trump’s alleged use of the word “shithole” to describe Haiti and African countries at a meeting on Thursday, U.S. officials said.

Trump denies using the term.

Feeley, one of the department’s Latin America specialists and among its senior most officers, made clear that he had come to a place where he no longer felt able to serve under Trump.

“As a junior foreign service officer, I signed an oath to serve faithfully the president and his administration in an apolitical fashion, even when I might not agree

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Which country is the real shithole?

Jan 13th, 2018 10:02 am | By

Robin Wright at the New Yorker on Trump’s “tough” words about African countries:

President Trump’s credibility as a world leader has been, to borrow his vulgarity, shot to shit. With one word—just the latest in a string of slurs about other nations and peoples—he has demolished his ability to be taken seriously on the global stage. “There is no other word one can use but ‘racist,’ ” the spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said at a briefing in Geneva. “You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes,’ whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome.”

That’s what the US stands for at this moment – hateful racist contempt said aloud … Read the rest



No apology forthcoming

Jan 13th, 2018 9:24 am | By

The African Union is displeased with Donald “shithole” Trump.

The organisation representing African countries has demanded that US President Donald Trump apologise after he reportedly called nations on the continent “shitholes”.

The African Union mission in Washington DC expressed its “shock, dismay and outrage” and said the Trump administration misunderstood Africans.

But, the Beeb continues, he denies it. Of course he does, the Beeb does not reply to itself, but he lies almost as often as he speaks, and he doesn’t hesitate to deny things we’ve all seen and heard. His denial is, epistemically speaking, pretty much worthless.

On Friday, Mr Trump on Friday tweeted that his language he used at the private meeting with lawmakers to discuss immigration legislation

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Vauxhall is a vibrant and important part of London

Jan 12th, 2018 9:39 am | By

So the Tories have made up their minds to stick to Trump no matter what.

Downing Street has accused Labour of risking relations with the US by saying Donald Trump is not welcome in Britain, after the president cancelled a visit planned for next month amid the threat of mass protests.

In a move that ties No 10 ever more closely to Trump, a Downing Street source supported a comment by Boris Johnson in which the foreign secretary condemned Jeremy Corbyn and the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, for opposing a presidential visit.

“The US is the biggest single investor in the UK – yet Khan & Corbyn seem determined to put this crucial relationship at risk,” the foreign secretary

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Trump’s fake alibi shot down

Jan 12th, 2018 9:18 am | By

Trump also lied about the US embassy in London.

Donald Trump has cancelled a visit to Britain next month to open the new US embassy in London, amid fears of mass protests.

The president claimed on Twitter that the reason for calling off the trip was his displeasure at Barack Obama having sold the current embassy for “peanuts” and built a replacement for $1bn (£750m). “Bad deal,” he wrote.

But the embassy’s plan to move from Mayfair to Nine Elms in London was first reported in October 2008, when George W Bush was still president.

He lies about everything, he lies as casually as he eats all the ice cream.

Trump confirmed on Twitter late on Thursday night

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The language used by him

Jan 12th, 2018 8:16 am | By

Trump of course is lying about it.

I suppose he’s too thick to realize that all his many lies have the result that informed people won’t believe this one.

Anyway, there are witnesses.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said on Friday that the president did use the term “shithole,” repeatedly, during the course of the meeting on immigration — which Mr. Durbin attended. The senator described Mr. Trump as saying “things which were hate-filled, vile and

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The language of apartheid and race war and annihilation

Jan 11th, 2018 5:14 pm | By

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At what point is it enough?

Jan 11th, 2018 5:04 pm | By

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Staffers predict the comment will resonate with his base

Jan 11th, 2018 4:48 pm | By

But wait, it gets even worse. Chris Cillizza has new details.

On Thursday, in a meeting with a senators and House members on immigration, the President of the United States, asked this: “Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?”

Yes, he said “shithole countries” — apparently in reference to the fact that immigrants from places like El Salvador, Haiti and Africa were being protected in a potential bipartisan deal to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and secure funding for border security.

What’s even more appalling is that the White House didn’t even try to deny that Trump used that slur, which was first reported in The Washington Post. In fact,

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A man of wealth and taste

Jan 11th, 2018 4:24 pm | By

Let’s get the take from somewhere else first. The BBC:

US President Donald Trump has reportedly lashed out at immigrants in a four-letter Oval Office outburst.

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Mr Trump told lawmakers on Thursday, according to the Washington Post.

The remark was reportedly in reference to people from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries.

The White House did not deny the comment, which has been confirmed by other US media.

Wow.

We know that’s what he thinks, of course, but we didn’t all know he was quite that disinhibited.

Democratic Senator Richard Durbin had just been discussing US temporary residency permits granted to citizens of countries hit by

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For sure, it’s a low bar for a president

Jan 10th, 2018 10:38 am | By

Yesterday Trump made an attempt to convince everyone that he is totally not a fucking moron or a child or watching tv instead of doing his job. He held a Potemkin “meeting” on immigration and had the cameras in to show the world how good Meeting he can do.

The President took a victory lap on Wednesday at a Cabinet meeting, welcoming reporters “back to the studio.”

“Actually it was reported as incredibly good and my performance — some of it called it a performance, I consider it work — but, it got great reviews by everybody other than two networks who were phenomenal for about two hours,” Trump said.

The President also claimed news anchors sent the White House

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Stunty McStuntface

Jan 9th, 2018 12:04 pm | By

Trump plans to hand out “Fake News” awards – to legitimate news organizations that dare to criticize him. He may get away with it but it’s not so simple for his staff.

“WARNING to White House staff: the president may be exempt from the rules at 5 CFR § 2635.701 et seq. on misuse of position BUT YOU ARE NOT,” tweeted Norm Eisen, who served as White House special counsel for ethics and government reform in the Obama administration.

In his message, Eisen told White House staff that if they help the president deliver the awards they could risk violating provisions of the law that forbid the use of government time and money to harm some members of the

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Sacrificing in their service

Jan 8th, 2018 5:30 pm | By

Oh gawd.

They are not “sacrificing” and it’s not “service” and WE DON’T WANT THEM TO.

They shouldn’t be there. There’s a law against presidential nepotism.

They’re not “sacrificing”; they’re exploiting their pseudo-jobs to make more money.

They have zero qualifications to work there.

Nobody wants them there.

Trump doesn’t get to be extra-special ragey that someone criticizes his children, because they don’t belong there in the first place. It’s not our fault or Wolff’s fault or journalists’ fault that Trump shoved his children into his job, ignoring the law against it and … Read the rest