Nazis gather

Nov 21st, 2016 11:48 am | By

Michael Goldfarb says “The term alt-right needs to be replaced by NYTimes/NPR et al and pronto.” He cites Joseph Goldstein’s story in the Times yesterday on a day-long meeting of followers of Richard B. Spencer near the White House on Saturday.

In 11 hours of speeches and panel discussions in a federal building named after Ronald Reagan a few blocks from the White House, a succession of speakers had laid out a harsh vision for the future, but had denounced violence and said that Hispanic citizens and black Americans had nothing to fear. Earlier in the day, Mr. Spencer himself had urged the group to start acting less like an underground organization and more like the establishment.

But now his

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Vewwy wude

Nov 21st, 2016 11:29 am | By

The grievance brigade.

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No reset button

Nov 21st, 2016 11:03 am | By

Jim Rutenberg at the Times on Megyn Kelly’s book.

On Tuesday, she was in her office at the Fox News headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, taking stock, preparing for the next phase — a Trump presidency — and warning fellow journalists to look at her experience during the campaign as a potential cautionary tale.

“The relentless campaign that Trump unleashed on me and Fox News to try to get coverage the way he liked it was unprecedented and potentially very dangerous,” she said, casual but animated behind her translucent desk. If he were to repeat the same behavior from the White House, she said, “it would be quite chilling for many reporters.”

He has been railing at the Times in … Read the rest

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“Let’s gut her”

Nov 21st, 2016 10:18 am | By

Slate had a piece about Trump and his team a few days ago that’s so horrifying I had to pause in reading it. It’s about how they echoed threats against Megyn Kelly to the point that a Fox executive had to explain to them that it wouldn’t help their campaign if she were murdered.

Donald Trump’s feud with Megyn Kelly was way darker than any of us knew. Kelly received so many death threats and so much harassment from Trump supporters after confronting him at the first Republican debate with a challenging question about his many, many misogynistic statements that she needed a special security detail for a year.

The Trump campaign stoked the flames of the Kelly hate, the

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We are given an obscene Gehenna

Nov 20th, 2016 5:26 pm | By

A few years ago Stephen Fry drove around the US in a London cab with a tv crew. I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the resulting tv series, and liked them. One of the places he visited was Atlantic City…

Would it not have been better to let the home of Monopoly, this seedy resort town and remnant of another way of holidaying, simply fall into the sea? Instead we are given an obscene Gehenna, a place of such tawdry, tacky, tinselly, tasteless and trumpery tat that the desire to run away clutching my hand to my mouth is overwhelming.  But no, I must brave the interior of the most tawdry and literally trumpery tower of them all

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Not only unpatriotic and servile

Nov 20th, 2016 4:33 pm | By

I don’t much admire Theodore Roosevelt, apart from the National Parks thing (which admittedly is a lot), but he said a good thing about our current issues.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

From an editorial he wrote for the “Kansas City Star” during World War I…when he was no longer president, of course.

H/t Steve Watson… Read the rest

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El Dorado

Nov 20th, 2016 4:12 pm | By

The vulgarity of Trump Palace is breathtaking. US Magazine did a piece on it a year ago, so we can see how hideous it really is.

Compare the White House.

You don’t need eye protection in the second place.… Read the rest

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Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream?

Nov 20th, 2016 12:03 pm | By

Trump’s national security guy is a conspiracy-monger. Business Insider reports:

The retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped to advise him on matters of national security has promoted stories involving conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn shared two thinly sourced articles on his Twitter account alleging that Clinton was involved in everything from “money laundering” to “sex crimes with children” just days before the election.

On November 2, the general tweeted a link to a website called True Pundit, which claimed to have spoken with “NYPD sources” involved in the investigation of Anthony Weiner. Flynn called it a “must read” — which many supporters likely did, since it was favorited and retweeted more than 12,000

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Measure the headlines

Nov 20th, 2016 11:16 am | By

A drawback to getting news online is that one doesn’t necessarily see how the news is presented and ordered – what is above the fold in huge headlines and what is below it in ordinary headlines. Jamison Foser has shown me what I’ve been missing.

Big headlines right at the top of the page, the whole entire above the fold occupied by Clinton email news.

On the other hand…

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Other issues

Nov 20th, 2016 9:55 am | By

The Times suggests Trump’s imbecilic tweeting may be an intentional diversionary tactic.

But even as Mr. Trump’s transition team appeared eager to embrace a more disciplined approach to the process of building out his administration, the president-elect’s Twitter complaints about “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live” provided a distraction.

That may have been the intention. Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts diverted attention from other issues, including a $25 million settlement in a lawsuit against Trump University, concerns about conflicts of interest involving the president-elect’s business dealings, and questions about the propriety of potentially appointing his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to a White House post.

Not around here they didn’t. I posted about both.

That’s the thing about Trump, as I keep … Read the rest

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Trump v Saturday Night Live

Nov 20th, 2016 9:46 am | By

Our petulant imbecile of a president-elect is still whining and complaining on Twitter, along with trying to tell us all what to do. He is so confused. He seems to think the president (and even the pres-elect) can just bark out orders and have them obeyed. That’s not how this works.

God he’s stupid. He really is like a child, a very young and very spoiled child. That interpolated “which I hear is highly overrated” – that’s so transparent and so goofy. No he doesn’t hear that, except … Read the rest

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Donnie’s pal “Honest Abe”

Nov 20th, 2016 8:41 am | By

… Read the rest

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Tee hee

Nov 19th, 2016 5:58 pm | By

Oh look, Milo Yiannopoulos being oh so amusingly “provocative” at Breitbart a few weeks ago – women should have stayed home hawhaw, they were better off there hawhawhaw, having babies is all they’re good for hahahaha.

Feminist propaganda shoved in the faces of previously-content housewives told ladies they would be less happy if they weren’t working a gruelling job like their husbands were. This sort of thinking was designed to make women feel strong and empowered. But the fact is, women have become far more unhappy in the last 35 years.

…

The role of the housewife has been thoroughly and ritually humiliated by successive waves of feminism — as if raising well-adjusted children, keeping a beautiful home and marrying

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Step right up, rent a bed in Trump’s new hotel, Ambassador

Nov 19th, 2016 5:21 pm | By

This is completely astounding.

Friday evening, the Washington Post reported that about 100 foreign diplomats gathered at President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC to “to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.” The tour included a look at the hotel’s $20,000 a night “town house” suite. The Post also quoted some of the diplomats saying they intended to stay at the hotel in order to ingratiate themselves to the incoming president.

ARE YOU SERIOUS???

He is marketing his new hotel to foreign diplomats?

I’m out of swears, out of facial expressions, out of anything that can express my disgust.

“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks

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Read, my child

Nov 19th, 2016 4:52 pm | By

John Lewis won a National Book Award on Wednesday.

Watch him accept it.

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He’s trying to project strength

Nov 19th, 2016 4:22 pm | By

The Times does a story on Trump’s temper tantrum about the “Hamilton” rebellion.

The clash between the “Hamilton” actors and Mr. Trump captured the sharply divergent feelings of many American voters 11 days after the election: a showdown between the values of multiculturalism on the left, including the racially diverse “Hamilton” cast and the world of entertainment, and the conservative principles of the incoming Trump administration, which was backed strongly by working-class white voters and traditional Republicans.

Actually no. It’s not “the conservative principles” that have so many of us fighting back. It’s the noisy racism, the venom, the bullying, the sneering, the insults. It’s the calling a senator “Pocahontas” and the many years as a birther and the … Read the rest

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The Voting Rights Act

Nov 19th, 2016 12:44 pm | By

Ari Berman points out in a Times op-ed that the Trump Supreme Court appointments will very likely kill the Voting Rights Act.

The ruling in Shelby was bad enough. What was the result of Shelby?

Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in effect in 2016, including strict voter ID laws, fewer opportunities for early voting and reductions in the number of polling places. These restrictions depressed turnout in key states like Wisconsin, particularly among black voters.

Now it will get much worse.

A grave danger comes from the Supreme Court. If Donald J. Trump appoints a justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia to fill the current vacancy, as he has pledged to do, there could be five votes

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People who know Trump say he’s a lifelong jerk so why stop now?

Nov 19th, 2016 11:45 am | By

The Times reports on how President Pussygrabber is adjusting to his new job. The first sentence is not a confidence-builder.

Donald J. Trump sits high in Trump Tower in New York, spending hours on the phone with friends, television personalities and donors to ask if they know people to recommend for his cabinet.

Very deadpan. ARE YOU SERIOUS? The man is asking tv personalities to recommend people for the cabinet???

Jesus h fucking christ.

He does a transition meeting early but then he goes back to his morning routine of reading the NY Times and Post and watching “Morning Joe” on the television machine.

He gets angry when members of his inner circle get too much of the spotlight,

… Read the rest

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A surprisingly sharp rebuke from Mr. Trump

Nov 19th, 2016 10:50 am | By

What happened at last night’s performance of “Hamilton.”

With Vice President-elect Mike Pence attending the show, the cast used the opportunity to make a statement emphasizing the need for the new administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, a Republican, to work on behalf of all Americans.

It was a deeply felt and altogether rare appeal from the stage of a Broadway show — and it drew a surprisingly sharp rebuke from Mr. Trump on Saturday morning. The president-elect tweeted that the “Hamilton” cast had “harassed” Mr. Pence by making the statement and had been “very rude.”

“Apologize!” Mr. Trump wrote at the end of one of two tweets on the matter.

“Surprisingly” sharp? Hardly. “Surprisingly” compared to what one would … Read the rest

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Trump objects to all this outrageous rudeness

Nov 19th, 2016 10:04 am | By

Twitter Trump tweets again.

He thinks it’s noteworthy that he will be working all weekend. Dude. That’s the job. It’s the job he signed up for, it’s the job he trampled all over people to get, yet he’s bragging/complaining about working over the weekend.

Then he tells us how happy he is that he succeeded in cheating people out of as much as $35k with his laughable fake “university” with only a token payout to settle the lawsuit.

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