Milo agrees he does like offending people

Nov 18th, 2016 5:52 pm | By

Channel 4 News (the UK one):

This is the moment Milo Yiannopoulos is challenged on Breitbart’s headlines and so-called “post-fact era.”

The news outlet’s former chairman Steve Bannon has been appointed as Donald Trump’s chief strategist – and there’s speculation that Yiannopoulos himself could find his own way into the White House.

Go there to see their excerpt, or here is the full interview:

He says himself he’s a troll:

You know perfectly well that it is a provocation designed to make people think and perhaps to make them laugh.

In other words, trolling.

At about 4:40 he’s even more explicit:

I do like offending people. I think that the grievance brigade, victimhood, you know the idea that hurt

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Troll seizes White House

Nov 18th, 2016 5:07 pm | By

Fresh Air yesterday talked to Joshua Green, a Bloomberg reporter who knows a lot about Steve Bannon.

DAVIES: In 2012, when Steve Bannon was the executive editor of Breitbart, he established a research arm – the Government Accountability Institute. What does it do?

GREEN: Well, Bannon – what attracted me to Bannon originally was that, you know, if you look at kind of the infrastructure, the organizational chart of the Republican right-wing, what Hillary Clinton once referred to as the vast right-wing conspiracy, what you see is that a lot of the tendrils lead back to Steve Bannon. So not only was Bannon executive chairman of Breitbart News, but then with some of the same financial backers, he started

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Trump agrees he cheated those students

Nov 18th, 2016 4:39 pm | By

In more bad news, Trump has settled the lawsuits against Trump “University.”

Donald J. Trump has reversed course and agreed to pay $25 million to settle a series of lawsuits stemming from his defunct for-profit education venture, Trump University, finally putting to rest fraud allegations by former students, which have dogged him for years and hampered his presidential campaign.

The settlement was announced by the New York attorney general on Friday, just 10 days before one of the cases, a federal class-action lawsuit in San Diego, was set to be heard by a jury. The deal, if approved, averts a potentially embarrassing and highly unusual predicament: a president-elect on trial, and possibly even taking the stand in his own defense,

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The kids sat in on the meeting with that guy from Japan

Nov 18th, 2016 4:16 pm | By

Again the mind reels. Ivanka Trump sat in on the meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister yesterday. Fortune says this is tinpot oligarchy behavior.

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly said that there would be no conflicts of interest during his administration because his vast business empire would be in a “blind trust.” But White House ethics lawyers in both parties have criticized that, noting that having his children run the company means it would be neither blind nor a trust.

The very first meeting that the President-elect held with a world leader, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is prompting further criticism—even alarm. According to photographs taken at Trump Tower in New York City and published this week, the

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Operation #TrumpCup

Nov 18th, 2016 3:51 pm | By

Jim Wright:

Apparently the latest trend is for conservatives to go to Starbucks and order a drink and when the barista asks for the name on the order they say “Trump.”

This means the liberal company run by famously liberal CEO Howard Schultz is now shouting “Trump!” from behind the counter several thousand times a day all across the country.

Conservatives who’ve never shopped at Starbucks are now dropping in to pull this stunt. They’re right now busy organizing trips to their local franchise via social media and posting pictures of their orders on Twitter and Facebook.

#TrumpCup is currently trending on Twitter.

Which conservatives find hilarious.

And it IS hilarious.

Especially when you realize Trump is

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Get out of jail free card

Nov 18th, 2016 3:24 pm | By

Turkish Minute reports:

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has brought a motion to Parliament that proposes rapists in Turkish jails be released if they marry their victims, a way out of prison for more than 4,000 inmates convicted of rape.

The motion was brought to the floor of the General Assembly and was approved by AKP deputies despite the nay votes of both the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

So the raped women get to spend the rest of their lives being raped by the guys who raped them in the first place, so that those guys can get out of prison where they were placed because they raped women. It’s as … Read the rest

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Of course it is crystal clear that assault is unacceptable

Nov 18th, 2016 3:04 pm | By

Back in October Jeff Sessions – former prosecutor Jeff Sessions – was very cautious about what you could call sexual assault.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a top Donald Trump surrogate, said on Sunday that even if the GOP nominee actually grabbed a woman “by the pussy,” as he bragged about in a leaked tape from 2005, that behavior would not amount to sexual assault.

“I don’t characterize that as sexual assault,” Sessions told The Weekly Standard in the spin room after Sunday night’s presidential debate. “I think that’s a stretch. I don’t know what he meant.”

“So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that’s not sexual assault?” the reporter asked Sessions.

“I don’t know,” the

… Read the rest

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Meet the white supremacist Attorney General

Nov 18th, 2016 11:48 am | By

Ari Berman tells us more about Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, Trump’s pick for Attorney General.

Donald Trump has chosen a white nationalist as his chief strategist and a white nationalist sympathizer as his pick for Attorney General. Like the Confederate general he is named after, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has long been a leading voice for the Old South and the conservative white backlash vote Trump courted throughout his campaign. Sessions, as a US senator from Alabama, has been the fiercest opponent in the Senate of immigration reform, a centerpiece of Trump’s agenda, and has a long history of opposition to civil rights, dating back to his days as a US Attorney in Alabama in the

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The Borgias hit a bump in the road

Nov 18th, 2016 11:23 am | By

I didn’t know this: there’s an actual law against presidents hiring family members.

Mr. Kushner has consulted with at least one lawyer and believes that by forgoing a salary and putting his investment fund, his real estate holdings and The New York Observer into a blind trust, he would not be bound by federal nepotism rules, according to one of the people briefed.

Ethics lawyers in both parties said that such an arrangement would violate a federal statute designed to prevent family ties from influencing the functioning of the United States government. Under a 1967 law enacted after John F. Kennedy installed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, no public official can hire a family member —

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A racist and a Tea Party hire

Nov 18th, 2016 10:58 am | By

Today in Trump-horror news:

President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he plans to nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) as CIA director, a pair of hard-line conservatives who offer early signs of the shape of Trump’s Cabinet.

Trump also confirmed the news reported a day earlier that he has selected retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn as his national security adviser, a position that, unlike the other two, does not need to be confirmed by the Senate.

…

Sessions, 69, was Trump’s first endorser in the Senate and quickly became the then-candidate’s chief resource on policy, but the fourth-term senator has been dogged by accusations of racism throughout his career.

In 1986,

… Read the rest

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Racists and anti-Semites are rejoicing

Nov 18th, 2016 10:44 am | By

David Duke is in bliss.

Duke: Bannon, Flynn, Sessions: the 1st Steps in Taking America Back!

Now it’s time for – LAW & ORDER!

Mr. Trump’s appointment of Bannon, Flynn and Sessions are the first steps in the project of taking America back.

… Read the rest

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These obscene harpies

Nov 18th, 2016 6:38 am | By

Have a passage from Edmund Burke to liven up your reading. It’s from A Letter to a Noble Lord, 1796.

It cannot at this time be too often repeated, line upon line, precept upon precept, until it comes into the currency of a proverb — to innovate is not to reform. The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, unchanged. The consequences are before us—not in remote history, not in future prognostication: they are about us; they are upon us. They shake the public security; they menace private enjoyment. They dwarf the growth of the young; they break the quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop

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Filthy Trump

Nov 17th, 2016 5:37 pm | By

Have nausea medications handy. Welcome to the Trump kleptocracy.

Anti-nepotism laws prevent Trump from giving his family members jobs in the administration. But don’t think that’s going to stop them from being active participants in U.S. government decision-making, or using the fact that Trump is president to keep money flowing in. In fact, we could see the president enriching himself and his family on a scale that we normally associate with post-Soviet kleptocrats and Third World dictators.

For starters, Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are on the executive committee of Trump’s transition team, helping decide who gets hired for key positions and what the administration’s initial focus will be. We learned that someone on the transition team inquired

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Joe makes a poem

Nov 17th, 2016 5:21 pm | By

This is a good one.

… Read the rest

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Three victims

Nov 17th, 2016 1:11 pm | By

In Oakland California…

A San Jose woman who once sued a school district for firing her after sex-reassignment surgery has been charged in the stabbing and shooting deaths of three people in Oakland, authorities said.

Dana Rivers, 61, a former Sacramento teacher, faces three counts of of murder, one count of arson and one count of possessing metal knuckles, according to a criminal complaint filed in Alameda County Superior Court. The complaint alleged the victims, who were identified as 57-year-old Patricia Wright and 56-year-old Charlotte Reed, were stabbed and shot. The third victim, 19-year-old Toto Diambu, was shot.

A lesbian couple and the son of one of them.

Someone called police at 12:21 a.m. after hearing multiple gunshots and

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Bad company

Nov 17th, 2016 12:36 pm | By

Russia has withdrawn its signature from the Rome statute that founded the International Criminal Court.

Russia has said it is formally withdrawing its signature from the founding statute of the international criminal court, a day after the court published a report classifying the Russian annexation of Crimea as an occupation.

The repudiation of the tribunal, though symbolic, is a fresh blow to efforts to establish a global legal order for pursuing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In recent months, three African countries who were all full members of the ICC – South Africa, Burundi and Gambia – have signalled their intention to pull out, following complaints that ICC prosecutions focused excessively on the African continent.

I’d love … Read the rest

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Still going down the list

Nov 17th, 2016 11:28 am | By

Joshua Foust’s list.

Item six is the only one without a link.

  • Putting one’s children into senior positions of a government is the behavior of a banana republic, not a constitutional democracy with strong institutions. This is not normal.

There was Kennedy making his brother Attorney General. There was plenty of controversy about that at the time. Sticking in three children and the spouse of one of them, all at once – when they are all entangled in the president’s many businesses – that’s a whole new level.

Item seven is his refusal to disclose his taxes.

Item eight:

  • Asking if he can decline the President’s salary, so as to avoid paying taxes, is not normal.

The link … Read the rest

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More going down the list

Nov 17th, 2016 10:37 am | By

Joshua Foust’s list part 2.

The third item on the list:

  • Blasting journalists with product placements for the labels your child, who is on your transition team, is wearing is not normal.

The link is to a tweet:

Jason Pinter responded a few days ago that she did the same thing after the convention:

“Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech” – that’s not normal.

I followed the link: it goes … Read the rest

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Going down the list

Nov 17th, 2016 10:03 am | By

First item on Joshua Foust’s list:

From that NBC News piece:

Trump’s transition website is now equipped with the official “.gov” federal web address.

And while the “Meet The President Elect” section is typically dedicated to outlining an official’s vision and background, there is one particular emphasis in his resume.

More than one-quarter of Trump’s bio refers to his business properties around the world.

The focus on Trump’s individual private properties, from which he draws his income, is a break from the political norms of a candidate transitioning into the White House.

Barack Obama, for example, had a similar bio page during

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Is not normal

Nov 17th, 2016 9:38 am | By

Oh god. We’re just not even going to be able to keep up. Teams of reporters and activists will be on each item and still they won’t be able to keep up. There’s just so much…

Joshua Foust points out the obvious truth that This is not normal. He explains that for a few paragraphs and I nod along with him.

“Normal,” as a concept, matters. The old adage that it is just the setting on a dryer is not just wrong but misleading. When something is abnormal it is important to understand why. If a person is not normal they could be brilliant or they could be sick, and knowing the difference is the distance between life and

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