The Genius of Portland sings again:
Peter Boghossian
Protesters, if you *really* want to make a positive impression tomorrow, dress well, avoid vandalism, & respect the police.
Also eat everything on your plate, hang up your jacket, do your homework, and kiss the boss’s ass.… Read the rest
Adam Raymond at New York mag on what’s gone from the White House website.
We know about the climate change section already.
Also gone from the site are the LGBT, civil rights, and health-care sections. Separately, the Labor Department’s report on LGBT workplace rights is no longer online.
If you click on the links you get bounced to a transitional page, with Trump and Pence leering into the distance.
Here is the archived LGBT page. I couldn’t find the other two by adding “obama” and “archive” the same way.
Added is a bio of The Great Man himself.
Andrew Rosenthal at the Times on Trump’s inaugural address.
There was no soaring rhetoric in his inaugural speech, no real effort to heal the wounds of the 2016 campaign, and really only one real, coherent defining theme for his coming administration – the only thing that counts is America.
On this day, he said, there will be “a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power.”
“From this day forward a new vision will govern our land,” he said. “From this day forward, it’s only going to be America first, America first.”
It’s a hideous slogan, even without the pro-Nazi background. He might as well have shouted, “We need … Read the rest
We (we in the US) now live in a country whose head of state is a very bad man.
It’s a dirty feeling.
It feels dirty having a mean vengeful angry belligerent bully as head of state.
It feels dirty having a corrupt lying cheating fraud as head of state.
It feels dirty having a misogynist racist pussygrabbing monster as head of state.
It feels dirty having an ignorant incurious stupid illiterate as head of state.
It’s a bad day.… Read the rest
PBS wondered how the crowds for Trump’s inauguration compared to those for Obama’s, so they compared photos:
So now it’s reality.
First stop: the erasure of climate change:
All References to Climate Change Have Been Deleted From the White House Website
Cool. That means there no longer is such a thing, and Trump’s children and grandchildren won’t have to deal with it in the next several decades.
… Read the restAt 11:59 am eastern, the official White House website had a lengthy information page about the threat of climate change and the steps the federal government had taken to fight it. At noon, at the instant Donald Trump took office, the page was gone, as well as any mention of climate change or global warming.
It’s customary for www.whitehouse.gov to flip over to the new administration exactly at noon,
Of course. Idiot Trump thought the right way to celebrate his inauguration would be with a brutalist display of tanks and missile launchers.
… Read the restThe military “may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trump told the Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday. “That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”
Trump spoke about his vision of military parades in vague terms, suggesting it was something he might oversee in the future. But according to several sources involved in his inaugural preparations, Trump has endeavored to ensure that his first day as commander-in-chief is marked by an unusual display of heavy military equipment.
During the preparation for
Trump and his gang are going to take an axe to federal programs.
The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
Also…
… Read the restAt the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.
Right now at the Convention Center in DC: Upsetting Rape Culture is projecting survivor stories on the wall of the Convention Center with the hashtags #wewillnotbesilent and #intheman, talking about how Trump reminds women of their abusers.
Trump is partying up his inauguration…and he’s doing it at his hotel. That means he’s profiting while he parties, which is sleazy as fuck. Tomorrow at 12:01 Eastern it will become more than sleazy.
With sirens blaring, a fleet of limousines and security personnel raced down Pennsylvania Avenue twice in less than the last 24 hours to deliver Donald J. Trump to inauguration events.
But he was not heading to the White House. He was going to Trump International Hotel.
The hotel he leases from the federal government, and runs as a profit-making venture.
… Read the restConflicts that for months have been theoretical are now about to become real — most immediately a possible challenge by the federal government. It owns
The Times addresses the question of why Putin wanted Trump; what’s in it for him?
… Read the restBrendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth and a contributor to The Upshot, made the case succinctly:
Trump has flouted the norms of American elections and governance at every turn, including calling for the jailing of an opposing candidate, encouraging violence against protesters, endorsing the torture of prisoners, suggesting he might not respect the results of the election, falsely claiming that millions of illegal votes were cast, failing to resolve unprecedented conflicts of interest or to even disclose his tax returns, and attacking a federal judge based on his ethnicity (and that’s of course a highly incomplete list). I can’t directly assess
I know some Ex-Muslims who are not impressed by the idea that wearing hijab is a good way to stand up for religious freedom, contrary to what People magazine suggests.
Actress Kathy Najimy Wants People to Wear Headscarves on Inauguration Day in Support of Religious Freedom
I get why she thinks that’s a good idea, but she’s still wrong. Hijab is a religious “obligation” imposed on women and women only. That’s not any kind of freedom.
… Read the restOne group, led by actress Kathy Najimy, is encouraging people to support “our about-to-be-disenfranchised Muslim sisters” by wearing headscarves on Inauguration Day.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Scarves — with the support of the Muslim Women’s PAC — is putting out a nationwide
Charles Pierce on the Betsy DeVos hearing. (Not really a hearing, more of a façade of a hearing.)
… Read the restAs nearly as I can tell, the nominees for the president-elect’s Cabinet fall into several different categories. There are the people you’d pretty much expect from any Republican administration. (James Mattis, Michael Flynn, Ryan Zinke). There are the people who understand the mission of their departments and have spent their lives undermining it. (Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, Rick Perry at Energy, Andrew Puzder at Labor). And there are the people who are fundamentally clueless about the general nature of public service. (Rex Tillerson at State.) On Tuesday night, DeVos demonstrated that she is that rarest of Trump administration fauna: Someone
Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:
… Read the restPolitico’s Michael Crowley has a nice piece explaining the missing National Security Council staffers, and the dangers that could cause if there’s an early crisis. Hundreds of briefing papers have been created by Obama’s NSC and sent to Team Trump, but the New York Times reports that no one knows if they’ve been reviewed.
Yet the NSC is ahead of the curve for this administration. Look at the big four departments. There’s no Trump appointee for any of the top State Department jobs below secretary nominee Rex Tillerson. No Trump appointee for any of the top Department of Defense jobs below retired general James Mattis. Treasury? Same story. Justice? It is one of two
Congressional Representative Luis Gutierrez on why he won’t be at the inauguration. Now there is a guy who knows how to talk, unlike President-elect Pussygrabber. The rep has something to say about the Pussygrabber.
… Read the restMy speech this morning on the Floor of the House about why I will not be at the inauguration ceremonies on Jan. 20 but will be marching with women at the Women’s March on Jan. 21. “We all heard the tape when Donald Trump was bragging – bragging! – about grabbing women by their private parts without their consent. It is something I can never un-hear. Bragging to that guy on TV that he would grab women below the belt as a way of hitting
Let’s hear from some more Nazis. They’re speaking up. Philip Oltermann in Berlin reports in the Guardian:
… Read the restA politician from the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has broken with the country’s postwar political consensus by calling for a “180-degree turn” from the tradition of remembering and atoning for the Nazi era.
In a speech in a beer hall in Dresden, Björn Höcke, who leads the party in the eastern state of Thuringia, railed against Germany’s decade-long tradition of acknowledging the crimes of the National Socialist era, describing the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as a “monument of shame”.
“They wanted to cut off our roots and with the re-education that began in 1945, they nearly managed,” Höcke said.
A big congratulations to 2016 for being the hottest year on record, beating out rival 2015, which beat rival 2014. Every year is a new record broken! Isn’t this exciting, folks?
… Read the restIn a powerful testament to the warming of the planet, two leading U.S. science agencies Wednesday jointly declared 2016 the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set just last year — which, itself, had topped a record set in 2014.
Average surface temperatures in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 2015, and featured eight successive months (January through August) that were individually the warmest since the agency’s record began in 1880.
The average temperature across the world’s
Bahahahahahahaha Donnie from Queens tweets a candid shot of himself “writing” his inaugural address. Suuuuuuure he is. He’s totally writing it. You can tell by the casual expertise with which he tries to fold the pad in half while he’s writing on it.
Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago. Looking forward to Friday. #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/S701FdTCQu
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2017
CFI Portland is throwing a Trumpesque event in ten days.
The New Campus Thought Police
Two brilliant and uncompromising thinkers, bestselling author Christina Hoff Sommers and Portland’s own Peter Boghossian, will share the stage on January 27th with political comedian and host Dave Rubin for a live “fireside chat” on the hot-button issues of speech, gender, and culture at PSU.
“The New Campus Thought Police” will be presented by both the Center for Inquiry in Portland, as well as Freethinkers. The event will feature honest and unfiltered conversation about the controversial subjects of free speech and political correctness on college campuses. This will include issues such as microaggressions, trigger warnings, safe spaces, cultural appropriation, victimhood culture, and more.
Yes, there … Read the rest
Another reason to think Donald Trump is not a very nice man.
… Read the restA former contestant on the reality show “The Apprentice” filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against President-elect Donald Trump over his response to her allegations that he groped her during a job interview in 2007.
Summer Zervos, a California restaurant owner who appeared on the show in 2006, accused Trump of aggressively kissing and grabbing her when she went to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel to discuss a possible job at the Trump Organization a year later.
In her suit, Zervos alleges that Trump defamed her when he denied her account of their interactions in the hotel room, accusing her and other women who made similar
