Aren’t we allowed to make up new stories?

Mar 10th, 2018 10:42 am | By

Belinda Luscombe interviewed Jordan Peterson for TIME. One thing they talked about was Peterson’s view that Disney’s Frozen is propaganda, as opposed to for instance Sleeping Beauty, which instead is Archetype. Luscombe asks him why he calls Frozen “deeply propagandistic.”

It attempted to write a modern fable that was a counter-narrative to a classic story like, let’s say, Sleeping Beauty — but with no understanding whatsoever of the underlying archetypal dynamics. You could say that Sleeping Beauty was raised out of her unconsciousness via a delivering male. Another way of reading the story is that unconsciousness requires active consciousness as an antidote. And the unconsciousness is symbolized in that particular story by femininity and active consciousness by masculinity. I

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Buy generics online

Mar 10th, 2018 10:11 am | By

What could go wrong?

A few things that could go wrong occur to me.

Yes, that’s one – children taking serious drugs with no adult participation.… Read the rest



Fox was doing re-runs

Mar 9th, 2018 6:04 pm | By

Oh, that meeting with Kim that Trump was going to have? Never mind. He got excited and he didn’t mean it and it was all a misunderstanding. Next question?

South Korean official Chung Eui-yong was in the White House yesterday meeting with other officials. Trump decided to see Chung right away; maybe Fox News was in repeats or something. Trump “then asked Mr. Chung to tell him about his meeting with Mr. Kim,” reports the New York Times. “When Mr. Chung said that the North Korean leader had expressed a desire to meet Mr. Trump, the president immediately said he would do it, and directed Mr. Chung to announce it to the White House press corps.”

It sounds

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Guilty of encouraging moral corruption

Mar 9th, 2018 5:49 pm | By

Two years in prison for taking a scarf off her head.

An Iranian woman who publicly removed her veil to protest against a mandatory hijab law has been sentenced to two years in prison, prosecutors say.

The woman, who has not been officially named, was found guilty of “encouraging moral corruption”, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi said.

Because a woman who refuses to wear a heavy scarf covering her hair and ears and neck is “encouraging moral corruption.” Women’s hair must be all but radioactive.

The Guardian has more:

More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested since the end of December for publically removing their veils in defiance of the law.

Most have been released, but many

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He’s famous because everybody talks about him because he’s famous

Mar 9th, 2018 5:09 pm | By

The New Zealand Herald reported on Lawrence Krauss’s absence from the tour there in May.

A celebrity atheist facing a raft of allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women has backed out of a New Zealand tour.

Lawrence Krauss was due to speak on a double-bill with Richard Dawkins at the Science in the Soul tour in May in Auckland and Christchurch, but the promoter this morning announced he would no longer be on the bill.

Instead, Dawkins would appear at the two Science in the Soul shows alone, with a new co-host to be announced, Australia-based Think Inc said.

Then not alone but with a new co-host. Anyway – do we think there’s any chance the new co-host will be … Read the rest



A grab too many?

Mar 9th, 2018 12:08 pm | By

About this lawsuit that Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) filed to break the NDA: it could be the thing that brings Trump down.

As any longtime legal hand in the capital remembers well, it was a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by an Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, against Bill Clinton that led to his impeachment for lying about his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

The case of the adult film actress, Stephanie Clifford, who uses the stage-name Stormy Daniels, may not get past even the first considerable obstacles. But if her court case proceeds, Mr. Trump and his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, may have to testify in depositions, several lawyers said in interviews on Thursday. Ms. Clifford’s suit

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21 people

Mar 9th, 2018 10:36 am | By

The Guardian reports:

The investigation into the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal has widened, as police sealed off the graves of his wife, Liudmila, and son, Alexander, and confirmed that a total of 21 people had been treated as a result of the incident.

The police officer who was exposed to the nerve agent used on the Skripals, named on Thursday as DS Nick Bailey, remained in a serious but stable condition.

Forensics officers began a major search for evidence at Skripal’s semi-detached house. They also cordoned off the graves in Salisbury cemetery where Liudmila and Alexander Skripal were interred in adjacent plots, and sealed off a garage and recovery service elsewhere in the city.

I wouldn’t … Read the rest



Let’s make a deal

Mar 9th, 2018 9:37 am | By

The Times solemnly reports on Trump’s North Korea caper as if it were sane and normal and likely to produce excellent results, and doesn’t talk to anyone who sees it differently until the last few paragraphs. Waaaay down at the bottom we get:

Analysts expressed skepticism about Mr. Trump’s decision to meet Mr. Kim, saying there was no indication that North Korea had given up its determination to be a nuclear weapons state.

“There is every reason to believe that North Korea is attempting to blunt sanctions and secure de facto legitimacy for its nuclear weapons program with this gesture,” said Michael J. Green, a former Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, speaking by telephone from Tokyo.

Evan S.

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Maga

Mar 9th, 2018 8:53 am | By

Trump fans.

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The waters are too clean

Mar 8th, 2018 4:51 pm | By

Catching up on one from a week ago:

[Editing to add: actually a year and a week ago. I should have realized. I knew he’d started doing it as soon as he got the chance, but I assumed this was a new phase. Reminder to self: check the year.]

President Trump stepped up his attack on federal environmental protections Tuesday, issuing an order directing his administration to begin the long process of rolling back sweeping clean water rules that were enacted by his predecessor.

……………………………What kind of fucking evil sack of shit gets rid of clean water rules?

Stupid question; I know; the fucking evil sack of shit who stole the election and now gets to destroy everything. … Read the rest



What they call us

Mar 8th, 2018 2:05 pm | By

The Scottish National Party MP Mhairi Black read out some of the misogynistic abuse she gets, including liberal use of “cunt.”

For instance starting at about 1:00

She needs a kick in the cunt, guttural cunt, ugly cunt, wee animal cunt – there is no softening just how sexualized and misogynistic the abuse is.

Please tell us again how “cunt” is not at all misogynistic in the UK. Please; we’re listening.… Read the rest



Farrakhan denounced “Satanic Jews”

Mar 8th, 2018 1:23 pm | By

To the surprise of no one who was paying attention, it turns out that the leaders of the Women’s March have a Farrakhan problem.

Mass movements are sewn together from a wide variety of sources, so they often sweep in unwanted companions as they move toward their goals. No one, however, expected to discover that three Women’s March co-chairs—Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Tamika Mallory—had ties to Farrakhan.

No one at all? When Sarsour’s hijab was on all those March posters?

It all came to a head last week, after Farrakhan delivered his address to the annual Nation of Islam gathering for Saviours’ Day, the sect’s three-day holiday honoring its founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad. Farrakhan denounced “Satanic Jews,” said

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A series of drunken falls

Mar 8th, 2018 12:41 pm | By

Part 5 of BuzzFeed’s big Russia series

Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was murdered in Washington, DC, on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US government’s official explanation of his death.

Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015, with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost yearlong “comprehensive investigation,” a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an “accident,” and prosecutors closed the

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None of us do

Mar 8th, 2018 11:22 am | By

Neither do I.

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Cosmopolitan

Mar 8th, 2018 11:14 am | By

The Huffington Post tells us the word “globalist” is the hot new thing in the White House right now…and not in a good way.

The term “globalist” has been used at the White House at least three times this week in reference to an outgoing Jewish Trump administration official, raising some eyebrows because the word is increasingly used in xenophobic and anti-Semitic contexts.

The word came up on Wednesday when a reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether a similar candidate will take the place of Gary Cohn, the outgoing director of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council.

“He was a noted free trader, a globalist. Will the president seek another globalist, another free trader?” Fox

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The real danger

Mar 8th, 2018 8:25 am | By

Ah Devin Nunes – the lying weasel who will commit any outrage to try to save his darling Don.

…last week, the California Republican was credibly accused of leaking texts from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking member to Fox News as part of an unusually misguided partisan stunt.

Patriotism at its finest.

Slate added last week that Nunes’ greatest hits include “being forced to admit that he hasn’t personally read the court documents that he based an FBI–Hillary conspiracy memo on, being forced to admit that the FBI actually did disclose the information about Trump ‘dossier’ author Christopher Steele that Nunes had accused it of not disclosing, and being forced to admit that he had coordinated his statements about

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A back channel for Putin to control Trump

Mar 7th, 2018 5:15 pm | By

Ohhhhhh god.

The Post, minutes ago – 8 p.m. their time, so it’s another one of these end-of-the-day booms that cause Maddow to tear up the show she and her people just spent the day writing and producing.

This one though…

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter.

Urk.

So it’s all true. Tillerson, and his demolition of the State Department and our ability to conduct a reasonable foreign … Read the rest



So what did you guys talk about?

Mar 7th, 2018 4:32 pm | By

Another boom. The Times reports Trump doing something you’re really not supposed to do…something that a punctilious observer could consider witness tampering.

The special counsel in the Russia investigation has learned of two conversations in recent months in which President Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters.

In one episode, the president told an aide that the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January. The article said Mr. McGahn told investigators that the president once asked him to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. McGahn never released a statement and later had

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90 minutes

Mar 7th, 2018 3:38 pm | By

The Trump administration cares.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a contentious visit to the site of last month’s Florida school shooting Wednesday, in which she was criticized by survivors and abruptly walked out of her own press conference.

Ok, the Trump administration cares about people who are deferential to them.

DeVos spent the morning at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where former student Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 students and teachers on Valentine’s Day. Her visit immediately sparked criticism and backlash from shooting survivors and advocates on social media.

“Do something unexpected: answer our questions,” Aly Sheehy tweeted at DeVos. “You came to our school just for publicity and avoided our questions for the 90 minutes you were actually

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Vlad gets around

Mar 7th, 2018 10:27 am | By

It was a nerve agent.

A nerve agent was used to try to murder a former Russian spy and his daughter, police have said.

Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found unconscious in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon and remain critically ill.

A police officer who was the first to attend the scene is now in a serious condition in hospital, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, said.

Is that terrifying enough yet? Will Trump ever have second thoughts about his best friend Volodya?

There are 14 other deaths under scrutiny.

In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian agent, was rushed to hospital after collapsing in London. As the world watched, a rare and highly radioactive isotope

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