Happy photos of the event

Mar 3rd, 2018 2:59 pm | By

Farrakhan gave another anti-Semitic speech last weekend.

Minister Louis Farrakhan engaged in a series of anti-Semitic remarks on Sunday.

Farrakhan has led the black nationalist group Nation of Islam since 1977 and is known for hyperbolic hate speech aimed at the Jewish community.

During the speech in Chicago, Farrakhan made several anti-Semitic comments, including, “the powerful Jews are my enemy.”

“White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through,” he later said.

Yeah that’s no good. Whatever you think of Israel, that’s no good.

Women’s March co-chair Tamika Mallory was in

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She washes and gilds all she touches

Mar 3rd, 2018 2:37 pm | By

Virginia Heffernan points out that corruption requires the legitimate world to protect its gains. Star witness: Princess Ivanka.

Crooks seeking legitimacy are not fenced out in America. The U.S. is teeming with enablers champing at the bit to serve rich thugs: lawyers, lobbyists, bankers, security firms, consultants and PR people.

Like Paul Manafort for instance, and like…Princess Ivanka.

Oh, Ivanka. Her livelihood is as opaque as her full-coverage foundation, but she plays a critical role in her father’s administration — and in the broader danse macabre of corruption and legitimacy.

The foundation dig is cruel but warranted – I noticed when watching that clip the other day where Princess rebukes the “inappropriate question” about the King’s pussygrabbing: she’s absolutely plastered … Read the rest



An ignominious anniversary

Mar 3rd, 2018 11:37 am | By

Trump hits 100.

President Donald Trump reached a presidential milestone at his Palm Beach County, Florida, golf club on Saturday: One hundred days in office at a golf club that bears his name.

100 days in 13 months: not too shabby.

Trump, once a critic of presidential golfing, has ignored his own advice and made a habit of visiting some of the many golf courses emblazoned in his moniker. The habit is part of the broader trend of the President and first lady making frequent trips to properties owned and operated by the Trump Organization.

So, you see, he’s not actually golfing in the recreational sense, he’s working to exploit the presidency to promote his businesses.

In total, Trump

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For the duration of Women’s History Month

Mar 3rd, 2018 11:23 am | By

Of Liberal Intent on Facebook:

Starting Thursday, March 1, 2018, Of Liberal Intent will host a new feature called Women’s Writes. For the duration of Women’s History Month, there will be a new post every day related to women and feminism. The author, Robin Buckallew, has declared the intent to write something every day for Women’s History Month every year until women everywhere have the same rights, opportunities, pay, and respect as men all over the world are able to command. The management of this site hope she lives a very long time…

Works posted there will be works of short fiction, essays, or excerpts from longer works. Please check in regularly to see any and all of the

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Intrinsically male

Mar 3rd, 2018 10:41 am | By

I’m reading comments on this post about the reasons Lawrence Krauss got semi-banned from Case Western Reserve, and I’m brought up short by this comment – by, specifically, a bit where it quotes Sam Harris.

It’s an elephant that looms large for female atheists, but is invisible for male atheists: Ed Drayton noticed the gender disparity, didn’t know why, so he asked and got knowledgeable answers: Sam Harris also noticed it, didn’t know why, but didn’t let ignorance get in the way of instant expertise when, off the cuff at a book signing, he supplied an answer from his own imagination:

“I think it may have to do with my person[al] slant as an author, being very critical of bad

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REST IN PEACE GOD DAMN IT

Mar 3rd, 2018 10:04 am | By

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Nothing like shouting at people to make them have a good nap.… Read the rest



Trump calls out mediocrity

Mar 2nd, 2018 4:57 pm | By

This morning:

The Times has background:

Mr. Trump had refrained from remarking on the show on Twitter for many months. But on Friday morning, Mr. Baldwin’s remarks were highlighted on Fox News and Mr. Trump weighed in soon after.

They share the tweet.

(An earlier version of the post in which Mr. Trump misspelled Mr. Baldwin’s name as “Alex” was deleted.)

It also spelled “dying” “dieing.”

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A vitriol that stuns

Mar 2nd, 2018 4:22 pm | By

Inside the West Wing:

But a president who has long tried to impose his version of reality on the world is finding the limits of that strategy. Without Mr. Porter playing a stopgap role on trade, the debate has been marked by a lack of focus on policy and planning, according to several aides.

Morale in the West Wing has sunk to a new low, these people said. In private conversations, Mr. Trump lashes out regularly at Attorney General Jeff Sessions with a vitriol that stuns members of his staff. Some longtime advisers said that Mr. Trump regards Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation as the “original sin,” which the president thinks has left him

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666

Mar 2nd, 2018 11:56 am | By

Another tightening of the noose:

Federal investigators are scrutinizing whether any of Jared Kushner’s business discussions with foreigners during the presidential transition later shaped White House policies in ways designed to either benefit or retaliate against those he spoke with, according to witnesses and other people familiar with the investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has asked witnesses about Kushner’s efforts to secure financing for his family’s real estate properties, focusing specifically on his discussions during the transition with individuals from Qatar and Turkey, as well as Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates, according to witnesses who have been interviewed as part of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to sway the 2016

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It’s easy!

Mar 2nd, 2018 11:11 am | By

Europe to Trumpistan: ok you’ve done it now – we’re slapping a tariff on bourbon and blue jeans, so ha.

It’s a clever move. Trump will hate that, because American Greatness!

The European Union will hit back at the heart of the United States, slapping tariffs on products like Harley-Davidsons, Kentucky bourbon and bluejeans, if President Trump goes ahead with a plan to place tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the president of the bloc’s executive arm vowed on Friday.

Harleys! They really know how to attack Americanitude, don’t they.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, made the remarks to the German news media in reaction to the proposed tariffs. Mr. Junker said the plans to tax the

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That inquiry? Skip it

Mar 2nd, 2018 9:10 am | By

Via Talking Points Memo:

The Securities and Exchange Commission late last year dropped its inquiry into a financial company that a month earlier had given White House adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm a $180 million loan.

While there’s no evidence that Kushner or any other Trump administration official had a role in the agency’s decision to drop the inquiry into Apollo Global Management, the timing has once again raised potential conflict-of-interest questions about Kushner’s family business and his role as an adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.

That is, there’s no evidence that outsiders are aware of, so far, that we know of – but that doesn’t rule out the existence of evidence known to a … Read the rest



Bumpy night

Mar 1st, 2018 5:12 pm | By

So what happens when Don has a really bad day? He starts trashing the place in earnest.

President Trump whiplashed Washington through 24 hours of chaos and confusion, culminating Thursday with a surprise announcement that he will unilaterally impose steep tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.

His own aides were stunned. The stock market plunged. It was the moment many of his advisers had long feared would occur when he grew tired of talking points and economic theory and decided to do things his way.

Maybe next time it will be starting the nuclear Armageddon.

Trump often likes to sow misdirection, running the White House like a never-ending reality show where only he knows the plot. But even

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The hacking and leaking

Mar 1st, 2018 4:49 pm | By

Interesting times.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is assembling a case for criminal charges against Russians who carried out the hacking and leaking of private information designed to hurt Democrats in the 2016 election, multiple current and former government officials familiar with the matter tell NBC News.

Much like the indictment Mueller filed last month charging a different group of Russians in a social media trolling and illegal-ad-buying scheme, the possible new charges are expected to rely heavily on secret intelligence gathered by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), several of the officials say.

Well we didn’t think he was going to get it all from the Post and MSNBC.… Read the rest



Burning it all down

Mar 1st, 2018 1:13 pm | By

Pro Publica shares a construction industry group’s power point on how wonderful the Trump administration is for The Bosses, even if it is run like a bad family business.

Following the descriptions of the administration’s dysfunction, the PowerPoint pivots to describing what it characterized as major successes in the construction industry’s “regulatory roll back” agenda since Trump entered office. “With President Trump in office, there are many Obama administration executive orders, rules, and other requirements in AGC’s crosshairs,” it says.

The group touts major victories in the form of repealed or delayed environmental and labor regulations:

A quick guide to the shorthand:

The “blacklisting” rule refers to President Obama’s “Fair Pay, Safe Workplaces” executive order that required companies bidding

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Guest post: The arbitrary link between words and meanings

Mar 1st, 2018 12:21 pm | By

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The social world is every bit as real as a booster rocket.

It’s interesting that critical thinking is often held (especially among movement skeptics) to be more closely associated with “hard” subjects like the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering than supposedly “soft” subjects like linguistics, psychology, philosophy etc. As someone with one leg in each camp*, I can definitely say that the former has been more useful in terms of employment. But in terms of critical thinking, I have to say that the most important lessons I have learned in my life – whether at school or from books – have come from “soft” fields like psychology, including things like heuristics and … Read the rest



He’s lost nothing of his rage

Mar 1st, 2018 11:48 am | By

Brave heroes of art:

The organisers of a music festival in northern France have defied pressure to cancel a performance by a once-idolised French musician who has served a jail term for beating his girlfriend to death.

More than 65,000 people have signed a petition demanding that Bertrand Cantat, former frontman of Noir Desir, be removed from the programme of the Papillons de Nuit festival, which takes place in May in the Normandy town of Saint-Laurent-de-Cuves.

“By putting Bertrand Cantat in the spotlight you are normalising violence against women and even condoning it,” claims the petition on the Change.org website, started by a “citizen feminist”.

The organisers of the festival, which drew 68,000 rock fans in 2017, have

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Turning the page

Mar 1st, 2018 11:17 am | By

Ok this is funny. I was reading Kevin Liptak at CNN on the tanking  morale in the White House, enriched by this gem of a sentence –

Inside the White House, aides identify the scandal involving Rob Porter, the staff secretary who departed after being accused of domestic abuse allegations, as the impetus for the latest devolvement in esteem.

There’s the goodbye of Hope Hicks, the brawl with Sessions, the hot blushing shame of Ben Carson’s taste in dining room furniture, the plan to “turn the page”…

Trump is encouraging his team to develop policy announcements that could help distract from the ongoing ruckus. On Thursday he was eager to announce protectionist measures to buffer the US steel

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A scolding too many

Mar 1st, 2018 10:57 am | By

The White House story yesterday was that Hope Hicks had been planning to quit for weeks n weeks, and her all-day session in front of the Intelligence Committee had nothing to do with it despite the temporal proximity. Nobody believed that, but now there’s reporting to the contrary.

[A] report from CNN’s Erin Burnett suggested Trump had made it clear he was not happy with Hicks following the revelation that she sometimes needed to tell “white lies” in her role, according to a close ally of the president who spoke with Burnett.

Trump asked Hicks “how she could be so stupid,” after the testimony, Burnett said, adding, “Apparently, that was the final straw for Hope Hicks.”

That’s so Don. … Read the rest



Muck

Mar 1st, 2018 5:53 am | By

The Times dropped this one late yesterday: Kushner’s Business Got Loans After White House Meetings.

Oh come ON, one wants to say. That obvious? That unabashed? That unsubtle? Just – hi guys, loan my company some money and I’ll make it worth your while?

Early last year, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House.

Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy. During that period, he met on multiple occasions with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said three people familiar with the meetings. Among other things, the two men discussed a possible White House job for Mr. Harris.

The job never materialized, but

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