Why on earth would the Washington Post run a piece by a carpool buddy of Brett Kavanaugh’s letting us know what a super-nice guy he is?

When I saw the title I honest to god thought it was satire:

I don’t know Kavanaugh the judge. But Kavanaugh the carpool dad is one great guy.

It sure looks like satire, doesn’t it, but she’s serious.

Her qualification for writing the piece is that she lives in Chevy Chase.

Much has been written about Brett Kavanaugh as President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, but the discussion has focused on his record as a federal judge and in his legal career. I’d like to talk about him as Coach K. Like the

They can dish it out but they can’t take it.

Americans in the UK have been warned to “keep a low profile” during this week’s visit of their president, Donald Trump, as the US embassy in London says demonstrations against the event could turn violent.

Oh  yes, definitely, and when they do turn violent they will attempt to exterminate Americans. Furthermore, all Americans in the UK are visibly unmistakably American, thanks to the neon YANK sign they are required to have permanently screwed onto their heads as a condition of entry. It’s a scary scary scary time to be a person of USitude in the UK.

“Be aware of your surroundings [and] exercise caution if unexpectedly in the vicinity

Raw Story in January 2016:

In a Raw Story exclusive, former and current employees of the Malheur Refuge have provided new revelations on the conflict between Dwight and Steve Hammond, two local ranchers who have clashed with federal government agencies for decades. The employees claim the Hammonds illegal grazing was damaging the refuge that’s home to 320 bird and 58 mammal species. They allege the Hammonds lawbreaking ranged from aerial hunting of animals in the refuge to death threats against employees and their families to cattle grazing that was altering the entire species composition of critical ecosystems.

…

The beef the Hammonds currently have with the feds is over access to land under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of

Peter Walker on Facebook:

I have no personal stakes here but I deeply dislike history being whitewashed. People who are the “salt of the earth” don’t threaten federal employees to “tear your head off and sh– down the hole,” nor do they say if they don’t get their way someone better “call the sheriff and an undertaker.”

 … Read the rest

Law? What law? Trump is all the law anyone will ever need. He’s pardoned the Hammonds.

President Trump on Tuesday pardoned a pair of Oregon cattle ranchers who had been serving out sentences for arson on federal land — sentences that set off an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in 2016.

Dwight L. Hammond, now 76, and his son, Steven D. Hammond, 49, became a cause célèbre that inspired an antigovernment group’s battle with the federal government over its control of rural land in Oregon. The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge resulted in the death of a rancher from Arizona.

And a lot of damage to our publicly-owned national wildlife refuge by some violent reactionaries … Read the rest

Liu Xia is free at last. HRW reports:

The Chinese government permitted Liu Xia, the widow of dissident Liu Xiaobo, to board a plane to Germany on the morning of July 10, 2018, nearly a year to the day since her husband’s death, Human Rights Watch said today. The German government negotiated Liu Xia’s release, whose health significantly deteriorated during nearly eight years of house arrest.

“It is a tremendous relief that Liu Xia has been able to leave China for freedom abroad,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “Ever since her late husband received the Nobel Peace Prize while in a Chinese prison, Liu Xia was also unjustly detained. The German government deserves credit

Silke-Maria Weineck in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Is there anything more gratifying to a nice, liberal academic than turning on NPR and hearing them talk about a book you have written? In that lovely, calm, reasonable NPR voice that makes you think all will be well with the world, if only we can all learn to talk to one another in that lovely, calm, reasonable voice?

Not a lot, I would guess, although I myself have gone all the way off the NPR voice, because to me it sounds not so much lovely calm reasonable as soporific, exaggeratedly slow, and determinedly middlebrow. In reality I would of course rejoice at the publicity and expansion of readership, but I … Read the rest

Not such good news. Sylvia Acosta on Facebook:

I just experienced a Handmaidens Tale moment at the DFW airport by Customs and Border Protection. I was traveling back from Rome and stopped by US customs. I was asked if Sybonae was my daughter and I said yes. Then they asked why if she was my daughter I didn’t have the same last name. I told them I had already established my career and earned my doctorate with my last name Acosta so I had decided not to change it. That is why we had different names. Then the customs office said, well maybe you should have taken your husbands last names so you could prove you were her mom.

A nice piece of news for a change. Reirani Kiri Taurima on Facebook:

This is The Prime Minister Of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern. She’s 37. She’s the youngest head of government in the world. She’s also the first western woman to give birth while in power. 2 days after the baby was born – with midwives, standard in NZ hospitals – she introduced her to the country during a press conference on the nightly news. It was really lovely. She named her Neve Te Aroha. Te Aroha means “The Love” in Maori. It represents ALL the names that were submitted (upon her request) from various tribes throughout the country, and was her attempt at capturing them all.

This

Another religious maniac heard from:

I agree. Leaders must once again acknowledge the importance of submission to God in a free society. What good are God given rights in America if people do not acknowledge God? #History #Truth #Bible pic.twitter.com/H9EhBNPbJN

— Sen. Jason Rapert (@jasonrapert) July 8, 2018

Leaders must once again acknowledge the importance of submission to God in a free society.

If “leaders” must acknowledge the importance of submission to God then we’re not talking about a free society, are we. The mandate is not free, the “acknowledgement” of a lie is not free, the citation of a non-existent entity is not free, and above all the demand for submission to a god is the very opposite of … Read the rest

A CFI press release:

The Center for Inquiry has filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia on behalf of the general public against drug retailer CVS for consumer fraud over its sale and marketing of useless homeopathic medicines. CFI, an organization advancing reason and science, accused the country’s largest drug retailer of deceiving consumers through its misrepresentation of homeopathy’s safety and effectiveness, wasting customers’ money and putting their health at risk.

Click here to access the official complaint (PDF).

Homeopathy is an 18th-century pseudoscience premised on the absurd, unscientific notion that a substance that causes a particular symptom is what should be ingested to alleviate it. Dangerous substances are diluted to the point that no trace of

More Trump dragging us all down down down: a California prosecutor calls Representative Maxine Waters a cunt and a bitch and says she should be killed.

The lead hard-core gang prosecutor in the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office is under investigation for a series of offensive rants on social media, triggering demands for his dismissal.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Selyem, who joined the D.A.’s Office 12 years ago, targeted outspoken U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, former first lady Michelle Obama, Mexican immigrants and the victim of a police shooting in Facebook and Instagram posts labeled by one critic as “hateful rhetoric.”

Of Waters, Selyem said: “Being a loud-mouthed c#nt in the ghetto you would think someone would have shot

A year ago Newsweek wryly pointed out that back in 2009 Fox News was so desperate for material on Obama that it had to resort to sneering at his lunch choices.

In news from eight years ago that appears to be from some alternate reality, Obama left the White House and went out for a local bite to eat with vice president and BFF Joe Biden in May. The two politicians ordered hamburgers, MSNBC journalist Andrea Mitchell reported at the time, with the sitting president requesting mustard on his red meat.

The story was featured on Sean Hannity’s show, Hannity’s America, as a screen showed a photoshopped image of Obama surrounded by bottles of mustard with the words “PRESIDENT

I just love it when men explain to women how lucky they are to be free of oppression.

being cis has nothing to do with your sex or being a woman. Like me, you're cis if you're not trans or non-binary.

What you feel is the prick of being labeled, something you haven't had to deal with because you were fortunate enough to be born cis

— Martin Wisse (@wissewords) July 8, 2018

Yaaaaaaaz definitely, women never have to feel the prick (or stab) of being labeled. Nobody ever tells us what we are, corrects us about what we are no matter how vehemently we protest, calls us harsh names, teams up in groups to do all that. Lucky lucky … Read the rest

The Guardian:

Iran has arrested a number of people for posting videos on Instagram, including a young woman whose targeting for her clips of her dancing to music has prompted outrage.

According to activists, Maedeh Hojabri, who appears to be in her late teenage years, was one of a number of users behind popular Instagram accounts who have been arrested. The identities of the other detainees have not been confirmed.

Her account, which has been suspended, was reported to have had more than 600,000 followers.

Hojabri has since appeared on a state television programme with other detainees, in which she and others made what activists say were forced confessions, a tactic often used by Iranian authorities.

State TV

One effect of global warming was always going to be more extreme weather events. That’s not in the future tense any more.

Japan is being swamped by rain.

Record rainfall continued to batter Japan on Sunday, with millions of people being urged to leave their homes because of the risk of flooding and landslides that have already killed dozens.

Government officials pleaded with affected residents to “take adequate actions and follow evacuation instructions issued by municipal governments” as forecasters predicted more rain in western and central Japan.

…

The flooding had killed at least 68 people by Sunday afternoon, and 56 more were missing. More than three million people were told to move to safer places such as school

Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream?

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

Ahhh yes the interests of people who make $$$ by selling substitutes for human breast milk – of course they are self-evidently more important than the interest of billions of infants.

American officials sought to water down

I find this so infuriating – no doubt disproportionately so, but all the same.

When Tennessee K-12 public students begin classes next month, the national motto “In God We Trust” will be required to be posted somewhere in their schools.

That’s not a real thing – a “national motto.” Congress can make one up if it wants to, but it’s stupid. Congress can make up a national sandwich, a national rock song, a national hat, a national ice cream flavor – a national any damn thing, but it doesn’t mean anything. And as for making up a “national motto” that is a fact claim about a non-existent magical sky-pest – they can fuck right off with that. It’s … Read the rest