Pressed on why he won't say MBS was responsible for Khashoggi's murder even though his intelligence community has, Trump says "I cannot comment on intelligence" and goes on to commend Saudi Arabia for doing "a great job from the standpoint of women." pic.twitter.com/LvqECtdMm8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 29, 2019

Yes, he really does say that.… Read the rest

Donald Ayer, who was Deputy Attorney General under George H. W. Bush before William Barr, says it’s been Barr’s lifetime goal to make the powers of the president all but infinite.

[I]n securing his confirmation as attorney general, Barr successfully used his prior service as attorney general in the by-the-book, norm-following administration of George H. W. Bush to present himself as a mature adult dedicated to the rule of law who could be expected to hold the Trump administration to established legal rules. Having known Barr for four decades, including preceding him as deputy attorney general in the Bush administration, I knew him to be a fierce advocate of unchecked presidential power…

And not so much the rule of … Read the rest

She was there why, again?

The abiding image from this year’s G20 summit will not be Donald Trump sharing another chuckle with Vladimir Putin. It is the clip of his daughter, Ivanka, inserting herself into an awkward circle of world leaders. The video, released by the French government, shows varying expressions of tortured politeness as Ms Trump intrudes on a discussion between France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Theresa May, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF. Ms Lagarde, in particular, was unable to conceal her irritation.

It’s not as if they’re gathered in Trump’s personal living room and Ivanka is an adorable toddler who has escaped from Nanny for a moment.

What they were discussing is secondary. Mr

And speaking of censorship – the San Francisco school board has decided to go ahead and destroy a mural in a high school because some people don’t understand it.

The fresco was painted in 1936 by Russian emigre Victor Arnautoff, a Communist artist who also painted some of the murals in Coit Tower and other locations in San Francisco.

I’ve seen the Coit Tower ones, and loved them. Think Diego Rivera type of thing.

The “Life of Washington” 1,600-square-foot mural at the high school, part of the federal Works Progress Administration’s art commissions, features scenes from the first president’s life, including images of slavery and white settlers stepping over a dead Native American.

Supporters of the mural say it’s a

Freedom of the press? Don’t be silly.

A cartoonist says he has been dropped from a series of newspapers after his image depicting Donald Trump ignoring dead migrants to play golf went viral.

Michael de Adder, a freelance political cartoonist in Canada, says he was let go by all major newspapers in the southeastern Canadian province of New Brunswick after his cartoon was shared by thousands on Twitter and Facebook.

This is the cartoon in question. I think it’s brilliant. Harsh, obviously, but that’s the point, and isn’t harsh called for?

Cartoon for June 26, 2019 on #trump #BorderCrisis #BORDER #TrumpCamps #TrumpConcentrationCamps pic.twitter.com/Gui8DHsebl

— Michael de Adder (@deAdder) June 26, 2019

On Friday, Mr de Adder said on

What’s the difference between saying “Biden gropes little girls” and “Biden’s behavior is creepy”?

Is there any real difference?

If you search Google images for “Biden gropes little girls” you get no shortage of results. The behavior the pictures show is indeed creepy, but is it creepy in some way that has nothing to do with being sexual?

Not that I can see. They look creepy precisely in the sense of lecherous elderly dude copping a feel. Normal adult men do not stick their hands all over little girls that way.

See that tilt of her body? See that pained expression? See that wrap-around clutch on her arm? That’s not creepy as in he’s wearing a Halloween monster outfit. That’s … Read the rest

Fox News host asks if it’s really all that cool for Trump to be sucking up to Kim given Kim’s record of atrocities, and Tucker Carlson (on the phone) gets all realpolitik on us.

Tucker Carlson justifies KJU's murderous regime: "You've got to be honest about what it means to lead a country, it means killing people. A lot of countries commit atrocities, including our allies."

Carlson adds, 'it's silly and stupid to point out KJU is 'so mean'' pic.twitter.com/FpAKFQUB3c

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) June 30, 2019

… Read the rest

Updating to add: the piece is from 2015. I saw that but then did other things before posting, by which time…

Politico does a backgrounder on Biden and school busing to correct for generations of racial apartheid.

Though the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision had outlawed “separate but equal” schools, it wasn’t until the court’s lesser-known 1969 ruling in Alexander v. Holmes County that many Southern school districts actually implemented desegregation plans. In response to these legal mandates, judges started to order busing plans in some Southern cities.

For fifteen years – more than the sum of kindergarten through 12th grade – Brown v Board might as well have been a poem on The Rose for all … Read the rest

How progressive.

City kids can now change their gender status on school records without any legal documentation — and play for the sports teams of their preference, the Department of Education announced Friday.

With parental permission, students can alter their genders, change their names and join sports teams regardless of what appears on their birth certificate, officials said.

Isn’t that sweet. How many Joes and Bills and Daves will rush to join the girls’ teams in order to win everything, I wonder. How many girls will lose their chance to win anything ever, I wonder.

“Schools are safe havens for students to develop their passions and discover their true identities, and these new guidelines celebrate and affirm all students,”

More on the new birtherism:

Just as Barack Obama’s US citizenship and background became a full-fledged conspiracy theory — promoted at the time by Donald Trump — Harris has also been targeted with disinformation questioning her race and legitimacy as a US citizen. Obama birther conspiracy theorists and prominent neo-Nazis, including Andrew Anglin, have questioned her eligibility to run for president, and she’s been labeled an “anchor baby.”

Then isn’t Trump an “anchor baby”? His mother was an immigrant. Or does it not count because she immigrated from Scotland?

Last night’s tweets, some of which were amplified by bots and in one case by Trump Jr., gave a new level of exposure to earlier claims propagated by fringe

Evil puke praises murderous Mohammed bin Salman to his face:

Donald Trump has praised Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, saying he was doing a “spectacular job” as the pair met on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

“You have done a spectacular job,” Trump told the powerful crown prince on Saturday, calling him “a friend of mine”.

Like Kim, and Putin, and Bolsonaro.

Trump also said he appreciated Saudi Arabia’s purchase of US military equipment, praising the crown prince for working to open up the country with economic reforms.

Trump praised the crown prince, who has moved to loosen some social restrictions in the kingdom but also cracked down on activists, including women pressing for the

No accountability for for-profit colleges please.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is rescinding an Obama-era rule that was created to protect students from abusive for-profit colleges.

The rule, known as Gainful Employment, required for-profit colleges and career certificate programs to post debt-to-earnings ratios, proving that their students could find good-paying [well paid] jobs upon graduating. If the average ratio did not meet government standards, the school’s federal funding would be revoked.

…

Consumer advocates slammed DeVos on Friday for rolling back the student safeguard.

“Again and again, Secretary DeVos proves she only cares about protecting for-profit colleges, no matter how many students they swindle,” said Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network.

DeVos has been widely criticized by

Oh fabulous, we get to have another round of birtherism.

Kamala Harris broke out from the other nine Democrats onstage during the second Democratic presidential primary debate on Thursday, calling on her personal experiences of racial injustice as a black woman.

“As the only black person on this stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race,” Harris said.

That’s when she was attacked on Twitter by a conservative provocateur for not being an “American black.” It’s a play straight out of the racist birther playbook used against Barack Obama when he ran for president a decade earlier. This time, though, those kinds of allegations don’t have to circulate for years on obscure right-wing forums before they

Biden says it’s not about the past. Oh well ok then. Just wipe that whole thing out then, yeah?

But if it’s not about the past why would anyone even pay attention to Joe Biden? He’s running on his past, specifically on his gig as Obama’s comic relief.

Joe Biden just spoke at an event in Chicago, addressing his exchange at the debate with Kamala Harris about his past comments about segregationist senators.

“30 seconds to 60 seconds on a campaign debate exchange can’t do justice to a lifetime committed to civil rights,” Biden said.

Is that what Biden’s lifetime has been devoted to? That’s not what I hear.

At the debate Thursday night, in response to a question

Spot the irony.

Today at my CLP I lost the LGBT Officer post because a str8 white man stood against me.His statement did not have one sentence about LGBT campaiging.Those sharing homophobic content today clapped. There was mass walkout in disgust. I might actually be done. Over to you @UKLabour

— Rohit K Dasgupta (@RKDasgupta) June 27, 2019

A man lost the LGBT Officer post because – oh no – a straight man stood against him.

Much dismay.

I am so, so angry about this. An LGBT+ person lost an election to be *LGBT OFFICER* at his CLP to a straight/cis man. Apparently queer people aren't good enough to represent ourselves anymore. What is this party becoming? Unbelievable.

Rohit –

Funny idea of “entertainment” some people have.

An app that claimed to be able to digitally remove the clothes from pictures of women to create fake nudes has been taken offline by its creators.

…

The team said the app was created as “entertainment” a few months ago.

Why just women then? Why not men too? Wouldn’t that be just as entertaining?

The program reportedly uses AI-based neural networks to remove clothing from images of women to produce realistic naked shots.

The networks have been trained to work out where clothes are in an image, mask them by matching skin tone, lighting and shadows and then fill in estimated physical features.

So, you know, it’s like the crude stuff … Read the rest

Meanwhile the “sex binary” in India continues to flourish.

Two people have been arrested in India’s Bihar state after a group of men shaved the heads of two women as “punishment” for resisting rape.

The group, which included a local official, ambushed the mother and daughter in their home with the intent of raping them, police said.

When the women resisted, they assaulted them, shaved their heads and paraded them through the village.

Can’t win, can we. In France after the Occupation, women had their heads shaved and were paraded through the village for having sex with a German, in India they get it for saying no to unrequested sex. s there a rulebook for  all this?… Read the rest