Biden is covering himself with glory.

Joe Biden lashed out at an Iowa town hall Thursday after a man suggested the former vice president helped his son get a sweetheart deal in Ukraine and was “selling access” like President Donald Trump does.
The fiery exchange with the man, who only identified himself as a non-Republican Iowa farmer, ended with Biden challenging him to a contest of push-ups, running or an IQ test before he yelled at him.

Brilliant. The age issue isn’t about doing push-ups, it’s about the likelihood of dying on the job. Ok it’s also about stamina and cognitive faculties and so on but it’s especially about that whole sell-by date thing. Biden is 77. He would … Read the rest

The brave new world.

BAM – that little girl who doesn’t want a dress for a birthday present is a BOY. Case closed.… Read the rest

Onward.

Trump abused the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in our election and help his campaign.

He withheld millions in military assistance from an ally to pressure them to do so.

We must hold this president accountable. No one is above the law. https://t.co/AkGy29Qrny

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 5, 2019

… Read the rest

You don’t say.

The vast majority of reported sexual assaults at public swimming pools in the UK take place in unisex changing rooms, new statistics reveal.

The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Sunday Times, suggests that unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities.

Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.

Golly. Why would that be, do you suppose?

Unisex facilities account for less than half the changing areas across the UK, but the number is on the rise – doing away with separate male and female changing rooms and toilets is seen as a

One person we won’t be taking any lessons in kindness or manners or decency or empathy from is Melania Trump.

Melania Trump has been described as a hypocrite after making a rare public political statement on Stanford University professor Pamela Karlan’s comment about Barron Trump.

The first lady was one of a number of people who reacted to Karlan’s quip about the president’s youngest son before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, December 4.

…

In response, the First Lady, who runs the White House’s anti-bullying Be Best initiative, tweeted: “A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics.

“Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a

This is what unions do now? They “work against” feminism that they label “trans-exclusionary” so that feminism will become about men who want to “live as” women rather than those boring wrong-headed malevolent people called women? The union for academics is telling women at Cambridge that they have to pretend to think men are women or be ostracized and demonized by their own god damn union?

It’s breathtaking.

Just wondering how CUSU's condoning of misogynist slurs, printing of misogynist slurs and distributing of misogynist slurs all over the Cambridge colleges should be handled. Excerpt is from a CUSU email to students received today. Cc: @janeclarejones @Docstockk @GoonerProf pic.twitter.com/Pr6M9ewKEV

— FemFresh (@FemFresher) December 4, 2019

… Read the rest

This is useful. Thanks, The New Yorker.

On Wednesday, four scholars of constitutional law answered questions from the House Judiciary Committee on what constitutes an impeachable offense. Here are the highlights. pic.twitter.com/knd6Pb6Vnc

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) December 5, 2019

… Read the rest

Trump’s thugs are pretending to be outraged that law professor Pamela Karlan said the sacred name of Trump’s youngest child when making a point about what Trump cannot do. She was asked to compare what kings can do and what Trump can do, given constitutional constraints.

Kings could do no wrong because the king’s word was law. Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article Two does not give him the power to do anything he wants. I will give you one example that shows the difference between him and a king, which is, the Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility. While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.

So, as … Read the rest

Meanwhile the venomous plutocratic Trump administration is rubbing its hands in glee as it takes food stamps away from 700 thousand people.

The Trump administration Wednesday formalized work requirements for recipients of food stamps, a move that will cause hundreds of thousands of people to lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Brandon Lipps, the deputy undersecretary for the USDA’s Food Nutrition and Consumer Services, spent about 18 minutes on a call with reporters outlining the changes to the rule that will take effect April 1.

“We’re taking action to reform our SNAP program in order to restore the dignity of work to a sizable segment of our population and be

Maybe it’s repeated small strokes.

Barack Obama’s former doctor, who served the 44th president for over two decades before his presidency, voiced concern for Donald Trump’s health after the president’s unscheduled weekend visit to a physician placed his well-being under scrutiny.

…

Speaking on CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday’s Erin Burnett OutFront, Dr. David Scheiner expressed his worries about the president’s allegedly failing mental health, which he claims is demonstrated by his occasional inability to string together coherent sentences.

“These aren’t words, these are slips of the tongue,” Scheiner said. “These are words he can’t find and this is happening over and over again. Comedians joke about it, but it’s not a joking matter. I think there is a

But fertility treatment is one thing, and “surrogacy” is another. The Huffington Post reports:

Senate Republicans will vote this week to confirm a lifetime federal judge who claimed that fertility treatments and surrogacy have “grave effects on society, including diminished respect for motherhood and the unique mother-child bond; exploitation of women; commodification of gestation and of children themselves; and weakening of appropriate social mores against eugenic abortion.”

Sarah Pitlyk, President Donald Trump’s nominee to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, argued those points in opposing a California statute that protects the right to assisted reproductive technology like in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and gestational surrogacy.

Pitlyk, who is special counsel to the

More from the Guardian’s live impeachment reporting:

Democratic counsel Norm Eisen asked the legal experts testifying at today’s impeachment hearing whether the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden was an impeachable act, even though the country ultimately did not launch the probe.

“The attempt itself is the impeachable act,” said Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, who noted that Richard Nixon’s efforts to cover up the Watergate break-in were ultimately unsuccessful. But the attempts themselves clearly constituted impeachable behavior, Feldman said.

Pamela Karlan and Michael Gerhardt echoed that opinion with hypothetical situations emphasizing the soliciation itself is the issue.

Seems only right, doesn’t it? Failure doesn’t render the attempt perfectly fine.

Constitutional scholar Noah Feldman: "If we cannot

He did what?

From the department of “you really can’t make this up”: the New York Times is reporting that Rudy Giuliani traveled to Europe this week to meet with former Ukrainian prosecutors who have pushed baseless corruption allegations against Joe Biden.

The Times reports:

Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.

The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played

latsot’s review of Kate Smurthwaite’s show:

Kate’s gig took place in the immediate aftermath of some Facebook misogyny so braying that it was simultaneously almost impossible to believe and entirely expected. Kate gets called “bitch” a lot on Facebook and other sundry internet places so she called her tour “Bitch”, intending to talk about that. Facebook was entirely sanguine about the bitch-calling business but decided that Kate’s calling her own gig “Bitch” violated their community guidelines so they refused to advertise the York one even though Kate had paid them to do that. Consequently, the show wasn’t well-advertised.

Yeah. Like I said, almost impossible to believe but at the same time entirely expected. It’s why I went to the show. … Read the rest

Trump left the NATO gathering early because he mad.

US President Donald Trump called Justin Trudeau “two-faced” Wednesday after Canada’s Prime Minister was caught on camera appearing to joke about Trump with other world leaders at a Buckingham Palace event the night before.

So…until that moment he thought Trudeau liked him?

I don’t know why I keep being surprised, but I do. My theory of mind isn’t good enough to grasp the complete lack of theory of mind in Trump.

The video appeared to show British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte having a laugh about Trump’s behavior during the summit.The 25-second clip, which has gone

What Trump has unleashed, part 47 thousand.

You forgot about Pocahontas. https://t.co/V3TlbSnBNp

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) December 3, 2019

Yeah. Haw haw. This is one of our Congressional Representatives, making racist jokes right out in the open. Perfect.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by latsot on Let’s be serious.

And Trump does the thing he always does when someone else is talking* which is to jerk his head around in apparent annoyance, roll his eyes and blow out his cheeks in boredom until it’s his turn. Then say something absolutely blithering to the deep embarrassment of everyone else on the planet.

Over here we have Trumps junior – Johnson and Farage – stoking our xenophobic instincts. It’s as though we forgot to tell foreigners how much we hate them for a few decades, while all the time employing them to do vital jobs for low pay and then throwing them out of the country with no possibility of appeal … Read the rest

Uh oh, Devin Nunes looks to be in trub-ble.

The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released its report on its central findings in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and buried within it were details on phone calls between Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California and several key figures implicated in the inquiry.

The report said that “phone records show contacts” in April between Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee and one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Congress; Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who’s now Trump’s personal lawyer; the Ukrainian-born businessman Lev Parnas; and the investigative reporter John Solomon, who has written several articles for The Hill peddling conspiracy theories about Ukrainian

Trump is the landlord, and he keeps jacking up the rent and these deadbeats keep not paying it! It’s an outrage!

Trump won't commit to coming to the defense of fellow NATO members if they're militarily attacked pic.twitter.com/RKMplISNyT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2019

Also…

REPORTER: Are you concerned about rising sea levels at all? TRUMP: “You know, I’m concerned about everything, but I’m also concerned about…

He’s concerned about everything, but he’s also concerned about…

Words, how do they work.… Read the rest