All entries by this author

Rape transfer

Jul 27th, 2017 6:56 am | By

Oh god. Brace yourselves. From the Times:

 The Pakistani police arrested 25 people in a rural village on Thursday, after the village council ordered a man to publicly rape a teenage girl to avenge the sexual assault of his sister.

Earlier this month, the council told Mohammad Ashfaq, 20, to rape the 16-year-old girl after Mr. Ashfaq’s family accused the girl’s brother of raping his 12-year-old sister, the police said.

Hell and damnation! It just can’t get any more stark than that – a man is accused of raping a woman so the solution is to rape the man’s sister.

We’ve been here before. I wrote post after post about it when B&W was young. The Guardian, March Read the rest



Trump heading for Mount Rushmore

Jul 26th, 2017 6:02 pm | By

More from the latest fascist uprising speech:

So we’re going to start enriching our country. We’re going to start bringing back our jobs, and we will be fools no longer, folks. We’ll be fools no longer. Every single President on Mt. Rushmore — now here’s what I do. I’d ask whether or not you think I will some day be on Mt. Rushmore, but, but here’s the problem. If I did it joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake news media will say, “he believes he should be on Mt. Rushmore.” So I won’t say it, okay? I won’t say it. But every president — they’ll say it anyway tomorrow. “Trump thinks he should be on Mt. Rushmore.” Isn’t

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Weak voice, weak voice, don’t worry

Jul 26th, 2017 5:06 pm | By

Some horrors from Trump’s speech in Youngstown, Ohio yesterday.

Then yesterday I was in West Virginia with almost 50,000 of our most impressive young Americans. They are young men who learned to cherish words like duty, honor, god, and country, the Boy Scouts. Then only a few hours ago the senate approved a vote to begin debating the repealing and replacing the Obamacare disaster. [ cheers and applause ] Finally. You think that’s easy? That’s not easy. We’re now one step closer to liberating our citizens from this Obamacare nightmare, and delivering great health care for the American people.

I’m here this evening to cut through the fake news filter and to speak straight to the American people. Fake

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As Einstein said

Jul 26th, 2017 4:39 pm | By

Princess Ivanka in 2013:

“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” – Albert Einstein #quote #sunday

Bahahahahahahahachokehahahahahaha… Read the rest



It’s entirely our choice

Jul 26th, 2017 4:03 pm | By

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To step outside

Jul 26th, 2017 3:49 pm | By

Those Republican women voting no are trying the patience of their more responsible and reasonable male colleagues.

Throughout the ongoing attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka Obamacare), female Republican senators have been at the front of a push for a reasonable plan that does not hurt millions of Americans. In June, Senators Murkowski and Collins stood up for women’s health — and specifically Planned Parenthood. And on Tuesday, July 25, Senators Murkowski, Collins, and Capito all said they would vote against repealing Obamacare without a replacement. Without their votes, that plan failed.

Also on Tuesday, Collins and Murkowski were the only two Republicans to vote against opening a discussion on repealing Obamacare.

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Let’s ask her

Jul 26th, 2017 3:26 pm | By

It’s been way too long since I shared a Jesus and Mo.

PatreonRead the rest



Don’s snuff porn

Jul 26th, 2017 12:31 pm | By

The American Prospect tells us about Trump’s latest crowd-incitement, yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio.

On Tuesday evening, at a campaign-style rally in Youngstown, Ohio, President Donald Trump treated his audience to a bit of snuff porn involving high-school age girls and some bad hombres.

After painting all the people currently under deportation orders as drug-importing gang members, the president described their purported crimes. “So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15—and others—and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before any die,” Trump said. “And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long.”

A more perfect encapsulation of the proclivities of the president’s poisonous psyche

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Mens sana in corpore sano

Jul 26th, 2017 11:58 am | By

Surprise Fact Department: the US Defense Department spends 84 million bucks a year on Viagra & its cousins.

In the DoD system, which dispensed eight types of ED meds in 2014, Viagra, added to the DoD formulary in 2012, tops the list for most popular: Of the 1.18 million prescriptions, 905,083 were for Viagra, at a cost of $41.6 million.

Cialis ranked second, with 185,841 prescriptions totaling $22.82 million.

Revatio — one of the costliest ED medications in the DoD formulary — was the least frequently prescribed: 1,699 prescriptions in 2014 for a total cost of $2.24 million, according to DHA.

Worth every penny.… Read the rest



It’s just a tantrum, official says

Jul 26th, 2017 11:23 am | By

Don is still making an exhibition of himself on Twitter, asking the world why Sessions does what he does when he’s the one who appointed him and we’re not. Dude why are you asking us?

But, you know, it’s all part of his cunning plan to bully Sessions into quitting, or inspiring Rod Rosenstein to jump up in the middle of the night and fire Mueller, or something. It looks like crazy but it’s actually fiendishly clever manipulation.

Or is it. The Post talked to people who say it’s just Trump being Trump.

President Trump renewed his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday, questioning on Twitter why the top U.S. law enforcement official had not replaced the acting FBI

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The degradation of the independent law enforcement function itself

Jul 26th, 2017 7:14 am | By

Benjamin Wittes has thoughts on the effects of the current situation on people at the Department of Justice and on the rest of us.

The trouble is that remaining in office does not merely demean the individual dignity of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general when the President whines about the attorney general’s compliance with Justice Department recusal rules; when he attacks the attorney general for not investigating a political opponent; when he openly suggests that the Justice Department’s leadership should act in his personal interests; or when he suggests that the deputy attorney general is biased against him as a result of previous service as U.S. attorney in a Democratic-majority city. These are also degradations of the

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They have established that these guys are willing

Jul 25th, 2017 4:58 pm | By

Jared Kushner thinks it was all no big deal…but people who know something about Russian intelligence operations all think it was a very typical overture.

Yesterday, Kushner insisted, “I did not read or recall this e-mail exchange before it was shown to me by my lawyers.” Whether or not that’s true, he attended the meeting. According to Kushner’s account of the meeting, it was uneventful. He got there late, some Russians he never heard of were discussing adoption policy, and he quickly messaged his assistant to call him so he had an excuse to bail. Longtime intelligence officials have a more jaundiced view. Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency, told me that he was convinced

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51-50

Jul 25th, 2017 4:20 pm | By

Sure enough, “hero” McCain returned to the Senate and the vote was 50-50 and Pence broke the tie, so they voted to debate how best to take health insurance away from millions. They’re evil demons.

That doesn’t mean they’ll be able to pass a bill, but it does confirm their evil demonhood. They want to take health insurance away from millions, and will if they can agree on the details.

President Trump has been pushing aggressively for Republicans to pass a repeal-and-replace plan, and jabbed lawmakers this week by saying anyone who votes against kicking off debate is saying they are “fine with the Obamacare nightmare.” Speaking during a joint news conference in the Rose Garden Tuesday,

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You have to know about the word “momentum”

Jul 25th, 2017 9:37 am | By

But my favorite part of Trump’s Address to the Nations Boy Scouts is where he just veers off into telling them a long boring story about this one guy he met 50 years ago, like any other damn windbag you accidentally sit next to at a dinner or on a bus or in the dentist’s waiting room. You know those – the ones who just talk, regardless of who is next to them or what the likelihood is that anyone in hearing will give a damn.

In life, in order to be successful, and you people are well on the road to success, you have to find out what makes you excited. What makes you want to get up

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It’s downright icky

Jul 25th, 2017 9:04 am | By

Some parents of Boy Scouts are furious.

One parent wrote: “Done with scouts after you felt the need to have my kid listen to a liar stroke his ego.”

Responding to the criticism of the speech, the Boy Scouts of America insisted it was “wholly non-partisan and does not promote any one position, product, service, political candidate or philosophy”.

It said the invitation to Mr Trump was a “long-standing tradition and is in no way an endorsement of any political party or specific policies”.

Except that the way it played out, it was.

Many parents, lobbyists and politicians took to social media to cite the 107-year-old organisation’s values, and to suggest Mr Trump had failed them.

Lobbyist for

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The Trumpler youth cheered and chanted

Jul 25th, 2017 8:38 am | By

More on Trump’s confusion of the Boy Scouts with the Hitler Youth:

“Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts?” President Trump asked the 40,000 people gathered in Glen Jean, West Virginia, on Monday for the Boy Scout Jamboree.

The answer is President Trump. The event, which occurs every four years, was attended by about 24,000 boys, ages 12 to 18, but Trump treated it like a raucous campaign rally. During a rambling, 35-minute speech, he playfully threatened a member of his cabinet about getting the votes to repeal Obamacare, recounted his election win in great detail, and attacked President Obama.

post on the Jamboree’s blog had warned troops

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That’s how you do it

Jul 25th, 2017 7:22 am | By

Pete Souza posted this on Instagram today:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW8u34hl0Rv/?taken-by=petesouza… Read the rest



Roosevelt used the occasion to talk about good citizenship

Jul 25th, 2017 6:23 am | By

The Post details how aberrant and wrong and narcissistic Trump’s speech to the Boy Scouts yesterday was.

For 80 years, American presidents have been speaking to the National Scout Jamboree, a gathering of tens of thousands of youngsters from around the world eager to absorb the ideas of service, citizenship and global diplomacy.

In keeping with the scouts’ traditions, all eight presidents and surrogates who have represented them have stayed far, far away from partisan politics.

I had assumed that, without knowing anything specific about it, because after all, it’s the Boy Scouts – it’s not a set of people you would expect to be interested in the minutiae of Donald Trump’s political biography and it’s also not a … Read the rest



He’s looking forward to it

Jul 25th, 2017 5:00 am | By

Oh, brilliant – now we’re expected to rejoice that War Hero With Glioblastoma Is Returning to the Senate to Vote on Urgent Matter – in fact to add his vote to the other Republican votes TO TAKE HEALTH INSURANCE AWAY FROM MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

I hate this country right now. Hate it. Trump’s performance in front of the Boy Scouts yesterday has pushed me over the edge.

John McCain has excellent health insurance, because he’s a senator, and he’s coming back to vote to take it away from people who don’t have the good fortune to get health insurance from their employers.

It was just five days ago that John McCain, the longtime Arizona senator, two-time presidential candidate and perhaps

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Take it away

Jul 24th, 2017 4:01 pm | By

There’s precedent for this enraged determination to rescind a piece of legislation that does something to help the non-rich. Republicans now are trying hard to take health insurance away from millions of people who won’t be able to afford it. In 1936 they tried hard to take Social Security away.

The 1936 story, told in detail in Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s, “The Age of Roosevelt,” began in October when a group of Detroit industrialists worked out an anti-Social Security campaign that the Republican National Committee quickly adopted. Two weeks before the election, signs began appearing in plants with the message, “You’re sentenced to a weekly pay reduction for all your working life. You’ll have to serve the sentence unless you

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