Oh christ. Donnie has given himself a new cover photo on Twitter. It betrays what a vain self-absorbed idiot he is.
As if the whole point of being president is flying around in the big blue plane to work up crowds of people.
Every day we learn afresh what a child he is.… Read the rest
There’s always the old “what daft thing can someone suggest women stick up themselves to make everything dryer and tighter” standby. Jen Gunter found one suggesting oak galls.
… Read the restSometimes to distract myself from the hot mess in the White House I Google unusual vaginal therapies and today’s BINGO comes from that gynecological gem that is Etsy, purveyor of not only vaginal herb balls but also of balls of wasp detritus and bark meant for the vagina.
What, you ask, are oak galls? Well my friend they are balls of bark and wasp excreta that once nurtured a wasp larva (so I suppose there may also be wasp larval residue, not sure what that might be but an image of
Trump has found another Obama action to reverse.
President Trump is considering reversing major pieces of the Obama administration’s opening with Cuba and reinstating limits on travel and commerce, citing human rights abuses by the Castro government as justification for a more punitive approach.
That’s funny, because just the other day he was telling the Saudis that he wasn’t there to “tell them how to live” – by which he meant, to tell them not to imprison, flog, or kill people for being atheist, or to tell them not to treat women as helpless brainless children, or to tell them not to treat foreigners like so much garbage. He went on to all but crawl into their arms and … Read the rest
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on A classic post-truth policy.
The orange incarnation of infinite stupidity and evil certainly deserves all the hate and contempt in the known universe and beyond, but let’s not talk as if everyone else were suddenly performing admirably on the climate issue. The truth of the matter is that there are no good guys in this story (or, if they exist, they’re as marginalized and on the fringe as you can possibly get).
If actions speak louder than words there is practically a universal consensus across the industrialized parts of the world that we are definitely going to emit more – a lot more – carbon than even the most optimistic scientific assessments … Read the rest
I mentioned the other day I don’t like Kathy Griffin’s severed head photo. I don’t like threatening imagery of that kind, no matter who’s doing it and no matter who’s the target. (On the other hand if she’d released it yesterday right after the Rose Garden announcement, instead of Tuesday, I might have lost sight of that dislike.) But that doesn’t mean outrage from Trump and co is anything other than bullshit.
Disgusting but not surprising. This is the left today. They consider this acceptable. Imagine a conservative did this to Obama as POTUS? https://t.co/QdghcbIjS7
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 30, 2017
Imagine? Imagine??! We don’t have to imagine, lots of people did that to Obama. Donald Junior’s own … Read the rest
… Read the restCentral European University announced Tuesday that it will remain in Budapest for the 2017-18 academic year, amid hope that it will be able to do so for the long run as well.
The university, founded in 1991, has American and Hungarian accreditation and offers graduate education in the social sciences and various professional fields. The university has won international praise for the quality of its academic programs. But a law passed in Hungary in April has endangered the university by requiring that it offer programs in New York State, where it is chartered but does not offer programs. The law has been condemned by academics worldwide as an attack on the university…While the exact motives
More bogus “suspense” from the Trump camp. Will he invoke “executive privilege” to stop Comey testifying, or won’t he? Stay tuned to find out.
Legal experts say Trump could invoke a doctrine called executive privilege to try to stop Comey from testifying. But such a maneuver would likely draw a backlash and could be challenged in court, they said.
Just a tad. What would that look like? Trump fires FBI director to prevent him from investigating Trump’s ties to Putin, then invokes “executive privilege” to prevent him from testifying. Self-incriminating much?
Also, checks and balances. What checks and balances are there if a Trump can hide behind executive privilege to protect the very crimes that need to be investigated?… Read the rest
Speaking of bullies – a news show host in Australia tore a strip off the Daily Mail for its habit of degrading and shaming women. One of the examples he gave was so bizarre I googled it and found the details.
… Read the restTo be fair, this weekend’s Daily Mail Australia story about Channel Seven television host Sam Armytage wearing granny underwear didn’t set out to demean and humiliate me. It only set out to demean and humiliate Armytage, and Armytage alone.
How else would you explain taking a photo of her on the street, from behind, without her consent, and plastering the results on the internet: “Sam Armytage dares to bare with her giant granny panties showing visible line
In small things as well is in large, Trump is consistent: he’s a mean, sadistic, bullying asshole who enjoys belittling and shaming people because he likes to see people feeling bad. He insults Merkel and Obama and Warren and Curiel, and he insults people who work for him.
In Trump’s White House, aides serve a president who demands absolute loyalty — but who doesn’t always offer it in return. Trump prefers a management style in which even compliments can come laced with a bite, and where enduring snubs and belittling jokes, even in public, is part of the job.
That right there? That’s an asshole. That’s a 100% brass-plated irredeemable asshole. We’ve all known them, and they suck.
… Read the restAllies
Canceling the Paris deal is a classic post-truth policy. Based on the outright denial of overwhelming scientific reality — and telegraphed in suspense-building gameshow style this week via Twitter and conflicting media teasers — it is Trump at his most callous, ignorant and attention-seeking.
That “suspense” bullshit was enraging. He treated it like just another “reality” show twist, which is so disgustingly frivolous it makes me go cross-eyed.
… Read the restAs a former reality TV star, Trump cares about how things look, not how they really are. Torpedoing climate efforts is the ultimate “up yours” to liberals — after all, that’s the point. The aim is symbolic, but faced with higher carbon emissions and consequent disastrous global warming,
The Post tells us about the exhaustive and exhausting efforts to get Trump to act like a responsible adult.
Silicon Valley titans, such as Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, contacted the White House directly, making clear just how seriously they viewed the issue of climate change — and how important it was to them that the president not withdraw from the international pact.
European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, used a private summit of the Group of Seven world powers to repeatedly and urgently prod Trump to stay true to the climate deal.
But of course Trump is both stupid and conceited, so he never for a … Read the rest
Bill McKibben is eloquent on Trump’s disgusting move.
People say, if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. We should be so lucky. President Trump has a hammer, but all he’ll use it for is to smash things that others have built, as the world looks on in wonder and in fear.
That is Trump. He has nothing to offer himself. He’s an empty vessel, his only skill being to market ugly tasteless buildings. All he wants to do is smash things up and piss people off – no doubt to console himself for the fact that intelligent people, no matter how rich and selfish, will not go near him.
… Read the restThe latest, most troubling
Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on A new frontier.
in a few years (or months?) everyone will be talking scornfully about cis-species privilege and saying “Do you believe trans-hippos are hippos, yes or no?”
Educate yourself.
“Species” is a social construct. Most people think that “species” refers to a population of organisms the males and females of which can produce fertile offspring, but this definition, aside from its biological essentialism and obvious transphobia, is WRONG. Some hybrids are fertile. Leopons, for example. You didn’t know that, did you? SCIENCE tells us that wild hybrids even occurred in ancient times. Look it up.
Also there is a little thing called Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT). And did I mention ring … Read the rest
Meanwhile the criminals in the White House have, of course, been stealing everything they can get their hands on, including all traces of ethical rules.
The Trump administration may have skirted federal ethics rules by retroactively granting a blanket exemption that allows Stephen K. Bannon, the senior White House strategist, to communicate with editors at Breitbart News, where he was recently an executive.
The exemption, made public late Wednesday along with more than a dozen other ethics waivers issued by the White House, allows all White House aides to communicate with news organizations, even if they involve a “a former employer or former client.”
In other words their waivers go like this:
… Read the restYou may ignore all the rules, including
Obama issued a statement on Trump’s evil move.
… Read the restA year and a half ago, the world came together in Paris around the first-ever global agreement to set the world on a low-carbon course and protect the world we leave to our children.
It was steady, principled American leadership on the world stage that made that achievement possible. It was bold American ambition that encouraged dozens of other nations to set their sights higher as well. And what made that leadership and ambition possible was America’s private innovation and public investment in growing industries like wind and solar – industries that created some of the fastest new streams of good-paying jobs in recent years, and contributed to the longest streak of
12:37 Pacific Time:
Trump: “In order to fulfil my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord, or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its tax-payers.
“So we’re getting out. But we will start to negotiate and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair.
“And if we can that’s great. and if we cant that’s fine.”
There are cheers and a ripple of applause in the Rose Garden as he speaks.
He is scum.… Read the rest
Jesse Singal suggests that the self-esteem craze that seized so many American brains during the 80s and 90s was just a little bit over the top.
… Read the restDuring this span, just about everyone, from CEOs to welfare recipients, was told — often by psychologists with serious credentials — that improving their self-esteem could, as The Lovables put it, unlock the gates to more happiness, better performance, and every kind of success imaginable. This was both a personal argument and a political one: The movement, which had its epicenter in California, argued that increasing people’s self-esteem could reduce crime, teen pregnancy, and a host of other social ills — even pollution.
It would be hard to overstate the long-term impact of
Now here’s the way to do a hoax. If it is a hoax. It’s impossible to tell. It’s about identifying as a hippo.
This article explores the formation of a tranimal, hippopotamus alter-ego. Confronting transgender with transpecies, the author claims that his hippopotamus “identity” allowed him to (verbally) escape, all at once, several sets of categorization that govern human bodies (“gender,” “sexuality,” age). He starts with an account of how his metaphorical hippo-self is collectively produced and performed, distinguishing the subjective, the intersubjective and the social. The article then investigates the politics of equating transgender and transpecies, critically examining the question of the inclusion of “xenogenders” in the trans political movement.
This could go either way. It could be … Read the rest
The Trump people undermining the science people in the government:
When the city of Toledo temporarily lost access to clean drinking water several years ago after a bloom of toxic algae, the Environmental Protection Agency sent scientists from its Office of Research and Development to study health effects and formulate solutions.
The same office was on the front lines of the Flint water crisis and was a critical presence in handling medical waste from the U.S. Ebola cases in 2014.
Thomas Burke, who directed ORD during the last two years of the Obama administration and was the agency’s science adviser, calls the office the nation’s “scientific backstop in emergencies.”
That seems like something we need, right?
Not to Donnie from … Read the rest
