Originally a comment by A Masked Avenger on The Way Forward.

All this huggy-bear stuff is bullshit.

That said, there’s a point to bear in mind that stands out starkly to me as a former right-wing fundie. My therapist made the cogent observation that the attraction of zombie movies is that zombies represent what jingoists want the enemy to be: relentless, implacable, utterly non-human, incapable of reason, incapable of showing mercy and undeserving of mercy.

When the enemy is literally beyond the reach of reason, literally relentless in their efforts to kill you without mercy or quarter, then there’s only one thing you can do: either you shoot them in the head, or they eat your brains. Separation is … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on The way forward.

Funny how much of this we hear, but few people point out that the women, people of color, and foreign-born citizens that Trump and his supporters hate (with a passion that exceeds anything I’ve ever seen from the other side) might be lost and afraid. That we might need some support. That we might need some sympathy. And that all of these pundits (I read tons of this) saying WE are the problem because of our “identity politics” and determination that we want to be part of the voice in this large, diverse, noisy country is the reason Trump won. I see tons of this on the so-called left, beating … Read the rest

Terry Gross talked to Roxane Gay yesterday.

GROSS: So when you were in college, you fell in love with theater. I guess earlier than that you fell in love with theater. You went to Yale, in part, because of their theater department. And you worked behind the scenes. Was that a way of being involved with storytelling and with people but also being kind of invisible because you were literally offstage?

GAY: Absolutely. It was a way of being a part of something because I’m not a joiner. I never was. And so I was never really interested in extracurriculars. I did them because that’s what you do to get into a good college. But theater is where I found

The BBC reports a horrifying statistic:

About 1,300 US children under the age of 17 die from gun-related injuries per year, a government study has found.

Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also found that guns seriously wounded about 5,800 children each year.

We’re horrified by all the people who died or were injured in Grenfell Tower, and this number dwarfs that.

“Firearm injuries are a leading cause of death among US children aged one to 17 years and contribute substantially each year to premature death, illness and disability of children,” said CDC’s Katherine Fowler, who led the study.

“About 19 children a day die or are medically treated in an emergency department for

Boy, that Shakespeare guy, he had a hell of a nerve, right? Insulting our president that way. Somebody ought to go spit on that church in Stratford – in Connecticut is it? Alabama? Idaho? I forget. Anyway they should, and all his novels should be banned out of the schools and libraries, and his descendants should be thrown out of their local churches what denominationsoever they may be. Plus those government art Nazis should all be fired.

Several theatres in the US have received threats and complaints after a show in New York depicted the assassination of a Julius Caesar made to look like President Donald Trump.

Messages wished death upon theatre staff at unrelated establishments in an apparent

Roshan Salih of 5Pillars is defaming Sara Khan and Maajid Nawaz by way of responding to the Finsbury Park terror. The result of course is that horrible people are rushing to harass and abuse them.

1. The Islamophobia industry – Maajid Nawaz, Sara Khan, Tommy Robinson, Douglas Murray, Katie Hopkins, Melanie Phillips #FinsburyPark

— Roshan M Salih (@RmSalih) June 19, 2017

That’s simply a lie, a Trump-level lie. Sara and Maajid are Muslims, so what sense does it make to call them part of “the Islamophobia industry”? Advocacy of reform≠hatred or phobia.

Katie Hopkins & Tommy Robinson should be serving jail time for inciting hatred, Maajid Nawaz & Sara Khan should be no platformed by media

— Roshan M Salih

Paul Krugman is scathing about the Republican senators’ super-secret take-away-health-care bill.

Last month House Republicans rammed through one of the worst, cruelest pieces of legislation in history. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the American Health Care Act would take coverage away from 23 million Americans, and send premiums soaring for millions more, especially older workers with relatively low incomes.

This bill is, as it should be, wildly unpopular. Nonetheless, Republican Senate leaders are now trying to ram through their own version of the A.H.C.A., one that, all reports suggest, will differ only in minor, cosmetic ways. And they’re trying to do it in total secrecy. It appears that there won’t be any committee hearings before the bill

Oh guess what, the cladding on Grenfell Tower that went up like a torch wasn’t supposed to be there.

The cladding used on Grenfell Tower, which has been widely blamed for spreading the blaze, is banned in the UK on buildings of that height, Philip Hammond has said.

The chancellor told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “My understanding is the cladding in question, this flammable cladding which is banned in Europe and the US, is also banned here.

“So there are two separate questions. One: are our regulations correct, do they permit the right kind of materials and ban the wrong kind of materials? The second question is: were they correctly complied with?

“That will be a subject that the

What qualities does one need to be a good leader? Prudence Gourguechon discovered that it’s not easy to find definitive answers to that question.

Although there are volumes devoted to outlining criteria for psychiatric disorders, there is surprisingly little psychiatric literature defining mental capacity, even less on the particular abilities required for serving in positions of great responsibility. Despite the thousands of articles and books written on leadership, primarily in the business arena, I have found only one source where the capacities necessary for strategic leadership are clearly and comprehensively laid out: the U.S. Army’s “Field Manual 6-22 Leader Development.”

That makes sense. They really need to know.

The Army’s field manual on leadership is an extraordinarily

People are walking away.

Six members of the group that advises the White House on HIV and Aids have quit their posts – claiming that the Trump administration does not care about the issue.

In a letter of resignation that was published on a US news site, the experts claimed the government had no meaningful policy on tackling Aids, failed to listen to advice from those working in the field, and actually promoted legislation that harmed individuals living with the disease.

Other than that, everything’s great.

“We have dedicated our lives to combating this disease and no longer feel we can do so effectively within the confines of an advisory body to a president who simply does not care,”

Inside Higher Ed reports:

The Department of Education last week outlined changes to civil rights investigations that advocates fear will mean less consistent findings of systemic discrimination at colleges.

Under the Obama administration, certain types of civil rights complaints would trigger broader investigations of whether a pattern of discrimination existed at a school or college.

But Candice Jackson, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, told regional directors for the Office for Civil Rights in a memo that the Department of Education would no longer follow those guidelines. In detailing the latest civil rights shift under Secretary Betsy DeVos, Jackson wrote that the department was setting aside existing rules and empowering investigators with more discretion to clear case backlogs

Let’s look back at a little history: the FBI and the Kennedy brothers versus Martin Luther King.

Beveryl Gage starts with a typed anonymous letter sent to King in late 1964.

The unnamed author suggests intimate knowledge of his correspondent’s sex life, identifying one possible lover by name and claiming to have specific evidence about others. Another passage hints of an audiotape accompanying the letter, apparently a recording of “immoral conduct” in action. “Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure,” the letter demands. It concludes with a deadline of 34 days “before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

“There is only one thing left for you to do,” the author warns vaguely in the