A glimpse of hell.
https://twitter.com/DBloom451/status/858449702408392704
https://twitter.com/WayneDupreeShow/status/858459599682363396
Ah the dignity and strength of the furious pout with folded arms.
https://twitter.com/mikandynothem/status/858435268453384192
Yay the Nazi salute.
https://twitter.com/JohnPaul_USA/status/858369296279273473… Read the rest
A law which protected Jordan’s rapists from punishment if they married their victims looks set to be scrapped.
The Jordanian cabinet revoked Article 308 on Sunday, after years of campaigning by women’s activists, as well as Muslim and Christian scholars and others.
The law had meant rapists could avoid a jail term in return for marrying their victim for at least three years.
Its supporters said the law protected a victim’s honour and reputation.
The victim’s “honour and reputation” shouldn’t be at issue anyway. It’s ridiculous. Imagine thinking someone whose wallet is stolen suffers damage to her honour and reputation.
And the rapist, blindingly obviously, should not escape punishment by further victimizing the victim. Imagine a … Read the rest
Originally a comment by iknklast on Eliminate the safety regulations.
I wonder how the “let’s get rid of safety regulations” policy is going to go over with Trump’s presumed blue-collar, working man base
Most of the blue-collar workers that surround me are ecstatic about the idea. They have bought into the idea that these regulations are unnecessary, are telling them how to do their job, are keeping them from making better money…in short, they voted for Trump because of this sort of thing, not in spite of it. At a recent meeting of a group that benefits highly from OSHA regulations, they were all discussing how eager they were for OSHA regulations to go away.
I think the problem … Read the rest
Amy Davidson in the New Yorker looks at the abject process of paying homage to Princess Ivanka.
… Read the restThe international project of flattering Ivanka Trump—which some of the world’s most notable women, from Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, to Queen Máxima, of the Netherlands, engaged in at a panel discussion during the W20 conference, in Berlin, this week—does not always run smoothly. There was, first, the achingly obvious oddity of deciding that Trump, whose experience on the public stage largely consists of marketing her clothing and jewelry lines, and her efforts to get her father, Donald Trump, elected, was qualified to sit between Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, and Chrystia Freeland, the Foreign Minister of
The Times has a piece on ways Donnie has changed the presidency. This one made me laugh.
…he has cast off conventions that constrained others in his office. He has retained his business interests, which he implicitly cultivates with regular visits to his properties. He has been both more and less transparent than other presidents, shielding his tax returns and White House visitor logs from public scrutiny while appearing to leave few thoughts unexpressed, no matter how incendiary or inaccurate.
Ha! Doin’ it wrong, Donnie. You’re supposed to reveal the stuff relevant to the job and hide the inappropriate thoughts that lurk in the pestilent swamp of your mind.
… Read the restAlthough Mr. Trump assumed that his experience in business and
Guess who would benefit from Trump’s (sketched) tax plan?
Oh darn you must have peeked. That’s right: it’s the man himself.
… Read the restAmong the likely winners in President Donald Trump’s tax-cut plan would be a real estate developer turned reality TV star who now happens to occupy the White House.
The one-page proposal released Wednesday seems sure to benefit the president’s businesses. It would eliminate the estate tax, repeal the alternative minimum tax that affects some affluent people, deeply slash corporate rates and reduce investment taxes — all of which could in theory benefit a billionaire real estate magnate like Trump.
It’s a sensitive subject for a White House that is telling Americans its proposed cuts to individual and corporate
So about those “hundred days”…
David Leonhardt gives Donnie low marks.
No doubt, you’ve seen a torrent of coverage in recent days of the milestone. And while it’s certainly an arbitrary milestone, it’s also a meaningful one. Presidents are at their most influential in their early months, which makes that period a particularly important one for a presidency.
In other words the hundred days is an arbitrary number, but the first few months of a presidency, is not. Trump’s hundred, Leonhardt says gently, is the worst ever.
… Read the restTrump has made no significant progress on any major legislation. His health care bill is a zombie. His border wall is stalled. He’s only now releasing basic principles of a tax
Trump has been giving a talk at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting. In that talk – on camera, with reporters present – he called Senator Warren “Pocahontas” again.
I am so sick of this trashy, vulgar, nasty, schoolyard-bully man.
Trump calling Warren Pocahontas is racist. We kind of gloss over it at this point. But this is the president being racist.
— Sam Stein (@samstein) April 28, 2017
At NRA, Trump looks to 2020: "It may be Pocahontas." A derogatory, dismissive reference to Sen. Warren.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) April 28, 2017
… Read the restTrump speculates about Dem contenders in 2020, refers to Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas…" reprising insult for MA Sen from campaign.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 28,
I guess Trump thinks the Gulf oil spill was a nice jobs-creator, or something. He wants to encourage that kind of thing.
Just past the seventh anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, President Trump on Friday directed the Interior Department to “reconsider” several safety regulations on offshore drilling implemented after one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history.
Friday’s executive order was aimed at rolling back the Obama administration’s attempts to ban oil drilling off the southeastern Atlantic and Alaskan coasts. It would erase or narrow the boundaries of some federally-protected marine sanctuaries, opening them up to commercial fishing and oil drilling.
Because marine life, meh, who needs it, whereas oil – now there’s a … Read the rest
Reuters talked to Donnie and found out that he wants his old life back. We want that for you, Donnie! Do feel free to resign.
He misses driving, feels as if he is in a cocoon, and is surprised how hard his new job is.
President Donald Trump on Thursday reflected on his first 100 days in office with a wistful look at his life before the White House.
“I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” Trump told Reuters in an interview. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”
He thought it would be easier. He thought it would be easier. Oh my god.
… Read the restMore than five
Elsewhere today – Cassini took a deep breath and dove through the rings of Saturn.
… Read the restIn the wee hours of this morning, NASA established that Cassini had survived. Now the little craft has begun sending back a stream of images that are the closest look at Saturn’s atmosphere yet.
Cassini was launched in 1997 on a mission to explore Saturn and it’s various moons. Over the years, it’s sent back a massive amount of data, including the recent discovery that potentially microbe-friendly hydrogen is spouting from the icy moon Enceladus. But Cassini has come to the end of its fuel and is now beginning its grand finale mission in which it will dive between Saturn and its rings once
Poor Fox. They just can’t get it right.
… Read the restJesse Watters, the Fox News host who took heat this week for making a joke about Ivanka Trump that was criticized as lewd, said on Wednesday that he would be taking a family vacation until Monday. The move came just three days after his show began airing in a new high-profile time slot.
Mr. Watters, who denied that his comment about President Trump’s daughter was sexual, announced his upcoming absence near the end of Wednesday night’s edition of “The Five.” He will miss two days of the show’s first week in prime time after it took over the 9 p.m. slot from “The O’Reilly Factor,” and he will miss his “Watters’
Another piece on how Trump’s people have to manage him as if he were a volatile heavily-armed toddler.
… Read the restAs Trump is beginning to better understand the challenges—and the limits—of the presidency, his aides are understanding better how to manage perhaps the most improvisational and free-wheeling president in history. “If you’re an adviser to him, your job is to help him at the margins,” said one Trump confidante. “To talk him out of doing crazy things.”
Interviews with White House officials, friends of Trump, veterans of his campaign and lawmakers paint a picture of a White House that has been slow to adapt to the demands of the most powerful office on earth.
“Everyone is concerned that things are not running
Trump is pining to break up the Ninth Circuit.
… Read the restPresident Donald Trump is threatening to break up the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which blocked his executive order banning travel from several nations with large Muslim populations and restricted the acceptance of refugees.
Asked by the Washington Examiner if he had considered proposals to split the court, Trump replied: “Absolutely, I have.”
“There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous,” Trump told the website. “Everybody immediately runs to the 9th Circuit. And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. Because they know that’s like, semi-automatic.”
Trump
A man in Saudi Arabia has reportedly been sentenced to death on charges of apostasy after losing two appeals.
Several local media reports identified the man as Ahmad Al Shamri, in his 20s, from the town of Hafar al-Batin, who first came to the authorities’ attention in 2014 after allegedly uploading videos to social media in which he renounced Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.
He was arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy and held in prison before being convicted by a local court and sentenced to death in February 2015.
The Saudi state plans to kill a man for not believing in a god and for rejecting Islam.
… Read the restUnder Saudi Arabia’s strict religious
Well, this isn’t what I was hoping to see. Obama has agreed to do a talk at a health care conference sponsored by a Wall Street investment bank for the modest sum of Four Hundred Thousand Dollars.
… Read the restOut of office for about three months, Mr. Obama has begun the process of cashing in. In February, he and his wife, Michelle, each signed book deals worth tens of millions of dollars. And Mr. Obama’s spokesman confirmed last week that he is beginning the paid-speech circuit.
A $400,000 speaking fee for addressing the Cantor Fitzgerald conference is a sharp increase from the amounts typically paid to his predecessors. Former President Bill Clinton averaged about $200,000 per speech while former President George
Because it came up in comments and Dave Ricks provided a link, I belatedly learned of the Tuskegee airmen.
… Read the restFor historical photographs or information regarding the Tuskegee Airmen, contact: Maxwell Air Force Base by e-mail at afhranews@maxwell.af.mil or write the Air Force Historical Research Agency, 600 Chennault Circle, Maxwell AFB, Ala. 36112-6424.
- The Tuskegee Airmen were dedicated, determined young men who volunteered to become America’s first Black military airmen
- Those who possessed the physical and mental qualifications and were accepted for aviation cadet training were trained initially to be pilots, and later to be either pilots, navigators, or bombardiers.
- Tuskegee University was awarded the U.S. Army Air Corps contract to help train America’s first Black military aviators because
Trump wants to claw back the national monuments – claw them back from the people in order to give them to developers and ranchers.
… Read the restPresident Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing his interior secretary to review the designation of dozens of national monuments on federal lands, as he singled out “a massive federal land grab” by the Obama administration.
It was yet another executive action from a president trying to rack up accomplishments before his first 100 days in office, with Saturday marking that milestone.
The latest move could upend protections put in place in Utah and other states under a 1906 law that authorizes the president to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use.
During
