Alt-right fake news impresario Mike Cernovich is threatening everyone in sight if anything bad happens to that wonderful guy Steve Bannon.

Cernovich made the claims that he’d release a series of “scoops” if Bannon is officially pushed out of the White House on an eleven-minute, self-recorded Periscope Thursday night.

“If they get rid of Bannon, you know what’s gonna happen? The motherlode. If Bannon is removed, there are gonna be divorces, because I know about the mistresses, the sugar babies, the drugs, the pill popping, the orgies. I know everything,” said Cernovich.

“If they go after Bannon, the mother of all stories is gonna drop, and we’re just gonna destroy marriages, relationships—it’s gonna get personal.”

Such lovely people.

Alt-right leaders

Yes but sexism is over, women have all the rights and freedoms men have now, there is nothing left to object to or campaign for and anyone who thinks otherwise is just playing victim and a horrible tribal SJW and Regressive Leftist. Sexism is over.

Last fall, in the weeks after 21st Century Fox struck settlements with two women who said that Bill O’Reilly had sexually harassed them, the Fox News host went on morning television and offered a harsh assessment of women who had come forward with complaints about the network.

“Look, it’s open season,” he said, visibly irritated, when asked about a recently published book by Megyn Kelly, his colleague at the time. In the

Today in measles outbreaks:

Three in Hennepin County, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Department of Health is investigating three measles cases.

All three patients are toddlers from Hennepin County. State health officials say they haven’t figured out how the children contracted the disease and are trying to track down anyone who may have had contact with them.

Most people who get measles in the United States have contracted the disease while traveling abroad or from someone who has recently traveled overseas. That’s not the case for these children, said Kris Ehresmann, the state health department’s infectious disease director.

They had not been vaccinated.

Most people in Minnesota are vaccinated against measles. But the state health department said immunization rates among some

So we’re playing “Let’s Relive the Cuban Missile Crisis!” these days. I’d so much rather not.

China has warned that “conflict could break out at any moment” as tension over North Korea increases.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said if war occurred there could be no winner.

I wonder if possibly it was a mistake to elect a narcissistic ignorant bully president at this particular moment.

Adding to Chinese unease, President Donald Trump said on Thursday that “the problem of North Korea” would be “taken care of”.

“If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.”

That was a tweet. It wasn’t something he said in a press release or … Read the rest

In Livonia, Michigan:

A Michigan doctor has been accused of performing genital cutting on two 7-year-old girls at a medical clinic, in a case that federal officials believe to be the first prosecution under a law banning the brutal practice.

The doctor, Jumana Nagarwala, 44, was arrested on Wednesday on charges that she performed the genital cutting at an unnamed medical clinic in Livonia, Mich.; transported minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity; and lied to federal agents.

“Cutting” aka mutilation.

One of the girls told investigators that she thought she and the other girl had gone to the doctor because “our tummies hurt.” The other said the cutting procedure was so painful that she screamed and

Well that figures.

The new acting head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights once complained that she experienced discrimination because she is white.

As an undergraduate studying calculus at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, Candice Jackson “gravitated” toward a section of the class that provided students with extra help on challenging problems, she wrote in a student publication. Then she learned that the section was reserved for minority students.

“I am especially disappointed that the University encourages these and other discriminatory programs,” she wrote in the Stanford Review. “We need to allow each person to define his or her own achievements instead of assuming competence or incompetence based on race.”

I don’t see color! All … Read the rest

Michael Shermer’s been shedding his light on the world again.

Sure, by all means, talk about it, but don't obsess over it, don't assume everyone is a racist, & don't try to find racism in everything. https://t.co/g2QcyiQBkR

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) April 12, 2017

The “it” in “talk about it” is race and racism. Shermer with his 118 thousand followers says sure by all means talk about race and racism but do it within these limits prescribed by him.

That’s not a good look. It’s not a good look for a prosperous white guy to issue short sharp instructions on how much and in what manner people can talk about racism.

But it gets worse.

No! If you are against

So they can just say anything, and then say its opposite a few months later, and not be held to account – even when the “anything” in question involves existential threats to the polity and the country.

In his first speech as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, the former Republican congressman who once applauded disclosures by WikiLeaks, attacked the group on Thursday as a stateless hostile intelligence unit eager to do the bidding of Russia and other American adversaries.

“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service,” Mr. Pompeo said. To support his assessment, he cited how the group had encouraged followers to join the C.I.A. and steal

The death of Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam is desperately sad news.

She called her chambers on Tuesday to say she wasn’t coming in. The next day she was found in the Hudson, with no signs of trauma.

The unexpected death was shocking and saddening and even set off some suspicions among Judge Abdus-Salaam’s friends and colleagues, many of whom said she had given no indication that anyone — including herself — would want to do her harm.

In the hours after her body was found, the police said they were treating her death as a suicide. The judge, 65, had recently told friends and a doctor that she was suffering from stress. And tragedy had followed her closely: On Easter

God the BBC can be infuriating. In its reporting on the murder by torture of Mashal Khan for instance.

A university student in Pakistan accused of blasphemy against Islam has been killed by a mob of fellow students on campus, police say.

Many students have been arrested after the brutal attack in the northern city of Mardan, and the campus has been closed.

Reports suggest that two young men were accused of posting offensive content on Facebook. One survived with injuries.

It’s not for the BBC to call the content of Khan’s posts “offensive.” It’s not for the BBC to agree with the idea that skepticism or mockery of religion is “offensive” – especially not hours after someone was violently … Read the rest

Ari Berman in The Nation:

My grandmother Sylvia moved from Brooklyn to Iowa when she was 89 years old. It was a culture shock, to say the least. When my mom took her to vote, she complained of the candidates, “There isn’t anybody who’s Jewish!”

I thought of my grandmother, who passed away in 2005 at 99, when the Iowa Legislature passed a strict voter-ID law today. She didn’t have a driver’s license because she never drove (she’d frequently walk two miles from her apartment to the grocery store). Her passport expired long ago. She never had a US birth certificate because she was born in Poland and fled the Holocaust. She used her Medicare card as identification.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan…

The US military has dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat on an Islamic State group tunnel complex in Afghanistan, the Pentagon says.

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), known as “the mother of all bombs”, was first tested in 2003, but had not been used before.

The Pentagon said it was dropped from a US aircraft in Nangarhar province.

The news came hours after the Pentagon admitted an air strike in Syria mistakenly killed 18 rebels.

…

The 21,600lb (9,800kg) bomb was dropped in Achin district on Thursday evening local time, the Pentagon said. It is more than 9m (30 feet) in length.

“We targeted a system of tunnels and caves

Terry Gross did an interview about for-profit colleges a couple of weeks ago that I kept meaning to blog if only Trump would shut up for one second. Her guest was Tressie McMillan Cottom, who has written a book about them called Lower Ed.

She worked as an enrollment officer for two for-profits at opposite ends of the spectrum – a cosmetology career school and a large college that offered associate’s, bachelor’s and graduate degrees. She left after fearing that instead of helping the students she recruited to improve their financial future, she was leaving them with large student loan debt they’d never earn enough to repay.

When she left the for-profit college sector, she returned to college, completed her

I saw this tweet from Elizabeth Warren

In the choice between students & student loan companies, Betsy DeVos made clear she stands with companies that cheat & squeeze borrowers.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) April 12, 2017

so I went to the Google to find news coverage. The Times has an editorial.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is inexplicably backing away from rules that are meant to prevent federal student loan borrowers from being fleeced by companies the government pays to collect the loans and to guide people through the repayment process.

On Tuesday, she withdrew a sound Obama administration policy that required the Education Department to take into account the past conduct of loan servicing companies before awarding them lucrative