All entries by this author

In a speech in a beer hall in Dresden

Jan 18th, 2017 11:31 am | By

Let’s hear from some more Nazis. They’re speaking up. Philip Oltermann in Berlin reports in the Guardian:

A politician from the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has broken with the country’s postwar political consensus by calling for a “180-degree turn” from the tradition of remembering and atoning for the Nazi era.

In a speech in a beer hall in Dresden, Björn Höcke, who leads the party in the eastern state of Thuringia, railed against Germany’s decade-long tradition of acknowledging the crimes of the National Socialist era, describing the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as a “monument of shame”.

“They wanted to cut off our roots and with the re-education that began in 1945, they nearly managed,” Höcke said.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 11 comments


And the winner is

Jan 18th, 2017 10:58 am | By

A big congratulations to 2016 for being the hottest year on record, beating out rival 2015, which beat rival 2014. Every year is a new record broken! Isn’t this exciting, folks?

In a powerful testament to the warming of the planet, two leading U.S. science agencies Wednesday jointly declared 2016 the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set just last year — which, itself, had topped a record set in 2014.

Average surface temperatures in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 2015, and featured eight successive months (January through August) that were individually the warmest since the agency’s record began in 1880.

The average temperature across the world’s

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 16 comments


Donnie doing his hoamwerk

Jan 18th, 2017 10:22 am | By

Bahahahahahahaha Donnie from Queens tweets a candid shot of himself “writing” his inaugural address. Suuuuuuure he is. He’s totally writing it. You can tell by the casual expertise with which he tries to fold the pad in half while he’s writing on it.

 … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 16 comments
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Watch out! It’s political correctness!

Jan 17th, 2017 5:49 pm | By

CFI Portland is throwing a Trumpesque event in ten days.

The New Campus Thought Police

Two brilliant and uncompromising thinkers, bestselling author Christina Hoff Sommers and Portland’s own Peter Boghossian, will share the stage on January 27th with political comedian and host Dave Rubin for a live “fireside chat” on the hot-button issues of speech, gender, and culture at PSU.

“The New Campus Thought Police” will be presented by both the Center for Inquiry in Portland, as well as Freethinkers. The event will feature honest and unfiltered conversation about the controversial subjects of free speech and political correctness on college campuses. This will include issues such as microaggressions, trigger warnings, safe spaces, cultural appropriation, victimhood culture, and more.

Yes, there … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 21 comments


Trump’s defamatory assertions may catch up with him

Jan 17th, 2017 5:34 pm | By

Another reason to think Donald Trump is not a very nice man.

A former contestant on the reality show “The Apprentice” filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against President-elect Donald Trump over his response to her allegations that he groped her during a job interview in 2007.

Summer Zervos, a California restaurant owner who appeared on the show in 2006, accused Trump of aggressively kissing and grabbing her when she went to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel to discuss a possible job at the Trump Organization a year later.

In her suit, Zervos alleges that Trump defamed her when he denied her account of their interactions in the hotel room, accusing her and other women who made similar

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments
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Falling apart

Jan 17th, 2017 4:57 pm | By

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution expanded on Trump’s assertion that John Lewis’s congressional district is “in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)” a few days ago.

The Democrat’s district includes parts of Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties – and most of the city of Atlanta – as well as Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur and Morrow. The district has several of Atlanta’s most prominent gems, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the King Center and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And it has the bulk of Georgia’s higher education institutions: Emory University, Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Georgia Tech and Georgia State University are all in the 5th Congressional District. It is also where many of the

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments
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Translating Trump

Jan 17th, 2017 3:59 pm | By

Rob Zaretsky at the LA Review of Books talks to a French translator about what it’s like translating Trump. They start with Obama. Translating him was a joy. Trump is…different.

Well, as I said, you have to be able to get into someone’s mind in order to translate his speech and reformulate it into your own language. Trump is not easy to translate, first of all, because, most of the time, when he speaks he seems not to know quite where he’s going. In my essay, I took the example of the interview he gave to The New York Times. He seems to hang onto a word in the question, or to a word that pops into his

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments
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368 to 1

Jan 17th, 2017 12:30 pm | By

Russia is decriminalizing domestic violence. Not a joke.

Domestic violence kills 14,000 women every year, the Russian Interior Ministry estimates. And just 2 percent of Russian victims of domestic abuse report attacks to police.

Now, the country has just passed a bill that would decriminalize some forms of domestic violence, enraging rights groups who say the measure will leave abuse victims even more vulnerable.

The bill ― known as the “slapping law” ― passed an initial hurdle in the Duma legislative body. It would eliminate criminal penalties for first offenses or attacks that occur only once a year in which a woman or child is not “seriously” injured.

So husbands and fathers get one freebie a year, … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments


Guest post: The cult of ignorance

Jan 17th, 2017 12:14 pm | By

Originally a comment by iknklast on Trump names his heroes. 

Team Him will just say, as usual, that the voters knew that when they voted for him

And he’d be right. Many of his voters voted for him precisely because he was unfit – they seem to think that is some good thing, having no idea what you’re doing. This is seeping into a lot of fields, too. The idea that teachers should be experienced is coming under attack from our “school reform” people – including those on the Obama team. The idea of using experienced people to sell your house? List with a realtor, and see how many people make fun of you for paying a commission, when … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Putin on morals

Jan 17th, 2017 11:45 am | By

Putin speaks.

Vladimir Putin has dismissed the dossier published last week about alleged links between Moscow and Donald Trump, describing the people who ordered it as “worse than prostitutes”.

What a ridiculous comparison. Prostitutes aren’t “bad”; prostitutes aren’t items on the list of Bad Types of People. Items on that list include murderers, rapists, bullies, frauds (funny how the last three apply to Trump) and the like. Pimps can be on that list, but prostitutes, no. But Putin is Putin, of course. I’m sure he thinks pimps and johns are the victims of prostitutes.

Making his first public remarks on the claims three days before Trump’s inauguration as US president, Putin joked about Russian sex workers, who he said

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


Bikers for Trump are on their way

Jan 17th, 2017 11:05 am | By

Today in TrumpOnTwitter.

His epistemology needs work. The fact that one sycophant says something flattering about his Twitter use is just that – a minor fact about one person. It’s far from sufficient to demonstrate that the media are dishonest about his Twitter use.

He seems to think his daughter should be immune from press attention … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments
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Trump names his heroes

Jan 16th, 2017 11:27 am | By

The transcript part 2.

Next comes the bit I saw on Twitter, which motivated me to read the whole thing. Empty empty empty. He is so empty.

Do you have any models — are there heroes that you steer by — people you look up to from the past?

Well, I don’t like heroes, I don’t like the concept of heroes, the concept of heroes is never great, but certainly you can respect certain people and certainly there are certain people — but I’ve learnt a lot from my father — my father was a builder in Brooklyn and Queens — he did houses and housing and I learnt a lot about negotiation from my father — although I also

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 27 comments
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Trump really is Trump

Jan 16th, 2017 11:08 am | By

The Times published a full transcript of the interview of Trump that Michael Gove and Kai Diekmann did for the Times and Bild respectively. It’s not a surprise yet it is a surprise. It’s the same old thing yet it still amazes. He can’t talk competently, and the content of what he says is absurd or horrifying or both. He’s always worse than one can believe.

Their opener is to ask him about relations with Germany and Scotland [and presumably the UK as a whole] – and he replies by talking about his golf course and how it’s raking in the cash thanks to how low the pound is.

They talk about Brexit and he talks about “strong borders” and … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 10 comments
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Trump’s holiday plans

Jan 16th, 2017 10:07 am | By

Trump is perhaps aware that his tribute to Martin Luther King was a little thin on specifics (unless you consider “wonderful” and “great” to be specifics), so he’s meeting with King’s oldest son to find out what they were.

Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s press secretary and communications director, announced the planned meeting in New York between Mr. Trump and Martin Luther King III in a morning posting on Twitter. It came two days after the president-elect had taken to the social media platform to attack Mr. Lewis after the congressman said an interview that he would not attend the inauguration and did not see Mr. Trump as a legitimate president because of questions about whether Russian hacking had affected

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
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All of the many

Jan 16th, 2017 9:31 am | By

Even when Trump tries for once not to be an asshole, he remains an asshole. That’s because he’s so inadequate and empty.

Behold his masterpiece for MLK Day:

Oh yes, all the many wonderful things. So many. Very wonderful. Very very wonderful.

Honor him. Honor him for being great. So great. Very very very great. Very very great man who did many many very very wonderful things.

Exclamation point!… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments
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Gender Equality and Misogynistic Islam in Nigeria

Jan 15th, 2017 | By Leo Igwe

The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar (lll) has made it clear that hatred, inequity, injustice and discrimination against women define the Islamic establishment, which he represents in Nigeria. This was evident in his reaction to the gender equality bill that is currently going through the legislative process at the Senate.

For some time now, there has been a debate on the status of women in Islam or under sharia law in Nigeria. There have been conflicting views and opinions on the issue. This debate, often provoked by issues regarding family inheritance and marriage in muslim majority states, has led to confused notions as to whether men and women are equal in Islam or if Muslim men are more equal than … Read the rest

Posted in Articles


They should APOLOGIZE

Jan 15th, 2017 4:28 pm | By

The latest TrumpOnTwitter:

No. John Lewis doesn’t need the ignoramus Trump telling him what to work on, and he’s not Trump’s assistant.

Says the man whose campaign rallies were notorious for their hatemongering which often developed into violence. Says the man who spews hatred for individuals and groups every day on Twitter. Says … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 11 comments
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Be nice to us because we have always been terrible to you

Jan 15th, 2017 1:14 pm | By

Ahhhh fuck you, dude.

Priebus to Obama: ‘Step up’ and quiet Democrats who question Trump’s legitimacy

Are you joking. That orange sack of shit spent three years lying about Obama in order to “question his legitimacy.” Lying. He lied. People now are questioning Trump’s legitimacy based on the truth.

Trump never bothered to apologize for those three years of racist lies.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Priebus acknowledged Lewis’s “historic contribution to civil rights and voting rights” but said his doubts about Trump’s legitimacy are “insanity” and “incredibly disappointing.”

“I think President Obama should step up,” he said, praising the cooperation from the White House on other transition issues. “I think the administration can do a lot of good

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments


He no longer has to be politically correct

Jan 15th, 2017 12:37 pm | By

A sweet little boy-meets-girl story out of Connecticut.

A local Republican politician in Connecticut was arrested for allegedly pinching a female employee’s genitals, reports the Westport Daily Voice.

Christopher von Keyserling, 71, was arrested Wednesday in Greenwich Town Hall and charged with fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor. He was released on a $2,500 bond and given a court date of Jan. 25.

It was last month. The woman encountered von Keyserling in a hall.

The two had a brief political argument, in which von Keyserling remarked, “I love this new world, I no longer have to be politically correct.”

When the woman tried to walk away, von Keyserling allegedly reached from behind to place his hand between her

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments


Compare

Jan 15th, 2017 12:13 pm | By

Susan Campbell has a terrific post at The Hill comparing Trump and John Lewis over time.

n a photograph from his youth, President-elect Donald J. Trump poses in the dress uniform of a New York Military Academy cadet. He’s posed next to his father, real estate mogul Fred C. Trump, and his mother, the Scottish immigrant/social climber, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump.

He graduated from NYMA in 1964, and with all due respect to the class of ’17, at the time his school had the reputation as little more than a holding pen for rich, disaffected young men who’d reach a level of incompetence unwelcome at other institutions.

During that same time, John Lewis, the son of

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
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