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New York City continues to be a sanctuary city

Nov 21st, 2016 3:44 pm | By

Columbia University Provost John Coatsworth said in a statement today:

First, you should know that the University will neither allow immigration officials on our campuses without a warrant, nor share information on the immigration status of students with those officials unless required by subpoena or court order, or authorized by a student.  Moreover, New York City continues to be a sanctuary city, with special protections for undocumented immigrants, and Mayor de Blasio recently affirmed that local law enforcement officials will continue to operate consistent with that commitment.

If the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy is terminated or substantially curtailed and students with DACA status lose the right to work, the University pledges to expand the financial aid

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


See the Nazi salutes

Nov 21st, 2016 3:21 pm | By

The Atlantic has video of that talk Richard B. Spencer gave at the neo-Nazi meeting Saturday evening after most of the journalists had left.

I hit the stop button after he said “It’s not just that they are leftists and cucks. It’s not just that they are stupid.” That’s 50 seconds in.

It’s only a few men in a room. But…they’re connected to the next president.… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


They talked about their first meeting

Nov 21st, 2016 2:55 pm | By

Ok the Trump-Macri story may not be true. It’s not completely clear that the reporter wasn’t joking.

On his popular Sunday night program “Periodismo para Todos” (Journalism for All), the muckraking Argentine reporter Jorge Lanata and his guests delivered an explosive claim: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump asked the country’s president for help getting permits for a stalled Trump tower project in Buenos Aires.

The story caught fire, but it may be just more fake news.

Ivan Pavlovsky, a spokesman for Macri who was present in the room during their call, said the claims were false and that “nothing like that ever happened.”

“They didn’t talk about any investments or any tower,” said Pavlovsky, reached by phone in Buenos Aires.

… Read the rest

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“Since I have you on the line, Mauricio…”

Nov 21st, 2016 12:28 pm | By

TPM tells us:

For a number of years, Trump and his Argentine partners have been trying to build a major office building in Buenos Aires. The project has been held up by a series of complications tied to financing, importation of building materials and various permitting requirements.

According to a report out of Argentina, when Argentine President Mauricio Macri called President-Elect Trump to congratulate him on his election, Trump asked Macri to deal with the permitting issues that are currently holding up the project.

Pause to stare at the screen in frozen horror.

This comes from one of Argentina’s most prominent journalists, Jorge Lanata, in a recent TV appearance. Lanata is quoted here in La Nacion, one

… Read the rest

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As phony as everything else about him

Nov 21st, 2016 12:22 pm | By

Robin Lustig sees a dangerous world ahead.

What scares me most about Trump is not only that he is a deeply unpleasant man with deeply unpleasant views but also that he is grotesquely, frighteningly incompetent and woefully unprepared for the task ahead. His reputation as a successful businessman is as phony as everything else about him, and he is a man who has no experience whatsoever of politics even at the very lowest level, who apparently had no idea of what was involved in putting together a new White House team.

More than a week after his election, no one from his team had been in touch with either the State Department or the Pentagon, and when the Japanese

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 9 comments
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Nazis gather

Nov 21st, 2016 11:48 am | By

Michael Goldfarb says “The term alt-right needs to be replaced by NYTimes/NPR et al and pronto.” He cites Joseph Goldstein’s story in the Times yesterday on a day-long meeting of followers of Richard B. Spencer near the White House on Saturday.

In 11 hours of speeches and panel discussions in a federal building named after Ronald Reagan a few blocks from the White House, a succession of speakers had laid out a harsh vision for the future, but had denounced violence and said that Hispanic citizens and black Americans had nothing to fear. Earlier in the day, Mr. Spencer himself had urged the group to start acting less like an underground organization and more like the establishment.

But now his

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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments
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Vewwy wude

Nov 21st, 2016 11:29 am | By

The grievance brigade.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments
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No reset button

Nov 21st, 2016 11:03 am | By

Jim Rutenberg at the Times on Megyn Kelly’s book.

On Tuesday, she was in her office at the Fox News headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, taking stock, preparing for the next phase — a Trump presidency — and warning fellow journalists to look at her experience during the campaign as a potential cautionary tale.

“The relentless campaign that Trump unleashed on me and Fox News to try to get coverage the way he liked it was unprecedented and potentially very dangerous,” she said, casual but animated behind her translucent desk. If he were to repeat the same behavior from the White House, she said, “it would be quite chilling for many reporters.”

He has been railing at the Times in … Read the rest

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“Let’s gut her”

Nov 21st, 2016 10:18 am | By

Slate had a piece about Trump and his team a few days ago that’s so horrifying I had to pause in reading it. It’s about how they echoed threats against Megyn Kelly to the point that a Fox executive had to explain to them that it wouldn’t help their campaign if she were murdered.

Donald Trump’s feud with Megyn Kelly was way darker than any of us knew. Kelly received so many death threats and so much harassment from Trump supporters after confronting him at the first Republican debate with a challenging question about his many, many misogynistic statements that she needed a special security detail for a year.

The Trump campaign stoked the flames of the Kelly hate, the

… Read the rest

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We are given an obscene Gehenna

Nov 20th, 2016 5:26 pm | By

A few years ago Stephen Fry drove around the US in a London cab with a tv crew. I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the resulting tv series, and liked them. One of the places he visited was Atlantic City…

Would it not have been better to let the home of Monopoly, this seedy resort town and remnant of another way of holidaying, simply fall into the sea? Instead we are given an obscene Gehenna, a place of such tawdry, tacky, tinselly, tasteless and trumpery tat that the desire to run away clutching my hand to my mouth is overwhelming.  But no, I must brave the interior of the most tawdry and literally trumpery tower of them all

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 10 comments
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Not only unpatriotic and servile

Nov 20th, 2016 4:33 pm | By

I don’t much admire Theodore Roosevelt, apart from the National Parks thing (which admittedly is a lot), but he said a good thing about our current issues.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

From an editorial he wrote for the “Kansas City Star” during World War I…when he was no longer president, of course.

H/t Steve Watson… Read the rest

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El Dorado

Nov 20th, 2016 4:12 pm | By

The vulgarity of Trump Palace is breathtaking. US Magazine did a piece on it a year ago, so we can see how hideous it really is.

Compare the White House.

You don’t need eye protection in the second place.… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »
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Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream?

Nov 20th, 2016 12:03 pm | By

Trump’s national security guy is a conspiracy-monger. Business Insider reports:

The retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped to advise him on matters of national security has promoted stories involving conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn shared two thinly sourced articles on his Twitter account alleging that Clinton was involved in everything from “money laundering” to “sex crimes with children” just days before the election.

On November 2, the general tweeted a link to a website called True Pundit, which claimed to have spoken with “NYPD sources” involved in the investigation of Anthony Weiner. Flynn called it a “must read” — which many supporters likely did, since it was favorited and retweeted more than 12,000

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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments
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Measure the headlines

Nov 20th, 2016 11:16 am | By

A drawback to getting news online is that one doesn’t necessarily see how the news is presented and ordered – what is above the fold in huge headlines and what is below it in ordinary headlines. Jamison Foser has shown me what I’ve been missing.

Big headlines right at the top of the page, the whole entire above the fold occupied by Clinton email news.

On the other hand…

… Read the rest

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Other issues

Nov 20th, 2016 9:55 am | By

The Times suggests Trump’s imbecilic tweeting may be an intentional diversionary tactic.

But even as Mr. Trump’s transition team appeared eager to embrace a more disciplined approach to the process of building out his administration, the president-elect’s Twitter complaints about “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live” provided a distraction.

That may have been the intention. Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts diverted attention from other issues, including a $25 million settlement in a lawsuit against Trump University, concerns about conflicts of interest involving the president-elect’s business dealings, and questions about the propriety of potentially appointing his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to a White House post.

Not around here they didn’t. I posted about both.

That’s the thing about Trump, as I keep … Read the rest

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Trump v Saturday Night Live

Nov 20th, 2016 9:46 am | By

Our petulant imbecile of a president-elect is still whining and complaining on Twitter, along with trying to tell us all what to do. He is so confused. He seems to think the president (and even the pres-elect) can just bark out orders and have them obeyed. That’s not how this works.

God he’s stupid. He really is like a child, a very young and very spoiled child. That interpolated “which I hear is highly overrated” – that’s so transparent and so goofy. No he doesn’t hear that, except … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 11 comments
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Donnie’s pal “Honest Abe”

Nov 20th, 2016 8:41 am | By

… Read the rest

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Tee hee

Nov 19th, 2016 5:58 pm | By

Oh look, Milo Yiannopoulos being oh so amusingly “provocative” at Breitbart a few weeks ago – women should have stayed home hawhaw, they were better off there hawhawhaw, having babies is all they’re good for hahahaha.

Feminist propaganda shoved in the faces of previously-content housewives told ladies they would be less happy if they weren’t working a gruelling job like their husbands were. This sort of thinking was designed to make women feel strong and empowered. But the fact is, women have become far more unhappy in the last 35 years.

…

The role of the housewife has been thoroughly and ritually humiliated by successive waves of feminism — as if raising well-adjusted children, keeping a beautiful home and marrying

… Read the rest

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Step right up, rent a bed in Trump’s new hotel, Ambassador

Nov 19th, 2016 5:21 pm | By

This is completely astounding.

Friday evening, the Washington Post reported that about 100 foreign diplomats gathered at President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC to “to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.” The tour included a look at the hotel’s $20,000 a night “town house” suite. The Post also quoted some of the diplomats saying they intended to stay at the hotel in order to ingratiate themselves to the incoming president.

ARE YOU SERIOUS???

He is marketing his new hotel to foreign diplomats?

I’m out of swears, out of facial expressions, out of anything that can express my disgust.

“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments
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Read, my child

Nov 19th, 2016 4:52 pm | By

John Lewis won a National Book Award on Wednesday.

Watch him accept it.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments
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