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Bad company

Nov 17th, 2016 12:36 pm | By

Russia has withdrawn its signature from the Rome statute that founded the International Criminal Court.

Russia has said it is formally withdrawing its signature from the founding statute of the international criminal court, a day after the court published a report classifying the Russian annexation of Crimea as an occupation.

The repudiation of the tribunal, though symbolic, is a fresh blow to efforts to establish a global legal order for pursuing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In recent months, three African countries who were all full members of the ICC – South Africa, Burundi and Gambia – have signalled their intention to pull out, following complaints that ICC prosecutions focused excessively on the African continent.

I’d love … Read the rest

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Still going down the list

Nov 17th, 2016 11:28 am | By

Joshua Foust’s list.

Item six is the only one without a link.

  • Putting one’s children into senior positions of a government is the behavior of a banana republic, not a constitutional democracy with strong institutions. This is not normal.

There was Kennedy making his brother Attorney General. There was plenty of controversy about that at the time. Sticking in three children and the spouse of one of them, all at once – when they are all entangled in the president’s many businesses – that’s a whole new level.

Item seven is his refusal to disclose his taxes.

Item eight:

  • Asking if he can decline the President’s salary, so as to avoid paying taxes, is not normal.

The link … Read the rest

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More going down the list

Nov 17th, 2016 10:37 am | By

Joshua Foust’s list part 2.

The third item on the list:

  • Blasting journalists with product placements for the labels your child, who is on your transition team, is wearing is not normal.

The link is to a tweet:

Jason Pinter responded a few days ago that she did the same thing after the convention:

“Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech” – that’s not normal.

I followed the link: it goes to a Macy’s … Read the rest

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Going down the list

Nov 17th, 2016 10:03 am | By

First item on Joshua Foust’s list:

From that NBC News piece:

Trump’s transition website is now equipped with the official “.gov” federal web address.

And while the “Meet The President Elect” section is typically dedicated to outlining an official’s vision and background, there is one particular emphasis in his resume.

More than one-quarter of Trump’s bio refers to his business properties around the world.

The focus on Trump’s individual private properties, from which he draws his income, is a break from the political norms of a candidate transitioning into the White House.

Barack Obama, for example, had a similar bio page during

… Read the rest

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Is not normal

Nov 17th, 2016 9:38 am | By

Oh god. We’re just not even going to be able to keep up. Teams of reporters and activists will be on each item and still they won’t be able to keep up. There’s just so much…

Joshua Foust points out the obvious truth that This is not normal. He explains that for a few paragraphs and I nod along with him.

“Normal,” as a concept, matters. The old adage that it is just the setting on a dryer is not just wrong but misleading. When something is abnormal it is important to understand why. If a person is not normal they could be brilliant or they could be sick, and knowing the difference is the distance between life and

… Read the rest

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Deeply abhorrent

Nov 17th, 2016 8:39 am | By

Nicola Sturgeon refuses to accept Trump and his shameless racism and misogyny.

https://youtu.be/KaZB1XKlcl0… Read the rest

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“Conflict of interest” doesn’t even describe it

Nov 16th, 2016 5:57 pm | By

It gets worse. The Times asks questions about the conflicts of interest.

Even if he no longer manages his businesses directly, Mr. Trump will continue to own them and his family will be involved in deals, both foreign and domestic, to develop real estate projects or license his brand. He will still be aware of the existence of his business interests and how his actions as president will affect them. The conflicts between his private interests and his public role will be impossible to untangle.

And it’s not as if he’s such an obviously principled, public spirited, integrity-endowed guy that we can just trust him to get it right. No, it’s not. Very much the opposite.

And now we … Read the rest

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Improvising

Nov 16th, 2016 5:25 pm | By

I never got to that Times story yesterday that sent furious Trump to Twitter again. It says the Trump team is making a hash of things, to the surprise of no one.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition was in disarray on Tuesday, marked by firings, infighting and revelations that American allies were blindly dialing in to Trump Tower to try to reach the soon-to-be-leader of the free world.

One week after Mr. Trump scored an upset victory that took him by surprise, his team was improvising the most basic traditions of assuming power. That included working without official State Department briefing materials in his first conversations with foreign leaders.

Well, briefings. He would have had to read those…and … Read the rest

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There is no scientific evidence that the product works

Nov 16th, 2016 4:41 pm | By

Have a press release from the Federal Trade Commission:

The Federal Trade Commission today announced a new “Enforcement Policy Statement on Marketing Claims for Over-the-Counter (OTC) Homeopathic Drugs.” The policy statement was informed by an FTC workshop held last year to examine how such drugs are marketed to consumers. The FTC also released its staff report on the workshop, which summarizes the panel presentations and related public comments in addition to describing consumer research commissioned by the FTC.

The policy statement explains that the FTC will hold efficacy and safety claims for OTC homeopathic drugs to the same standard as other products making similar claims. That is, companies must have competent and reliable scientific evidence for health-related claims,

… Read the rest

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Trumpian epistemology

Nov 16th, 2016 11:57 am | By

The New Yorker reporter Evan Osnos was on Fresh Air yesterday to talk about what President Pussygrabber will likely do.

Toward the end Dave Davies raised the issue of temperament. He did it much too timidly and normalizingly, but he did it.

DAVIES: When you wrote about Donald Trump and his policies towards the military and towards foreign affairs, the issue of temperament comes up. This is a loaded word. He hated being criticized for his temperament. But you have – you found a quote from his book “Think Like A Billionaire.” It can be smart to be shallow, that he has a penchant for making big decisions quickly, that he trusts his gut. Share what – some of what

… Read the rest

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Trump is the only one who knows who the finalists are!!!

Nov 16th, 2016 11:02 am | By

Trump has been puking out crazed tweets again.

Jeremy Duns observed that that one sounds as if he thinks it’s a game show.

That’s the next president, taking … Read the rest

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This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily

Nov 16th, 2016 10:21 am | By

A striking piece of news that will probably get lost in the breathless coverage of Trump’s deranged tweets:

The leaks and disclosures published by WikiLeaks in the run-up to the US presidential election this year were a “conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect”, according to the director of the National Security Agency (NSA).

US intelligence chief Michael Rogers, who has managed the secretive agency since 2014, said during a Wall Street Journal conference on 15 November that Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid was hampered by state-sponsored hackers who worked to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind – this was not something that was done casually,” he

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments


Run by goons or not at all

Nov 16th, 2016 5:59 am | By

We have to resist the urge to normalize. Brian Beutler at the New Republic points out the media normalization around the Obama-Trump meeting, and how sucky it is.

The political media has relished all of it: the pageantry, the symbolism, the implication that our system of government is sturdy enough to persevere through the ugliest election in modern history and withstand the transfer of control between two men who hate each other.

…

This all sounds very soothing, and Obama in particular must feel obligated to lead the transition with grace and dignity, irrespective of the horribly racist way that Trump—a leading proponent of birtherism—has treated him for the last several years.

But it is all extremely delusional—Obama’s sanguinity,

… Read the rest

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How Hitler’s publicity machine made it possible

Nov 15th, 2016 4:56 pm | By

The tabloid press.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »


Joe

Nov 15th, 2016 4:42 pm | By

https://twitter.com/jonnysun/status/797198272079298568

https://twitter.com/tragecies/status/797145251223900161

https://twitter.com/pieceofjay/status/797187300723752960… Read the rest

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Not Trump’s to fill

Nov 15th, 2016 4:17 pm | By

Dahlia Lithwick says we should all throw a huge tantrum about the Supreme Court, and scream and scream and scream until we’re sick, because the Republicans stole that god damn vacancy.

The current Supreme Court vacancy is not Trump’s to fill. This was President Obama’s vacancy and President Obama’s nomination. Please don’t tacitly give up on it because it was stolen by unprecedented obstruction and contempt. Instead, do to them what they have done to us. Sometimes, when they go low, we need to go lower, to protect a thing of great value.

The seat that became vacant when Antonin Scalia died earlier this year was blocked by the Republican party for 9 months for reasons that were transparently false

… Read the rest

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Get someone with more experience

Nov 15th, 2016 3:34 pm | By

More Clown Show. Ben Carson declines a cabinet job because he doesn’t have the relevant experience. And yet…he ran for president.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, a top ally of President-elect Donald Trump, is not interested in serving as the secretary of health and human services, The Hill reported Tuesday.

Armstrong Williams, Carson’s business manager and confidant, told The Hill that Carson won’t join the administration and will instead be an unofficial adviser.

It was reported earlier Tuesday that Carson had been offered the position of HHS secretary.

“Dr. Carson was never offered a specific position, but everything was open to him,” Williams told The Hill. “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience; he’s never run a federal agency.

… Read the rest

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Off to a great start

Nov 15th, 2016 3:03 pm | By

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown gently suggests that hiring a hate-everybody troll for a top policy job in the White House might be seen as unfriendly to non-troll Americans.

Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D.) today urged President-elect Donald Trump to reverse his appointment of Steve Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News, as chief White House strategist and senior counsel because of his association with the Alt-right.

“We cannot bring the country together by inviting into the White House the same bigotry and hate speech that divided us on the campaign trail,” Mr. Brown said in a statement released today.

“This is not about a difference in policy or politics — Steve Bannon has promoted anti-Semitic, racist, misogynistic and dangerous views

… Read the rest

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Guest post: Critics see

Nov 15th, 2016 2:32 pm | By

Guest post by G Felis.

New York Times headline: “Critics See Stephen Bannon, Trump’s Pick for Strategist, as Voice of Racism”

Oh FFS! Steve Bannon’s history of waving the banner of both implicit and explicit racism is not a judgment call or matter of perspective. That’s like saying “Critics See Animal in this Picture as Duck-like.” If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and calls for the separation of the races like a duck and publishes racist rhetoric like a duck, it’s a racist duck.

(The duck pictured is just a metaphor, of course. I apologize for any implication that the duck in this picture is racist. He isn’t a racist, he just thinks ducks … Read the rest

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Trump’s talent pool

Nov 15th, 2016 10:10 am | By

The Times provides some highlights of Steve Bannon and Breitbart.

Here, in his own words, are a selection of Mr. Bannon’s public statements about the country, the Republican Party and his own political philosophy.

• “Fear is a good thing. Fear is going to lead you to take action,” he said in a 2010 interview.

• Referring to Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin in a 2011 radio interview on Political Vindication Radio, he said: “These women cut to the heart of the progressive narrative. That’s why there are some unintended consequences of the women’s liberation movement. That, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love

… Read the rest

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