Typical Trumpy behavior – if there’s an island that had had a ban on motorized vehicles since 1898, why, what’s there to do but go to that island with 8 SUVs and parade around in them.

Vice President Mike Pence arrived at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in an eight-vehicle motorcade Saturday, prompting cries of “sacrilege” on social media.

Cars are generally banned on the island, and that century-old ban is integral to its charm.

When President Gerald Ford visited the island in 1975 — the only sitting president to make such a visit — he and first lady Betty Ford traveled by horse-drawn carriage.

Pence, who spoke at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, is the first sitting

Trump this morning gave an eloquent defense of his phone call with the president of Ukraine:

While Democrats stepped up calls for impeachment, President Donald Trump directly acknowledged Sunday that he spoke with the president of Ukraine about an investigation into political opponent Joe Biden, but called the talk appropriate.

Speaking with reporters en route to a trip to Texas and Ohio, Trump said: “The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, with largely corruption – all of the corruption taking place – and largely the fact that we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine.”

His brain is like a broken record. The word “largely” gets into … Read the rest

But don’t worry, the Ivankas are still enjoying their White House Years.

When in Rome …

Updating to add Alfalfa:

… Read the rest

Speaking of “Charlotte” Clymer –

“Before, I used to get a lot of women accusing me of ‘mansplaining’ stuff to them, but if they say that to me now I can get them fired.”

Remind us of how fragile and vulnerable Clymer is, because at the moment I just can’t seem to see it.… Read the rest

One from the “stupid shit” file – the deep personal importance of The Pony Tail to a trans laydee.

It starts with a photo of an actual pony tail on the head of an actual woman, I guess so that we’ll know what “Charlotte” Clymer is talking about.

When I was in kindergarten—and very much in the closet as transgender—I had begun to crave a ponytail like the ones I saw on many of the girls in my class.

Five-year-old children are not “in the closet.”

I’m well aware that for many girls and women, the ponytail is a “bare minimum” style, often for lazy days, but the girls I saw in my class emulated the women I saw

Merriam Webster today:

Good morning! Today’s #WordOfTheDay is ‘misprision’ https://s.m-w.com/2K33oII

Zinnnnnnnng.… Read the rest

Another scary thing about the Greenland ice shelf:

When the remnants of Europe’s second summertime heat wave migrated over Greenland in late July, more than half of the ice sheet’s surface started melting for the first time since 2012. A study published Wednesday in Nature shows that mega-melts like that one, which are being amplified by climate change, aren’t just causing Greenland to shed billions of tons of ice. They’re causing the remaining ice to become denser.

“Ice slabs”—solid planks of ice that can span hundreds of square miles and grow to be 50 feet thick—are spreading across the porous, air pocket-filled surface of the Greenland ice sheet as it melts and refreezes more often. From 2001 to

Say goodbye to the birds.

Over the past half-century, North America has lost more than a quarter of its entire bird population, or around 3 billion birds.

That’s according to a new estimate published in the journal Science by researchers who brought together a variety of information that has been collected on 529 bird species since 1970.

“We saw this tremendous net loss across the entire bird community,” says Ken Rosenberg, an applied conservation scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. “By our estimates, it’s a 30% loss in the total number of breeding birds.”

Rosenberg and his colleagues already knew that a number of bird populations had been decreasing.

“But we also knew that

In the annals of “stupidest thing I’ve read today” we get Pink News

ah well enough said, isn’t it. We get Pink News.

Prepare to be stunned and amazed and admiring all at once:

In news nobody saw coming today, Mark Ronson has come out as sapiosexual, which describes being attracted to intelligence in a person above all else.

The chart-topping record producer behind hits such as ‘Uptown Funk’ revealed his sexual identity on today’s Good Morning Britain.

Hosts Ben Shepherd and Kate Garraway congratulated the disc jockey for being “out and proud”.

I’d say this has got to be parody, but it’s Pink News – I don’t think they know what parody is.

Why would anybody see it coming? … Read the rest