Let’s not do this, shall we?
Also, it’s a lie about the 59 cities and capitals. They don’t.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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Bring back toxic lead!!
More evil from the bad man and his bad people:
Humane World for Animals and Humane World Action Fund, formerly called Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society Legislative Fund, issued the following statement in response to a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump directing federal agencies to expand hunting on public lands and permit the use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle. The order raises serious concerns about how wildlife on public lands, which belong to all Americans, will be managed, including whether decisions will continue to prioritize science-based conservation and the health of wildlife and their habitats.
The Sept. 17 executive order directs federal agencies to expand hunting access on public lands, permit the use of lead ammunition and tackle, and increase “targeted management of predators”—a euphemism for the discredited practice of “predator control,” where wild carnivores are killed ostensibly to increase numbers of game species like deer and elk for hunters. While the order does not directly repeal the nationwide requirement for nontoxic shot in waterfowl hunting, in place since 1991, it leaves unclear what longstanding restrictions on toxic lead could be affected as agencies implement the directive.
Sara Amundson, president of Humane World Action Fund, said:
“Once again, this administration is firmly placing our nation’s wildlife in the crosshairs of a minority of Americans who hunt or fish, and in this executive order it is with lead ammunition and tackle. Entire ecosystems will be subject to the toxicity lead brings to our environment. If the government acknowledged the risk and banned lead in paint for our homes and businesses, why would we sanction its use in our sensitive ecosystems? With safer, more effective alternatives available, we should be reducing wildlife’s exposure to toxic lead, not creating new opportunities to spread it across the lands and waters they depend on.”
Ah well, it’s only stupid libruls who object to spreading toxic lead. Real Americans like a little poison in their food.
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A sharp departure
If the national Attorney General won’t follow the most basic rules, what are we even doing?
Attorney General Todd Blanche is blurring traditional boundaries between politics and federal law enforcement with recent speeches at political events that mark a sharp departure from norms meant to protect the Justice Department from the appearance of partisan bias.
From the appearance and, one hopes, the reality of partisan bias. I for one care far more about the reality than the appearance. I want that fucker to be free of trumpy bias, not just appear to be that.
Blanche took the stage this week at an event for a Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina days after speaking at a GOP midterm convention, where he praised Trump and touted the administration’s tough-on-crime approach.
What tough on crime approach? Trump is the most criminal president we’ve ever had, by miles. Nixon looks like an angel next to him. Harding was a saint.
“It lends credence to the arguments that the Justice Department is hopelessly politicized,” said Richard Painter, who was a White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. “And that’s not where we want to be right now.”
It’s not where we want to be ever. That’s why the “traditional boundaries” were there.
The Justice Department said Blanche’s appearances at political events are made in his personal capacity, and noted that his speeches have addressed the administration’s efforts broadly but do not get into agency policies or official business.
Oh come on. The federal AG can’t appear at public events in his “personal capacity” as opposed to his official one. That’s not possible. It’s not a suit he can take off, it’s a fact about him that doesn’t change unless he resigns or is thrown out.
The Hatch Act prohibits government officials from using their official positions to influence elections. That includes supporting candidates while acting in their official capacities. Watchdog groups have long complained that the law isn’t a strong deterrent and enforcement has been inadequate and uneven.
The Justice Department under Biden in 2022 tightened its restrictions on employees’ attendance at political events after then-Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins attended a fundraiser that featured first lady Jill Biden. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was fired by Trump in April, later rescinded those restrictions.
Of course she did.
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Fame at last
Developments in Sarah Phillimore’s libel case against Jolyon Maugham:
Open letter sent August 28 2026
Phillimore v Maugham KC: Open Offer
KB-2026-002022
1. We continue to act for the Claimant, Sarah Phillimore, in a spirit of collegiality and with a genuine desire to resolve this matter proportionately. We invite you to consider both this open offer and the reasoning that follows with care.
The current position
2. Our client’s Particulars of Claim set out three publications, each of which accused her of leading a campaign of harassment so wicked that another person attempted suicide. Your client admitted at the pre-action stage that each publication was defamatory at common law and caused serious harm to our client’s reputation. The publications achieved very substantial reach: over 400,000 followers on X alone, with hundreds of thousands of views, and continuing publication on Bluesky, TikTok and Instagram to audiences numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
I recommend reading the whole thing. The lawyerly dispassion and clarity are a treat. Upshot is Phillimore did nothing wrong so you might as well settle, you damn fool – only of course the last three words are not actually written. Felt in the air, but not written.
Maugham of course did not agree to settle.
Then there’s the part about the witness.
9. We are mindful that the person at the centre of the underlying complaint – Sophie Weddell – is, on any view, a vulnerable individual. Weddell’s own witness statement, served in support of the GLP complaint, described very significant mental health difficulties. Our client takes no pleasure whatsoever in that contested defamation proceedings, with the publicity they inevitably attract, risk causing Weddell further distress, particularly if your client’s truth defence requires them to give evidence and be cross-examined on the matters set out in the Particulars of Claim, the BSB’s decision letter, and the Independent Reviewer’s report.
10. Our client would prefer that Weddell is spared that ordeal entirely.
Weddell, on the other hand, is on Blue Sky jumping up and down begging to be a witness.
He cannot wait for his closeup, Mister DeMille.
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A pattern
The FBI Director is a wackjob.
Not in a good way.
An Atlantic report on Patel in April chronicled a pattern of heavy drinking, odd behavior, and mysterious absences—it was headlined “The FBI Director Is MIA.” Representative Jamie Raskin is investigating his payments of more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars to favored FBI agents. He’s fired long-term, respected FBI agents for political reasons. Patel has also been in trouble for using public assets to ferry himself and his country music star girlfriend to entertainment venues.
Other than that…
Patel was grilled on some of his decisions at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Tuesday. He opened by recounting a barrage of purported FBI accomplishments in reducing violent crime and thwarting terrorism, many of which were exaggerations or falsehoods, featuring activities largely the terrain of other agencies, not the FBI.
Oh well, it’s only the FBI.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin opened by saying flatly that Patel should be replaced. He was the first to express bewilderment at the agency’s new welcome mat to applicants who’d “engaged in bestiality.” It was left to GOP Senator John Kennedy to drill down on the strange new regulation. When pushed, Katel insisted that “the previous regulation automatically disqualified any individual who participated in either side of it,” to which Kennedy asked what the entire audience had to be wondering: “Either side of bestiality? So you disqualified the animal?”
Kennedy went on: “You’re not saying that if a human being had sex with an animal, they can be an FBI agent?”
Patel tried to explain. “Applicants who have engaged in bestaility means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so. At this FBI we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving.”
Forced to do so? Is this some new fad? Why haven’t we been told?
Senator Adam Schiff put Patel under a magnifying glass over whether he had fired FBI agents who worked on either major investigation into Trump—into his wrongly holding onto classified information after leaving office, or fomenting the January 6 insurrection. Patel was evasive, then eventually admitted that “most” such agents had left the agency, but claimed that they’d retired. Schiff pointed to numerous lawsuits by FBI personnel claiming wrongful termination, as well as Attorney General Todd Blanche’s boasting that Patel had gotten rid of all the Trump classified-info investigators. But Patel continued to filibuster and claim that wasn’t true.
Let’s hope he doesn’t have any pets.
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Oops scratch the harmony award
Archbish has to take it back. Whoops! Maybe think about it more carefully next time, eh wot?
The archbishop of Canterbury has withdrawn an interfaith harmony award she gave to an Osama Bin Laden apologist on the anniversary of 9/11 last week.
The withdrawal follows a public backlash after the National Secular Society and other outlets revealed [that] Tahir Ashrafi, as chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council, had bestowed the title “Saifullah”, or sword of Allah, on Osama Bin Laden, in 2007.
Here’s the thing, Archbish. We don’t want swords of Allah (or of Jahweh or Jehova or God or Jesus, either). Swords are bad things; they’re hurty and killy. The goal is not violence, not endless war, not slaughtering each other over who has the best fictional goddy character. Don’t be rewarding people who are all in on the slaughter part.
The council bestowed the title in reaction to the UK knighting Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was forced into hiding after the Iranian supreme leader issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for his death because the book was deemed ‘blasphemous’.
Speaking in 2007, Ashrafi said: “If a blasphemer can be given the title ‘Sir’ by the West despite the fact he’s hurt the feelings of Muslims, then a mujahid [jihadist] who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah”.
Ashrafi told the BBC yesterday he was only trying to convey “the hurt felt by many Muslims”, but he defended the comparison between the author and the architect of a terrorist atrocity which killed thousands of civilians.
Meanwhile, of course, one of the fanatics finally got to Salman and took one of his eyes. That’s the faction the archbish wanted to flatter.
Ashrafi has also expressed support for Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which makes it a capital offence to insult Islam. It is routinely used to persecute Ahmadi Muslims, who hold different beliefs to the majority of Muslims in Pakistan, as well as other religious minorities and nonreligious people.
In 2021, Ashrafi reportedly endorsed remarks by Pakistan’s prime minister which appeared to blame women for being assaulted if they do not wear hijab. He has also said a man may marry up to four women without his first wife’s consent. In 2023, he allegedly described the perpetrators of the October 7 attack as “freedom fighters”.
After a torrent of public criticism, Lambeth Palace issued a statement last night which said: “previous comments made by Imam Ashrafi have come to light that have led Lambeth Palace to reconsider this award and we can now confirm today that the award has been withdrawn”. No apology has been issued.
In other words Lambeth Palace admitted it had been grotesquely lazy and sloppy about vetting the guy they wanted to give a nice churchy interfaithy prize to. Listen up, Lambeth P: religions are not automatically or invariably sources of compassion or fairness or sweet reason; not yours and certainly not that violence-loving other one.
National Secular Society chief executive Stephen Evans said: “We welcome the withdrawal of this award, but it is astonishing that it was given in the first place – on the anniversary of 9/11, no less.
“This episode reveals not only appallingly poor judgement and inadequate due diligence, but a dangerous naivety about the religious figures legitimised in the name of interfaith engagement.
“A Church capable of such a serious failure of judgement should not enjoy constitutional privilege, including 26 bishops making our laws. It is time the Church of England was disestablished.”
I cannot disagree.
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Dictator announces a news ban
Ok, so, it’s unconstitutional, but he’s doing it anyway and getting away with it anyway.
Reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico on Saturday said they were denied access to White House grounds after President Trump announced a ban on the three media outlets.
He can’t do that. But he’s doing in anyway.
On Friday afternoon, a Bloomberg News reporter asked Trump about the ban at a press conference and whether he was trying to intimidate the press. “No, no, no, no. I dislike dishonest press, like you. I think you’re terrible,” Trump responded.
He also said: “They purposely write negative news, and they do that because they want to try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration.” Trump said there was no specific news story that led to his decision, instead it was a frustration that had built up over the last two years.
In other words it’s as unconstitutional as it can possibly be.
CNN said in a statement on X Saturday that they have “a right under the U.S. Constitution” to report without interference from the government.
“We will not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account, and we will continue to report on the actions and processes of this administration without fear our favor.”
And Trump will continue to put obstacles in their path until someone stops him.
Trump’s announcement comes amid a midterm election season where Democrats have an edge — Trump has faced pushback over his unpopular war in the Middle East, a looming affordability crisis, and threats to demolish the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center.
White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich said Friday that “the Constitution protects the freedom of the press from government interference.”
“That protection does not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage, agrees with its reporting, or approves of the questions its journalists ask,” she said.
Theodore Boutrous, a leading First Amendment lawyer in the U.S., told NPR that the ban is, on its face, unconstitutional.
Trump don’t care. Trump does what he wants. The dictatorship is now.
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An unusual level of fame
I don’t know, maybe we deserve Trump. Not individually, but as a species. Arwa Mahdawi wrote a few days ago:
Bonnie Blue has made millions of pounds by having sex with thousands of men. I suppose that last part isn’t particularly unusual for a sex worker; it’s basically the job description. But Blue has reached an unusual level of fame for the profession through grotesque stunts such as having sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours and preying on young men with “barely legal” content and university “bang bus” tours. She’s notorious enough that she was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary last year.
Thus more men willing to give her money to service them.
Now it seems that Blue, who gave birth to her first child (father unconfirmed) last month, is carrying that enrage-to-engage ethos into motherhood. She has been sharing postpartum content with her subscribers and recently escalated to posting a video where she is holding a baby and is surrounded by men in balaclavas while promoting her sexual content. It is unclear if it’s actually her baby or a doll in the video but, either way, it’s disturbing. So much so that it’s even got me agreeing with the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, for perhaps the first time ever. Speaking to Sky News last week, Badenoch said that the video was a “safeguarding issue”. She added that while it is tempting to ignore the whole disgusting affair, doing so risks “normalising babies in porn adverts”.
In response, Blue sent Sky News a statement insisting “my baby is loved, protected, and incredibly well cared for”. Blue may love her baby but there is obviously nothing protective about using your child to entice people to watch you perform sexual acts.
Oh I’m sure that baby will grow up to be very proud of Mommy Blue.
H/t Mostly Cloudy
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Guest post: All those stories where the bully is the bad guy
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Boston glam v Queens glam.
(I know it’s all been said or asked before, but sometimes you just had to vent. Please forgive the self-indulgence of my preaching to the choir.)
How is it that a country that once upon a time prided itself on being a society of straightforward, no-nonsense people who frowned on conspicuous boastfulness and greed could fall for the likes of Trump? What about all of those stories where the bully is the bad guy, where the slick, fast-talking, hollow huckster is exposed as a selfish fraudster to be shunned, where noxious self-regard and self-dealing were shown up to be the marks of bad character, and the malevolent, egotistical charlatan met his comeuppance through the back-firing of his own devious scheming, providing a lesson for all the good folk he seduced, and then victimized, on how not to behave? Whatever happened to that America? I know that much of that image was always a myth, but still.
How did Trump overcome decades of cultural conditioning that should have raised a forest of red flags? If he’d been written into a Disney movie NOBODY WOULD HAVE BELIEVED IT. Trump is a human amalgam of all of the Seven Deadly Sins, and exhibits just about every other moral failing and charcter flaw you could possibly imagine, and has been since before winning the Republican nomination, the campaign for which saw him commit an untold number of offences, any one of which would have utterly ended the campaign of any normal candidate. Gaining power has only made him worse, and he was awful to start with.
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Emblematic of the hostility
More on the sez Jo question.
The Supreme Court decision is emblematic of the hostility towards trans people in much of the so-called justice system. Conservatives , and then Labour, appointed transphobes to head the watchdog notionally charged with protecting trans people, the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The Charity Commission, whose senior leadership “likes” transphobic material on social media, has funnelled huge sums of public money in charitable tax relief to organisations set up to attack trans people.
No, see, this is the basic misunderstanding or rather misrepresentation that Jolyon and people like him lean on so heavily. It’s not about “hostility to trans people”. It’s about not believing in, and resisting, the ideology. It’s the ideology, stupid.
Because the ideology is all there is – because trans people are trans people only because the ideology says so – we do dispute and reject and criticize the ideology, but that’s not the same thing as hating the people who have been duped by the ideology.
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Boston glam v Queens glam
Jeffrey Blehar at the National Review skewers Trump v Kennedy Center nicely.
Trump has long betrayed a quietly deep obsession with the world of the theater arts — which he no doubt associates with the New York of his youth. He is, famously, equally
asobsessed with Kennedy family glamour — why, he even found his own collectible Kennedy to add to the administration! — and desperately wants to associate his own (decidedly grubbier) name with a national martyr.In a way that’s more appropriate than it sounds, because the putative Kennedy family glamour really isn’t all that glam. Joseph Kennedy was an awful shit – a crook and a bad human being. He got rich, so his many offspring were rich, and they were reasonably pleasant to look at, but then you could say the same of Trump.
Therefore, it was perhaps inevitable that he would take a heavy hand with the Kennedy Center — the federally owned and directed performing arts venue for the nation’s capital, named for the slain president in 1964, prior to opening. It was one of the shiniest baubles in (what he regards as) his personal presidential treasury to play with and admire.
Nobody expected him to try to slap his name on it, however. Nobody expected him to be that crude or lawless. The building is named by statute; renaming it anything else is not optional, unless approved by Congress. Trump doesn’t care: His openly stated philosophy is to put his own name (or Trump-like “stamp”) onto everything he possibly can while still president. “Nobody else will,” he says, correctly.
It’s pathetic that he’s too dim to realize how this makes him look. Donny Donny Donny – if you throw yourself across the dinner table to grab all the food and smash any you can’t pick up, you’re not going to leave your guests dumb with admiration. Now apply this aperçu to every single thing you do. You see what I mean? Everything you do is grab or smash. Everything.
His message is clear: The Kennedy Center might belong to the nation, but for now it belongs to me. And if I can’t put my name on it, I’ll simply tear it down . . . and you can’t stop me. (To emphasize the point, Trump was later photographed — quite intentionally, one imagines — on Air Force One, being presented with various plans for emergency demolition of the Kennedy Center.)
I don’t even really care about the Kennedy Center itself. JFK was his father’s kid, and not a fabulous president. The putative glamour was all about the money, just as Trump’s is – although JFK did get into Harvard, which Dumb Don certainly didn’t. I don’t really care about the Center and it’s only Trump’s vulgar determined vandalism that has nudged me into acting as if I do.
understand the repulsiveness (and quasi-blackmail) of Trump simply threatening to tear the entire building down if he can’t get his name onto it. Nobody likes the kid who cries and threatens to take his toys home if people don’t bow to his demands. But people really hate the kid who cries and threatens to take your toys home.
People sometimes ask me why, with all the potential distractions and scandals this administration regularly provides, I’ve spent so much time writing about Trump’s impossible desires to forever associate himself with the prestige of Washington, D.C. Most of all, I find this entire sordid affair to be a wonderfully emblematic miniature, summarizing Trump’s imperial arrogance in all its spectacular pettiness.
Yep that’s me. I don’t really care about the Center but by god I care about the filth that is Trump.
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sez Jo
Jolyon taking on Goliath again.
(Why does he sign his posts “Jo Maugham”? Why so matey? We’re not your mates, mate.)
Billionaires like JK Rowling have funded a blizzard of legal attacks on the trans community – and her allies in the rightwing and far-right press have pursued a campaign of trans hate, says Jo Maugham
Why do you talk about yourself in the third person, “Jo”? We all know there is no higher-up person writing this blurb; we know it’s you; so y u talk about yourself as “Jo Maugham”? It’s cringey.
The day the Supreme Court handed down its decision on the meaning of sex under the Equality Act was the last day Anna*, a woman in her 30s, was seen or heard from. She took herself into her room, locked the door from the inside, and took her own life.
What do you mean she took herself into her room? You make her sound like a child. What room? Was a room all she had? Why was there a lock on the door, and why couldn’t it be unlocked from outside? Are you trying to up the poignancy dosage?
The notorious judgment was handed down on 16 April 2025. It followed a process in which the Supreme Court refused to hear from any trans people, ignored its legal obligation under the Human Rights Act to consider their human rights, and came to a decision without hearing any challenge to patently false findings of fact.
What does “hearing from trans people” have to do with anything? If I claim to be Jolyon Maugham, do I then have a right to be “heard from” when you say I’m not?
Anna’s death is a profound tragedy for those who loved her. But it is also merely one drop in an ocean of trans suicidality. Billionaires like JK Rowling have funded a blizzard of legal attacks on the trans community – and in tandem her allies in the rightwing and far-right press have pursued a campaign of trans hate.
Worse still is how, in a shift reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, public bodies have joined the hunt.
Blah blah blah, the usual stuff, repeated until he gets to the end.
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Oops, sorry, give it back
God-botherers draw some unwelcome attention.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s office has rescinded an honor given to a Muslim cleric who previously pledged to award an honorary title to Osama bin Laden.
Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi received the award on Friday, the 25th anniversary of 9/11, presented by Dame Sarah Mullally for reconciliation and interfaith co-operation.
Interesting timing.
The move is not universally popular
Note the shapeless lump beside the cleric dude. That’s actually a human being!
Is that smiling or…erm…preparing to bite?
Seriously why did the archbish or the church or whoever do this? And why did they include the scary parcel, aka the human being smothered in black cloth as if she were about to be buried? Why does any institution that views and treat women this way get any kind of flattery and rewarding from powerful institutions?
Men in dresses on the one hand, and women in black garbage bags on the other – it’s a pincer movement to wipe out women altogether.
A picture caption from last week stated Mr Ashrafi was being recognized “for his outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan”.
The National Secular Society (NSS) criticized the honor as “obscene, and almost beyond parody”, noting it was conferred on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 individuals, including 67 British citizens.
…
NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said: “We welcome the withdrawal of this award, but it is astonishing that it was given in the first place – on the anniversary of 9/11, no less. This episode reveals not only appallingly poor judgement and inadequate due diligence, but a dangerous naivety about the religious figures legitimised through interfaith engagement. A Church capable of such a serious failure of judgement should not enjoy constitutional privilege, including 26 bishops making our laws. It is time the Church of England was disestablished.”
It is astonishing. What did the archbish think of the woman so obliterated she might as well have been a bolt of cloth? The archbishop is the Church of England’s first female archbishop, yet here she is acting as if a woman treated like an obscenity is nothing to fret about.
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Not you, Bubba
Since when are nations described as “elite” or “the elite”? Since never, as far as I know, but Trump says it’s a thing.
Andid yever notice they’re considered ayleet, they’re the ayleet, I don’t wanna mention their names, they’re ayleet, they’re only elite because we allow them to trade with us and we allow them to make far more money than they should be, they’re not elite, we’re the ones that are elite.
I have a feeling he doesn’t have a strong grasp on what the word “elite” means.
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Big spiky new toy
Let’s do something obviously dangerous and also pointless, just for the fun of it.
The Trump administration is eager to press ahead with its proposed 250-foot arch at Memorial Circle, a traffic island on the historic bridge connecting Washington, D.C. to Arlington, Va.
The grassy roundabout is not far from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA): An arch would stand just about two aeronautical miles from the airport’s main runway, which is one of the busiest in the country.
“An enormous number of airplanes come over that site, basically every 45 to 60 seconds all day long ’til 11 at night,” U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat who represents that part of Virginia, told NPR. “Just imagine the disaster that could happen with all of these airplanes coming right across a 250-foot-high arch.”
That makes it more exciting! Like a roller coaster!
The no-fly zone above the National Mall forces most flights landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) from the north to approach along a narrow path along the Potomac River. Recent DCA passenger-flight-path data shows how much traffic passes through the site where the Trump administration wants to build a 250-foot arch.
So flying into National Airport is already risky, and Trump is eager to make it more so. Whatta guy, whatta pal.
A preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report said in June that the structure would likely not be an issue as long as it has blinking red obstruction lights on top, as the 555-foot-tall Washington Monument does.
Yeah let’s just throw up lots of obstacles along busy flight paths, we can always put blinking red obstruction lights on them. Blinking red lights make mistakes impossible.
NPR spoke to three aviation safety experts about the impacts of a potential arch. Their consensus: While the arch itself most likely would not pose a significant risk to most aircraft, it adds yet another variable to a notoriously crowded and complicated airspace.
“It’s a small airport with one runway, nestled in a metropolitan area that’s surrounded by prohibited airspace [near the White House and U.S. Capitol],” said Jeff Guzzetti, a retired accident investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The congestion — and complexity — of D.C.’s airspace is a well-documented concern, especially after the January 2025 midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people. Even so, some experts worry the FAA may be facing political pressure from Trump to rubber-stamp the project.
Ya think? It’s not as if Trump always presses people to do whatever he wants.
Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline pilot and accident investigator who now teaches aviation safety at Ohio State University, went even further. He said putting a 250-foot arch in Memorial Circle would be “inherently dangerous.”
“This is an unbelievably ridiculous idea, to put this arch so close to this airport just for the sake of his personal needs,” Pruchnicki added, referring to Trump.
His “personal needs” being his insatiable vanity and lust for ever more visibility.
H/t What a Maroon
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New friends
Trump is creating new friendships. Not with him, of course, but with people and countries not-him.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday welcomed the European Union’s ambition to make Ottawa an associate member of the 27-nation bloc and said Canadian lawmakers would ultimately vote on the final structure of the alliance.
“Canada and Europe are each strong. Europe and Canada are stronger together,” Carney told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France.
Canada’s prime minister did not name President Donald Trump in his speech, but he nodded to his U.S. counterpart’s use of tariffs by saying, “Economic integration is now being weaponized — tariffs being used to exert pressure.”
Trump likes to weaponize things. He also likes to sexualize things. If he can’t do one or the other, well, what’s the point of that thing at all?
[Carney’s] comments come shortly after Trump described the prospect of Canada becoming the first associate member of the EU as “laughable” and threatened the bloc with tariffs if he deemed the move to be a “hostile act.”
Speaking to reporters in North Carolina, Trump called Canada a “terrible trade partner” and said the U.S. could even “stop trading with Europe on many things” if the EU moves ahead with its plan. “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe,” Trump said.
His concept of “good” is that it means “something Trump likes”.
“This alliance is a positive process; that’s my response to the American president. A stronger, more resilient, more sovereign Canada will be a more effective partner with the United States,” Carney told reporters at a news conference shortly after his speech.
“Canadians are united that nobody is going to tell us what language we speak, no one is going to dictate our culture or with whom we can strike agreements internationally,” he added.
You mean Trump is not the boss of the whole world?
What a concept.
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Call it Trump or he’ll tear it down
Another way of looking at the Trump demolition of Kennedy Center thing is that it’s not one of his taunts but something he actually plans to do.
A new photo shows President Donald Trump eyeing a poster that appears to reference the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts being demolished, hours after he warned that the building “will end up being ripped down” if he is not properly recognized for his efforts to renovate it.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Ohio Democrat battling Trump over his efforts to get his name affixed to the Kennedy Center, notified a federal judge Thursday morning in a court filing about the image and the president’s threat.
Not a taunt but a threat.
Beatty, a day earlier, asked Judge Christopher Cooper to schedule an emergency hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on what she says is the “unlawful” closure of the Kennedy Center by its board of trustees in violation of a prior order by Cooper.
In her filing Thursday, Beatty’s lawyers told Cooper, “Plaintiff files this Notice to apprise the Court of two new pieces of evidence that came to light last night.”
“First, yesterday evening, in response to reporter questions regarding the Kennedy Center project, President Trump stated, ‘for the Trump administration, for me, to get involved, and to take on long term, and to carry it, or to raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition,’” the filing said.
″‘Because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close, it will end up being ripped down,’” Trump had said, the lawyers noted.
Shame if something happened to it type of thing. It’s somehow magically going to close and magically be ripped down.
The attorneys added, “Separately, a photo has been circulated on social media depicting President Trump reading a placard on Air Force One that appears to read ‘Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.’”
Probably something Natalie Harp found for him.
The center’s closure came after Cooper on Tuesday rebuffed a new effort by the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees to honor Trump by putting his name on the center in recognition of planned renovations to the building. The board voted to close the center for renovations after Cooper issued his order.
Trump later Tuesday said the center would close immediately, and that planned renovations and reconstruction would not occur until Cooper’s initial ruling barring the addition of Trump’s name to the center was reversed by either a federal appeals court or the Supreme Court.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the photo.
In a statement Wednesday, Beatty’s lawyers said, “Closing the Kennedy Center without Judge Cooper’s approval appears to directly violate his order. This is an assault on the rule of law.″
“The board cannot simply ignore Judge Cooper’s rulings whenever it suits them. In this country, no one — including the president — is above the law,” the attorneys, Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, said.
But if he can get away with it, then he is. So far no one has been able to stop him.
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Poster boy
Toddler seen behaving like toddler on presidential airplane.
Trump was pictured reviewing a poster that appears to read, “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED,” hours before his administration told a judge the arts institution had to be closed due to “structural deterioration” it characterized as posing “untenable risks” to safety.
The images were captured through the window of Air Force One on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews as a dramatic legal battle plays out in court over the fate of the institution. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on what Trump was reviewing and what exactly it said.
Educated guess: building falling apart, Trump savior, people who interfere with Trump demons.
The president had warned earlier Wednesday that the Kennedy Center would “end up being ripped down” without his support, adding, “It’s in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape.”
It’s full of goblins and Democrats!