Sarah Sanders issues a statement on the investigation of her boss’s racketeering.
Statement on Chairman Nadler’s fishing expedition. pic.twitter.com/tBsVzrtGYg
— Kayleigh McEnany 45 Archived (@PressSec45) March 5, 2019
“Killing babies.”
This is an official executive branch statement.… Read the rest
These days Trump is all about the “No YOU are!”
This week, however, the current president seems to have taken his fondness for projection to a new level.
* Friday, March 1: Facing allegations that he’s committed a variety of crimes, Trump insisted “real crimes were committed” by Democrats. He echoed the argument two days later.
* Sunday, March 3: After House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) raised the prospect of Trump running afoul of the law, Trump tweeted that Schiff may have run afoul of the law.
* Tuesday, March 5: Accused of obstructing justice, Trump said via Twitter that Democrats “are obstructing justice.”
You know how it is – he hears an exciting new … Read the rest
About as “nifty” as interviewing Rachel Dolezal for Black History Month.
https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1102980693217431552… Read the rest
The incoherence of it all.
“I wouldn’t say they’re transphobic, but they need to be careful what they tweet”
Lucy Clark, football’s first transgender referee, reacts to comments of ex-sports stars like Sharron Davies and Martina Navratilova on trans athletes in women’s sportshttps://t.co/G0PEAgNlJL pic.twitter.com/oacPu0gtd1
— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) March 4, 2019
Victoria Derbyshire asks “What about the suggestion that trans athletes should have a separate category of competition?”
So that muddies the waters right off the bat. The issue is trans women competing against women. Trans men aren’t being unfair to men or women by competing against men, so the issue isn’t “trans athletes” in general but trans women who compete against women. The bad question allows Clark … Read the rest
In another “you have got to be kidding” moment, Trump announces on Twitter that he’s giving special treatment to Alabama.
FEMA has been told directly by me to give the A Plus treatment to the Great State of Alabama and the wonderful people who have been so devastated by the Tornadoes. @GovernorKayIvey, one of the best in our Country, has been so informed. She is working closely with FEMA (and me!).
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2019
Many observers are asking, with some heat, why he is “telling FEMA directly” to give Alabama “the A plus treatment” when he didn’t do so in the case of Puerto Rico or of California. Shouldn’t “the A plus treatment” be … Read the rest
Prince Jared’s buddies the Saudi dictators:
… Read the restA dual citizen of Saudi Arabia and the United States had been imprisoned in the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh for about a week when he heard a knock on his door.
Guards dragged Walid Fitaihi, a Harvard-trained physician, to another room, according to a friend who took down the prisoner’s detailed account of his treatment. Dr. Fitaihi told the friend he was slapped, blindfolded, stripped to his underwear and bound to a chair. He was shocked with electricity in what appears to have been a single session of torture that lasted about an hour.
His tormentors whipped his back so severely that he could not sleep on it for days, his friend said,
He’s doing it again.
In State Dining Room where Trump is about to present another college football team (North Dakota State University Bisons) with another of his legendary junk food feasts. Making America great, one Big Mac at a time. pic.twitter.com/7dm39ZxHCW
— Sebastian Smith (@SebastianAFP) March 4, 2019
Never mind that these college kids might prefer to have something more elegant and memorable to match the surroundings, just give them the crap they can get for a few bucks on any busy downtown corner.… Read the rest
Meanwhile…the House is swinging into action.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee delivered a flurry of document demands to the executive branch and the broader Trump world on Monday that detailed the breadth of the Democrats’ investigation into possible obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power by President Trump and his administration.
…
Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the Judiciary Committee chairman, made clear on Monday that the new majority intends to train its attention on actions at the heart of Mr. Trump’s norm-bending presidency — actions that could conceivably form the basis of a future impeachment proceeding.
It will be interesting if the hearings clearly establish that Trump has committed multiple crimes, and he … Read the rest
There were historical echoes in that hearing room last week.
Any onetime Mafia investigator who listened to the Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen testify Wednesday would have immediately recognized the congressional hearing’s historical analogue — what America witnessed on Capitol Hill wasn’t so much John Dean turning on President Richard Nixon, circa 1973; it was the mobster Joseph Valachi turning on the Cosa Nostra, circa 1963.
Also perhaps any consumer of popular movies and tv shows would recognize the broad plot outline, even if Joseph Valachi didn’t come to mind.
And it’s had that overtone all along – the story is packed to the rafters with prosecutors, serving and former; packed with feds, packed with rats and stool pigeons, packed with … Read the rest
… Read the restRep. Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said that as far as he’s concerned there’s “direct evidence” of collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. Specifically, Schiff says that the 2016 offer from a Russian lawyer for information on Hillary Clinton to members of Trump’s campaign is the smoking gun. “I think there is direct evidence in the emails from the Russians through their intermediary offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what is described in writing as the Russian government effort to help elect Donald Trump,” Schiff said on CBS’ Face the Nation, when he was asked if he had “direct evidence of collusion with Russia.”
“They offer
Catherine Bennett points out that media-friendly clerics have one persona for Thought for the Day and another for, say, newspaper columns.
… Read the restAnd welcome to the amoral maze, where our dilemma of the week is: just how insufferable does a spiritual leader have to be before he or she becomes unqualified to preach at the general public? Or to put it another way, why should the church have a monopoly on excommunication?
The question is not, emphatically, restricted to the case of the ubiquitous prelate, blogger and speaker, Giles Fraser, although with his recent blog – chastising women who fail to stay near home for the future convenience of incontinent fathers – he has done more than most to focus attention
I think the first step toward being a journalist ought to be a reasonably solid grip on the language you plan to use. There shouldn’t be a mistake or incoherence or clumsiness in every paragraph, as there is in this piece on A Nopen Letter saying…no, I’ll let the reporter explain what it says.
Dozens of female celebrities, politicians and women’s rights campaigners have condemned the “narrow and archaic” opinions they say are are squashing transgender rights in Scotland.
Squashing? Squashing rights? That’s a peculiar word to use. Crushing, yes, quashing, yes, but squashing? It sounds silly, and off.
… Read the restMore than 70 women from across the UK have penned an open letter hitting out at commentators they claim
The Beeb might as well hire McKinnon at this rate.
Tennis icon Martina Navratilova has apologised for using the term “cheating” when discussing whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sport.
Navratilova – one of the most successful tennis players of all time – has been criticised as “transphobic” for writing that transgender women had “unfair” physical advantages over female opponents.
There it is again – the “somebody called her transphobic” well-poisoning right at the beginning, so that readers will be fully primed to despise Navratilova before they even know what she said.
… Read the restOn Saturday, former British swimmer Sharron Davies told BBC Sport that many current athletes “feel the same way” and that trans athletes should not
Listen up, people, words are magic, and that’s all you need to know. Simple.
https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1102265197547474945
Self-identification=reality. Simple. In other words, what people say about themselves is true, period, end of story. Simple.
So if someone tells you she’s a beluga whale, she is a beluga whale. Simple.
If someone tells you he’s Denali, he is Denali. Simple.
Words are magic. Simple. Anyone who says otherwise is An Enemy of the People. (What if she says she isn’t An Enemy of the People? That question is against the law.)
Now that we know words are magic, life is going to become a whole lot simpler. I can’t wait to get started.… Read the rest
The Beeb loads the dice yet again:
Transgender athletes should not compete in female competitions in order to “protect women’s sport”, says former British swimmer Sharron Davies.
Her comments come after 18-time tennis Grand Slam singles champion Martina Navratilova said it was “cheating” to allow transgender women to compete in women’s sport because they had unfair physical advantages.
One campaign group said Navratilova’s comments were “transphobic”.
The BBC did not have to report it that way. It did not have to include that sly childish tattletale one campaign group said Navratilova’s comments were “transphobic”. It didn’t have to and it shouldn’t have, because in fact her comments were not “transphobic.” It’s not “phobic” to say that male bodies … Read the rest
Trump had big hopes for the summit with his dear friend Kim. He thought his charisma would win all the cards.
In a dinner at the Metropole Hotel the evening before, mere feet from the bomb shelter where guests took cover during the Vietnam War, Mr. Kim had resisted what Mr. Trump presented as a grand bargain: North Korea would trade all its nuclear weapons, material and facilities for an end to the American-led sanctions squeezing its economy.
An American official later described this as “a proposal to go big,” a bet by Mr. Trump that his force of personality, and view of himself as a consummate dealmaker, would succeed where three previous presidents had failed.
More reasonable people knew … Read the rest
This photo is just weird.
That’s Natalie van Gogh again in the middle. All the other members of the team are turned to the side, angled toward the middle person, while the middle person – van Gogh – stands and faces the viewer dead-on. The heights rise from each side to culminate in van Gogh, the tallest and widest. The others’ legs are only slightly parted, while van Gogh’s are in an emphatic upside-down V, aka a straddle. The photo is of a large domineering muscular man with a group of much younger women as his handmaidens on either side.
Is that…a publicity shot? A wtf shot? What is it? Why did van Gogh agree to the pose? Has … Read the rest
Trump has been talking at the right-wing shindig CPAC for nearly two hours now.
Not certain, but this might be Trump's longest speech since he launched his campaign in 2015. My first tweet about it was exactly 90 minutes ago.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 2, 2019
That ^ was 15 minutes ago and new tweets are still coming in.
Basking in adulation at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the president said: “You know I’m totally off script right now and this is how I got elected, by being off script. And if we don’t go off script, our country’s in big trouble, folks, because we have to get it back.”
“Off script” … Read the rest
Originally a comment by guest on America’s exceptionally low social mobility.
One of the most striking differences I noticed when I moved from the US to the UK was how many people I met in professional/work circles who had literally ‘worked their way up’–the country/sector director of the large company I worked for in my first job here had started as an apprentice in the ’70s. I don’t think I ever knew anyone in the US who’d done this (I thought I had, but when I mentioned this years ago a catty friend revealed the advantages this person, whose persona was that of someone from an underprivileged background who’d ‘made good’, had actually started with).
I’ve met dozens of … Read the rest
Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf resort must pay the Scottish government’s legal costs following a court battle over a major North Sea wind power development.
Mr Trump battled unsuccessfully in the courts to halt the project before he became US president.
Why?
Mr Trump had argued the development would spoil the view from his golf course at Menie.
Goodness, that takes a lot of nerve. You buy a golf course in a foreign country and then you expect to be able to veto anything that country wants to build within sight of your golf course? Like, you own everything as far as the eye can see?
Good that it didn’t work. Even better that he has to pay … Read the rest
