News from India Today:

An 18-year-old Muslim girl in Nawada district, Bihar was tied to a tree and caned by her family members for loving a Hindu boy. Her punishment was allegedly a result of the village panchayat’s diktat.

The incident happened on Wednesday (October 3) in Jogiya Maran village falling under Rajauli police station in Nawada. She remained tied to the tree for around five hours.

When she was being thrashed, no one came to her rescue.

Or while she stayed there tied to the tree for five hours either, apparently.

The two wanted to marry but her family was against it, so she ran away to his village.

The girl’s family came to know that she was

The president of the United States.

The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2018

Anti-Semitic trope and personal targeting, from the president of the United States. Just another Friday.

Jack Holmes at Esquire:

Good Lord. He’s gone Full InfoWars. This appears to be first time the President of the United States has mentioned George Soros in a tweet, Soros being the legendary boogeyman for the right wing who supposedly funds any and every

It’s just so insulting.

https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/1047869765556097024

https://twitter.com/AriBerman/status/1047887425589141504

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1047888995131305984

In less than a week, Trump and McConnell have managed to make a mockery of sex assault survivors, the Senate, the FBI, and the Supreme Court. This charade is an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 4, 2018

Kavanaugh Yale suite mate now a theology professor says he heard at the time about Kavanaugh incident with Ramirez including their identities. He wasn’t interviewed by FBI. This is corroboration under any definition. How is this “thorough” @SenatorCollins? https://t.co/QuSxAZInxP

— Mimi Rocah (@Mimirocah1) October 4, 2018

I'm watching Senator McConnell's defense of Judge Kavanaugh, and truly, it's like reading 1984. The facts are not the facts.

Adam Serwer on Trump’s theater of cruelty:

The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of children that would make it possible to unite them with the families the Trump administration had arbitrarily destroyed, that the White House was considering a blanket ban on visas for Chinese students, and that it would deny visas to the same-sex partners of foreign officials. At a rally in Mississippi,

Look at this fucking lying hack.

"The president was stating the facts," Sarah Sanders says of Pres. Trump mocking Dr. Ford, adding everything Kavanaugh has said has been picked apart, "yet if anybody says anything about the accusations that have been thrown against them, that's totally off-limits and outrageous" pic.twitter.com/jRAhDf4EmI

— ABC News (@ABC) October 3, 2018

Trump was not “stating facts” in that disgusting performance last night. It’s not “stating facts” to pretend to be someone else saying silly things. I’d like to know what Sarah Sanders would have to say if a school bully did that kind of mocking “oh look this is you” performance to one of her kids. I don’t think she would claim the bully … Read the rest

Claire Potter on Kavanaugh as Trump’s surrogate bully:

While two Republican senators have condemned what is now routine behavior from the President, Kellyanne Conway, the President’s designated sexual assault spokesperson in the West Wing, indicated that Blasey had caused everyone enough trouble and she should go away now. “The woman has been accommodated by all of us, including Senate Judiciary Committee,” Conway snapped. “She’s been treated like a Faberge egg by all of us, beginning with me and the President. He’s pointing out factual inconsistencies.”

You know what seems like a Faberge egg right now? Democracy. Process. Human decency. The damage that the Kavanaugh hearings has done is so thick you can practically taste it floating in the

No wonder Trump likes Putin so much.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has labelled poisoned ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal a “traitor” and a “scumbag”.

In a speech, he complained that the media were treating Mr Skripal as “some kind of human rights defender”, insisting he had betrayed his country.

And that’s why we poisoned him! Wouldn’t anyone?

“I see that some of our colleagues are pushing the theory that Mr Skripal was almost some kind of human rights activist,” Mr Putin said on Wednesday.

The Russian leader, a former intelligence officer himself, then described Mr Skripal as a “traitor to the motherland”.

“He’s simply a scumbag, that’s all.”

And what do we do to scumbags? We murder them. Doesn’t everyone?… Read the rest

Trump at yet another “rally” (is it every day this week?) makes fun of Christine Blasey Ford, gets maudlin about Kavanaugh and “his wife” and his “daughters, his beautiful incredible kids” [whom he would love to date in a year or two] and then ends with “these are really evil people” – meaning the ones who accuse men of sexual assault.

BREAKING: President Trump mocks Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, during a rally in Mississippi. https://t.co/yjrqDceYv6 pic.twitter.com/iv22aHRwhn

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 3, 2018

… Read the rest