All entries by this author

He thinks it would be great

Aug 5th, 2018 9:02 am | By

The Post has another long story on how much more wack Trump is this week than he was last week. I just want to point to the final item in the story.

Trump made a surprise call into Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show Wednesday to congratulate the conservative icon on his 30th anniversary on the air. Trump mused aloud with Limbaugh about whether it would be more politically advantageous for him to shut down the government over border wall funding before or after the November elections.

“I’ve heard a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, don’t do it before the election. We’ll upset the applecart,’ ” Trump said. But, he added, “I actually think it’s a great campaign issue. I think

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Working to do good things

Aug 4th, 2018 6:25 pm | By

Queen Melania dissents:

The US first lady, Melania Trump, said she would be open to visiting the NBA superstar LeBron James’s new public school, the day after her husband questioned the Los Angeles Lakers player’s intelligence.

Donald Trump insulted James on Friday night hours after CNN re-aired an interview with the basketball player and reporter Don Lemon. “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon,” Trump said. “He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”

Many, including professional athletes and the Republican governor of Ohio, were critical of Trump’s statements.

On Saturday afternoon, Melania Trump also issued a surprising, positive statement about James, but did not reference her husband.

“It looks

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Not a costume party

Aug 4th, 2018 12:09 pm | By

This is one of those times when the kind and courteous agreement to call men who have transitioned to being trans women “women” with no further qualification is not a good plan. People who go into convenience stores to swing axes at random shoppers are rarely female.

The headline: Sydney axe attack: Woman guilty of trying to kill strangers

The text:

A woman who attacked two people with an axe in an Australian convenience store has been convicted of attempted murder.

Evie Amati, 26, carried out the unprovoked attack in Sydney last year.

After entering the 7-Eleven store, Amati used the axe to strike a man in the face and a woman in the back of the head. Both victims

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Guest post: None of the traits of intelligence, and all of the traits of enormous ego

Aug 4th, 2018 11:28 am | By

Originally a comment by iknklast on Shame.

One problem Trump has is that he doesn’t recognize the limits of his knowledge. When he “knows” something, he “knows” it better than anyone else, and anyone disagreeing with him must be wrong. He sees highly intelligent people as stupid because of categories (black, Mexican, woman, Muslim) that are arbitrary in most cases, and have nothing to do with intelligence. And these highly intelligent people speak in a way he cannot understand, and call out his lies, and disagree with him, and since he (DJT) knows everything, even things no one else knows, they must be wrong; therefore, stupid.

Even if they were wrong, being wrong doesn’t equate with being stupid, but … Read the rest



Compare

Aug 4th, 2018 10:17 am | By

To expand on the point a little, Trump’s fake “university” (yes fake AND scare quotes because it’s just that fake) charged thousands of dollars for real estate tips you could learn from a pamphlet.

Wikipedia:

Trump University (also known as the Trump Wealth Institute and Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC) was an American for-profit education company that ran a real estate training program from 2005 until 2010. It was owned and operated by The Trump Organization. (A separate organization, Trump Institute, was

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Green light

Aug 4th, 2018 9:49 am | By

I’m seeing people say never mind what he tweets, focus on what he does – but what he says is what he does, and it’s far from mere fluff or distraction. His open shameless angry racism gives the green light to millions of other angry shameless racists, and they do things, from Charlottesville-type riots to not hiring or promoting or renting to people of Other Races to harassment and violence. The proud noisy ragey racism of the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES encourages and incites racists everywhere. This shit matters.… Read the rest



Shame

Aug 4th, 2018 9:13 am | By

Racist US president is at it again.

James is a basketball player; Lemon is a CNN news anchor. Both are African-American. This is our president: a deeply stupid corrupt white man who likes to use his position to call influential black people stupid. (See: Maxine Waters, repeatedly.)

Funny thing: I had no clue who Don Lemon was until Trump was elected. Trump’s election prompted me to watch his show now and then, and I tell you what, he is the opposite of “dumb.” It’s because of … Read the rest



More bums in beds

Aug 3rd, 2018 4:50 pm | By

Well at least this mess is good for business at Trump’s hotel in Manhattan.

The general manager of the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan had a rare bit of good news to report to investors this spring: After two years of decline, revenue from room rentals went up 13 percent in the first three months of 2018.

What caused the uptick at President Trump’s flagship hotel in New York? One major factor: “a last-minute visit to New York by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” wrote general manager Prince A. Sanders in a May 15 letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post.

The royals didn’t stay at Trump’s hotel because well, frankly, it’s crap, isn’t it, but they … Read the rest



Some sunny day

Aug 3rd, 2018 11:41 am | By

On the one hand CNN and the Post and the Times are The Enemy, and on the other hand…

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4,229 lies

Aug 3rd, 2018 11:18 am | By

Trump is lying more than ever.

As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.

That’s an overall average of nearly 7.6 claims a day.

When we first started this project for the president’s first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. But the average number of claims per day keeps climbing the longer Trump stays in office. In fact, in June and July, the president averaged 16 claims a day.

Put another way: In his first year as president, Trump made 2,140 false or misleading claims. Now, just six months later, he has almost doubled that total.

He loves doing it, and so far he’s gotten away … Read the rest



With each denunciation, the crowd jeered and screamed

Aug 3rd, 2018 8:38 am | By

Meanwhile Trump attacked the press again at his rally last night.

President Donald Trump is renewing his campaign against the media, claiming at a Pennsylvania rally that the media is the “fake, fake disgusting news” and casting journalists as his true political opponent.

Is he enough of a Hitler-clone yet?

Trump barnstormed Thursday night in a state that he swiped from the Democrats in 2016 and that is home to a Senate seat he is trying to place in the Republicans’ column this fall. But the race between GOP U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta and two-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey took a back seat to Trump’s invectives against the media, which came amid a backdrop of antagonism to journalists

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Repeated attacks on the free press

Aug 3rd, 2018 8:31 am | By

The UN comments on Trump’s rhetoric attacking the press:

UN and Inter-American experts on freedom of expression have condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the free press and urged him and his administration to cease efforts to undermine the media’s role of holding government accountable, honest and transparent.

“His attacks are strategic, designed to undermine confidence in reporting and raise doubts about verifiable facts,” said David Kaye and Edison Lanza, the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of expression for the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, respectively.

The President has labelled the media as being the “enemy of the American people” “very dishonest” or “fake news,” and accused the press of “distorting democracy” or spreading

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Step right up, only $200 k per customer

Aug 2nd, 2018 5:35 pm | By

Another nice little angle for Trump, it appears – selling tours of Air Force One. Nothing at all tacky about that, no indeed.

Four Democratic senators are calling for an investigation into who has received Air Force One tours under the Trump administration, following reporting by BuzzFeed News that found that some members of the president’s private Florida clubs appeared to have received those tours.

In a letter to the inspectors general of the Air Force and Department of Defense, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Tom Carper of Delaware, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island cite the BuzzFeed News report as “particularly troubling.”

“If true, these reports could mean that the President or his family

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No idling

Aug 2nd, 2018 2:03 pm | By

From the New Yorker:

For the past decade, an uptown mortgage broker named George Pakenham has been predicting that the scourge of engine exhaust caused by needless automobile idling will soon become as socially unacceptable as secondhand smoke. After years of rapping on the windows of passenger cars and delivery vans, reminding drivers that the law prohibits idling for longer than three minutes within the city limits, and only occasionally being rebuffed with remarks like “Go move to China” and “You are not human,” he felt like he had reason to be optimistic. He has produced a children’s book devoted to the subject, “Big Nose, Big City,” and also a documentary, “Idle Threat,” which has

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Shameful

Aug 2nd, 2018 1:06 pm | By

Welllllll, this is appalling.

Jim Acosta apparently walked out at that point.

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Press the BBC to catch up with the 21st century

Aug 2nd, 2018 12:45 pm | By

Rupert Read just said no.

ike most Greens, I typically jump at opportunities to go on air. Pretty much any opportunity: BBC national radio, BBC TV, Channel 4, Sky – I’ve done them all over the years, for good or ill. Even when, as is not infrequently the case, the deck is somewhat stacked against me, or the timing inadequate for anything more than a soundbite, or the question up for debate less than ideal.

But this Wednesday, when I was rung up by BBC Radio Cambridgeshire and asked to come on air to debate with a climate change denier, something in me broke, and rebelled. Really? I thought. This summerof all times?

So, for almost

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First and last appearance

Aug 2nd, 2018 12:24 pm | By

Skeletor told us “At least she’s meeting with local school kids and doing her best to garden with them” – she being Melania Trump.

No, she’s not. The Post this past April:

Thus far, the Trump administration has erred on the side of silence regarding the vegetable garden, mirroring the silence in Congress around the impending farm bill deadline. In February 2017, a news release from the Office of the First Lady confirmed the White House vegetable garden would not be removed. Come April, however, there was no spring planting event such as Michelle Obama had held; instead, the secretary of agriculture announced that he would “Make School Lunches Great Again” by relaxing Obama-era HHFKA nutrition and sourcing regulations.

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In Saudi Arabia there is no civic space left to shrink

Aug 2nd, 2018 11:58 am | By

Trump’s BFF Saudi Arabia is not behaving well.

The UN has expressed concern over the continuing and “apparently arbitrary” crackdown on Saudi human rights activists after two more prominent female campaigners were arrested in the kingdom.

Samar Badawi, an internationally recognised activist, and Nassima al-Sadah, a co-founding member of Al-Adalah Center for Human Rights, were detained earlier this week.

At least 15 prominent activists have been held as part of a government campaign that began in the run-up to the much publicised lifting of the ban on women driving. Many other cases are thought to remain unreported.

That’s interesting – so the “run-up” to the removal of one violation of women’s rights consisted of trashing other women’s rights. How … Read the rest



Public confession of official misconduct

Aug 2nd, 2018 11:07 am | By

Max Boot at the Post explains how Trump is flouting the law right out in the open where we can watch.

There’s the tweet yesterday saying Sessions “should” stop the investigation.

Trump’s team, on cleanup duty, claimed the president is offering an opinion, not issuing a formal order. But when a boss tells a subordinate he “should” do something, it’s not just an innocent opinion like “that’s a nice shirt.” Last year, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that the president’s tweets are “official statements.” Indeed, the president fired then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by tweet. If Trump was just expressing a nonbinding opinion, why isn’t Tillerson still on the job?

When the president tells

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Let’s get that dirt back into our god-given air

Aug 2nd, 2018 10:34 am | By

The Trump admin has been working hard for a long time on a plan to make sure we have dirtier more climate-damaging fuel economy standards. Thanks, Trump admin.

The Trump administration Thursday pushed ahead with plans to unravel the federal government’s most effective action to fight climate change — aggressive fuel economy standards aimed at getting the nation’s cars and trucks to average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025.

After months of discussion and drafts, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formally unveiled their plan to rewrite those rules and replace them with ones so lax even automakers are wary.

More dirt please, more smog, more carbon, more global warming.

The administration’s

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