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

Welllllll, this is appalling.

Here's the video. Sarah Sanders is asked multiple times if she believes the media is the enemy of the people. She refuses each time to respond. (via Yahoo) pic.twitter.com/q9jvKSzl3u

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 2, 2018

Jim Acosta apparently walked out at that point.

I walked out of the end of that briefing because I am totally saddened by what just happened. Sarah Sanders was repeatedly given a chance to say the press is not the enemy and she wouldn't do it. Shameful.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 2, 2018

… Read the rest

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.

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

Lawrence Tribe got my attention.

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1024966371992657920

So let’s read that Times article:

In the back of a fairground auditorium in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday night, as President Trump presided over a rally dedicated to denigrating his enemies, the journalists dispatched to cover the proceedings attracted their own raucous crowd.

“Stop lying!” shouted a man in an American flag T-shirt, one of dozens of Trump supporters who hurled invective at the assembled press corps. Facing the reporters’ work space — and away from the stage where Mr. Trump was set to speak — they flashed middle fingers and chanted “CNN Sucks!” as Jim Acosta, a CNN White House correspondent, attempted to speak on-air.

The “hate the media” theme was already … Read the rest

There’s this picture from last September of Queen Melania pretending to garden, kind of like Marie Antoninette at le Petit Trianon.

Gee, that basket is awfully clean. So are her gloves, so are her sneakers, so are her pruners.

Heather Schwedel at Slate compares her to her predecessor in the gardening thing:

She doesn’t bother to put up her hair or exchange her designer sunglasses for a more practical wide-brimmed hat. In one hand, she holds a pair of pruning shears uneasily, as if ready not to trim an overgrowth but to snip off the ponytail of an invisible rival or a Barbie doll she is jealous of. Her other hand poses beatifically over an empty basket, providing gestural

Giuliani is telling reporters Don was just thinking aloud, obviously.

President Trump called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday to end the special counsel investigation, an extraordinary appeal to the nation’s top law enforcement official to halt an inquiry directly into the president.

..This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2018

We can never admire that tweet enough.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers quickly moved to contain the fallout, saying it

Step right up and read about the Existential Crisis of a Femme-Presenting Trans Man. You think I’m making it up but I’m not.

Since the day I came out as a trans man, people have assumed that I would drop my femininity like a bad habit.

I didn’t change my pronouns, but folks started referring to me as “him.” They started calling me “bro” and “dude,” when they hadn’t used those words to identify me before. While part of me felt validated by these things, since my masculinity had been erased and ignored for most of my life, another part of me felt pressured not to stay true to myself in favor of fulfilling the expectations of others.

Oh. … Read the rest

Good news for Muslim women in the UK:

A high court judge has decided that a couple’s Islamic marriage falls within the scope of English matrimonial law, in a ruling that could have implications for thousands of Muslims in the UK.

Nasreen Akhter wanted to divorce Mohammed Shabaz Khan, her husband of 20 years, but he blocked it, arguing that the couple were not married under English law.

Akhter and Khan underwent a religious marriage ceremony, known as a nikah, conducted by an imam in 1998.

This year Akhter, a solicitor, petitioned for divorce, saying the nikah constituted a valid marriage. Khan, a businessman, wanted to prevent Akhtar from bringing a case for a divorce settlement to court, and

Originally a comment by Freemage on Stop the woman who is speaking.

Axxyaan

August 1, 2018 at 12:56 am

@Freemage

As you explain the Nordic Model, my understanding of it, goes a bit as follows. The prostitute is allowed to accept money, and is allowed to let that influence her in being seduced by the person who tries to win her favors. However there isn’t any contract (not even a verbal one) involved, so he can’t buy her favors. She is never under any kind of legal obligation to perform any sexual service.

Also the handing over money to the prostitute is not illegal. It just doesn’t buy anything. (except maybe some good will)

Is this more or less

Trump’s attacks on the media are of course having their effect.

At the president’s Tampa rally Tuesday, Trump supporters surrounded CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta while he was doing a live bit to boo, shout profanity and gesture toward him to show their level of disgust with him specifically and the media more generally.

Just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa. I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy. pic.twitter.com/IhSRw5Ui3R

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 1, 2018

While the degree of the

Uhhhhyeah…

For the first time ever, Barbie is wearing a hijab. The new doll is modeled after Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad and is part of broader effort by Mattel to diversify the Barbie line https://t.co/dqN1ufACf5 pic.twitter.com/oVHgd0qUiG

— CNN (@CNN) August 1, 2018

That’s kind of like a stripper in a hijab, but whatever.… Read the rest