Taslima asks a pointed question.
Why are they so interested to take pictures? pic.twitter.com/Ze0ZGWxR24
— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) April 3, 2018
I have to say, I’m a little grossed out by all those shameless naked hands poking out. They’re obviously doing it on purpose – carefully pushing their naked nude unclad hands out front so that we can’t not see them. The sluts.… Read the rest
Oh, damn, this is heartbreaking and infuriating. Jill McCabe on why she decided to accept the urging to run for state office, and how badly that turned out for them.
… Read the restI am an emergency room pediatrician and an accidental politician — someone who never thought much about politics until I was recruited to run for state office after making a statement about the importance of expanding Medicaid. That decision — plus some twisted reporting and presidential tweets — ended up costing my husband, Andrew, his job and our family a significant portion of his pension my husband had worked hard for over 21 years of federal service. For the past year and a half of this nightmare, I have
Suzanne Moore has a lot of sympathy for Niall Ferguson and other endangered guys like him.
… Read the restUp steps the latest victim, poor Niall Ferguson, author, history professor and lover of empire, who wrote in the Sunday Times that he had to endure a “disproportionately vitriolic response” for organising a conference that featured only white male historians. How he has suffered, I can only imagine.
Jordan Peterson, another minor academic, became major simply by outlining how wrong we are to talk of the various ways in which western culture has been deemed oppressive to women. Excuse me, but didn’t Camille Paglia do that 20 years ago?
To such men, any notion of inclusiveness, or of the dread “diversity”, becomes a
Trump and Pruitt are putting their shoulders to the wheel, or their feet to the floor, pushing us to create more and more and more pollution to make American great again.
The Trump administration openly threatened one of the cornerstones of California’s environmental protections Monday, saying that it may revoke the state’s ability under the Clean Air Act to impose stricter standards than the federal government sets for vehicle emissions.
The announcement came as the administration confirmed it is tearing up landmark fuel economy rules pushing automakers to manufacture cleaner burning cars and SUVs.
We want dirtier burning cars, god damn it. Dirt is good. It’s like cowboys n shit.
… Read the restPruitt’s announcement said that the administration will abandon the federal
Ah maybe now we know why Trump was in such a Mood this morning.
The cover of the latest @NYMag: pic.twitter.com/TQjMbQwdO6
— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) April 2, 2018
He won’t be framing that and hanging it on the walls of his golf resorts.… Read the rest
Class photo time again: Trump with the spring class of White House interns:
That’s nearly 100 people; I think I found four who are not white.
Also, how weird is it that all the women have the Trump-women look? The long hair worn down over the shoulders in front in the manner of Princess Ivanka – every single female person in the photo is wearing her hair that way. As a female person who had long hair in her youth I can tell you that’s not a natural or default way to wear long hair; the natural thing is to pull it all back out of the way and just leave it there. It’s weird to drape some of … Read the rest
Aaron Blake at the Post points out the undeniable fact that people who work for Trump know full well how thick he is.
Lost in the debate over whether President Trump should talk to Robert Mueller is this: The arguments against him doing it often betray a remarkably dim view of Trump’s intellect.
They do, of course. How could they not? Trump makes it blindingly obvious every time he opens his mouth or punches the buttons on his phone that he has no filter, aka is too stupid and heedless to discipline himself even in a situation of legal peril. That’s a remarkable fact, for sure, and with any luck it will soon cause him to perjure himself in … Read the rest
What happens when you let your attention wander for a minute and you elect a toddler to be chief executive of a country with a huge nuclear arsenal:
When Donald Trump was elected president, it quickly became obvious that the traditional national-security briefing a person in his position receives daily would be well beyond his zone of proximal development. The briefings were slimmed down in length, chopped up into easy-to-digest bullet points, and decorated with lots of graphs and pictures. Alas, the Washington Post reports, even the kiddie version of the presidential brief has proven too challenging. Now, Trump gets his briefing verbally.
Michael Wolf is very clear on this in Fire and Fury: Trump won’t read and … Read the rest
Here is Leo Igwe’s talk at a TED conference.
… Read the restAs a humanist, Leo Igwe doesn’t believe in divine intervention — but he does believe in the power of human beings to alleviate suffering, cure disease, preserve the planet and turn situations of poverty into prosperity. In this bold talk, Igwe shares how humanism can free Africans from damaging superstitions and give them the power to rebuild the continent.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Niall Ferguson feels put upon.
First sentence of his Times (the London one) piece explaining why he feels put upon:
It is not very fashionable to be a man these days, especially a white one.
Really? In what sense? Have men lost all their power, their privilege, their advantage over women?
Of fucking course not. What he means is that many of us have noticed the advantage and are trying to make things less unbalanced in the direction of always calling a man. He feels aggrieved because we’re no longer just taking it for granted that men should dominate everything and women should be an afterthought at best.
… Read the restLast month I organised a small, invitation-only conference of historians
Russian bots are springing to the defense of Fox bully Laura Ingraham, according to Business Insider.
As companies yank their ads from Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham’s show in droves, she continues to draw support from one key Twitter demographic: Russian bots.
The advertiser exodus comes after Ingraham insulted Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg’s grades on Twitter. The Fox News host announced Saturday that she would be taking a “pre-planned vacation” amid the controversy.
“Controversy” is too dignified for it. She’s a grown-ass adult who didn’t just see a bunch of her friends shot to death and felt entitled to bully a teenager who did. That’s not a controversy, it’s just hateful mindless shitty bullying in the style of … Read the rest
Photo of the day. Or week, or year.
https://twitter.com/AlexisCoe/status/980456131188453376… Read the rest
Seattle-based ABC affiliate KOMO-TV says its owner, the conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, is forcing its reporters to air pre-scripted segments about fake news media, in an attempt to undermine non-Sinclair stations.
Sinclair has long produced “must-run” segments for its stations, dispersing them to its various subsidiaries and requiring the local stations to run controversial, typically conservative commentary promos alongside their regular news coverage. However, in recent weeks, it’s begun turning its sights on the competition, throwing in mentions of “fake news,” among other things.
In other words it’s helping Trump’s authoritarian attacks on independent journalism.
… Read the rest“The promos, which began airing on the station last week, are part of a Sinclair campaign that forces local
Jennifer Rubin at the Post on the emoluments case ruling that granted standing:
In a decision with far-reaching implications for President Trump, a federal court ruled this week that a lawsuit could go forward claiming he unconstitutionally received foreign emoluments — that is, monies from foreign governments explicitly prohibited by the Constitution — from his hotel in Washington. The Associated Press reported:
A federal judge Wednesday allowed Maryland and the District of Columbia to proceed with their lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of accepting unconstitutional gifts from foreign interests, but limited the case to the president’s involvement with the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
There are other hurdles but that was the biggest one.
… Read the restIf Maryland and the
Benjamin Butterworth at Pink News yesterday:
… Read the restLabour’s shadow equalities minister hosted a string of anti-trans activists in parliament for an official meeting on ‘trans inclusion’, PinkNews has learned.
Dawn Butler, Labour’s lead MP on LGBT rights, met with activists opposed to transgender women being included on all women shortlists in an official capacity on Wednesday.
…
A spokesperson for the Labour Party told PinkNews: “All women shortlists are and always have been open to all women, which of course includes trans women.
…
“The Labour Party recognises the vital importance of self-declaration for the Trans community, which is why we are calling on the Government to reform the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act 2010 to change the
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern on what Trump’s inability to get good lawyers to work for him has revealed about the US legal system.
… Read the restThe ongoing and increasingly worrying problem for Trump is that he has lived for so long in the world of rich-man business-mogul law that his conception of lawyers and lawyering is badly skewed. He genuinely believes that attorneys like Michael Cohen—who is now embroiled in a wrestling match with a pugnacious Stormy Daniels and her lawyer—and Marc Kasowitz—who has represented Trump in litigation ranging from his divorce and bankruptcy proceedings to the Trump University lawsuit—can handle any type of legal proceeding…What’s really new here isn’t so much that no serious lawyer wants to
The Guardian reported on the march in memory of Mireille Knoll on Wednesday.
… Read the restSilent marches are taking place in Paris and other large French cities in memory of an 85-year-old woman who survived the Holocaust but was stabbed to death last week, in what is being investigated as an antisemitic attack.
Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA
After killing Mireille Knoll, her attackers set her local authority flat alight in a poor area of the French capital. Two men, aged 22 and 29 – one of them a neighbour known to the victim since he was a child, have been arrested and placed under formal investigation.
Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP
Other marches were due to be held in the French cities of Lyon,
More on the murder of Mireille Knoll:
An 85-year-old woman who as a child narrowly escaped France’s most notorious wartime roundup of Jews has been murdered in Paris, and the authorities are calling it a hate crime.
The body of the woman, Mireille Knoll, was found on Friday in her apartment in the city’s working-class 11th Arrondissement.
Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
That’s the building – an ordinary council block.
… Read the restMs. Knoll was a child in Paris when, in the summer of 1942, the French police, cooperating with the Germans, rounded up thousands of the city’s Jews, stuffing them into a cycling stadium, the Vélodrome d’Hiver. Virtually all were subsequently murdered at Auschwitz.
Ms. Knoll’s mother, summoned
… Read the restEvery morning, in a part of the 11th Arrondissement of Paris that has not yet gentrified, Mireille Knoll would sit at home watching television as she waited for her personal care aide.
The aide, Leila Dessante, would clean the small second-floor apartment, cook lunch and keep company with Ms. Knoll, a 85-year-old grandmother and Holocaust survivor. “She would take my face in between her hands and always ask, ‘How are you doing today, sweetheart?’” Ms. Dessante recalled on Wednesday.
Ms. Knoll’s gentle routine was brutally interrupted last week when she was killed in her apartment. The attack shocked her neighbors, France’s Jewish community and the country as a whole. Two suspects, men in their
The Post, with offended dignity and dignified offense, corrects Trump’s flailing claims about Amazon and the Post and the Post Office.
The president also incorrectly conflated Amazon with The Post and made clear that his attacks on the retailer were inspired by his disdain for the newspaper’s coverage. He labeled the newspaper “the Fake Washington Post” and demanded it register as a lobbyist for Amazon. The Post operates independently of Amazon, though the news organization is personally owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon.
So there, Mister President, Sir.
It got in an excellent covert dig though.
… Read the restIn Trump’s first of two Amazon tweets, sent at 8:45 a.m., he wrote: “While we are on
