This is Donald Trump in a single image. pic.twitter.com/tpgy3wgT5i

— MZS (@mattzollerseitz) February 26, 2018

… Read the rest

Jared Kushner has had a pleasant 13 months seeing all the top secrets despite not having the appropriate security clearance, but that cheery idyll has come to an end. Kelly done busted him down.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has been stripped of his high-level security clearance after months of delays in completing an exhaustive background check, limiting his ability to view highly classified information, a White House official and another person familiar with Mr. Kushner’s situation said.

Mr. Kushner’s top-secret clearance was reduced to secret and his portfolio, especially with regard to his conduct of foreign affairs on behalf of President Trump, is expected to contract sharply as well in the days ahead, the people

Is it stupidity or corruption or both? Who knows, who cares, either way it’s appalling.

House Speaker Paul Ryan signaled Tuesday he isn’t supportive of the proposals to impose new restrictions on gun purchases, telling reporters “we shouldn’t be banning guns for law abiding citizens.”

During a weekly news conference in the wake of the mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people, the Wisconsin Republican added, “we should be focusing on making sure that citizens who shouldn’t get guns in the first place don’t get those guns.”

As if anyone can know which citizens “should” get guns and which shouldn’t. As if anyone can know that every time, infallibly, at a glance. As if people … Read the rest

Top best most fabulous intersectionalityism:

https://twitter.com/MunroeBergdorf/status/968439202462470144

Is Munroe Bergdorf a Russian troll?

Munroe Bergdorf got “facial feminization” surgery a month ago, and posts glam shots of the result.

https://twitter.com/MunroeBergdorf/status/967428325839921152

Fine; whatever; knock yourself out; but don’t be telling women how to do feminism correctly.… Read the rest

There are people corroborating the BuzzFeed story on Lawrence Krauss on social media.

Elise Andrew for one.

Adding my voice to this – in 2013 I attended an event with Krauss and considered requesting an interview. Was told by someone who works with him that “we don’t leave female journalists alone with Lawrence”. Decided not to do the interview.

This “whisper network” people are talking about wasn’t made up of people who didn’t like him and wanted to smear him. It was people who worked with him who didn’t want to deal with the drama.

The same would apply to other people who warned women about Krauss: the goal was not [necessarily] to smear Krauss but to warn the … Read the rest

The Oath Keepers, a lunatic militia group, are organizing to “protect” schools by standing around outside them packing heat. What could possibly go wrong.

In Indiana, at least one member of the group, Mark Cowan, stationed himself outside of a Fort Wayne high school last week. He wielded a handgun and AR-15 while keeping watch near the premises, per local outlet WPTA-21.

Fabulous. And the school administration and teachers and students are supposed to know he’s protecting them as opposed to preparing to shoot them how exactly?

Bryan Humes, a leader in the Oath Keepers chapter in Indiana, said he’s not sure how many Oath Keepers are currently stationed outside of local schools, although he believes there are several.

Paul Krugman notes the flood of resistance, or what he calls “a powerful upwelling of decency,” in for instance MeToo and the reactions to the Parkland massacre.

This isn’t what anyone, certainly not the political commentariat, expected.

After the 2016 election many in the news media seemed all too ready to assume that Trumpism represented the real America, even though Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote and — Russian intervention and the Comey letter aside — would surely have won the electoral vote, too, but for the Big Sneer, the derisive tone adopted by countless reporters and pundits. There have been hundreds if not thousands of stories about grizzled Trump supporters sitting in diners, purportedly showing the out-of-touchness of

Prepare to become more Woke.

Today’s lesson: how to fight all the varieties of misia.

Offstage voices: The what?

Oh dear, you don’t know what misia is? How sad. Fortunately there is a page for laggards like you. It is the “what does ‘misia’ mean?” page. You’re welcome.

You may be wondering why our guide uses the suffix “misia” instead of the suffix “phobia.” If you’ve not encountered “misia” language before, you may also be wondering what it means. Well never fear! We are more than happy to explain this relatively new shift in language.

The suffix “phobia” comes from the Greek word for “fear of,” and so it denotes an intense aversion to the part of the

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on This brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism.

Part of the problem in the 2016 primaries is that the other candidates focused on attacking each other, assuming that the Trump bubble would burst, either on its own or because another candidate would take care of him. But in retrospect, it’s very obvious how by 2016, the GOP had stripped itself of many possible defenses to Trump even if they hadn’t waited until it was too late. What arguments could they have made?

1. “He doesn’t have the experience and qualifications.” Well, first, Republicans spent years pissing on the idea of government service as something of value, extolling millionaires as the real “job creators,” … Read the rest

Another one.

The troubling details of a kidnapping that unfolded last week in the rural community of Dapchi in northern Nigeria after Boko Haram attacked a school and apparently made off with teenage hostages horrified the nation. As many as 110 girls have been missing since Monday, when armed militants stormed the school.

Many Nigerians were all the more outraged that the attack and the events that followed mirrored a similar kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls in 2014 in the community of Chibok.

That episode grabbed the world’s attention and elicited promises from officials that it would never happen again. Nearly four years later, an estimated 112 of those students are still held hostage.

“Not even our 112 Chibok

Originally a pair of comments by AJ Milne on Shade of pale.

Think it was David Brin also pointed out about Star Wars: the droids are pretty clearly sentient, intelligent beings… Yet they can be bought, sold, effectively enslaved with ‘restraining bolts’. And it’s not just villains who do so.

… I find it not at all surprising Sagan would raise the issues he did. It flows quite naturally, it seems to me, from other views on the possible diversity of life in the universe, how our own perspective is, as yet, probably quite limited, against all of what might be out there.

There seems to be this very poorly thought through attitude amongs the anti-social justice (or possibly … Read the rest