The toddler ran amok.

It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

…peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

North Korean

Twitter has told “Sheriff” David Clarke to knock it off with the violent threats.

Former Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr., a vocal surrogate for President Donald Trump on the campaign trail, was temporarily blocked from tweeting after Twitter users’ complaints alerted the company that three of his messages violated the terms of service, CNN has learned.

Clarke was placed in read-only mode until he deleted three tweets that seemed to call for violence against members of the media.

In one of them, which has since been deleted, Clarke told his followers, “When LYING LIB MEDIA makes up MAKE NEWS to smear me, the ANTIDOTE is to go right at them. Punch them in the nose & MAKE THEM TASTE

Bloodroot Vegetarian Restaurant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, yesterday:

As many of you know, Bloodroot has recently come under attack and is currently being trolled by a number of people in the transgender community and their supporters. We felt it was time to make an official statement. Because it seems whenever we try and explain what happened and our stance on this issue, it only serves to inspire more hatred, we will not be replying to comments.

Bloodroot and her owners are not transphobic – far from it! Bloodroot has always welcomed and respected everyone – especially people who might feel uncomfortable in a public space. Whether that be people from other countries, people of color, people of every type of

Benjamin Wittes looks at Trump’s war on the Deep State so far, and finds it fulfilling dire predictions but also not as bad as it could be if Trump were more competent.

The first few weeks of the Trump administration raised the question of the degree to which Trump’s malevolence would be tempered by his incompetence. In the first year of the Trump presidency, the answer to that question was that incompetence did a lot of tempering. Trump blundered from crisis to crisis. The lawyering around him was comically dreadful—as was the broader executive functioning. Taking on established democratic institutions and wrecking them actually takes a certain amount of focus and energy—and Trump just isn’t very good at

Deborah Cameron has a shorter and of course vastly better list of some good reads.

• Mary Beard, Women and Power: A Manifesto.
• Emma Jane, Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History.
• Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and tumblr to Trump and the alt-right.

About the Nagle, she says

Before anyone was talking about the ‘alt-right’, Angela Nagle was investigating the online subcultures from which it emerged, tracking the people involved, the platforms they used, the political positions they espoused and—from a linguist’s perspective most interestingly—the evolution of their distinctive communication style. This isn’t as distinctive as we might think: it has much in common with earlier celebrations of transgression (‘kill all

Oh goody, a list. On the other hand it’s a pretty odd list. It’s Robert McCrum’s choice for The 100 best nonfiction books of all time – in English, though that’s not stated, and the last one is the bible which was not written in English. But that’s the only translation as far as I could tell, unless Popper wrote The Open Society in German, which I don’t think he did.

But McCrum includes poetry and drama in non-fiction, which seems like cheating. It lets him include the First Folio, which by all means, but non-fiction, really?

Anyway the contemporary and modern choices seem pretty meh to me – more most popular or most familiar than best. Naomi Klein’s No … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Jeff Engel on Still never.

President Clinton would have made for a glorious 4-8 years of moaning and crying from the right, able to pick on every peccadillo and declaim about the moral superiority of the Republican Party who – they’d be happy to say – ultimately rejected Trump while the Democrats embraced Her Satanic Majesty. So yeah, it’s not that expensive being a Never Trumper from the op-ed pages.

Still – I don’t believe I can take fully seriously the complaints about Trump’s character combined with the delight in his policies. Bullying, pettiness, aggressive ignorance – these are the same things that will underlie the preferred conservative society of “ordered classes”, people “knowing their … Read the rest

In today’s US Gun Terrorism news so far:

The Denver Post:

One Douglas County deputy died and four more were wounded along with two civilians Sunday morning at a Highlands Ranch apartment complex. The shooter was also shot and is believed dead, the Sheriff’s Office said in a tweet at 9:32 a.m.

Deputies were responding to a domestic disturbance call.

CBS News:

Police in Houston say they arrested a man found with guns and ammunition in his hotel room early Sunday, as authorities across the country remain on high alert ahead of planned New Year’s Eve celebrations.

The guy was drunk and tottering around hassling other guests, so police asked him to go to his room and when … Read the rest

This woman in #Iran took off her #Hijab to protest the mandatory Islamic dress code imposed on Iranian women. #IStandWithHer #IranProtests #Islam pic.twitter.com/G6oKHIPA68

— Armin Navabi (@ArminNavabi) December 29, 2017

A clear photo via Fariborz Pooya:

Maryam’s new Facebook cover photo:

… Read the rest

Trump’s good buddy former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke:

I am UNINTIMIDATED by lib media attempts to smear and discredit me with their FAKE NEWS reports designed to silence me. I will continue to poke them in the eye with a sharp stick and bitch slap these scum bags til they get it. I have been attacked by better people than them #MAGA pic.twitter.com/XtZW5PdU2b

— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) December 30, 2017

I am UNINTIMIDATED by lib media attempts to smear and discredit me with their FAKE NEWS reports designed to silence me. I will continue to poke them in the eye with a sharp stick and bitch slap these scum bags til they get it. I have been

From the ACLU:

During the holiday season, many of us think about what we can do to help people struggling with poverty. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on the other hand, decided just before Christmas to rescind a guidance meant to protect low-income Americans.

The 2016 guidance, issued by former President Obama’s Justice Department, urged state and local courts nationwide to abide by constitutional principles prohibiting the jailing of poor people who cannot afford to pay court fines and fees. Jeff Sessions’ action makes clear that he and his Justice Department are unconcerned by courts trampling on the rights of poor people.

The Obama Justice Department issued the 2016 letter after reports and lawsuits by the ACLU and other groups

The hot Donnie-news today is what got the FBI started on the Russia investigation. It turns out it was Papadopoulos blabbing to an Australian diplomat.

During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.

Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But