The tweet

A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened! Who would do this in a public space with live security……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2018

The tweet in response

Please, by all means, share the footage from the hallway outside the 24th floor residential elevator bank on the morning of January 11, 2006. Let’s clear this up for everyone. It’s liars like you in politics that have prompted me to run for office myself. https://t.co/ir7EEKoXRU https://t.co/GmkkZ5jUc7

— Rachel Crooks (@RachelforOhio)

I wondered why Rob mentioned Dinesh D’Souza…then I saw that the latter was trending on Twitter, so I looked. Oh, that’s why.

Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs https://t.co/Vg3mXYvb4c

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 20, 2018

The tweet he shared with that startling gloss:

https://twitter.com/passantino/status/966072311534182401… Read the rest

It turns out the whole thing is a left-wing plot to…um…to corrupt our precious bodily fluids? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely left-wing and a plot. And Soros.

Former GOP congressman Jack Kingston on Tuesday doubled-down on his inflammatory allegations that a group of school shooting survivors pushing for tougher gun laws are simply being used by left-wing political groups. Appearing on CNN, the Georgia Republican suggested that billionaire George Soros and other liberal activists had “hijacked” the “sorrow” of survivors of the Parkland, Florida, massacre, who in recent days have been helping organize a series of pro-gun-control protests.

“Do we really think, and I say this sincerely, that 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a

Trump and Co want to ditch a law that protects birds. Yeah, who needs birds anyway?

The bird protection law—known officially as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—is more important now than ever. It protects more than 1,000 species of birds by making it illegal to kill or harm any birds not covered by permits.

Stripping the nation’s longest-standing bird conservation law of its authority to protect birds contradicts decades of bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats. If the law is decapitated by the Interior Department and by legislative proposals authored by Wyoming GOP Representative Liz Cheney, millions of our most iconic and beloved birds will be at huge risk.

…

The penalties under the bird protection law are critical

Up for another Moral Quandary via Twitter session?

The BBC reported yesterday on the BAFTA awards and the MeToo Time’s Up campaigns.

Guests at the Bafta Film Awards showed their support for the Time’s Up and Me Too campaigns by wearing black and sending messages from the stage.

Virtually all the stars at the London ceremony were in black and some were accompanied by rights campaigners.

One of the few in a colourful dress was best actress winner Frances McDormand – but she told the ceremony: “I stand in full solidarity with my sisters.”

It’s all a bit knife-edge, isn’t it – movie stars all dressed up protesting and standing in solidarity with their sisters and stuff. A bit cringeworthy, … Read the rest

The slaughter of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas school was a welcome relief to people at the White House, because it took the heat off them for a change. They’d been having a baaaaaad week until then. Whew! Thanks, 17 dead people!

One White House official said the shooting forced the White House to focus on critical and serious issues — like consoling the victims and trying to heal the nation — rather than getting bogged down in what they view as more trivial West Wing drama.

“For everyone, it was a distraction or a reprieve,” said the White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal conversations. “A lot of people here felt

Newsweek reports:

White nationalist provocateurs, a pair of fake news sites, an army of Twitter bots and other cyber tricks helped derail Democratic Senator Al Franken last year, new research shows.

While everyone has been focused on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election to support Donald Trump, the Franken takedown originated in—and was propelled by—a strategic online campaign with digital tentacles reaching to, of all places, Japan. Analysts have now mapped out how Hooters pinup girl and lad-mag model Leeann Tweeden’s initial accusation against Franken became effective propaganda after right-wing black ops master Roger Stone first hinted at the allegation.

A pair of Japan-based websites, created the day before Tweeden came forward, and a swarm of related Twitter

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on No politics, please, we’re here to solicit $$$$.

Here’s what I want someone (well, someone other than me, someone with actual influence) to say after the next mass shooting:

The NRA and its lackeys don’t want us to talk about guns now. They say that would be “politicizing” this tragedy. And I say: yes, it would, and that’s exactly why we should do it.

“Politics” has come to be a dirty word, that brings to mind petty bickering and disingenuous posturing. But that’s not all that politics is. Politics is the means by which we, as a society, decide how to govern ourselves. It’s how we make changes that might prevent or … Read the rest

Paul Ryan doesn’t want to “talk about politics” at his own fundraiser. That’s his version, at least; what he apparently means is that he doesn’t want to talk about gun control – way too political, that.

Two protesters chanting “no more guns” were removed from a Republican fundraiser in Key Biscayne Friday night after confronting Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about the mass shooting that happened days earlier and miles up the road.

…

Maria Thorne, a Key Biscayne activist, said she noticed motorcade traffic clogging up her commute home from her job as a fifth grade teacher at iPrep Academy, where she spent the day reassuring scared students that she could keep them safe from a shooter.

Virginia Heffernan on John Kelly and “political correctness”:

How good it feels; it’s almost a high. When we can’t be bothered to temper our provincialism — or lechery and racism — we get to dress up ignorance as bravery, rebellion. To defy the PC goblins passes as radical truth-telling. In a flash, our existential terror about being obsolete and left behind — at being a “dinosaur,” as Harvey Weinstein once described himself — turns into bravado about that very same backwardness.

We know the type.

John Kelly, the beleaguered White House chief of staff, despises political correctness.

And he doesn’t just hate it on behalf of geezers who can’t get girls to laugh at their off-color jokes anymore. He

Not at all scary or abnormal or reckless.

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, whose inability to obtain permanent security clearance has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks, requests more information from the intelligence community than any other White House employee who isn’t working on the National Security Council, according to an unnamed source who spoke with the Washington Post. Kushner continues to only have interim security clearance after 13 months in the White House, since his background check still isn’t finished, most likely because he has had to repeatedly revise his disclosure form regarding foreign contacts to add information he had previously omitted.

And for extra added bonus alarm, he has no foreign policy or intelligence … Read the rest