Heckuva job

Sep 12th, 2018 9:48 am | By

Hey it costs money to lock up more and more scary Mexicans illegal immigrants, and that money has to come from somewhere. Oh I know: take it from FEMA, they don’t do anything useful.

Newly revealed documents show the Trump administration took nearly $10 million away from FEMA and other federal agencies to apparently pay for immigration detention centers. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency which FEMA is a part of, said under no circumstances was any disaster relief funding transferred from FEMA to immigration enforcement efforts.

CBS News’ Jeff Pegues reports the money in question was transferred back in August to ICE. A source at DHS tells Pegues the funds were transferred to ICE for adult detention beds, not to house children. The funds were transferred from FEMA’s operational account at FEMA headquarters.

Over the last year there have been questions about whether FEMA’s resources are stretched thin as it responds to hurricanes and that’s why that nearly $10 million is getting a lot of attention, Pegues reports. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon who called the transfer a “scandal,” first made the budget adjustment documents public.

Silly Democrats, always making a fuss about nothing. I’m sure it will be fine. The next big hurricane is at least 24 hours from striking South Carolina, so chill.

Merkley spoke to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday night about how he obtained the documents.

“It means that just as hurricane season is starting…the administration is working hard to find funds for additional detention camps, and of course this is all part of the child separation policy, and that’s how this information came into my hands because of my work on the issue of trying to stop the child separations,” he said.

The documents came to light as Hurricane Florence, called “the storm of a lifetime,” emptied homes and hospitals in the Carolinas. More than five million people are now under hurricane warnings with the Category 4 storm expected to make landfall on Friday or Saturday.

Florence could cost the East Coast more than $170 billion and damage nearly 759,000 homes and businesses, according to analytics firm CoreLogic. That would make Florence the costliest storm ever to hit the U.S. in terms of property loss.

Well there you go then. $10 million is a drop in the bucket, so it might as well be diverted to separating more parents from their children.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Get a job! No not that job!

Sep 11th, 2018 3:59 pm | By

Interesting. We’re supposed to despise people who are on welfare because they should get a job no matter how scarce jobs are where they live or how young and dependent their children are or how hard they’re working in school to improve their chances of finding work…but also, it turns out, we’re supposed to despise people who do have jobs if the jobs are not posh enough for our refined tastes.

Former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens made headlines this holiday weekend after a New Jersey shopper snapped photos of him bagging groceries at a Trader Joe checkout line — then provided them to the Daily Mail.

Instantly, Owens — who played the Huxtables’ affable son-in-law Elvin on the show from 1985 to 1992 and is still a working actor — found himself at the center of a complicated conversation about low-wage labor. It involved social media shaming, a backlash to the backlash, and a SAG-led campaign to celebrate the many actors who, like Owens, work less glamorous jobs to make ends meet and do what they love.

…

The Daily Mail took a scornful approach to reporting Owens’ employment, publishing several photos of him in “a Trader Joe’s T-shirt with stain marks on the front as he weighed a bag of potatoes.” The tabloid also reported the average hourly wage at the store ($11), and implied that Owens was washed-up as an actor, quoting the photo-taker as saying, “Wow, all those years of doing the show and you ended up as a cashier.”

So there you go. Get out there and find a job, you lazy parasite, but when you do we will make fun of you, you proletarian loser.

However, neither the Daily Mail nor Fox News, which circulated a widely-shared follow-up, made any attempt to contextualize Owens’s appearance in the Trader Joe’s line.

For instance, the outlets failed to note that more than two-thirds of all SAG-affiliated actors make less than $1,000 a year as actors. They also failed to note that Owens has worked steadily an actor throughout the decades: In addition to regular theater work, he’s been consistently active as a television guest actor every year but one since 2007.

Not only that, but the Yale alumnus has been busy teaching acting classes at Yale, Columbia, and the well-respected New York play incubator Primary Stages.

But naturally some people on Twitter made fun of him anyway, because hey, menial work, how dare he.

The overwhelming majority of people who read the Daily Mail and Fox News pieces, however, were outraged at the media outlets for sensationalizing the honest labor of a respectable man and dedicated working actor. Performers of all stripes and professional levels swiftly came to Owens’s defense.

https://twitter.com/TheRebeccaCorry/status/1036706500255789058

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Blind to reality

Sep 11th, 2018 3:32 pm | By

The Goldsmiths LGBTQ+ mash note to Stalin and the Gulag made it into the Telegraph:

Students at a leading London university have been condemned as blind to reality after defending the system of Soviet Gulag labour camps where thousands perished as “compassionate” places of rehabilitation.

Trans rights campaigners at Goldsmiths University described the Gulags as benign places where inmates received education, training and enjoyed the opportunity to take part in clubs, sports and theatre groups.

In fact most historians agree they were a brutal network of labour camps used by Stalin’s Soviet dictatorship to incarcerate internal opponents and so-called ‘enemies of the state’, resulting in the death of more than an estimated 1.05 million people.

But they did it with love.

Paradoxically the thread was written as an apparent justification for an earlier post by the same group which threatened to send a political opponent “to the gulag”.

The threat was made against Claire Graham, a special education needs teacher, who wrote objecting to LGBTQ Goldsmith’s threat to target feminist academics who they claimed were prejudiced against transgender individuals.

The original Twitter thread from Goldsmith LGBTQ, since removed

The rest of Goldsmith LGBTQ's Twitter thread justifying the Gulag system

The thread has now been removed so it’s useful to have the screenshots.

Goldsmiths Students’ Union has now suspended the group and withdrawn its support for its activities, saying the Gulag threat – and subsequent refusal by the group to apologise for it – clearly breached the students’ union code of conduct.

In a statement backed by Goldsmiths University the students’ union said: “We condemn the abhorrent content of the tweets and they are in complete opposition to the views and values of the Students’ Union.”

Members of Goldsmiths LGBTQ refused to comment when approached by The Daily Telegraph.

They’re busy re-educating each other.

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We’ll let you know

Sep 11th, 2018 11:51 am | By

Trump either is or is not going to drop in on Ireland in November.

The White House has not yet made a final decision on whether US President Donald Trump will make a stop in Ireland in November, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said.

…

The comments came after it was reported Mr Trump’s planned visit to Ireland in November had been put off.

The Government on Tuesday evening confirmed that the visit of President Trump has been “postponed” for what it called “scheduling reasons”.

The Irish Times understands that the proposed details of the trip had been changing constantly since the White House first announced President Trump’s intention to visit last month.

Not a very adult or polite way to treat other countries. “We may visit you in a few weeks, or not, we haven’t decided yet, we’ll let you know.”

When the trip was announced the Labour party said that it would “join with like-minded people to oppose this visit.” Green party leader Eamon Ryan said the government should cancel the planned visit.

Mr Ryan welcomed the news on Tuesday that the visit was off. “The visit came out of the blue and has now been cancelled in the same erratic way. We are glad he is not coming. Trump’s positions and demeanour on every issue of the day, from climate to women’s rights, from international relations to political decency, represent the opposite of Green and indeed Irish values,” he said.

“It’s hard to know why the trip has been cancelled at this stage, but we are nonetheless glad that such a costly, potentially divisive and undignified event will now not take place,” he added.

Labour Senator Aodhán O Ríordáin welcomed the news too, saying it was as a result of the campaign against the visit.

Maybe Trump is expecting all of Ireland to say with one voice “Oh no, we’re sorry, please do visit, we promise not to protest even a little tiny bit.”

He’ll have to wait a long time for that.

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Sargon and Dankula on free speech

Sep 11th, 2018 11:20 am | By

Carl Benjamin aka “Sargon of Akkad,” famed misogynist bully, was on an EU parliament panel to discuss free speech at the invitation of a UKIP MEP.

A MAN who was fined after filming a pet dog giving Nazi salutes has rubbed shoulders with Nigel Farage after being invited to speak about his case at the European Parliament.

Mark Meechan met with the former UKIP leader and his successor Gerard Batten as he spoke at a conference on threats to free speech on the internet.

…

Meechan, of Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, raised more than £193,000 through a crowdfunding page to pay for legal fees to fund an appeal against his conviction and sentence but his application was refused.

He joined UKIP in the wake of his conviction and on Monday he sat alongside leader Batten, Scots MEP David Coburn and fellow YouTuber Carl Benjamin at a panel in Strasbourg.

There’s glory for you!

https://youtu.be/1pzLVCzWAdA

Carl Benjamin captioned the video:

Count Dankula, Gerard Batten MEP, David Coburn MEP and I hosted a panel on Article 11 (the link tax), Article 13 (the copyright directive) and free speech.

Free the speech!

Forgot to add:

https://twitter.com/GerardBattenMEP/status/1039226411662368769

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We da winnahs

Sep 11th, 2018 10:47 am | By

The usual dignity and empathy and respect.

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Abrupt end of attempt to queer Stalin

Sep 11th, 2018 9:49 am | By

The gulagsplaining turned out to be a step too far even for the Goldsmiths Student Union. Their statement:

Yesterday, Monday 10th September, a member of the LGBTQ+ Society with access to their Twitter account posted tweets containing offensive material. We condemn the abhorrent content of the tweets and they are in complete opposition to the views and values of the Students’ Union.

The Society have broken multiple Union policies and procedures, including failing to adhere to our code of conduct, and we have issued multiple requests for the group to delete the tweets. As such, the Society have been suspended and disaffiliated from the Students’ Union, pending investigation.

I think they should have said what the tweets were about and what made them “offensive” and “abhorrent”…and chosen a word other than “offensive” to describe them. Evasiveness seems unhelpful. But anyway it’s good to know the Goldsmiths Student Union isn’t a fan of Stalin and the gulag.

I can’t help wondering how friendly Stalin would have been to the Goldsmiths (or any other) LGBTQ+ Society. Nah I don’t really wonder, I already know. They’d have been in the gulag, not standing outside admiring it and trying to persuade others to admire it. Kids today, eh, thinking Stalinism and queer politics make a good mashup.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog


Unless it’s a volume of collected tweets…

Sep 10th, 2018 3:22 pm | By

Trump says he’s going to “write” a “book.” Uh huh, and I’m going to fly the 6 o’clock plane to Heathrow.

That would be laughable even if he did know how to write, because he’s a narcissist who can’t stop bragging, so any book he “wrote” on the subject would be a pack of lies and tedious as well.

During his business career, Trump wrote nearly 20 books, including “The Art of the Deal.” Most of the books had known ghostwriters.

So he didn’t write them. The ghostwriters wrote them.

On Monday, Trump called Woodward “a liar who is like a Dem operative prior to the Midterms” following an appearance by Woodward on NBC’s “Today” show.

During the interview, Woodward, an associate editor at The Washington Post, defended his reporting in light of denials of material in the book attributed to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

“They are not telling the truth,” Woodward said, adding: “These people, these are political statements to protect their jobs, totally understandable.”

It’s understandable, but it doesn’t do much for their reputations.

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Gulagsplaining

Sep 10th, 2018 2:43 pm | By

Well this would explain a lot! The genius (or one of the geniuses) in charge of the @lgbtqgold account undertakes to explain why gulags were such fine fine institutions and Stalin was so tragically misunderstood:

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039140880731521025

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223037328089088

But it is “governed” by a former KGB agent, but don’t let that worry you.

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223043023949824

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223046983311361

Don’t you wish you could go live in one right now?

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223051097923585

People who don’t consent to repeat the formula “trans women are women” must be eradicated through “re-education” in a nice cozy book-filled gulag.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 20 comments


See this fist?

Sep 10th, 2018 11:13 am | By

The Guardian report was posted before Bolton gave his speech; the Times reports the speech given.

The Trump administration threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it pursued an investigation of American troops in Afghanistan, opening a harsh new attack on an old nemesis of many on the political right.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” President Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said in a speech on Monday in Washington.

“We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States,” Mr. Bolton said. “We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists in an I.C.C. investigation of Americans.”

In other words: Listen up, peasants: the United States is better than everyone else, and it is above the law. We can do whatever we want because we are the Colonial Power and you are the colonized. We have the biggest fist, and you can’t touch us. To sum up: we don’t give a rat’s ass about your stupid “international law” and your “treaties” and your “court.” If you don’t give us what we demand, we’ll just take it. In conclusion, fuck all of you.

Mr. Bolton’s hostile words, in what the White House has called his first major address as national security adviser, echoed the position he took as a senior official in the George W. Bush administration, when Mr. Bolton emerged as the most virulent foe of the court, which is based in The Hague.

The United States declined to join the court during Mr. Bush’s first term, when Mr. Bolton was an under secretary of state and later ambassador to the United Nations. After he left the Bush administration, the White House showed a little less resistance to the court’s work, even expressing support for its investigation of atrocities in Darfur.

Let’s keep this in mind when Trump makes us look back on Bush as not so bad.

Under President Barack Obama, the United States began helping the court in investigations and shifted to a policy of “positive engagement,” according to Harold Koh, then the State Department’s legal adviser.

Still, the United States never joined the court. And with Mr. Bolton back in power, the White House has swung back to the language of 2002 and 2003. In his speech, he made familiar arguments against the court, saying that it infringed on American sovereignty, had unchecked power, and was “ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous.”

What about Germany’s sovereignty? Huh? Didn’t the Nürnberg trials infringe on Germany’s sovereignty? Why shouldn’t a country commit genocide if it feels like it and nobody can stop it? Not just any country, of course, but the US, and…no, just the US.

“The largely unspoken, but always central, aim of its most vigorous supporters was to constrain the United States,” Mr. Bolton said. “The objective was not limited to targeting individual U.S. service members, but rather America’s senior political leadership, and its relentless determination to keep our country secure.”

By “senior political leadership” he of course means “more firepower.” The idea that we have “senior political leadership” at this moment is a mix of laughable and emetic.

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Because we are Perfect

Sep 10th, 2018 10:51 am | By

Oh great, John Bolton is going to trash the ICC. That’s a good look.

John Bolton, the hawkish US national security adviser, will threaten the international criminal court (ICC) with sanctions when he makes an excoriating attack on the institution in a speech in Washington.

According to drafts of his speech, Bolton will push for sanctions over an ICC investigation into alleged American war crimes in Afghanistan. He is also expected to announce on Monday the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington because of its calls for an ICC inquiry into Israel.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton will say, according to a draft of his speech seen by Reuters.

How is the ICC illegitimate? It’s illegitimate because it dares to investigate something the US did. Nobody has any right to investigate anything the US does, because the US is Sacred. In case this isn’t clear, just look at Trump and Mueller. It’s the same principle – Mueller has no right to investigate anything Trump does, because Trump is Sacred. How is he Sacred? He just is, that’s all, and asking questions about it is illegitimate.

“The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” the draft text continues. It says the Trump administration “will fight back” if the ICC formally proceeds with opening an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by US military and intelligence staff during the war in Afghanistan.

No investigation allowed, because John Bolton says so.

Bolton is expected to propose that the Trump administration bans ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the US, impose sanctions on any funds they have in the States and prosecute them in the American court system.

“We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us,” Bolton’s draft text says.

That’s grown-up foreign policy right there: the ICC is dead to us. You are dead to us, ICC! Don’t even try to call, we won’t answer!

The UN-backed court’s remit is to bring to justice the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The US did not ratify the Rome treaty that established the ICC in 2002. The then president George W Bush was strongly opposed to the court. President Barack Obama subsequently took measures to improve cooperation with the organisation.

And we can’t have that.

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Razor blade hoax

Sep 10th, 2018 9:37 am | By

There was a claim circulating that feminists had placed stickers at a Manchester railway station with razor blades behind them. That never did make much sense – wouldn’t they be visible behind a flat piece of paper? Also why would feminists seek to discredit themselves that way? Also what about the possibility that this is just yet more of the pretending that women are the source of violent aggression and men are their powerless victims?

So anyway, the police checked, and sure enough – it was bullshit.

10 Sep 2018 15:43
Sticker claims – Manchester Oxford Road

British Transport Police (BTP) were made aware of a tweet – dated 5 September – stating that stickers, with razor blades behind them, were put up in the toilets of Manchester Oxford Road train station.

Officers have attended the station to investigate this claim and have confirmed there is no evidence of this.

BTP has a tried and tested system in place for dealing with hoaxes designed to cause minimum disruption whilst ensuring the safety of members of the public and rail staff.

Nevertheless, hoaxers waste considerable police time and divert our much-needed resources from other duties. We will continue to monitor the situation and will take further action should this malicious activity continue.

Women as a class are not the oppressors of men as a class. Making up stories about razor blades behind feminist stickers is not going to flip that.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments


Whistle

Sep 10th, 2018 9:17 am | By

Yes, that’s fine, no problem at all, go right ahead.

https://twitter.com/Knightcartoons/status/1039017329030393856

Updating to add a tweet and a pointed retweet by JK Rowling:

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 24 comments


The money will be reallocated

Sep 9th, 2018 4:15 pm | By

Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker:

Update: Three hours after the publication of this story, CNN reported that Moonves will step down from his position at CBS. A person familiar with the discussions said that Moonves will no longer receive any of his exit compensation, pending the results of the independent investigation into the allegations, and that a portion of the amount he would have received will be donated to organizations focussed on sexual harassment and assault.

Now that’s some powerful journalism.

Members of the board of the CBS Corporation are negotiating with the company’s chairman and C.E.O., Leslie Moonves, about his departure. Sources familiar with the board’s activities said the discussions about Moonves stepping down began several weeks ago, after an article published in the The New Yorker detailed allegations by six women that the media executive had sexually harassed them, and revealed complaints by dozens of others that the culture in some parts of the company tolerated sexual misconduct. Since then, the board has selected outside counsel to lead an investigation into the claims.

As the negotiations continue and shareholders and advocacy groupsaccuse the board of failing to hold Moonves accountable, new allegations are emerging. Six additional women are now accusing Moonves of sexual harassment or assault in incidents that took place between the nineteen-eighties and the early aughts. They include claims that Moonves forced them to perform oral sex on him, that he exposed himself to them without their consent, and that he used physical violence and intimidation against them. A number of the women also said that Moonves retaliated after they rebuffed him, damaging their careers. Similar frustrations about perceived inaction have prompted another woman to raise a claim of misconduct against Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” who previously reported to Moonves as the chairman of CBS News.

…

The terms of Moonves’s potential departure have yet to be settled. Last week, news reports had circulated that he might leave with an exit package of nearly a hundred million dollars. Several of the women expressed outrage that Moonves might be enriched by his departure from the company. Jessica Pallingston, a writer, alleges that Moonves coerced her into performing oral sex on him when she worked as his temporary assistant, in the nineties, and that, after she repelled subsequent sexual advances, he became hostile, at one point calling her a “cunt.” “It’s completely disgusting,” she said of the reports of Moonves’s potential exit package. “He should take all that money and give it to an organization that helps survivors of sexual abuse.”

But remember, children: “cunt” is not a term of misogynist abuse, no no, it’s a friendly, wholesome insult with no specific application to female people.

It’s a long story.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Riling them up

Sep 9th, 2018 3:49 pm | By

Fox News needles a former CIA contractor to talk on the air about killing Obama.

Kris Paronto, who worked for the intelligence agency during the 2012 Benghazi attacks that left U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens dead, was speaking to host Pete Hegseth about recent remarks by Obama suggesting that the Republican investigation into the incident was politically motivated.

“It’s disgusting. It just raises the bile inside of me. I had a hard time just watching the speeches,” Paronto told Hegseth, Raw Story reported. “I just wanted to see what he had to say. And when that came across, I just wanted to reach through the screen and just grab him — grab him and choke him.”

“Honestly, the man is a disgrace, just a complete disgrace,” he said of the former president. “It’s completely offensive and I wish I had that man sitting in front of me right now without his Secret Service,” the former CIA contractor added, smacking his hands together in a threatening gesture.

Hegseth then cautioned Paronto against threatening a previous head of state. But the former contractor pushed back, saying: “It doesn’t get yourself away from saying comments when my friends died in front of me.”

Donald Trump has frequently referred to the Benghazi attacks as a cover up by the Obama administration, especially during his presidential campaign. He used this as a line of attack against his political opponent Hillary Clinton, who served as Secretary of State when the incident occured. However, ten investigations, six of which were led by Republican-controlled House committees, failed to find any wrongdoing by Clinton or other senior Obama officials.

Fine. Let’s talk about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion then.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


No exit compensation

Sep 9th, 2018 3:26 pm | By

Ronan Farrow dropped a new story today.

Three hours later…

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1038887744146169856

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog


The supposed issue

Sep 9th, 2018 10:07 am | By

Zinnia Jones showing the usual empathy for women and girls:

Right up there with Hannah Mouncey in solidarity with girls and women.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 11 comments


It just is

Sep 9th, 2018 9:59 am | By

The genius of Dave Rubin:

https://twitter.com/aiizavva/status/1038430387154894849

The racist ideas of the day are not coming from conservatives and libertarians, they’re really not, and they’re certainly not coming from classical liberals. They’re coming from the progressives, that actually is just true, it just is.

Mmhm. Sam Harris insisting that Charles Murray was and is right that brown people are stupid is not a racist idea of the day, fer sher.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


It was you, Donnie

Sep 9th, 2018 9:44 am | By

Trump and his thugs are pretending to think the anonymous “hero” is a security threat.

“We’ll find out if there was criminal activity involved,” vice-president Mike Pence told Fox News Sunday. “I think the president’s concern is that this individual may have responsibilities in the area of national security.”

Don’t be schewpid, of course it’s not. Trump’s concern is Trump.

Pence was echoed by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union as the hunt for the author continued.

“There could be a national security risk at hand,” she warned. “It depends on what else has been divulged by this individual … Anybody who would do this, you don’t know what else they’re saying.”

Please. The threat is Trump. The calls are coming from inside the house.

On Friday, Trump called on his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to lead an investigation to identify the author. But Conway acknowledged that the opinion piece per se did not constitute criminal activity.

“I think this person is going to suss himself or herself out,” Conway said. “Cowards are like criminals, eventually they tell the wrong person.”

That’s not what “suss” means.

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Trump should be shackled

Sep 8th, 2018 5:59 pm | By

Is Trump wrong in the head? Yes, Trump is wrong in the head. Woodward’s book says so, anomynous really anomynous I mean anonymous says so, mental health experts say so.

None of this is a surprise to those of us who, 18 months ago, put together our own public service book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”

My focus as the volume’s editor was on Trump’s dangerousness because of my area of expertise in violence prevention. Approaching violence as a public health issue, I have consulted with governments and international organizations, in addition to 20 years of engaging in the individual assessment and treatment of violent offenders.

All involved were aware of the norms against diagnosing people at a distance, but they were also aware of the norms in favor of harm reduction and risk reporting, and the latter weighed more heavily than the former.

We already know a great deal about Trump’s mental state based on the voluminous information he has given through his tweets and his responses to real situations in real time. Now, this week’s credible reports support the concerns we articulated in the book beyond any doubt.

These reports are also consistent with the account I received from two White House staff members who called me in October 2017 because the president was behaving in a manner that “scared” them, and they believed he was “unraveling”. They were calling because of the book I edited.

The op-ed author talked of Trump’s lack of principle and his impulsive and reckless decision-making.

These are obviously psychological symptoms reflective of emotional compulsion, impulsivity, poor concentration, narcissism and recklessness. They are identical to those that Woodward describes in numerous examples, which he writes were met with the “stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters.”

They are also consistent with the course we foresaw early in Trump’s presidency, which concerned us enough to outline it in our book. We tried to warn that his condition was worse than it appeared, would grow worse over time and would eventually become uncontainable.

Really? Because I’ve thought he’s been steadily improving all this time.

Hahaha kidding.

My current concern is that we are already witnessing a further unraveling of the president’s mental state, especially as the frequency of his lying increases and the fervor of his rallies intensifies.

I am concerned that his mental challenges could cause him to take unpredictable and potentially extreme and dangerous measures to distract from his legal problems.

Yep. One of these days he could just launch some nukes, to make things a little pleasanter for himself. It’s kind of a shame that nobody who could do anything about this is doing anything about this.

Mental health professionals have standard procedures for evaluating dangerousness. More than a personal interview, violence potential is best assessed through past history and a structured checklist of a person’s characteristics.

These characteristics include a history of cruelty to animals or other people, risk taking, behavior suggesting loss of control or impulsivity, narcissistic personality and current mental instability. Also of concern are noncompliance or unwillingness to undergo tests or treatment, access to weapons, poor relationship with significant other or spouse, seeing oneself as a victim, lack of compassion or empathy, and lack of concern over consequences of harmful acts.

The Woodward book and the New York Times op-ed confirm many of these characteristics. The rest have been evident in Trump’s behavior outside the White House and prior to his tenure.

The fact that he ticks not some but all of the boxes should be cause for alarm, Bandy Lee says. Yep, no denying that.

She says more about how bad it all looks. Not a word of it seems anything but self-evident and impossible to deny.

From my observations of the president over extended time via his public presentations, direct thoughts through tweets and accounts of his close associates, I believe that the question is not whether he will look for distractions, but how soon and to what degree.

At least several thousands of mental health professionals who are members of the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts share the view that the nuclear launch codes should not be in the hands of someone who exhibits such levels of mental instability.

They absolutely should not. Is anyone trustworthy doing anything about it? Possibly so, but it would be nice to be sure.

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