Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Just seen on Netflix.

Wow.

The down side of monarchy

What if the king is a boob who uses his power to carry out stupid whims and protect cronies?

Say it again

We can't say often enough that Trump's protectionism hurts far more of his own working class voters than it can possibly help, not least by providing tax revenues paid by them to partially replace the tax revenues that will no longer be paid by the rich, thanks to Bozo's massive tax cut.

His voters are just plain stupid.

Besides being "a basket of deplorables".

OCDE: choc frontal entre les Etats-Unis et leurs partenaires

So the c-word is OK, now?

Or maybe just for women and girls, like "nigger" is OK only for black people.

Comedian Samantha Bee calls Ivanka Trump a 'feckless c***'

Feminists in the 60s and 70s wrote endlessly that men's use of various rude words for vagina as insults was misogynistic and comparable in wickedness to white people's use of the n-word - all the while encouraging use of such words as "dick" and "prick" as insults.

So is "cunt" back?

Bozo's future?

Governor Greitens.

MSNBC rides a hobby horse

Everyday racism.

More proof, if more were needed, that people's politics are generally as baseless and absurd as their religion.

Al Sharpton of the Tawana Brawley affair would not have been my first choice, looking for a black person to comment credibly on the topic.

Liberals, perhaps (?) especially black liberals, perceive or claim to perceive racism where it is invisible to others.

Liberals, perhaps (?) especially black liberals, perceive or claim to perceiver something they are convinced deserves the name "white privilege".

And liberals, perhaps (?) especially black liberals, fail to perceive or claim to fail to perceive, and all but exceptionlessly deny, black or other non-white racial hatred of whites.

So, it's done, then?

Bozo in Tennessee.

Trump went to Nashville, Tennessee to do a campaign rally on Tuesday to support Marsha Blackburn's run at a Senate seat and used the same tired shtick and bizarre self-glorification he craves to promote himself and attack his rivals.

He bragged about making America great again, being respected again and issuing "no more apologies."

Mission accomplished!

Maybe he'll quit and go home under a hail of accolades from a grateful nation.

How did this even start?

Valerie Jarrett responds to Roseanne's racist Twitter rant: 'A teaching moment'

Why on earth did R feel moved to attack VJ, anyway?

Obama has been out of the White House for some 15 months.

The ape thing is classic racism, but what's up with the Muslim thing?

Valerie Jarrett, a former top aide to President Barack Obama, reacted to actress Roseanne Barr's racist Twitter rant that led to the cancellation of the television sitcom "Roseanne" on Tuesday by saying that the incident should become "a teaching moment."

In one tweet, Barr wrote, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj" in reference to Jarrett. ABC announced it was canceling "Roseanne" in the aftermath of the Twitter outburst.

And Bozo, of course, used the occasion to whine about ABC's coverage of himself.

"Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that 'ABC does not tolerate comments like those' made by Roseanne Barr," Trump tweeted Wednesday. 

"Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?"

This is interesting.

Cole is a fully compliant liberal, so in his mind anything you really want to damn you have to call racism.

No matter how often it is pointed out that Islam is a religion whose followers are of all races, they will never concede that religious and political hostility toward or suspicion of Muslims is (a) not necessarily unreasonable and (b) not per se a form of racism.

And despite the fact that Islam's most dangerous followers are generally whites in or from the Middle East or Iran.

Ms. Jarrett is African-American, and ape comparisons are an ugly staple of anti-Black discourse. 

Even the right wing comic Wanda Sykes (a former National Security Agency employee) resigned from the show as production consultant.

The internet has been thick with falsehoods for years about Ms. Jarrett having wanted to promote Islam in the US. 

Apparently these lies derive from her having been born in Shiraz, Iran, while her father, an American physician, was helping out at a hospital there. The family is not Muslim. 

The connection from there to the Muslim Brotherhood is ignorance, since the Brotherhood is Sunni but Iran is largely Shiite.

. . . .

It probably does not need to be said that it was the ‘planet of the apes’ crack rather than the weird invocation of the Muslim Brotherhood that got Barr fired. 

Racist language against Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians is virtually the only uncontroversial hate speech in today’s America. 

Barr even did a segment about Muslim neighbors with strong Islamophobic overtones. 

The inmates of Marshalsea

Dickens is endlessly sympathetic to the downtrodden who are, in his eyes, decent, responsible, enterprising, and upright - though only less so toward persons of like character who are not at all, or not much, downtrodden.

Even if and after they become extraordinarily rich by one sort of windfall or another, legally and respectably, and take up lives of leisure.

And he jeers at and satirizes not only the villains of his works but also those deficient in character in lesser degree, regardless of their social station.

In his works he makes sure to show us characters of both sorts all over the social map.

The contrast is stark, for example, between his attitude toward and treatment of Little Dorrit and his attitude toward and treatment of her father and the rest of her family, as well as the denizens of Marshalsea of whom most are their admirers and supporters.

I can see many reasons why some people might think of this as perhaps his finest book.

Not the least is the quality of the writing, itself.

And though some, it is said, find it rather darker than much else of his, it is all the same quite funny in many places.

To impeach, or not to impeach? That will be the question.

Rudy Giuliani.

John Amato.

Host Dana Bash asked about intentional strategy to attack the validity of the special counsel since Robert Mueller must stay silent.

BASH: No, but, I mean, that this is an intentional strategy to undermine the investigation, knowing that they, the investigators, the special counsel, it's their policy not to talk. But you are very free to and are very aggressive about doing so. 

GIULIANI: Well, I mean, they're -- they are giving us the material. I -- I couldn't do it if I didn't have the material. They are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president. We are defending -- to a large extent, remember, Dana, we are defending here, it is for public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach, not impeach. 

Rudy continued, "Members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, are going to be informed a lot by their constituents. So, our jury is the American -- as it should be -- is the American people. And the American people, yes, are Republicans largely, independents pretty substantially, and even Democrats now question the legitimacy of it."

Rudy is admitting that they feel impeachment is an option and is coming down the pike. That's odd since Trump has repeatedly said he and his campaign did nothing wrong.

But with this admission by Trump's legal spokesperson, the media should not ever take any attacks by the Trump administration on the Special Counsel seriously ever again.

Endless, continuing, and public efforts at obstruction of justice.

Abuse of power (the Amazon/Bezos stuff).

Possibly some charges to do with perjury or lying to the FBI.

Maybe, in the end, something to do with unlawful acceptance of Russian help in the campaign.

At least the first three are possible bases for articles of impeachment I and maybe most people would support.

The last? The "underlying crime"? Not so much.

And there might be any number of incidental crimes unearthed in the course of the investigation.

We'll see, as the Duce so likes to say.

The myths of Pocahontas

Steve M. on Elizabeth Warren

Bear in mind that Steve M speaks for and attempts to influence only slightly from their left main stream liberals and Democrats.

His voice is not an extremist voice, though it is a dyed-in-the-wool, one-hundred-percenter voice.

By which I mean to say that, so far as I have seen, there is not a single issue on which he fails to adhere to the official and certified and true blue liberal position, a nudge or so to the left of the rather less litmus-test-certifiable body of Democratic office holders and politicians, wherever there is one.

As for Pocahontas, well, anybody can make a myth or weaponize history.

Steve writes,

The right-wingers who mock her [Elizabeth Warren] by calling her Pocahontas don't do it because they care about Native Americans, any more than the right-wingers who mocked Rachel Dolezal for being a white woman who claimed to be black did so because they cared about black people. 

Why would caring about Indians or blacks be a reason for such mockery, anyway?

(Yeah, we all mocked Dolezal, but I'm focusing on conservatives now.) 

Right-wingers believe that Warren knowingly lied about her heritage and gained employment advantages as a result.

And then he writes,

To the right, this is everything wrong with liberals: We hate white people even if (or especially if) we're white, and we think non-whiteness is so awesome we created a system that discriminates against white people -- a system Dolezal and Warren took advantage of.

Really, that's what the right believes -- and not just the right, but some people who aren't so far to the right.

And then,

If you go to Pocahontas.com now, you land here, and can read this:

The story of the real Pocahontas is quite different from the myth that has been twisted by powerful people over the generations. When Pocahontas met John Smith, he was almost 30 years old – and she was about 10 years old. Whatever happened between them, it was no love story. 

In her teens, Pocahontas was abducted, imprisoned, and held captive. Oral history of the Mattaponi tribe indicates that she was ripped away from her first husband and raped in captivity. When she later married John Rolfe, he paraded her around London to entertain the British and prop up financial investments in the Virginia Company. She was about 21 years old when she died, an ocean apart from her people. 

Even today, violence continues to devastate Native communities. More than half of today’s Native women have experienced sexual violence.

I think Warren imagines that if she's attacked as Pocahontas by a political opponent -- maybe this year by independent Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai, who was born in India and calls her a "fake Indian" in campaign advertising, and eventually by Donald Trump -- she'll turn the attack around by saying something along these lines.

I hope it works. 

I suspect it will work in Massachusetts, where there's a highly educated electorate, and where Warren seems likely to be easily reelected this year.

To which I posted this comment.

"To the right, this is everything wrong with liberals: We hate white people even if (or especially if) we're white, and we think non-whiteness is so awesome we created a system that discriminates against white people -- a system Dolezal and Warren took advantage of.

"Really, that's what the right believes -- and not just the right, but some people who aren't so far to the right."

Right on target.

And the perception is encouraged by the right wing propaganda that smears mainstream liberals and Democrats with the outlooks and attitudes of unrepresentative extremists who do their best to influence liberals and Democrats, claim to speak for them, or even claim to be among them.

Just as left wing propaganda would have it that every Republican has an "88" tattooed on his shoulder.

https://www.adl.org/educati...

As to the whole Pocahontas thing, there isn't a Franco-American - a French Canadian - in the country whose family doesn't maintain just such a tradition of remote Indian ancestry.

Still, few of us try to capitalize on such traditions as she has so ludicrously done.

It's not that her claim is untrue.

It's that it's silly, even if true.

I never noted my own family's claim to a remote Iroquois ancestor on any application for anything, or any census asking about race or ethnicity.

And remote Native American ancestry is just a damned flimsy reason for tribal leaders to offer political support to a personally privileged white woman of such annoying, schoolmarm tendencies.

Oh, and I just have to ask.

How does turning the Pocahontas myth on its head, using it as a club to bash and guilt-trip white people, seem to her or to you like a good way to respond to expected mockery from Republicans?

How would that not be a blatant validation of the widespread right wing conviction that liberals endorse racial hostility toward whites that you so properly point out?

File under the labels, "guilt-trip politics" and "weaponized history".

Korea summit still on? Back on?

Trump cancelled it Thursday and says now it's still on.

Feds lose 1500 children of illegal immigrants

US lost track of 1,500 immigrant children, but says it's not 'legally responsible'

The federal government has placed thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children in the homes of sponsors, but last year it couldn't account for nearly 1,500 of them.

. . . .

Wagner's statement has attracted more attention amid reports that immigrant children are being separated from their parents at the US border.

Wagner said the Department of Homeland Security referred more than 40,000 immigrant children to the ORR during the 2017 fiscal year.

This is not required by law.

It is Trump's own personal policy.

So of course he tweeted up a storm this weekend blaming Obama, the Democrats, and current immigration law for what he called the cruel and inhuman separation of families of people illegally crossing the border.

Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

Again, it is entirely his policy not at all required by law and not imposed by Obama or the Democrats.

And he seems to have forgotten that the Republicans control both houses of the congress, not the Democrats.

Do they want to change the law in some way?

Have at it.

A different feminism?

So is this really a thing?

Or a tiny minority within the feminist movement as a whole?

Open your eyes, pro-life feminists are everywhere

When I began working in the pro-life movement in the late 1980s, while the "boots on the ground" were often female, the C-suites of organizations like the National Right to Life and Americans United for Life were occupied by men. 

Today, hands-down, the most visible voices and leaders in the movement are women -- at the National Right to Life Committee, at Students for Life, at Live Action, at Americans United for Life, and at the March for Life.

In recent years, too, women have begun to spearhead many pro-life groups with explicitly pro-women agendas, which articulate how women's rights are co-extensive with children's rights: Feminists for Life, the Susan B. Anthony List, New Wave Feminists (with the inimitable slogan: Badass.ProLife.Feminist.), Rehumanize International ("Working to make aggressive violence a thing of the past through education, discourse, and action"), the Sisters of Life (a contemplative order dedicated to the "protection and enhancement of the sacredness of every human life" and providing ongoing support for mothers) and my own organization, Women Speak for Themselves (Empowering.Local.Voices).

If you're paying attention, it's impossible to miss the trend.

I'm a feminist against abortion. Why exclude me from a march for women?

I did not vote for President-Elect Donald Trump and continue to question his fitness to serve. 

Thus I am unsurprised that hundreds of thousands of women would want to protest his election this coming Saturday, the day after the inauguration. 

I am surprised, however, that the leaders of the Women's March on Washington—and most feminists today—are so unwilling to listen to an alternative feminist perspective, one with deep roots in feminist history and a good deal to offer to women today.

As a pro-choice activist who helped lead my college's Women's Center in the 1990s, and now, decades later, as a pro-life feminist, I too have looked forward to the day when a strong and accomplished woman would lead our nation. 

But however strong and accomplished, Secretary Clinton was not the woman for me. 

To me she represents all the contradictions of abortion rights feminism, contradictions also conspicuous in the guiding principles of the Women's March. 

In my view, an authentic women's movement—one that properly extols human dignity, care, and non-violence—must be unabashedly pro-life.

Note the rather archaic misandry of this author, which sounds, oddly, rather Catholic to me.

That and her wholesale criticism of the sexual revolution makes me suspect a strong dose of social conservatism extending well beyond this single question of the right to kill the unborn.

Or maybe it's a dash of old-fashioned sociobiology.

If I could say just one thing to those at the Women's March, it would be this: the constitutional right to abortion has only made men like Trump worse.

Contraception fails. It just does. 

But constitutionalizing the right to abortion as Roe did in January 1973 hasn't relieved women of the consequences of sex or the vulnerabilities of pregnancy. 

Rather it has detached men even further from sex's procreative potential and, for the poor in particular, increased the vulnerability of both women and children. 

That is, easy abortion empowers the male illusion that sex can finally be completely consequence-free. 

For men, anyway.

The ascendancy of abortion rights feminism over the last fifty years has failed to remedy the sort of objectification of women on particular display by our president-elect in the unearthed Access Hollywood video and beyond. 

As pro-life feminists have long argued, the undisciplined testosterone-driven male libido, interested in no-strings-attached sex, benefits most from an abortion-permissive culture. 

And when male sexuality goes undisciplined, bereft of the deep emotional bonds once demanded by self-respecting women, sex is sought for pleasure alone. 

For the most callous of men, women become mere pleasure-providers, the objects of the male libido's aggressive demands.

And more, and worth the reading.

Rosenstein allows GOP assholes to view documents about Russiagate

Rosenstein caved to all Bozo's utter bullshit about the FBI spying on his campaign, massively bullhorned by the right wing echo-chamber.

President Donald Trump has branded his latest attempt to discredit the special counsel's Russia investigation as "spygate," part of a newly invigorated strategy embraced by his Republican colleagues to raise suspicions about the probe that has dogged his presidency since the start.

Trump now is zeroing in on — and at times embellishing — reports that a longtime U.S. government informant approached members of his 2016 campaign during the presidential election in a possible bid to glean intelligence on Russian efforts to sway the election. 

He tweeted Wednesday morning that the FBI has been caught in a "major SPY scandal."

Trump's dense cloud of bullshit portrays as a "major spy scandal" the FBI doing its job.

He has been peddling this lie for over a year.

He committed to naked and direct interference on Monday, when he dragged the FBI director and Rosenstein into the woodshed to pressure the hell out of them to give his most rabid Congressional supporters the access to highly classified and sensitive information about investigation of Russian interference in the election of 2016 they have been demanding in a private meeting between them and his GOP supporters.

And then all this was made public by the White House.

The Democrats first protested this violation of long-time and normal procedure and then insisted if it was to happen at all it had to be bipartisan.

President Trump’s unprecedented meeting on Monday with the FBI director and deputy attorney general regarding a case in which he is directly involved may turn out to be the defining moment of his presidency and for his party.

. . . .

Naturally, Democrats protested vehemently. 

On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent a forceful letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray declaring that the meeting “is completely improper in its proposed form and would set a damaging precedent for your institutions and the rule of law.” 

They warned, “We can think of no legitimate oversight justification for the ex parte dissemination – at the direction of the president – of investigative information to the president’s staunchest defenders in Congress and, ultimately, to the president’s legal defense team.” 

However, they wrote, if Rosenstein and Wray think the meeting is necessary to prevent things from “devolving into an outright constitutional crisis,” then the only proper body to receive information was the so-called Gang of Eight (the majority and minority leaders of both houses and the chairmen and ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee).

Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also called on Rosenstein to revisit his decision “to release highly sensitive, highly classified information to members of Congress who have indicated that they intend to use it to undermine an ongoing investigation and federal law enforcement.” 

They urged him to “cancel any plan to release this information until its disclosure will avoid putting the Special Counsel’s work at risk.”

The meeting itself was demanded by Bozo's most mendacious supporters in Congress, led by Sam Nunez.

It is now said that Trump's chief of staff will be there, too.

The Gang of Eight meeting is to occur today.

Of course, the GOP insisted they alone have a pre-meeting from which the Dems would be excluded, but Adam Schiff showed up and demanded, and was given, admission.

This is leading Trumpists and Bozo himself openly interfering with - obstructing - an ongoing FBI investigation.

Art of the deal?

Trump Pulls Out of North Korea Summit Meeting with Kim Jong-un

President Trump has notified Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, that he has canceled their much-anticipated meeting to discuss steps toward denuclearization and peace because of recent “tremendous anger and open hostility” by Pyongyang toward members of his administration.

. . . .

Mr. Trump’s reference to anger and hostility followed comments from a North Korean official who described Vice President Mike Pence as “ignorant and stupid.”

Mr. Pence had said that relations with North Korea “will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal.” 

He made the comments in an interview on Monday with Fox News.

But in front of the cameras just now Bozo was not angry and instead was persistently optimistic about how it will all work out, insisting Kim and the North Koreans still want to "do the right thing".

Too hot an issue for the news

This is the closest I have come to finding a straight news account of the impending Irish referendum on repeal of a feature of the Irish constitution that insists the unborn child has a right to life equal to that of the mother, the 8th Amendment.

Everyone in Ireland, including courts and lawyers and politicians, agrees it effectively prohibits any and all abortions, except in some cases where the life of the mother is at stake.

Most of the big media coverage is highly editorial, highly partisan, and mostly fiercely supportive of repeal.

Even CNN has a hard time sticking to neutral coverage.

The young Americans trying to stop Ireland from voting Yes to abortion

And we get the usual mendacious behavior from the usual suspects.

Facebook Tips the Scales in Ireland’s Abortion Referendum

Says Father Marcel de la Cruz in WSJ,

[T]he Irish government and many in the traditional media have grown concerned that voters will reject their push for legalized abortion. 

Social media is one of the few avenues of public outreach left to those who oppose repeal of the Irish Constitution’s pro-life Eighth Amendment, which voters overwhelmingly approved in 1983. 

An independent member of the Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s lower house of Parliament, accused Prime Minister Leo Varadkar last week of lobbying Facebook to ban advertising related to the referendum on abortion. 

Legislator Mattie McGrath said the ban was “preventing campaigns that have done nothing illegal from campaigning in a perfectly legal matter.”

. . . .

As a co-founder of FrontPage.org, a website that has published articles in support of the Eighth Amendment, I have seen firsthand how Facebook puts its thumb on the scale. 

Earlier this month Facebook’s ad service denied our attempts to promote two op-eds by journalist Bruce Arnold of the Irish Independent, Ireland’s most popular daily newspaper. 

It also blocked our attempts to promote a letter signed by more than 100 Irish lawyers defending the Eighth Amendment.


Last week Facebook’s Dublin lawyers rejected our request to restore FrontPage.org’s ability to inform the Irish public on issues regarding the referendum. 

It isn’t too late for the company to admit its mistake and reverse its decision. 

That would truly serve the interest of freedom, fairness and transparency.

Full disclosure: I do not accept that Russian propaganda activity in support of Trump ought per se to be regarded as scandalous, and neither do I regard criminalization of it as a good thing.

In any case it is certainly a marvel of hypocrisy, considering our own government's long tradition of extensive "interference" in other people's elections using just such, and other less savory, means.

And I am no more supportive of facebook trying to censor its users in a government-coerced effort to suppress fake news than I am of the government doing it directly.

First Amendment, free expression, don't you know.

And that is not an amendment we should repeal.

A lot of this is pure anti-Trump excess doing damage that will outlast him.

Update. Repeal of the 8th passed.

Nevada moving toward criminalizing prostitution?

The churches support it.

Feminists support it.

Some leading Democrats support it.

The campaign to shut down Nevada's old west brothels

Prohibition of prostitution is even stupider than prohibition of alcohol.

Or, for that matter, prohibition of recreational use of marijuana.

Shed a tear for them? Maybe not.

Iowa: will America's strictest abortion law drive female voters to the left?

A new Iowa law passed in May that bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually at about six weeks. 

That is before most women know they are pregnant. 

The law, Madison [a Trump voting, ex-Democrat white woman in her sixties] said, is “awful”.

“We’re going to see a lot more clothes hangers used and women dying,” Madison said. 

“I just don’t go along with it.” 

The law won’t affect her, or her children, but she said she hoped her granddaughters would “have the choice”.

I have no doubt her attitude towards laws prohibiting abortion is about the same as that of most people toward the Volstead Act, and of many people toward laws criminalizing recreational use of marijuana.

And that explains her blaming, for women dying from use of clothes hangers, not the women for killing themselves in an attempt to kill their own children, but the law that forbids them to do that, or the people who made that law.

But supporters of such laws place the blame squarely on the women and the back-alley abortionists from whom they seek help.

Their attitude towards these women?

Well, consider most people's attitude toward terrorist bomb-makers who blow themselves up.

Not so fast

Pope Reportedly Tells Gay Man 'God Made You Like This And Loves You'

Frances Langum at C&L writes, under that headline,

Is even the Catholic Church evolving on this issue? It appears so.

She quotes CNN:

A victim of clerical sexual abuse has said that Pope Francis told him that God made him gay and that his sexuality "does not matter." 

Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of sexual abuse, spent three days with Pope Francis at the Vatican in April, in which he discussed his sexuality and the abuse he suffered at the hands of a Chilean priest. 

Describing his encounter with the Pope to CNN, Cruz said: "You know Juan Carlos, that does not matter. God made you like this. God loves you like this. The Pope loves you like this and you should love yourself and not worry about what people say."

The traditional Catholic position is that while what we do is up to us, what we want to do is not.

And that God loves us all.

And that morally we must not fulfill some desires.

Nothing the Pope said - or reportedly said - conflicts with or departs from any of that.

I'll think he's really revising the traditional Christian and Catholic moral view when he says homosexual activity is not wrong.

Or, for that matter, any sexual activity at all apart from intercourse with one's spouse of the opposite sex making no use of birth control measures other than the rhythm method.

Wait for that.

Don't hold your breath.

Journal of the Plague Year

I have abandoned this book out of boredom and irritation at the narrator's annoying, though entirely believable and appropriate to the time and place, rather Calvinist Protestant Christian piety.

I have turned to a volume of Dickens, whose books, Pickwick Papers aside, have never bored me and whose first person narrators have never displayed annoying forms of piety.

Cannot stand those huge, obtrusive, and intrusive google-ads

So I dropped my online subscription to the New York Times.

Why the hell should I pay for that?

The Royal Wedding

The Times has a fine slideshow.

The weather and people and costumes were gorgeous.

And the whole affair was a studied affront not only to sociocon morality (divorce! remarriage!) and monarchic traditionalism (an American and a commoner!) but also, and more significantly, to white Nativism, nationalism, and racism.

She was beautiful, alert, and visibly happy.

He was hung over, it seemed.

What should the blue wave do?

If there actually is one, I mean, of course.

The Republicans having trampled collegiality and bipartisanship into the ground, I have no more interest in it than they do.

If the Democrats in Congress have to act with little or no Republican support, so be it.

In fact, the desire for such support should play no part in determining their agenda.

Better to let both the congressional GOP and the president show their true colors through their votes and his vetoes.

If their numbers in Congress allow it, the Democrats should undo as much as they can of the damage done by Bozo and the Republican Party, most definitely including tax increases on the rich to avoid the huge increases to the deficit and the national debt programmed in by the GOP.

Making DACA the law would be good.

Sending to the states an amendment to repeal the Second Amendment - without the customary 7 year time limit - would be good.

Undoing the damage to Obamacare, CHIP, food stamps, welfare, the VA, the EPA, and the Department of State ought to be priorities, as well as making Medicaid expansion more attractive for states.

And then they can pass increases in Social Security benefits, plug the donut hole in Medicare Part D, and reduce both the Part B premium and the massive share of the cost of care that currently falls on patients with so-called "traditional Medicare".

Only after at least attempting as much of the above as possible - Trump will doubtless veto most or even all of it, and the congressional GOP will vote against all of it - should the Democrats move on to what will surely paralyze the Congress utterly for the rest of Trump's first term, at least, an effort at impeachment that cannot actually succeed unless the Democrats win not only a majority of seats in the house so they can set the process in motion but 67 seats in the senate so they can actually fire the president.

And I am far from saying they should attempt the thing only if they do win both a majority in the house and at least 67 seats in the senate.

Once the GOP and Bozo have again shown what they are about through their votes and his vetoes, it will be just as well to dirty them all up as much as possible heading into the presidential election of 2020.

To actually undo any of the damage, already done and yet to come, by the GOP and the Duce, the Democrats have to win and win big in 2020.

Do not expect Bozo to resign, and do not expect his base to reject the lies that it's all a witch hunt and that all eventual allegations of actual crime by the president are just lies coming from "the deep state", the people and institutions of the federal government.

Do not be surprised if Trump ends up pardoning in advance a great many people, possibly including himself.

What could he lose by rolling the dice?

Or if Mike Pence does a whole lot of pardoning, including of Bozo, if Trump is forced out.

I assume, of course, that Bozo's public behavior has already and for quite a while included obstruction of justice several times enacted before the eyes of all the world, and that Mueller will prove crimes not only by many people around Trump but by Trump himself, no doubt including but not limited to illegally lying on multiple occasions.

And do not expect Trump to settle for one term, or to be defeated in the primary season by some non-Buchananite Republican challenger.

Update.

Watching the rebroadcast of Rachel's Friday show on which she compared Bozo's efforts to "fuck with" Jeff Bezos through attacks on Amazon, to avenge the Washington Post coverage of Russiagate and Trump, to Nixon's felonious abuses of power to ruin people on his "enemies list", explaining that those abuses were the basis for the second article of impeachment against Nixon.

Update 2, 05232018, 1327 hrs EDT.

A thought suggested by the impending Irish referendum on repeal of the 8th Amendment to their constitution is that the Congress should send the states a Human Life Amendment.

Why have the Republicans not done this?

Why are they not doing it before the midterms?

Are they relying on Trump to pack the Supremes with people who will overturn Roe, restoring a constitutional status quo ante?

10 killed, 10 wounded in Santa Fe, Texas, shooting

Seen on Morning Joy moments ago:

A white guy maybe in his thirties in a tee shirt and bermudas, carrying an American flag, wearing a MAGA hat and a holstered semi-automatic pistol, approached the high school on foot.

Stopped by police and newsies, he explained he was there "to offer support".

And then he walked away.

Texas, of course, is an open carry state.

These are the people whose man is in the White House.

Time to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

Federal, state, and local authorities will then be free to outlaw firearms types and legally restrict, or even forbid, civilian ownership of firearms, as well as impose gun safety and registration requirements.

Meanwhile, people who want gun control are shoveling bullshit in large quantities, trying to increase alarm and outrage by using ludicrous criteria for identification in order to pump up the number of school shootings so far this year, all the while knowing perfectly well that the audience will take them to be referring to mass shootings of students or school personnel by people who went to the school purposely to carry them out.

Proving the lack of scruple and respect for decency in politics is not confined to one side.

Politifact is among those far too indulgent toward these both laughable and egregiously, intentionally misleading ways of counting.

As to the shooter in Santa Fe, he told police his purpose was to kill some people he didn't like.

No indication of religious, political, or racial motivation.

Thumbs up, thumbs down

Possibly the only thing on which I am closer to the Republicans than the Democrats is abortion.

And that is because support for the alleged right of women to kill their unborn children, which ought to be denied the shelter of the privacy right given it in Roe, is the absolute core of modern feminism, and because feminists are so strong within the Democratic Party they have made it a litmus test issue for Democratic candidates.

In my view - except for the first couple of weeks of pregnancy, before actual organs begin to develop, during which it is intrinsically unobjectionable, though perhaps it still would be best for it to be illegal - abortion is the killing of an unborn child and ought to be illegal, just as is infanticide.

In fact, woman should have legally enforceable duties of care for their unborn children, just as parents have such duties regarding their children who have already been born.

But what women want is the right to commit murder, and without any interference from anyone, not even the fathers of their children, not even the parents of pregnant minors.

And they want that more than anything else on their feminist todo list, many of the items on which are there only to defend or entrench that right.

It occurs to me that Immanuel Kant somewhere wrote that prohibitions of cruelty to animals were necessary, though animals have no rights and no moral standing in themselves, in order to prevent humans being even more vicious and brutal toward each other than they are.

Surely someone must see how this applies to the question whether abortion ought to be prohibited, even if it is believed or anyway alleged that unborn children are not children or have no rights.

Though it has been argued by some utilitarian ethicists - perhaps previously employed at Buchenwald and widely admired by liberals -  that killing a mature ape or adult chimpanzee is morally much worse than even killing a human infant, and much, much worse than abortion.

Trump Administration to Tie Health Facilities’ Funding to Abortion Restrictions

But this is horrible, malicious, ugly, misogynist Nativism.

Trump Administration Wants to Shut Door on Abused Women

Trump's bullshit is now nearly unendurable

Trump lies again, promising to fight school shootings.

He made a much bigger show, for days, and much bigger and more detailed promises, last time.

And did nothing.

And the Republican Congress did nothing.

Support not only for the Second Amendment but for the most, and increasingly, extremist gun-rights positions has become a litmus test affair for the Republican Party.

Santa Fe, Texas

At Least 8 Dead and Suspect in Custody

He will lie and bullshit and do stupid things, if anything.

Since the Supremes upheld the new district map, we will be in 17 in November, rather than 18

Lamb, currently our congressman in our current 18th, will run this fall in the new 17.

Lamb opens up.

The real forever war

Bain de sang à Gaza pour l’inauguration de l’ambassade des États-Unis à Jérusalem

Donald Trump n’a pas fléchi. Depuis lundi – soixante-dix ans après la création de l’État d’Israël – l’ambassade des États-Unis a déménagé de Tel-Aviv à Jérusalem, donnant de facto à la Ville sainte un statut de capitale.

Mais l’inauguration de l’ambassade, en présence d’Ivanka Trump et de Jared Kushner, n’a pas fait la une de la presse internationale pour ses discours officiels sur l’amitié américano-israélienne, mais pour “le contraste saisissant” entre les festivités et le “bain de sang, à 80 km de là, qui a coûté la vie à au moins 55 Palestiniens”, observe le Los Angeles Times.

Pour les Palestiniens, ulcérés par la décision de Washington, la journée de lundi devait aussi marquer l’aboutissement de la Marche du retour, un mouvement de 45 jours commencé le 30 mars “pendant lequel des dizaines de milliers de Palestiniens ont marché vers la frontière (entre Gaza et Israël) pour réclamer la fin des 11 ans de siège de la bande de Gaza, et le retour des réfugiés dans leurs maisons et sur leurs terres”, explique le site d’information israélien +972.

Mais Tsahal n’a pas hésité à répondre par la force, qualifiant le rassemblement de lundi de “violente émeute” et assurant que “les protestataires avaient lancé des bombes incendiaires et des pierres contre ses soldats, et avaient essayé de placer un engin explosif près de la barrière de sécurité de la frontière”, rapporte The Jerusalem Post.

Au moins 55 Palestiniens, dont plusieurs mineurs de moins de 16 ans, ont été tués, et quelque 2 700 personnes ont été blessées dans les affrontements, selon le dernier bilan. 

L’armée a été accusée par les associations de défense des droits de l’Homme “d’usage disproportionné de la force” contre des “manifestants non armés”, relève le quotidien. 

La direction de l’Autorité palestinienne a quant à elle crié au “massacre”.

Constitutional in Germany?

La Bavière dote sa police de pouvoirs inquiétants

We'll find out.

Le Parlement bavarois a adopté une loi controversée mardi 15 mai : proposée par la Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU), le parti conservateur de Bavière, le texte accorde de nouveaux droits à la police. 

Elle est désormais autorisée à agir de manière préventive, dès qu’est constatée la menace d’un “danger imminent”. 

Elle pourra mettre des suspects sur écoute ou fouiller leurs disques durs, sans cadre juridique spécifique.

Les mesures du texte de loi dépassent celles prévues en cas de terrorisme et avaient suscité l’indignation dès leur proposition : 30 000 personnes sont descendues dans les rues de Munich le 10 mai dernier pour s’y opposer. 

La Cour constitutionnelle devrait par ailleurs être saisie par les Verts et le SPD.

Wouldn't O have stepped in, by now?

At least said something?

Promised more help?

Really bad news.

Inquiétude en RDC: pour la 1ère fois Ebola se propage en zone urbaine

Le virus Ebola qui sévit en République démocratique du Congo (RDC) a atteint pour la première fois une zone urbaine où un cas a été confirmé par les autorités et l'Organisation mondiale de la Santé (OMS), qui parle d'une "situation très préoccupante".

"Un nouveau cas (...) a été confirmé à Wangata, l'une des trois zones sanitaires de Mbandaka, une ville de près de 1,2 million d'habitants de la province de l'Équateur dans le nord-ouest de la RDC", a indiqué l'OMS.

"L'arrivée d'Ebola dans une zone urbaine est très préoccupante et l'OMS et ses partenaires travaillent ensemble pour intensifier rapidement la recherche de tous les contacts du cas confirmé dans la région de Mbandaka", a déclaré le Dr Matshidiso Moeti, directeur régional de l'OMS pour l'Afrique.

Mbandaka étant située sur le fleuve Congo et reliée à Kinshasa par de nombreuses liaisons fluviales, "il y a un risque réel d'une amplification nationale et régionales" de l'épidémie, a mis en garde Peter Salama, directeur du Programme de gestion des situations d'urgence de l'OMS.

"Nous estimons à plus de 300 personnes (ceux) qui ont été en contact direct ou indirect avec des personnes contaminées par le virus Ebola à Mbandaka", a déclaré à l'AFP un médecin d'un hôpital général de la ville.

. . . .

D'après les autorités citées par Médecins sans frontières (MSF), "514 personnes auraient été en contact avec des cas connus" de malades d'Ebola. 

Ces personnes sont "sous surveillance", selon l'OMS.

. . . .

L'arrivée d'Ebola en zone urbaine intervient alors qu'un lot de 5.400 doses d'un vaccin expérimental contre le virus, en provenance de Genève, a été réceptionné mercredi par les autorités.

Lundi dernier, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, directeur général de l'OMS, avait affirmé que tout était désormais prêt pour le déployer et espérait pouvoir diffuser le vaccin "à la fin de la semaine". 

"C'est l'objectif que nous visons mais si nous avons des difficultés, (ce sera) à partir de lundi".

Le 8 mai, les autorités de la RDC avaient déclaré une épidémie d'Ebola dans le Nord-Ouest, près du Congo-Brazzaville.


L'OMS a compté au total 44 cas (3 cas confirmés, 20 probables et 21 suspects) et 23 personnes sont mortes, selon un porte-parole de l'OMS.

Spread Of Ebola In Congo A 'Game Changer'

A new case of Ebola has emerged in an urban area of Democratic Republic of the Congo, a troubling development in the country's new outbreak of the contagious and often fatal virus. 

Until now, the outbreak had affected a rural area.

Dr. Oly Ilunga, Congo's Minister of Health announced Wednesday that a suspected case was confirmed in Mbandaka, a city of around 1.2 million people, and the capital of the Équateur Province.

. . . .

WHO is deploying around 30 Ebola experts to the outbreak zone and says they will work with locals "to engage with communities on prevention and treatment and the reporting of new cases."

Most Ebola cases are spread through person-to-person transmission, according to the WHO. People can become infected with bodily fluids or secretions — like blood, stool, saliva or semen — if they enter the body through broken skin or a mucous membrane. 

As a result, health workers and family members of infected people are at higher risk of infection.

But an experimental Ebola vaccine — two years in the making — is providing some hope in the fight against the disease.

As NPR's Nurith Aizenman has reported, the vaccine proved enormously effective during a large-scale trial in Guinea during the waning months of a recent massive Ebola outbreak in West Africa. 

And now global health experts are rushing to get the vaccine into Congo.

The Ministry of Health says it received 5,400 doses on Wednesday. 

Health care workers and others who have been in contact with infected people will be targeted first.

If Trump notices this at all, he will doubtless respond by recommending a travel ban on all sub-Saharan Africans.

Too repulsive to watch

Why for several days I have not been blogging.

Everything Trump touches, everything the entire GOP, these days, touches turns to a heap of stinking excrement.

Before he has even achieved anything, before the much touted meeting with Kim has even happened, Trump and his toadies have said he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Everything he touches, everything that touches him, is slimed with filth and forever stained.

They will have to fumigate the White House for weeks.

Or bury it forever under tons of concrete like Chernobyl.

That will happen to the Nobel Peace Prize, if he gets it.

Catholic priests used to tell abused wives they could not get a divorce or even an annulment, but could and should pray for their husbands' happy death.

For the heathen out there, that means death shriven, in a state of grace.

Soon.

The Heritage Trail at S 4th Street

I have no idea why it's not indicated on their system map, but there is a great deal of free parking at this trail entry point, so far from stores or businesses that nobody would want to park there except to walk or ride the trail.

More than half of it was empty today at about 1 pm.

Of course, it's cloudy and cool, today, and a week day.

That parking is indicated on the Bike Pittsburgh map.

[It's possible the Heritage Trail section on the Friends of the Riverfront site is no longer active.

I filled out the request form there for a paper system map to be mailed to my house and nothing ever happened.

I picked up a Bike Pittsburgh paper map at a bike shop near the South Hills Village mall.]

At this point the trail surface is blacktop, about a car lane in width, with nothing between it and the river but a berm dropping ten to twelve feet to the Monongahela, covered with trees and brush, but with an open view across the river to the city here and there.

There are frequent benches along the trail, though I did not see any picnic areas or tables, much less firepits or charcoal grills, and at one point between 4th and 10th streets I saw a chained down air pump and a bunch of tethered tools including screwdrivers and wrenches for bike repair.

Also along the trail there are occasional historical markers of the sort you see at parks and rest areas, about chest high easelboards with information of interest about the particular spot.

At the Heritage Trail website, they are referred to as "Interpretive signs".

One was completely spray-painted over to unreadability in an area of the trail with dotted-line Jersey barriers heavily defaced with that urban blight, spray can graffiti.

The others were less defaced, or not at all defaced but merely dirty.

There is some paper litter along the trail and I noticed four or five plastic bottles along the stretch, though there was at least one trash can - and it was not overflowing - along that stretch, too.

While I was walking toward tenth from fourth, a police car came slowly along the trail toward me.

I stood off onto the grass to let the car pass safely.

I suppose it might have been responding to a call, but it did nothing indicating urgency so it may also have been a regular police patrol.

If so, that's a good thing.

The trail is very isolated from traffic or even passers-by, and it might seem tempting to muggers.

All the same, the most threatening individual I saw was a raggedy looking and almost certainly homeless fellow.

I encountered several bike riders and as many people out for a walk.

Update, 05122018.

I biked the trail today from S 4th to S 18th street and back.

Half an hour.

Gorgeous, warm day with just the right breeze.

Are you serious?

Until Gina Haspel Denounces Torture, She Shouldn’t Lead the C.I.A.

Uh huh.

Like she would mean it, right?

Update.

She didn't denounce torture.

She was confirmed.

Of course Bozo wants torture-girl

She did it before - and destroyed evidence contrary to orders - and she'll do it again.

She even defended what she did, mostly evaded questions, appeared angry at those who questioned her, and generally behaved like someone the Duce might like but the rest of us should not.

I would rather she was fired in dishonor than rewarded by being made director of the agency.

Gina Haspel Vows at Confirmation Hearing That She Would Not Allow Torture by C.I.A.

Why would we believe that when she spoke as reported below?

Trump CIA pick: The real ‘tragedy’ of torture was people criticizing it

Gina Haspel, Trump’s pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), may have shown her true colors Wednesday morning, when she lashed out during her confirmation hearing after being faced with concerns about the Bush-era torture program.

Haspel opened the hearing with the hollow promise not to reinstate the Bush-era torture program that she helped oversee and cover up, but repeatedly refused to say she believed it was wrong.

When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) pressed her on reports that she supported expanding the torture program when it was being wound down, Haspel lashed out.

Wyden said he was “troubled” by Haspel’s apparent confirmation that she supported expanding the program, and Haspel responded by boasting that she wasn’t “on the sidelines” after 9/11.

“I think we did extraordinary work,” Haspel said. 

“To me, the tragedy is that the controversy surrounding the interrogation program — as I’ve already indicated to Senator Warner, I fully understand that — but it has cast a shadow over what has been a major contribution to protecting this country.”

Does Bozo want a better deal or a better Iran?

Trump Withdraws U.S. From ‘One-Sided’ Iran Nuclear Deal

President Trump declared on Tuesday that he was pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, unraveling the signature foreign policy achievement of his predecessor, Barack Obama, and isolating the United States among its Western allies.

“This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” Mr. Trump said at the White House in announcing his decision. 

“It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”

As the following article explains, it was hoped by O and Kerry that the deal would lead to cooperation between Iran and the US against ISIS and Sunni extremism in general.

But Iran has allied with the Russians and Assad and refused out of hatred to cooperate with the US in any way.

What Trump and those who support this move are looking for is not so much a better deal as a better Iran, a better regime.

But Iran had a better regime in the immediate aftermath of the revolution that got rid of the Shah, a secular and democratic republican regime.

And the Iranian people promptly allied with the radical clergy whose leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, had sponsored the revolution to begin with to overthrow it and put in place the ferociously Shiite, anti-American republic utterly devoted to the destruction of Israel now in place, in which the power of the clergy to impose Islamic religion and law on the country is institutionally guaranteed.

What reason does anybody have to suppose that a collapse of the current regime would be succeeded by something better in the eyes of Israel or the US?

Maybe what would follow would be years of civil war and chaos.

And maybe Bolton, Trump, the Saudis, and the Israelis would be OK with that.

Behind Trump’s Termination of Iran Deal Is Risky Bet That U.S. Can ‘Break the Regime’

Bolton has long wanted regime change, even if it would take a war to do it.

For President Trump and two of the allies he values most — Israel and Saudi Arabia — the problem of the Iranian nuclear accord was not, primarily, about nuclear weapons. 

It was that the deal legitimized and normalized the clerical Iranian government, reopening it to the world economy with oil revenue that financed its adventures in Syria and Iraq, and support of terror groups.

Now, with his announcement Tuesday that he is exiting the Iran deal and will reimpose economic sanctions on the country and firms around the world that do business with it, Mr. Trump is engaged in a grand, highly risky experiment.

Mr. Trump and his Middle East allies are betting they can cut Iran’s economic lifeline and thus “break the regime” by dismantling the deal, as one senior European official described the effort. 

In theory, America’s withdrawal could free Iran to produce as much nuclear material as it wants — what it was doing five years ago, when the world feared it was headed toward a bomb.

But Mr. Trump’s team dismisses that risk: Tehran doesn’t have the economic strength to confront the United States, Israel and the Saudis. 

And Iran knows that any move toward “breakout” to produce a weapon would only provide Israel and the United States with a rationale for taking military action.

. . . .

Exiting the deal, with or without a plan, is fine with the Saudis. 

They see the accord as a dangerous distraction from the real problem of confronting Iran around the region — a problem that the Saudis believe will be solved only by regime change in Iran. 

They have an ally in John R. Bolton, the president’s new national security adviser, who shares that view.

Israel is a more complicated case. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pressed Mr. Trump to abandon an arrangement that he has always detested. 

But Mr. Netanyahu’s own military and intelligence advisers say Israel is far safer with an Iran whose pathway to a bomb is blocked, rather than one that is once again pursuing the ultimate weapon.

Why smoke-filled rooms are better than primaries

Democracy in the wrong place enables demagogy.

Donald Blankenship.

Donald Trump.

The GOP was the party of Eisenhower and Nixon who gave us the Warren Court, a civil rights bill, federally enforced desegregation (Little Rock), and the EPA and thought conservatives and libertarians who wanted to undo the New Deal and abolish Big Government were idiots.

Then those same libertarians and conservatives, enemies of Big Government to a man but free traders, globalists, and anti-nationalists, took over the party and, as the so-called "Republican establishment", wanted no part of Donald Trump, and even now wants no part of Donald Blankenship.

During the 2016 campaign, they rejected Trump and rejected every piece of his Buchananist agenda, to date implemented only so far as Trump could manage it against the resistance of the Congress, the courts, and pretty much everybody in the executive branch, including some key people in the White House.

But now the uprising of the Buchananite rabble enabled by too much procedural democracy in the selection process for candidates does more damage every day, and the GOP is increasingly the party of people like Joe Arpaio, Judge Roy Moore, and Don Blankenship, all convicted of felonious defiance of federal authority, and Donald Trump, who can't go a week without angrily and brutally denouncing the federal courts, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Congress, immigration law, free trade agreements, the press, the Democrats, and whatever regulatory agency you care to name.

Big lie propaganda, protectionism, and even Luddism for industries that are dying and jobs that are obsolete are high on their agenda.

Utter loathing for the institutions of the federal government define them and their supporters.

Full frontal Buchananism, angry, defensive, and resentful white tribalism included.

The Democrats have become a party that honors Lincoln and upholds the ideals of the Radical Republicans.

The increasingly Trumpist and Buchananist Republicans are becoming a Nativist, white nationalist party that undermines the rule of law at every turn and defends public honors for Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

West Virginia primary: Blankenship brushes off 'bigot,' 'moron' accusations in radio ad

Don Blankenship looks to send Trump a message with a primary win in West Virginia

Update, 5/9/18.

Blankenship came in third. Morrissey won.

Not quite truthful

Madeline Albright comes close, but does not admit that the republic was dead the moment the Spanish generals rebelled, and the "Republican" side was never that, but was an inevitably failed alliance of Stalinists and anarchists.

Franco's victory was both inevitable and best.

Fascism: a warning.

A monthly retainer for legal services is not repayment for a specific, large outlay

Even if over a long period the sum of the retainers exceeds the outlay

The subtle Rudy has cooked up this lie, coordinated and cleared with Trump, to get Cohen off the hook for an unlawful campaign contribution, the hush money he gave to Stormy Daniels.

And that is intended to diminish the pressure on him to rat out his boss.

But nobody has yet pointed that out, I think.

Rather less subtle is Rudy's claim that Trump fired Comey because the G-Man would not publicly declare he was not personally under investigation, which some are seeing as an admission he was fired for not exonerating the president.

Trump Backs Rudy Giuliani’s Claim That No Campaign Money Went To Stormy Daniels

Michael Avenatti Stunned By Rudy Interview: ‘No Way, No How’ Trump Finishes His Term Now

My God, what a brilliant ending

So much better than the movie.

Lord Jim.

Doesn't get much clearer than that

Exclusive Image Demolishes Charlottesville White Nationalist’s Claim of Self-Defense

A self-avowed “white civil rights” activist was found guilty of malicious wounding Tuesday for his role in the beating of a black man at last summer’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The newly published image above shows Jacob Scott Goodwin, who argued that he was defending himself, holding a shield and attempting to strike DeAndre Harris, who is on the ground.

The jury didn’t buy his story and it’s not hard to see why.

The beating left the 20-year-old Harris with a spinal injury, a broken arm, and cuts to his head that required eight staples.

Video of the attack went viral in the days after the rally and internet sleuths helped identify some of the men beating Harris, including Goodwin.

. . . .

The jury agreed, convicting Goodwin and recommending a ten-year sentence and a $20,000 fine.

No safe places for white people

PC police are so utterly full of shit.

Prom Dress That Caused a Furor in U.S. Draws Head-Scratching in China

Those dresses are beautiful and perfect for spring.

My mother had one, many years ago, along with a pair of pajamas with a similar flowery, Chinese look.

When Keziah Daum wore a Chinese-style dress to her high school prom in Utah, it set off an uproar — but not because of its tight fit or thigh-high slit.

After Ms. Daum, 18, shared pictures on social media of her prom night, a Twitter user named Jeremy Lam hotly responded in a post that has been retweeted nearly 42,000 times.

Do people agree with this troll or do they think he's an asshole, I wonder.

Maybe he was kidding?

“My culture is NOT” your prom dress, he wrote, adding profanity for effect.

“I’m proud of my culture,” he wrote in another post.

“For it to simply be subject to American consumerism and cater to a white audience, is parallel to colonial ideology.”

Other Twitter users who described themselves as Asian-American seized on Ms. Daum’s dress — a form-fitting red cheongsam (also known as a qipao) with black and gold ornamental designs — as an example of cultural appropriation, a sign of disrespect and exploitation.

You have to wonder whether this vomit is actually the product of an alt-right tweeter flying a false flag, deliberately stirring the pot.

Cultural appropriation?

Is that like when Yo Yo Ma plays the cello?

When the Tokyo Symphony plays Mahler?

The very concept is a racist attack.

And the target is always somebody white.

Actually, it is everybody white.

A point that has not escaped commenters actually living in Asia.

When the furor reached Asia, though, many seemed to be scratching their heads.

Far from being critical of Ms. Daum, who is not Chinese, many people in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan proclaimed her choice of the traditional high-necked dress as a victory for Chinese culture.

“I am very proud to have our culture recognized by people in other countries,” said someone called Snail Trail, commenting on a post of the Utah episode by a popular account on WeChat, the messaging and social media platform, that had been read more than 100,000 times.

“It’s ridiculous to criticize this as cultural appropriation,” Zhou Yijun, a Hong Kong-based cultural commentator, said in a telephone interview.

“From the perspective of a Chinese person, if a foreign woman wears a qipao and thinks she looks pretty, then why shouldn’t she wear it?”

If anything, the uproar surrounding Ms. Daum’s dress prompted many Chinese to reflect on examples of cultural appropriation in their own country.

“So does that mean when we celebrate Christmas and Halloween it’s also cultural appropriation?” asked one WeChat user, Larissa.

Others were quick to point out that the qipao, as it is known in China, was introduced by the Manchus, an ethnic minority group from China’s northeast — implying that the garment was itself appropriated by the majority Han Chinese.

In its original form, the dress was worn in a baggy style, mostly by upper-class women during the Qing dynasty, which ruled China for more than 250 years, until 1912.

It was only in the 1920s and ’30s, when Western influence began seeping into China, that the qipao was reinvented to become the seductive, body-hugging dress that many think of today.

For many cinephiles, it has become inextricably associated with Maggie Cheung, the actress who wore a stunning array of cheongsams in Wong Kar-wai’s 2000 film “In the Mood for Love.”

These days, it is rare to see Chinese women wearing qipaos in the street.

Western “fast fashion” has taken over, though the qipao has made something of a comeback among some official figures, like the country’s first lady, Peng Liyuan.

“To Chinese, it’s not sacred and it’s not that meaningful,” said Hung Huang, a Beijing-based writer and fashion blogger, in an interview.

“Nowadays, if you see a woman wearing a qipao, she’s probably a waitress in a restaurant or a bride.”

The Dems rightly accuse the GOP of harboring and even toadying to white racism.

And the GOPsters rightly accuse the Dems of harboring and toadying to anti-white racism, though the extent is by no means the same.

White racism is in the very heart of Trumpism.

Anti-white racism, though to a degree reflexive in nonwhite - especially black - Democrats, was neither a selling point nor an agenda item in the Obama White House, nor any other Dem administration.

Dems castigate the GOP as the party of traditionalist patriarchy - the word "misogyny" is more often used - but Hillary exemplifies perfectly and in person the misandry of some Dems.

All part of the sharpened polarization of American politics.

Don't you hate it when the bastards are right?

I certainly do.

Seven States, Led by Texas, Sue to End DACA Program

Opening another front in the battle over immigration policy, Texas and six other states sued the federal government on Tuesday in an attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The lawsuit — joined by Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia — asserts that the Obama administration overstepped its authority when it created the DACA program, which allows individuals who were brought to the United States illegally as children to remain in the country, without congressional approval.

“The executive unilaterally conferred lawful presence and work authorization on otherwise unlawfully present aliens, and then the executive used that lawful-presence ‘dispensation’ to unilaterally confer United States citizenship,” the lawsuit says.

It calls on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas to “immediately rescind and cancel all DACA permits currently in existence because they are unlawful,” or at a minimum to block the government “from issuing or renewing DACA permits in the future, effectively phasing out the program within two years.”

A really fine ending

The Money Heist.

Beautiful and brilliant.