It’s a personal choice.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday she won’t be wearing a mask at the president’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Saturday, calling it a “personal choice.”

So what if it’s a personal choice? What’s that got to do with anything? It’s a personal choice for people to cough in people’s faces on purpose, too, so what?

She said not wearing a mask still complies with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control, telling reporters Friday that masks are recommended but not required. 

But since they are recommended (and I don’t think the CDC has the power to require people to wear things anyway), why not wear one? What is the purpose of the “personal … Read the rest

Huh. Don Junior is committing wire fraud.

More threatening fundraising texts from Don Jr. pic.twitter.com/LNLnU6ZA3k

— Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) June 19, 2020

You’re the ONLY 1 – except all the others who got the same text.

That is interesting. I got the same text from #DimwitJr saying that I was the only one who had not join the club. pic.twitter.com/W3I4qJcnVM

—1) (@DrDigiPol) June 19, 2020

https://twitter.com/colin5392/status/1274093551790538754

Norm Eisen also says – yep wire fraud.

This is 18 USC 1343 wire fraud by Trump campaign

No way the other 99 really replied, so all elements are met

1)scheme to defraud 2)with intent to defraud & 3) foreseeable & actual use of interstate wire comms.

Barr won't investigate, but states

So some people did protect a statue of a feminist woman writer (not exactly a poet), even though it didn’t actually need protecting. Story partially true. Literary Hub explains:

Worldwide protests ignited by the death of George Floyd have continued, including in Nuneaton, Warkwickshire, where a group of locals thought they were protecting a statue of George Eliot over the weekend.

Valiant defenders of this bronze effigy popped up following incidents in which Black Lives Matter supporters took down a statue of a 17th-century slave trader in Bristol and tagged a monument of Winston Churchill with the words “is a racist” in central London.

The people guarding the Eliot statue in Nuneaton were presumably operating on the assumption that

Reporter: "Why does the President keep hiring people that are 'dumb as a rock, overrated, way over their heads, whacko, and incompetent'?"

Kayleigh McEnany: "…He likes the model of having a team of rivals, like what we saw in President Lincoln's administration." pic.twitter.com/Bc8bHHxUI5

— The Hill (@thehill) June 19, 2020

Reporter: Yes but why hire a team of rivals who are dumb as a rock, overrated, way over their heads, whacko, and incompetent?

KM: Wull sometimes those rivals prove those labels to be true.

Me: If they’re all that it’s bound to be obvious just by chatting with them for a minute, so…… Read the rest

Hmm.

Right now in my home city (in the UK) the statue of a feminist poet is being torn down simply because she is white… all because a black criminal was murdered by a white cop in the USA. This madness is tearing society apart. It has to stop. 2/2

I tried Google News and Google – nothing. The closest Google can find to “white feminist poet statue torn down” is ” Bristol mayor: Colston statue removal was act of ‘historical poetry‘” from the Guardian…which is not close at all.

The conversation started with Annoying’s annoyance at me for tweeting that Trump is threatening protesters, because hey, he didn’t say a word about threatening them.

Right, and when … Read the rest

It’s all just so bonkers.

President Donald Trump on Friday, gearing up for his first campaign rally in months in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, threatened any protesters who show up outside or try to disrupt the event, saying “it will be a much different scene” than how they’ve been dealt with in “New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis.”

“Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!” Trump tweeted Friday morning.

It wasn’t clear exactly what Trump meant or what he could do to carry out his threat, but he has taken an

Trump announces he will unleash violence on protesters.

Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020

President of the United States, here, threatening protesters with violence.… Read the rest

John Cleese seeks information.

I'm baffled by the debate over JKR

Am I right in thinking that if I tomorrow declare myself to be a woman, then anyone who doesn't accept that must hate me ?

This is a genuine request for information, even if the question itself seems odd to many older people ?

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 19, 2020

It’s like this, see – is the experience of being a woman inextricably linked to biology? Or is it just totally random and arbitrary and unpredictable?

It's a debate over whether the struggles and experience of being a woman are inextricably linked to having the biology of a woman. JKR and many feminists think it is. Many trans

After that one I watched this one, on detransitioning.… Read the rest

This is now available.… Read the rest

Oh look, more “cis white woman=bitch cunt whore,” this time from the proudly non-cis (but still white, which seems careless) Morgane Oger.

That cis white female pedestal you put yourself on is your cage.

Say what? We don’t put ourselves on it, and it’s not a pedestal.

We don’t put ourselves on it because we didn’t make ourselves either white or female, we were just born both. It’s not a pedestal because we are still objects of contempt or loathing or both.

Dear cis woman leveraging patriarchy for personal advantage, I beg you to be careful what you ask for.

Dear condescending man telling women what we are and what to say, I beg you to fuck off.… Read the rest

Maybe it’s all legit, I don’t know, but yes it does seem very odd for a young adult man to “adopt” a teenage boy (not that a teenage girl would look any better).

Anyway, the jokes are rolling in.

For all those wondering, this is my son Nestor. We share no blood but he is my life. He came from Cuba (legally, of course) six years ago and lives with me in Florida.

I am so proud of him and raising him has been the best, most rewarding thing I’ve done in my life. pic.twitter.com/Am2rlJpNoc

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) June 18, 2020

So many questions but one of mine is how long it will take before @tedcruz challenges someone

Oh what was that about Matt Gaetz’s explosion of rage at Cedric Richardson for…what was it now? Worrying about the safety of black children while not asking Matt Gaetz for approval first? Something like that? How dare Richardson assume that Matt Gaetz doesn’t have any black children? Yes that was it.

Surprise revelation!

Nestor turned 19 a few days ago & will be off to University. He arrived here at 12.

As you can imagine, I was triggered when (to make an absurd debate point) a fellow congressman diminished the contributions of Republicans because we don’t raise non-white kids.

Well, I have.

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) June 18, 2020

Erm. I hate to say it, but I don’t have to, … Read the rest

One beneficial effect of the virus:

Carnival suffered losses of $4.4bn (£3.6bn) in three months, as the cruise company’s business was all but sunk by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Revenues dropped to $700m from $4.8bn for the same March-May period in 2019, as bookings dried up and the corporation’s cruise lines suspended sailings after severe outbreaks onboard its ships.

These things just do not make sense in light of the climate catastrophe.

But but but freedom, my rights, freedom to do whatever I want to wherever I want to including in a tightly enclosed space shared with hundreds of people 5 miles above the planet.

American Airlines has removed a passenger from a flight after he refused to wear a face covering in compliance with its Covid-19 safety policy.

Brandon Straka was asked to wear a face mask on Flight 1263 from New York to Dallas, Texas, on Wednesday.

When Mr Straka refused, he was asked to leave the flight, the airline said.

Mr Straka said there was no law that required him to wear a face covering on the flight.

Doesn’t matter. There’s no law that says you can’t play … Read the rest

Trump is livid, LIVID, about all these crazy political Supreme Court justices. How can they be so political?! It’s an outrage!

These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

There is already a conservative (or right-wing) majority on the court. Roberts voted with the liberals on the DACA ruling, and Trump clearly thinks that’s an outrage. It’s hilarious that he complains about “politically charged decisions” though (or that Scavino translates whatever scream of rage … Read the rest

Trump made Juneteenth very famous.

The Times explains the car crash:

Reviewing a list of potential locations over the past few weeks, [Brad] Parscale quickly settled on Tulsa, Okla., people familiar with the planning said in interviews, mostly because it seemed easy. A deep red state President Trump carried by 36 percentage points four years ago, Oklahoma wasn’t in play for the November election. But it was the furthest along of any state in the country in terms of reopening, and it had seen fewer than 400 Covid-19 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

A city with a supportive Republican mayor, where the coronavirus was no longer having a deep impact on daily life, seemed like the

CNN has some more nibbles from Bolton’s book.

Bolton writes that in December 2018, Trump offered to help Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a Justice Department investigation into a Turkish bank with ties to Erdogan that was suspected of violating US Iran sanctions. When the Turkish leader presented Trump with a memo from the law firm representing Halkbank, Trump flipped through it and then declared he believed the bank was totally innocent of violating US sanctions related to Iran.

Well thank goodness he looked into it thoroughly before committing himself.

Trump told Erdogan he would “take care of things,” and explained that the Southern District prosecutors “were not his people, but were Obama people,” and the problem would

Another twerp heaves another rock:

Harry Potter fans—yes, I’m addressing roughly the entire Millennial generation—we need to have another tough conversation with ourselves: We must end our Harry Potter fantasy now.

She goes on to detail what a passionate, indeed obsessive fan she was growing up, and then gets on with the stoning.

I’m also a ciswoman, which means my feelings are not the point right now. As significant as the franchise has been for me, if I am actually going to be the ally I fancy myself to be, that means I have to consider the damage Rowling (and potentially the entire series) has done to trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people.

She’s a woman, so her feelings … Read the rest

This just in: Trump fails in his attempt to throw the children of undocumented immigrants out of the country.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration cannot carry out its plan to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed nearly 800,000 young people, known as “Dreamers,” to avoid deportation and remain in the U.S.

The decision is a big legal defeat for President Donald Trump on the issue of immigration, which has been a major focus of his domestic agenda.

That is, the issue of brown people messing up his shiny gleaming white country.

The decision authored mostly by Chief Justice John Roberts said the government failed to give an