It appears the water is heating up in Trump’s frying pan.
[Tip: Riggleman calls Thomas’s texts “insightful” and 60 Minutes host asks “Insightful how?” and Riggleman uses the word again, but he doesn’t mean “insightful” – he’s using the made-up word “inciteful” i.e. “intended to incite.” Also it’s amusing that 60 Minutes takes care to show us a clip of him “typing” with two fingers.]
And for good measure…
Another incident from the orgy of monarchist mourning:
I knew that Charles Windsor would be declared “King Charles III” in official ceremonies around the UK. I had assumed they would be fairly small-scale….
It was only when I went to church that I learnt that there was not only a proclamation in Oxford but a procession that would start just outside our church. I was feeling sad and angry as I left church and walked past the cordoned-off streets, and saw the dignitaries and military leaders standing on the steps of Carfax Tower in clothing more suited to the 16th century. This, apparently, is how we proclaim a new head of state in 21st-century Britain.
After making slow progress along the pavement, I asked the police how I could get across to the other side as the road was closed off. When I expressed a mild criticism of the royal procession during my question about the road closures, they became defensive and refused to talk with me further. Someone who had heard me came over and challenged my views, but the police told us not to talk to each other. I have no idea on what basis the police stop people with different views having a discussion.
You and a lot of gender critical women.
He was stuck there so he listened to the proclamation.
I remained quiet in the first part of the proclamation, concerning the death of Elizabeth. Any death is sad and I would not object to people mourning.
It was only when they declared Charles to be “King Charles III” that I called out: “Who elected him?” I doubt most of the people in the crowd even heard me. Two or three people near me told me to shut up. I didn’t insult them or attack them personally, but responded by saying that a head of state was being imposed on us without our consent.
A security guard appeared, stood right in front of me and told me to be quiet. Two more security guards came along and they tried to push me backwards. As I asked them to give the legal basis for what they were doing, the police came over, more or less moved the security guards out of the way and took hold of me. I was outraged that they were leading me away, but was taken aback when they told me they were arresting me. I have no illusions about the police’s questionable relationship with the law, but I seemed to have been arrested for nothing more than expressing an opinion in public. They gave me confused answers when I asked on what grounds I had been arrested.
Lèse-majesté of course! Mind you that’s not illegal except in Thailand, but the police get to make up their own laws when it comes to Saying Something Naughty.
Eventually I was handcuffed—I don’t know what sort of threat they thought I posed—and put in the back of a police van. A police officer got in the van and took my details. After lots of conversations on his radio, he said I would be de-arrested but that they would want to interview me. I said I would do so only with a lawyer present. After some more radio conversations he told me I would be de-arrested and then contacted to be interviewed at a later date, and possibly charged.
For saying “who elected him?” It’s trumpian in its absurdity and overreach.
Eventually, on the way home, I was told that I had been arrested under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (the outrageous act passed earlier this year) for actions likely to lead to “harassment or distress.”
Vivat rex!
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has warned that climate change will not spare other countries the sort of disaster that left up to one third of his country underwater and millions of its children at risk of water-borne diseases.
…
“In this ground zero of climate change, 33 million people, including women and children, are now at high risk from health hazards,” he said.
It’s not going to be just pockets here and there, that the rest of us can ignore. It’s going to be millions – and in fact it already is.
Authorities have warned it could take up to six months for the flood waters to recede in the country’s hardest-hit areas, as fears rise over the threat posed by waterborne diseases including cholera and dengue.
The deluge has left 3.4 million children in need of “immediate, lifesaving support,” according to UNICEF, leaving them vulnerable to contracting water-borne diseases, including dengue fever and malaria.
“The undeniable and inconvenient truth is that this calamity has not been triggered by anything we have done,” he said.
Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s planet-warming gases, European Union data shows, yet it is the eighth most vulnerable nation to the climate crisis, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.
Hardly fair, is it.
Also, the floods haven’t gone anywhere.
Millions of people in Pakistan are still deeply affected by catastrophic flooding which “is not going anywhere”, UN relief agencies said on Tuesday.
Close to eight million people have been displaced by the disaster and the UN along with the authorities and partners have continued to race to reach affected populations with desperately needed relief items.
Southern Sindh province is still in crisis, with many areas still under water.
To date, more than 1,500 people have been killed, including 552 children.
“We don’t have enough food, we don’t have shelter, and still even the kind of healthcare that is required is not available,” said Gerida Birukila, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Pakistan Chief of Field Office in Balochistan, another of the worst-hit provinces.
…
As had been feared, life-threatening illness and disease have now spread among displaced communities, including cerebral malaria, for which there is no available medicine.
It’s like Katrina times a big number.
It is likely that climate change helped drive deadly floods in Pakistan, according to a new scientific analysis. The floods killed nearly 1500 people and displaced more than 30 million, after record-breaking rain in August.
The climate is changing. Climate events that break records are likely due to climate change.
The analysis confirms what Pakistan’s government has been saying for weeks: that the disaster was clearly driven by global warming. Pakistan experienced its wettest August since the country began keeping detailed national weather records in 1961. The provinces that were hardest hit by floods received up to eight times more rain than usual, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department.
Climate change made such heavy rainfall more likely, according to the analysis by a group of international climate scientists in Pakistan, Europe and the United States. While Pakistan has sometimes experienced heavy monsoon rains, about 75 percent more water is now falling during weeks when monsoon rains are heaviest, the scientists estimate.
But don’t go thinking at least they won’t have a problem with droughts. Climate change is sly.
…while it’s clear that intense rain will keep increasing as the Earth heats up, climate models also suggest that overall monsoon rains will be less reliable. That would cause cycles of both drought and flooding in Pakistan and neighboring countries in the future.
Great. If the drought doesn’t kill you the monsoon will, and vice versa. Lose lose.
More storms? Worse storms?
Canadian troops are being sent to assist the recovery from the devastation of storm Fiona, which swept away houses, stripped off roofs and knocked out power across the country’s Atlantic provinces.
After surging north from the Caribbean as a hurricane, Fiona came ashore before dawn on Saturday as a post-tropical cyclone, battering Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Quebec with hurricane-strength winds, heavy rains and huge waves.
…
The Canadian Hurricane Centre tweeted that Fiona had the lowest pressure ever recorded for a storm making landfall in Canada. Forecasters had warned it could be the one of the most powerful storms to hit the country.
“We’re getting more severe storms more frequently,” Trudeau said.
More resilient infrastructure was needed to withstand extreme weather events, the prime minister said, adding that what was once a one-in-100 year storm might now arrive every few years because of climate change.
…
The Prince Edward Island premier, Dennis King, said few communities were spared damage, with the devastation looking to be beyond anything they had seen before in the province.
Just the beginning.
Thanks but we’ve decided to go in another direction.
Investors are walking away from commitments to invest in a company that planned to merge with Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform.
Was it something he said? Something he did? Everything?
“Blank-check” company Digital World Acquisition said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday that some backers were pulling a total of $139 million they had planned to put into the deal. Digital World had previously announced funding commitments of $1 billion.
The investors who signed up for the deal about a year ago were able to back out if it was not completed by September 20.
But it’s Trump. Everything he touches turns to gold.
For some reason Russian soldiers aren’t all that keen on Putin’s war.
Russia’s Kremlin-controlled lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved legislation that toughens punishment for soldiers breaching their duties, in an apparent effort to boost discipline in the ranks amid the fighting in Ukraine.
…
Under the new legislation, deserting a military unit during a period of mobilization or martial law would be punishable by up to 10 years in prison, compared with five years under the current law.
Those who voluntarily surrender to the enemy will also face a prison term of up to 10 years, and those convicted of looting could be handed a 15-year term.
Another amendment introduces a prison sentence of up to 10 years for those who refuse to go to combat or follow an officer’s order.
Sounds like a morale problem. I wonder why that might be.
The suckers are paying Trump’s legal bills.
As Donald Trump’s legal woes mount, donors and the Republican party have paid millions in dollars of his legal fees.
His newest legal headache saw him and three of his children hit with a fraud lawsuit, which alleges they lied about the value of property “by billions”.
Financial data shows that he has already spent more than $1m (£890,000) of donations fighting the case in 2022.
…
Millions of dollars spent combatting these charges have come from Mr Trump’s Save America political action committee (PAC) – which takes donations from Trump supporters across the country – Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show.
Save America has paid more than $1.12m this year alone to law firms hired to defend Mr Trump in the New York case. As a so-called “Leadership PAC”, it can use money to pay for expenses that cannot be funded by campaign committees, such as some personal travel or some leadership expenses.
The fix is in.
Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Meet “truthful hyperbole”.
All sorts of advertising slogans from my childhood fell foul of accuracy laws.
The one which changed the most (long past the point, in my opinion, that it should have simply been abandoned) was Whiskas cat food. “Eight out of ten cats prefer Whiskas!” became, eventually “In tests, eight out of ten owners who expressed a preference said that their cats preferred Whiskas!” Not exactly snappy, eh?
EU laws are very protective of consumers. Subway have fallen foul of them quite recently, when they lost their case to continue to call their rolls ‘bread’. They contain too much sugar – they are officially cake.
I wonder if they’ll ever come down on European estate agents, landlords, and the like, for the exaggerations and blatant lies they tell.
Iran has been tripped up by the women.
The eruption of nationwide protests in Iran following the death in police custody of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman detained for allegedly failing to adhere to hijab (headscarf) rules is the most serious challenge Iran’s leadership has faced in years.
Oddly enough women don’t like being bullied and oppressed and muffled in yards of cloth.
Civil liberties groups continually spotlight the suppression of women in Iran, an entire part of society who have been the biggest losers of the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Half of society – the half without which there won’t be any more Iranians. (Men are required for that too, but in a pinch you can get by with far fewer of them.)
Iranian women were forced to wear hijab (headscarf) soon after the revolution and have lost many of their rights, including right to travel, right to work and right to child custody over the age of seven. There was little objection to these changes from men at the time.
“The fact that many men are joining the protests shows that the society has shifted to more progressive demands,” says Mehrdad Darvishpour, an Iranian sociologist based in Sweden.
The main slogan of protesters is “Woman, Life, Freedom”, a call for equality and a stance against religious fundamentalism.
The real problem is theocracy. Get the goddam religion (whatever religion it is) out of government. Woman, Life, Freedom, Secularism.
No.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi withdrew from a long-planned interview with CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, after she declined a last-minute demand to wear a head scarf.
I don’t suppose Amanpour sent Raisi a last-minute demand to wear underpants on his head. Why does he think he gets to tell her what to put on her head? She doesn’t go to his school, she doesn’t have to wear its uniform.
Amanpour, who grew up in the Iranian capital Tehran and is a fluent Farsi speaker, said that she wears a head scarf while reporting in Iran to comply with the local laws and customs, “otherwise you couldn’t operate as a journalist.” But she said that she would not cover her head to conduct an interview with an Iranian official
outside a[in a different] country where it is not required.“Here in New York, or anywhere else outside of Iran, I have never been asked by any Iranian president — and I have interviewed every single one of them since 1995 — either inside or outside of Iran, never been asked to wear a head scarf,” she said on CNN’s “New Day” program Thursday.
Iran is stuck on the down escalator.
Amanpour said that Raisi’s aide made clear that the interview — which would have been the Iranian president’s first on American soil — would not happen if she did not wear a head scarf. He referred to it as “a matter of respect,” given that it is the holy months of Muharram and Safar, and referred to “the situation in Iran,” alluding to the protests sweeping the country, she added.
Ah but that’s just it. We don’t respect sexist laws that treat women like Obscene Sexual Invitations on two legs. We have deep contempt for such laws.
Anti-government protests erupted across Iran last week over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in custody, after
having been[she was] arrested by Iran’s morality police on an accusation of violating the law on head scarves.
Wearing a large piece of cloth over one’s head and neck should not be a police matter, let alone a custodial matter, let alone a death in police custody matter.
In Iran, the head scarf is a potent symbol of a set of personal rules imposed by the country’s clerical leaders, which govern what people can wear, watch and do. Over the past decade, protests have flared as many Iranians have grown resentful of those limitations.
Sigh. The habit is spreading. Those rules impinge on women far more strictly than they do on men, so at least say “people, especially women,” or better, in a piece on women and hijab, just say “women.” This really is about women, and the violent oppression of them by clerical men.
Wales says but we don’t want a prince thank you anyway.
The naming of William as the new Prince of Wales was “divisive”, according to a senior Plaid Cymru politician.
“Divisive” is a stupid word. Everything’s divisive. If you mean “bad” say “bad.”
Senedd member Cefin Campbell also asked whether, in today’s “more inclusive” and “egalitarian” society, whether “we need a monarchy at all”.
That’s the real question. Is there any point to this whole monarchy shtick other than demonstrations of inequality?
King Charles announced William and Catherine were Prince and Princess of Wales in his first address as monarch.
Then he got back to pitching fits at fountain pens and inkstands.
Is it lying or is it just colorful “hyperbole”?
A couple of days ago
Letitia James filed a 220-page lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court accusing Donald Trump and three of his children of using wildly inaccurate evaluations of Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago and multiple other properties to defraud lenders and cheat on taxes. The result, she said, was a “staggering” and “astounding” scheme that yielded an estimated $250 million in ill-gotten gains.
James termed these financial manipulations “the art of the steal,” a play on the title of Trump’s 1987 bestselling memoir The Art of the Deal. In that book, Trump (or, more likely, his co-author, journalist Tony Schwartz) called his aggressive salesmanship “truthful hyperbole,” which was explained as “an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”
Stop right there. There is no such thing as “truthful hyperbole.” It may sound cute, if you’re not paying attention, but it’s a contradiction in terms, and is itself dishonest.
And when it comes to marketing there is definitely no such thing as “an innocent form of exaggeration.” We know it’s not “innocent” because it’s done to trick people into giving you more money. You don’t get to call that “innocent.”
That of course is all the more true when we’re talking about Trump, who is the least “innocent” person most of us have ever seen.
The reason, Trump (or Schwartz) said, was that “people want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular,” and Trump was more than willing to oblige them.
That is, he was eager to “oblige them” by telling them his product was the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular so that they would give him more money than it was worth. That’s not obliging them, it’s tricking them into giving him money.
It’s maddening that Trump basically informed the world that he was tricking people into paying him more for his properties than they were worth and the world just chuckled and left him to get on with it.
Maybe, maybe, all this criminality will end up being an obstacle to Trump’s dream of returning to the White House dining room so that he can throw more catsup at it.
Donald Trump’s legal perils have become insurmountable and could snuff out the former US president’s hopes of an election-winning comeback, according to political analysts and legal experts.
Meanwhile Politico is arguing that the legal perils just make the base love him more, but even if they’re right about that it won’t do him much good if he’s being held without bail.
On Wednesday, Trump and three of his adult children were accused of lying to tax collectors, lenders and insurers in a “staggering” fraud scheme that routinely misstated the value of his properties to enrich themselves.
The civil lawsuit, filed by New York’s attorney general, came as the FBI investigates Trump’s holding of sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and a special grand jury in Georgia considers whether he and others attempted to influence state election officials after his defeat there by Joe Biden.
One two three legal perils.
“He’s done,” said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University, in Washington, who has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1984. “He’s got too many burdens, too much baggage to be able to run again even presuming he escapes jail, he escapes bankruptcy. I’m not sure he’s going to escape jail.”
How embarrassing is it that we elected a flagrant shameless prolific criminal president?
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, noted that the civil component “involves things of particular significance to Trump and his family and his organisation, namely their ability to defraud the public, to defraud banks, to defraud insurance companies, and to continue to subsist through corruption. Without all of that corruption, the entire Trump empire is involved in something like meltdown.”
The money is going to disappear, and the debt collectors are going to become all too visible.
No previous former president has faced investigations so numerous and so serious.
No previous president has been quite such a hardened criminal, although there have been some ringers.
Asked by a conservative radio host what would happen if he [were] indicted over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump replied: “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”
Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said: “If the best defence you have for your conduct is: if you hold me accountable, there will be violence, that sounds like someone who has no business being either in public service or being outside of jail.”
Or on tv.
Scottish rugby chiefs have been accused of putting women and girls in danger after the country became the only part of the UK to allow male-bodied transgender players to compete against females in full-contact matches.
Scotland really hates women, doesn’t it. I guess because they won’t wheesht?
Rugby’s governing bodies in England, Wales and Ireland have recently changed their transgender policies to state that only people born as women can play in women’s matches, after peer-reviewed evidence showed male-born athletes retained significant physical advantages.
Next up: governing bodies will say only adults can play in adult matches, after peer-reviewed evidence showed adult athletes have significant physical advantages over children.
Existing rules state that female players must not be told they will be competing against a male-bodied opponent, denying them the chance to opt out of matches if they have safety concerns. Clubs face disciplinary action if they break the strict confidentiality rule.
That’s sadistic and murderous.
Scottish Rugby is believed to be consulting with the two trans players about the impact of any change, but has left the door open to continuing to allow trans women to compete in female matches.
I wonder if they’re consulting with women at all.
The current policy states that trans women and girls can be cleared to participate in full-contact games, provided testosterone levels have been below a certain threshold for 12 months.
That is so breathtakingly stupid. As if testosterone were the only variable.
World Rugby, the international governing body, stated in October 2020 that trans women who had begun male puberty should not be allowed to compete in women’s games as dangers to female players were “unacceptably high”.
It found male players were significantly bigger, stronger, heavier and faster, and that suppressing testosterone levels “removes only a small proportion” of large physical advantages of male-born competitors.
As everybody knows. Of course males are significantly bigger, stronger, heavier and faster.
Scotland needs to wake up.
Lily Maynard has a brilliant long piece about the Brighton meetup and issues that flow from it:
Standing for Women holds various public meetings around the country, most famously at the Reformers Tree in London on the last Sunday of each month but increasingly in other cities. Recent meets have taken place in Nottingham, Manchester and Bristol as well as London, and in Washington DC and New York City in the States. At most of these meetings, held in public spaces, any woman who wishes to can speak to the group about issues that concern her and her sex. Sometimes, when the women are done, male allies get to speak too.
Let’s be clear, we were not meeting in order to clash with transactivists. Currently there is still no law to stop a group of people gathering in a public park for a chat. We were not ‘organising a protest’ or deliberately provoking anyone – unless, like the protestors, you view women talking about their rights as provocation.
She took many photos, which she shares.
So what did these guardians of diversity have to say for themselves? Well a couple of them enjoyed shouting ‘fascist’ at a baby on the outskirts of the meeting – I know, right? It does seem unlikely- but you can see the clip here. The woman in blue dungarees, shouting at the baby, is Carly-May Kavanagh, policy advisor to the local MP.
“You’re raising a little fascist as well?” her companion asks the baby’s dad.
“Oh, you’ll get your poo on it?” Kavanagh raises her voice at the baby. “Wow, you fucking fascist!”
“You think that’s a good idea, do you, to raise a child who believes this filth? Who doesn’t accept trans people?” she moves closers and gesticulates suddenly in the baby’s direction, calling its father ‘disgusting’.
Fortunately, baby remains unmoved by the exchange.
I knew nothing of the incident at the time but I was speaking to the baby’s mum shortly after it happened. Indignantly, she told me, ‘someone just called my baby a fascist’. Awful. Baby was fab, adorable, totally cool and checking everything out. Not displaying any fascist tendencies as far as I could tell in the two minutes I spent cooing at it.
Well that’s how they pull you in. They’re sneaky, babies are.
There was much repeating of mantras. Oh, the irony of men chanting ‘you’re not feminists’ at us because we won’t go along with their pretence that they’re women!
…
“Fuck off Karen” was popular for a few minutes.
And, of course, ‘trans-rights are human rights’ – which we all know to be true. I don’t know anyone who ewould deny that. Trans rights are indeed human rights. People who believe in gendered brains have the same sex-based rights as the rest of us. So when TRAs say ‘trans rights are human rights’ that isn’t what they mean. They mean that they should have the right to force us all to pretend you can change sex. That’s not a human right. It’s not a human right to force people to pretend they agree with you. It’s not a human right to silence and bully people who don’t share your unfounded and phantastical beliefs.
This is what I keep saying. We don’t oppose human rights for trans people. The issue is new, invented, ridiculous pseudo-rights that don’t even resemble real rights. There is no “right” to force people to believe your claims about yourself no matter how crazy they are.
It is interesting to note- although sacrilegious to point out- that trans activism is based entirely upon lies. Firstly the lie that you can change sex. Secondly the lie that hobbies, clothing & hairstyles are what make you a certain sex juxtaposed with the idea that actually no of course it isn’t that at all… but also yes it is… but also it isn’t… so it doesn’t matter how you look at all, your gender expression can be different to your gender identity, yet at the same time boobs and beards, or their absence, are essential for authentic-self-ness.
Developments.
She’s locked her account AND she’s blocked me (and I assume a great many other critics of her venomous bullying). Belt AND braces.
She may be feeling unnerved because Allison Bailey, whom she casually called a lot of harsh names yesterday, has demanded a retraction.
And she wasn’t even elected.
I don’t know what that means exactly, except that nobody voted for her.
Sometimes the alibi just makes the crime worse. Trump on his “declassifying” prowess:
In his first TV appearance since a court-authorized search of his Florida home last month, Donald Trump reasserted Wednesday that any documents taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago were declassified while he was in office, adding that a president can carry that out “even by thinking about it.”
“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Well, as he understands things isn’t a very good measure of the things. Also it’s the kind of thing he should have been very sure about, not the kind of thing he qualifies with a “could be wrong” disclaimer.
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified,” the former president added.
“You’re the president — you make that decision.”
Yeeaahh no that’s not it. It’s not a perk, like you get to use the pool whenever you want to. It’s not something you get to do so that you can brag to your friends. It’s not something you get to do just because you want to take the documents with you in the golf cart.
