Bahahahahahahaha Donnie from Queens tweets a candid shot of himself “writing” his inaugural address. Suuuuuuure he is. He’s totally writing it. You can tell by the casual expertise with which he tries to fold the pad in half while he’s writing on it.
Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago. Looking forward to Friday. #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/S701FdTCQu
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2017
CFI Portland is throwing a Trumpesque event in ten days.
The New Campus Thought Police
Two brilliant and uncompromising thinkers, bestselling author Christina Hoff Sommers and Portland’s own Peter Boghossian, will share the stage on January 27th with political comedian and host Dave Rubin for a live “fireside chat” on the hot-button issues of speech, gender, and culture at PSU.
“The New Campus Thought Police” will be presented by both the Center for Inquiry in Portland, as well as Freethinkers. The event will feature honest and unfiltered conversation about the controversial subjects of free speech and political correctness on college campuses. This will include issues such as microaggressions, trigger warnings, safe spaces, cultural appropriation, victimhood culture, and more.
Yes, there are plenty of silly people on the left, as there always are. Yes, many of them get too worked up about things that aren’t all that important. No, the best people to talk about such things are not Christina Hoff Sommers and Peter Boghossian.
Also, don’t worries about college students demanding trigger warnings seem a little less urgent now as Donald “I hate political correctness” Trump slithers into the White House?
You know…CFI is a secular humanist organization. The humanist part is important. CFI is about values as well as epistemology – it’s never been one of those “pure” skeptical outfits that insist on keeping political and moral ideas out. This is not a good look for a secular humanist organization.
It’s happening, and I don’t think “no platforming” is a good idea except in truly extreme cases, but I think this is pretty sad.
Another reason to think Donald Trump is not a very nice man.
A former contestant on the reality show “The Apprentice” filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against President-elect Donald Trump over his response to her allegations that he groped her during a job interview in 2007.
Summer Zervos, a California restaurant owner who appeared on the show in 2006, accused Trump of aggressively kissing and grabbing her when she went to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel to discuss a possible job at the Trump Organization a year later.
In her suit, Zervos alleges that Trump defamed her when he denied her account of their interactions in the hotel room, accusing her and other women who made similar accusations of lying and fabricating their accounts. Zervos said she would drop her lawsuit, which was filed in New York, without seeking monetary damages if Trump would retract his claim that she lied and acknowledge his actions.
Sleazy enough yet?
Zervos held a news conference with her lawyer, Gloria Allred.
“Enough is enough,” Allred said. “Truth matters. Women matter, those who allege they were victims of sexual misconduct or sexual assault by Mr. Trump matter.”
Trump’s people denied it.
Eleven women spoke publicly before the election, accusing Trump of inappropriately touching or kissing them. They stepped forward after Trump denied ever touching a woman without her consent during a presidential debate in October.
“Have you ever done those things?” Trump was asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, regarding comments Trump made during a taping of “Access Hollywood” in 2005, when he bragged about groping and kissing women without their permission. “I will tell you: No, I have not,” Trump responded.
Was that credible? After listening to that tape? No.
During the campaign, Trump asserted that each of his accusers was lying and vowed to sue the women for making the claims.
“Total fabrication,” he said during a campaign rally in Gettysburg, Pa., in October. “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
He’s a bad man.
Without evidence, he said the women were coordinating with the campaign of his rival, Hillary Clinton. He also mocked some of the women, suggesting they were not attractive enough for him to sexually harass.
“When you looked at that horrible woman last night, you said, ‘I don’t think so,’ ” Trump said at a rally about one of his accusers, a People Magazine reporter who said Trump shoved her against a wall and forcibly kissed her while she was at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate on assignment in 2005.
He’s a cruel bullying lying monster of a man.
Zervos said she excused Trump’s behavior for years, particularly because she was ultimately offered a job at the Trump Organization, but she had been compelled to step forward after hearing the presidential candidate brag to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush about behaving similarly with other women.
According to the suit, the tape convinced Zervos that Trump was “a sexual predator who had preyed on her and other women.”
You can see how it would. It shows that he did that shit routinely and calculatedly, and that he bragged about it to other men. Yes, that’s predatory.
Lie down with dogs, get up with Donald Trump as president.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution expanded on Trump’s assertion that John Lewis’s congressional district is “in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)” a few days ago.
The Democrat’s district includes parts of Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton counties – and most of the city of Atlanta – as well as Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur and Morrow. The district has several of Atlanta’s most prominent gems, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the King Center and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And it has the bulk of Georgia’s higher education institutions: Emory University, Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Georgia Tech and Georgia State University are all in the 5th Congressional District. It is also where many of the state’s Fortune 500 companies are based, including Coca Cola Co., Southern Co. and Delta Air Lines.
Um. Er. So not really in such horrible shape then. Not actually falling apart then. Kind of the opposite. Five colleges and universities, and CocaCola, and Delta, and the CDC.
Ah yes but does it have any Trump Towers?
Rob Zaretsky at the LA Review of Books talks to a French translator about what it’s like translating Trump. They start with Obama. Translating him was a joy. Trump is…different.
Well, as I said, you have to be able to get into someone’s mind in order to translate his speech and reformulate it into your own language. Trump is not easy to translate, first of all, because, most of the time, when he speaks he seems not to know quite where he’s going. In my essay, I took the example of the interview he gave to The New York Times. He seems to hang onto a word in the question, or to a word that pops into his mind, repeating it over and over again. He shapes his thought around it and, sometimes, succeeds in giving part of an answer — often the same answer: namely, that he won the election. Trump seems to go from point A (the question) to point B (himself, most of the time) with no real logic. It’s as if he had thematic clouds in his head that he would pick from with no need of a logical thread to link them.
Indeed. I too have been reading him closely, and yes that is what he does. Remember the answers from the Times – Bild interview? A question about his view of the UK – a reply about his golf course. A question about his heroes – a reply about how awesome he is. Random and narcissistic at once.
But here’s the other problem with Trump: even once you’ve understood his point (or lack thereof), you must still express it in your own language. You realize, at that moment, that you have written something very unpleasant to read. Trump’s vocabulary is limited, his syntax is broken; he repeats the same phrases over and over, forcing the translator to follow suit. If she does not, she betrays the spirit of the original piece. The translator has to translate the content and the style. So that is what I do, and reading Trump in French, which is a very structured and logical language, reveals the poor quality of his language and, consequently, of his thought.
It’s very unpleasant to read in English too. It’s especially unpleasant in light of his new job. That brain-dead tweet about Martin Luther King for instance: nothing but “great” and “very very.” It’s horrifying that that is succeeding Obama.
Does this mean that Trump poses an ethical as well as linguistic challenge to the translator?
As a translator of political discourse, you also have the duty to write readable texts: so what am I to do? Translate Trump as he speaks, and let French readers struggle with whatever content there is? (Not to mention the fact that I will be judged on the vocabulary I choose — sometimes the translator is blamed for the poor quality of a piece.) Or keep the content, but smooth out the style, so that it is a little bit more intelligible, leading non-English speakers to believe that Trump is an ordinary politician who speaks properly — when this is obviously not the case?
No, not that second one. Absolutely not. He must never be translated into Less Stupid.
Russia is decriminalizing domestic violence. Not a joke.
Domestic violence kills 14,000 women every year, the Russian Interior Ministry estimates. And just 2 percent of Russian victims of domestic abuse report attacks to police.
Now, the country has just passed a bill that would decriminalize some forms of domestic violence, enraging rights groups who say the measure will leave abuse victims even more vulnerable.
The bill ― known as the “slapping law” ― passed an initial hurdle in the Duma legislative body. It would eliminate criminal penalties for first offenses or attacks that occur only once a year in which a woman or child is not “seriously” injured.
So husbands and fathers get one freebie a year, provided no bones are broken. That makes sense. Obviously a man is going to punch his wife and/or one of their children all the time, so it would just be cruel not to let them do it at least once. What the wife or the child thinks about it doesn’t matter, because only the man is a real person.
The measure’s major proponent, arch conservative senator Yelena Mizulina, has said the current penalties are “anti-family” and a “baseless intervention into family affairs,” CNN reports.
Seriously. Where would family life be if the adult male couldn’t throw a punch now and then? What are families for if the adult male can’t hit his inferiors?
The Russian Orthodox Church also backs the bill, which its leaders see as in line with its patriarchal view demanding a man’s wife and children’s absolute submission to him.
Well God is the patriarch, see, so it all makes sense.
Some 36,000 women are beaten by their husbands daily, the state-run news agency RIA Novosti reports. In 2008 the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that two-thirds of all homicides in Russia were attributable to household or domestic confrontations.
The controversial bill breezed through its first reading — 368 to 1, with one abstention. It will next go through a second and third reading and be voted on again.
Wow. That’s shocking.
I never can seem to get used to how much women are hated.
Originally a comment by iknklast on Trump names his heroes.
Team Him will just say, as usual, that the voters knew that when they voted for him
And he’d be right. Many of his voters voted for him precisely because he was unfit – they seem to think that is some good thing, having no idea what you’re doing. This is seeping into a lot of fields, too. The idea that teachers should be experienced is coming under attack from our “school reform” people – including those on the Obama team. The idea of using experienced people to sell your house? List with a realtor, and see how many people make fun of you for paying a commission, when you could just “do it yourself”. It is nearly impossible to get elected to a school board if you have any education experience. And then, don’t get me started on the whole anti-expertise movement in the medical field, leading to a burgeoning of nonsensical health claims by uninformed people.
But, boy, put one comment out there critical of religion, and they will inform you that you must be properly versed in all aspects of that religion, broad, universal knowledge, before you can say a word against it. Experts in religion are not regarded well by the masses, either, until the time someone points out the nonsense of their position.
Vladimir Putin has dismissed the dossier published last week about alleged links between Moscow and Donald Trump, describing the people who ordered it as “worse than prostitutes”.
What a ridiculous comparison. Prostitutes aren’t “bad”; prostitutes aren’t items on the list of Bad Types of People. Items on that list include murderers, rapists, bullies, frauds (funny how the last three apply to Trump) and the like. Pimps can be on that list, but prostitutes, no. But Putin is Putin, of course. I’m sure he thinks pimps and johns are the victims of prostitutes.
Making his first public remarks on the claims three days before Trump’s inauguration as US president, Putin joked about Russian sex workers, who he said were “the best in the world”, but said he did not believe Trump would have met any.
He’s a riot.
In a sometimes bizarre speech in Moscow that echoed some of the more salacious language in the documents, the Russian president said that any allegation that Trump was essentially a Russian intelligence asset was nonsense.
“I’ve never met him. I don’t know what he’ll do on the world stage. So I have no reason either to criticise him, or to defend him,” said Putin, who has previously expressed admiration for Trump’s stated desire to improve relations with Russia.
Putin dismissed as an “obvious fake” the idea that Trump could have been compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe competition.
“This is an adult, and a man who for years organised beauty contests and spoke with the most beautiful women in the world. I can hardly believe that he ran off to meet with our girls of low social morals. Although of course ours are the best in the world,” said Putin.
Ah there you go – the “girls” have “low social morals.” Men who use women have no such stigma.
“The people who order these fakes which are being spread against the president-elect of America and use them in the political battle are worse than prostitutes. They have no moral limits,” the Russian president added.
Putin said it was absurd to think Russian special services would be interested in Trump given that at the time he was not involved in politics. “When Trump came to Moscow he was not a political figure, he was just a businessman, one of the rich people of America. Do they think our special services follow every American billionaire?”
Um…yes? Of course?
Today in TrumpOnTwitter.
"@levisteveholt: @realDonaldTrump I appreciate your use of Twitter to keep us informed and maintain transparency." Very dishonest media!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
His epistemology needs work. The fact that one sycophant says something flattering about his Twitter use is just that – a minor fact about one person. It’s far from sufficient to demonstrate that the media are dishonest about his Twitter use.
At 9:00 P.M. @CNN, of all places, is doing a Special Report on my daughter, Ivanka. Considering it is CNN, can't imagine it will be great!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
He seems to think his daughter should be immune from press attention unless it’s friendly. If she were a child I would agree, but she’s not. She’s an adult and a participant in his shoddy corrupt activities.
"@drgoodspine: @realDonaldTrump @Ivanka Trump is great, a woman with real character and class."
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
Again – that’s one person saying something. It’s random.
Also notice Trump’s chronic shallowness – notice that he chose a tweet that says nothing, just as he couldn’t manage to say anything about Martin Luther King even when he wanted to. “Great…character…class.” That’s just a generic compliment, it doesn’t mean anything. Trump doesn’t even know how to mean.
People are pouring into Washington in record numbers. Bikers for Trump are on their way. It will be a great Thursday, Friday and Saturday!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
No they’re not. People are staying away in record numbers.
The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
No they’re not.
John Lewis said about my inauguration, "It will be the first one that I've missed." WRONG (or lie)! He boycotted Bush 43 also because he…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
"thought it would be hypocritical to attend Bush's swearing-in….he doesn't believe Bush is the true elected president." Sound familiar! WP
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
It’s true that Lewis boycotted Bush Jr’s inauguration. Since he doesn’t have Trump’s pattern of reckless lying, I think he forgot as opposed to lying, but I can’t demonstrate it. Mind you, there were very solid reasons for seeing Bush’s first election as dubious, given that 5-4 Supreme Court ruling and all. But Trump is at least telling the truth in that pair of tweets. But so what? He’s telling it in aid of continuing his attack on someone who’s better than he is.
"How Trump Won–And How The Media Missed It" https://t.co/Hfab41h65X
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
Breitbart. He’s quoting Breitbart at us. He’ll be president in three days and he’s quoting Breitbart at us.
The transcript part 2.
Next comes the bit I saw on Twitter, which motivated me to read the whole thing. Empty empty empty. He is so empty.
Do you have any models — are there heroes that you steer by — people you look up to from the past?
Well, I don’t like heroes, I don’t like the concept of heroes, the concept of heroes is never great, but certainly you can respect certain people and certainly there are certain people — but I’ve learnt a lot from my father — my father was a builder in Brooklyn and Queens — he did houses and housing and I learnt a lot about negotiation from my father — although I also think negotiation is a natural trait, I don’t think you can, you either have it or you don’t, you get better at it but basically, the people that I know who are great negotiators or great salesmen or great politicians, it’s very natural, very natural . . . I got a letter from somebody, their congressman, they said what you’ve done is amazing because you were never a politician and you beat all the politicians. He said they added it up — when I was three months into the campaign, they added it up — I had three months of experience and the 17 guys I was running against, the Republicans, had 236 years – ya know when you add 20 years and 30 years — so I was three months they were 236 years — so it’s sort of a funny article but I believe it’s like hitting a baseball or being a good golfer — natural ability, to me, is much more important to me than experience and experience is a great thing — I think it’s a great thing — but I learnt a lot from my father in terms of leadership.
His hero is himself, in fact. He has that heroic quality of being a good negotiator, in the sense of getting more money out of a deal than anyone else. He has it naturally. Heroic.
How is being president going to change how you operate?
Ya know this is a very, very big change — I led a very nice life and ya know successful and good and nice and this is a lot different — but ya know my attitude on that is when you’re president, you’re in the White House which is a very special place — you’re there for a limited period of time — who wants to leave? Like I’ve liked President Obama, he’s been very nice, yeah he’s been nice one on one, but maybe not so nice in other ways — but who wants to leave the White House to go to some other place and be away on a vacation? The White House is very special, there’s so much work to be done, I’m not gonna be leaving much — I mean a lot of work to be done — I’m gonna be in there working, doing what I’m supposed to be doing — but who wants to leave the White House?
Oh, I see – it’s about the house. I didn’t realize that. Ok. He’s excited about the house. He’s all about the house. He won’t be wanting to leave the house.
But he’ll be working hard while he’s in the house. At what? Twitter. He’s really big on Twitter you know. Did you know that? He wants you to know that.
When you’re president will you still tweet? And if you do will it be as the Real Donald Trump, as Potus, or probably as Real Potus?
@realDonaldTrump I think, I’ll keep it . . . so I’ve got 46 million people right now — that’s a lot, that’s really a lot — but 46 million — including Facebook, Twitter and ya know, Instagram so when you think that your 46 million there, I’d rather just let that build up and just keep it @realDonaldTrump, it’s working — and the tweeting, I thought I’d do less of it, but I’m covered so dishonestly by the press — so dishonestly — that I can put out Twitter — and it’s not 140, it’s now 140, 280 — I can go bing bing bing and I just keep going and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out — this morning on television, Fox — “Donald Trump, we have breaking news” — I put out a thing . . .
Well yes, it’s true that when a president tweets something deranged or contemptible, it gets on the news…but that’s perhaps not such an unalloyed good as he’s thinking.
But ya know the tweeting is interesting because I find it very accurate — when I get a word out and if I tell something to the papers and they don’t write it accurately, it’s really bad — they can’t do much when you tweet it and I’m careful about, it’s very precise, actually it’s very, very precise — and it comes out breaking news, we have breaking news — ya know, it’s funny, if I did a press release and if I put it out, it wouldn’t get nearly — people would see it the following day — if I do a news conference, that’s a lot of work.
Very, very precise – that’s good to know. He’s careful about it, it’s very very precise, he means every word. Good to know.
Are you looking forward to meeting our prime minister?
Well, I’ll be there — we’ll be there soon — I would say we’ll be here for a little while but and it looks like she’ll be here first — how is she doing over there, by the way, what do you think?
Theresa?
Yeah, May.
Glad we got that cleared up.
What do you do when there’s a toddler in the White House? Not because the president has a toddler but because the toddler is the president? What do you do?
The Times published a full transcript of the interview of Trump that Michael Gove and Kai Diekmann did for the Times and Bild respectively. It’s not a surprise yet it is a surprise. It’s the same old thing yet it still amazes. He can’t talk competently, and the content of what he says is absurd or horrifying or both. He’s always worse than one can believe.
Their opener is to ask him about relations with Germany and Scotland [and presumably the UK as a whole] – and he replies by talking about his golf course and how it’s raking in the cash thanks to how low the pound is.
They talk about Brexit and he talks about “strong borders” and how he’ll sign strong borders first thing on Monday, not Friday or Saturday because those are party days.
You mentioned you have German ancestors. What does it mean for you to have German blood in your veins?
Well, it’s great. I mean, I’m very proud of Germany and Germany is very special Bad Dürkheim, right? This is serious Germany, right? Like this isn’t any question — this is serious Germany. No, I’m very proud of Germany. I love Germany, I love the UK.
Tell us more about the UK.
When are you coming to the UK as president?
I look forward to doing it. My mother was very ceremonial, I think that’s where I got this aspect because my father was very brick-and-mortar, he was like, and my mother sort of had a flair, she loved the Queen, she loved anything — she was so proud of the Queen. She loved the ceremonial and the beauty, cause nobody does that like the English. And she had great respect for the Queen, liked her. Anytime the Queen was on television, an event, my mother would be watching. Crazy, right?
Is there anything else you take from having a Scottish mother?
Well, the Scottish are known for watching their pennies, so I like to watch my pennies — I mean I deal in big pennies, that’s the problem.
Is there anything typically German about you?
I like order. I like things done in an orderly manner. And certainly the Germans, that’s something that they’re rather well known for. But I do, I like order and I like strength.
Elegantly done.
Given your views on free trade, would you say that you’re a conservative?
I’m pragmatic, look I go in front of crowds — I had the biggest crowds anybody’s ever had for a presidential election and that’s tough and when I was fighting with Jeb Bush, ya know “low energy” Jeb, he would say, ‘Donald Trump is not a conservative’, so I’d go in front of 25,000 people and, like in Michigan, where there’s massive — 32,000 people — and I’m screaming, ‘Jeb Bush says I’m not a conservative’, they’re screaming, ‘Who cares?’, and I said, ‘What do you want? Do you want conservative or a good deal?’ And the reason, because Jeb Bush said I’m not a conservative because I don’t believe in free trade — well I do believe in free trade, I love free trade, but it’s gotta be smart trade so I call it fair trade — and the problem, so I said to the people, ‘Do you want a conservative or do you want somebody who’s gonna make great deals?’, and they’re all screaming, ‘Great deals, great deals’ — they don’t care, there are no labels — ya know there’s some people, he is not — Jeb Bush would stand up — ‘He is not a true conservative’ — who cares — I am a conservative, but I’m really about making great deals for the people so they get jobs . . . the people don’t care ya know when you’re talking — they don’t care, they want good deals — ya know what? They want their jobs back.
And then everyone’s head flew off and the credits rolled.
Just kidding. That’s only halfway. But I do wonder what Gove and Diekmann were thinking.
Trump is perhaps aware that his tribute to Martin Luther King was a little thin on specifics (unless you consider “wonderful” and “great” to be specifics), so he’s meeting with King’s oldest son to find out what they were.
Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s press secretary and communications director, announced the planned meeting in New York between Mr. Trump and Martin Luther King III in a morning posting on Twitter. It came two days after the president-elect had taken to the social media platform to attack Mr. Lewis after the congressman said an interview that he would not attend the inauguration and did not see Mr. Trump as a legitimate president because of questions about whether Russian hacking had affected the American election.
Mr. Trump hit back on Saturday with Twitter postings calling Mr. Lewis, who was brutally beaten in the “Bloody Sunday” march in 1965 in Selma, Ala., “all talk,” and saying that instead of “falsely complaining” about the election results, he should focus on fixing his “falling apart” and “crime infested” Georgia district.
Mr. Lewis actually represents a district that includes part of the wealthy enclave of Buckhead; the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Later, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Lewis should help him focus on “burning and crime infested inner-cities” throughout the United States and adding, “I can use all the help I can get!”
As if John Lewis were a servant to the president as opposed to a Congressional Representative with his own work to do.
In a series of television interviews on Monday, Mr. Spicer said Mr. Lewis started the fight, and he defended Mr. Trump’s decision to respond, telling CBS that the president-elect is “not going to sit back and just take attacks without responding.”
Ahhhh now you see that’s a problem right there. Actually presidents do have to sit back and just take attacks without responding. It goes with the territory. Presidents have to do that an enormous amount, possibly more than any other single human being on the planet, given our combination of a hefty population and a free press, along with our head of state and head of government folded into one office. Presidents are going to be attacked by all and sundry; that’s the nature of the job. They have to refrain from responding in order to get on with their work. So if Trump really is not going to sit back and just take attacks without responding, then that’s another reason he’s in way over his gleaming orange head.
News reports on Sunday initially said that Mr. Trump, whose aides had refused to divulge his plans for Martin Luther King’s Birthday, would visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, but later said the plans had fallen through.
“Fallen through”? What’s that supposed to mean? He forgot he had a geography test today? He had no clean underpants? He lost his bus pass? How can a plan of that kind for the president-elect “fall through”?
Mr. Spicer said that the president-elect would meet with Mr. King and others in New York to discuss voting rights and other ways of pursuing King’s legacy during a Trump administration.
Ah voting rights is it. So is he going to talk to Mr King about his lie about “millions of people who voted illegally”? Trump doesn’t give a shit about voting rights, except for taking them away.
Maybe they’ll just talk about football and call it a day.
Even when Trump tries for once not to be an asshole, he remains an asshole. That’s because he’s so inadequate and empty.
Behold his masterpiece for MLK Day:
Celebrate Martin Luther King Day and all of the many wonderful things that he stood for. Honor him for being the great man that he was!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2017
Oh yes, all the many wonderful things. So many. Very wonderful. Very very wonderful.
Honor him. Honor him for being great. So great. Very very very great. Very very great man who did many many very very wonderful things.
Exclamation point!
The latest TrumpOnTwitter:
Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017
No. John Lewis doesn’t need the ignoramus Trump telling him what to work on, and he’s not Trump’s assistant.
For many years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017
Says the man whose campaign rallies were notorious for their hatemongering which often developed into violence. Says the man who spews hatred for individuals and groups every day on Twitter. Says the meanest angriest most narcissistic man ever to be elected president of the US.
Thank you to Bob Woodward who said, "That is a garbage document…it never should have been presented…Trump's right to be upset (angry)…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017
about that…Those Intelligence chiefs made a mistake here, & when people make mistakes, they should APOLOGIZE." Media should also apologize
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017
Ah, people who make mistakes should apologize. When has Trump ever apologized for a mistake? He never apologized for his torrent of lies about Obama. He never apologized for bragging about grabbing women by the pussy without their permission.
He is at this moment struggling to conclude a thought that was too long for one tweet. It’s been eleven minutes now and he still hasn’t completed it.
.@FoxNews "Outgoing CIA Chief, John Brennan, blasts Pres-Elect Trump on Russia threat. Does not fully understand." Oh really, couldn't do…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2017
Couldn’t do what?
Writing is hard.
Ahhhh fuck you, dude.
Priebus to Obama: ‘Step up’ and quiet Democrats who question Trump’s legitimacy
Are you joking. That orange sack of shit spent three years lying about Obama in order to “question his legitimacy.” Lying. He lied. People now are questioning Trump’s legitimacy based on the truth.
Trump never bothered to apologize for those three years of racist lies.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Priebus acknowledged Lewis’s “historic contribution to civil rights and voting rights” but said his doubts about Trump’s legitimacy are “insanity” and “incredibly disappointing.”
“I think President Obama should step up,” he said, praising the cooperation from the White House on other transition issues. “I think the administration can do a lot of good by telling folks that are on the Republican side of the aisle: Look, we may have lost the election on the Democratic side, but it’s time to come together.”
I think Trump can do some good by apologizing for all his racist lies and insults. I think he should go first.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence separately criticized Lewis on Sunday for questioning Trump’s legitimacy in interviews on Fox and CBS, calling his remarks “deeply disappointing.” He also defended Trump’s recent tweets attacking Lewis, saying Trump “has the right to defend himself.”
The “right,” sure, technically. His doing so isn’t a crime. But should he? Is it a good thing to do? Especially the way he’s doing it? Of course not.
Many Democrats have bristled at the GOP calls to quietly accept Trump’s presidency, pointing to the president-elect’s prominent role in promoting the false “birther” movement to question whether Obama was born in the United States. Trump refused to unequivocally accept Obama’s status as a natural-born U.S. citizen until September — less than two months before Election Day — and has never apologized for his role in spreading doubts.
His role in spreading doubts by lying. John Lewis hasn’t told any damn lies about Trump. It takes lies to throw suspicion on Obama, but it’s the truth that disgraces Trump.
A sweet little boy-meets-girl story out of Connecticut.
A local Republican politician in Connecticut was arrested for allegedly pinching a female employee’s genitals, reports the Westport Daily Voice.
Christopher von Keyserling, 71, was arrested Wednesday in Greenwich Town Hall and charged with fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor. He was released on a $2,500 bond and given a court date of Jan. 25.
It was last month. The woman encountered von Keyserling in a hall.
The two had a brief political argument, in which von Keyserling remarked, “I love this new world, I no longer have to be politically correct.”
When the woman tried to walk away, von Keyserling allegedly reached from behind to place his hand between her legs and pinched her in the groin. He said “it would be your word against mine and nobody will believe you,” the woman claimed.
There he is, no longer having to be politically correct. It’s so horrifyingly politically correct to refrain from grabbing women by the pussy, isn’t it?
His lawyer told Greenwich Time the charges were the result of a “jocular” moment with a woman.
“In almost 30 years of practicing law in this town, I would say Mr. von Keyserling is the one person I would never suspect of having any inappropriate sexual predilections,” the lawyer, Phil Russell, said. “There was a playful gesture, in front of witnesses. It was too trivial to be considered anything of significance. To call it a sexual assault is not based in reality.”
Sure. Women are just furniture, after all. They walk around and talk, but that’s only because somebody programmed them. They have no actual minds, no actual thoughts and plans and intentions.
Police said surveillance recordings from the day of the incident are consistent with the woman’s claims.
Well they’re just being politically correct.
Susan Campbell has a terrific post at The Hill comparing Trump and John Lewis over time.
n a photograph from his youth, President-elect Donald J. Trump poses in the dress uniform of a New York Military Academy cadet. He’s posed next to his father, real estate mogul Fred C. Trump, and his mother, the Scottish immigrant/social climber, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump.
He graduated from NYMA in 1964, and with all due respect to the class of ’17, at the time his school had the reputation as little more than a holding pen for rich, disaffected young men who’d reach a level of incompetence unwelcome at other institutions.
During that same time, John Lewis, the son of the sharecropper Eddie Lewis, and Willie Mae Carter Lewis, was running the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and he was a keynote speaker at the 1963 March On Washington, the gathering where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream Speech.”
Now to be fair Lewis is six years older than Trump, so in the early years he gets a partial discount for that…but only partial, because the discrepancies in material advantages remain.
While Trump was playing Animal House Lewis was having his skull fractured by Alabama state troopers.
Trump transferred to Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, and racked up five draft deferments — four for college, and one for bone spurs in his heels. He entered his father’s real estate business, where in 1973, the Department of Justice sued Trump and his company for alleged racial discrimination at their housing developments.
Trump and family settled, without admitting guilt, but only after Trump tried to counter-sue for $100 million.
During that time, Lewis was director of the Voter Education Project, which coordinated the voter registration work of five different organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP, and the National Urban League. In 1987, John Lewis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia’s Fifth district. In 1998, he published, “Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of a Movement.” It won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He followed it with a much-acclaimed series of graphic novels titled, “March.”
In 1987, Trump published “Art of the Deal,” followed by “The Art of the Comeback,” “How to Get Rich,” and “Think Like a Billionaire,” though we don’t actually know if Trump is a billionaire as he won’t release his income taxes.
Speaks for itself, dunnit.
In 2011, Trump began floating the (false) rumor that Pres. Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. That same year, Lewis was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Trump isn’t good enough to empty the wastebasket in Lewis’s office.
Item 23 from Amy Siskind’s list – C-Span being interrupted by RT during testimony by Maxine Waters. It happened but C-Span considers it a glitch as opposed to a sinister move by the Rooskies.
At 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Representative Maxine Waters was on the floor of the House of Representatives, arguing for the importance of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“At this time,” Ms. Waters, Democrat of California, said, “with a bill that would basically take our cop on the block, the S.E.C., and literally obliterate ——”
Alas, politics junkies, news editors and anyone else who was watching the broadcast online did not learn how that sentence ended. Ms. Waters was cut off. Instead, they heard the jangling music of a feed from RT, a state-run Russian television network that has been accused of helping its government interfere in the American election.
Some on social media immediately assumed that the interruption, which lasted about 10 minutes, had nefarious implications.
C-Span, in a statement, had a simpler explanation: It was probably a technical error. C-Span’s television broadcast continued uninterrupted.
Probably.
Noting that RT is among the news feeds it regularly monitors, it said: “We don’t believe we were hacked. Instead, our initial investigation suggests that this was caused by an internal routing error. We take our network security very seriously and will continue with a deeper investigation, which may take some time.”
So that one’s a question mark.
Item 2 from Amy Suskind’s list – Bloomberg reported on January 5:
Donald Trump’s new Washington hotel, located just blocks from the White House, owes electricians, wood workers and a plumbing and heating business more than $5 million for unpaid labor, according to liens filed against the property with the District of Columbia.
The 263-room hotel, located on the historic site of the city’s former main post office, opened in October following a $212 million renovation of the 1899 structure. The liens were filed in November and December, according to public records.
Trump has acknowledged not always paying all his bills, saying it’s often a negotiating tactic when work is subpar. His companies have been sued numerous times over unpaid work. Among them were landscapers at Riverside South Park in Manhattan, who sued in 2001 seeking $111,000. Contractors at Trump Park Avenue sued in 2003 seeking $206,000. And in 2010 a painter in Chicago sued a Trump entity developing a high-rise claiming to be owed more than $4 million.
Beautiful, isn’t it? The guy who will be president in 5 days owes 5 million bucks to working people? Are we a classy nation or what.
Those claiming they’re owed money by Trump Old Post Office LLC include the Washington plumbing and heating firm, Joseph J. Magnolia Inc., which says it’s due $2.98 million. A Maryland company, AES Electrical Inc., claims it’s owed $2.075 million and A&D Construction of Virginia LLC, says the hotel hasn’t paid $79,700 for trim work including crown and base moldings.
Rebecca Woods, an attorney representing the president-elect in other hotel-related litigation, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment on the liens. Trump’s communications office didn’t immediately reply to an e-mailed request for comment.
Trump is a thief, and the people he steals from are contractors and workers.
Last night’s Alec Baldwin as Trump:
