Here someone states the obvious, because it must sometimes be asserted in the face of caviling over the ethics of stating the obvious: the president is not well. Accepting the reality about the president’s disordered personality, writes Peter Wehner, is essential.
Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving—has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them; his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating.
It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny, predatory sexual behavior, and sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW. (When asked about Trump’s feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump’s mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, reportedly said, “He pisses ice water.”)
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Previously featured at Boing Boing as the titular "revenge porn shitweasel" in Mark Frauenfelder's classic post Revenge porn shitweasel abuses DMCA in vain effort to take down his own photos, revenge porn shitweasel Craig Brittain is now running for U.S. Senate. But he has another problem today: text messages posted by someone who claims he sent them.
Andrew Chavez, the owner of Petition Partners, told the Arizona Capitol Times that Republican Craig Brittain lashed out at Chavez and his family after he declined Brittain’s request to hire Petition Partners to help gather enough nominating petitions to qualify for the 2020 primary ballot.
On August 21, Chavez tweeted a screengrab of texts he received from an unnamed source. At the time, Chavez only wrote that the sender was a candidate he declined to work for.
That candidate, who Chavez later identified as Brittain, lashed out at Chavez.
“F*ckin piece of sh*t be glad you even get to stay in my country. Can’t wait to deport some of your family members. MAGA,” Brittain allegedly wrote. “Deport all invaders and deport anyone who is anti-deportation or pro-amnesty along with them… You are trash just like the invaders. Move to Mexico.”
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Howard Schultz is ending his bid to become President of the United States of America—or at least blackmail Dems into supporting a billionaire-friendly centrist over more popular left-leaning candidates. Read the rest
Ashley Feinberg's "brief history of overreaction" hilariously chronicles the New York Times' current roster of columnists and their haters.
Many readers of the New York Times were astonished by Bret Stephens’ Aug. 30 column, which warned that Nazi-style propaganda was on the march because he couldn’t handle being called a bedbug in a joke on Twitter. But Stephens was simply carrying on a now-familiar tradition in the opinion section: spending hundreds of words in the country’s most prominent newspaper to complain that someone was mean to the writer online. Facing the leveling effects of the internet—and especially Twitter—where anyone can make fun of anyone else, the credentialed columnists of the Times have consistently lost their sense of proportion, turning their attention away from a criminal presidency or impending ecological collapse to use their platforms to try to accomplish what normal people would do with a “lol” or the mute button. Here is a brief history of that practice under editorial page editor James Bennet, who took over the section in May 2016.
My favorite word for the NYT's opinion section under Bennet is prosciutto: fancy, fragile, salty, undercooked ham. Read the rest
After two solid days of failure and crisis, including three lost votes and a disastrous performance at Prime Minister's Question Time, the government of Boris Johnson is already floundering badly. Now his own brother, Jo Johnson, is quitting not only his government, but his seat and the ruling Conservative party too.
The business minister and Tory MP for Orpington, south-east London, cited an "unresolvable tension" in his role. Mr Johnson voted Remain in the 2016 EU membership referendum, while his brother co-led the Leave campaign.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was "unbelievable timing".
Mr Johnson's resignation follows the removal of the Tory whip from 21 MPs this week for supporting moves to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Our political editor tweeted that Mr Johnson was "understood to be upset about the purge of colleagues" and that the brothers were "in very different places" on Brexit.
Today I learned that Boris Johnson's younger brother looks exactly like him, but hasn't been infected by the Bene Gesserit with a genetically-targeted STD that turns you into a pustulent floating poisoned bag of a man. Read the rest
Jacob Wohl is among the more baffling right-wing grifters to grace social media. So inept and comical are his antics (framing politians for impossible crimes, false claims of location belied by the selfies in which the claims are made, claiming to overhear hipsters in coffee shops admit to conservative beliefs, etc) that he's become a figure of fun online. The fun is over; he's being indicted.
Wohl and former business partner Matthew Johnson were both charged with the unlawful sale of securities in a Riverside Superior Court criminal complaint filed on Aug. 19.
Wohl has not been arrested yet on the charge, according to the court docket. Prosecutors recommended $5,000 bonds for both Wohl and Johnson.
The allegation that Wohl and Johnson unlawfully sold securities centers on one of Wohl’s financial companies, Montgomery Assets. A warrant application filed by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office notes that the three-year statute of limitations on the case was set to expire at the end of August 2019, meaning prosecutors had to file by the end of last month if they wanted to pursue charges.
Behind the blundering and ridiculous claims, Wohl has been accused of at least one horrible small-time fraud by a person to whom the money -- peanuts to rich-kid Wohl but years of savings to them -- will likely never be recovered. He's a nasty son of a bastard and, all things considered, no joke.
Update: Wohl's arrest warrant was rescinded after he appeared in court today and was released on his own recognizance, pending arraignment next month. Read the rest
Get over it! Despite the mockers and complainers, and even attempts to make it illegal to perambulate while looking at your own damned phone, science concludes that the risks of it are negligible.
As part of the mandated study, the DOT conducted an in-depth review of written crash narratives in the city between 2014 and 2017. They found just .2 percent of reports made any mention of pedestrians using electronic devices. In one of those cases, the victim was actually reaching to pick up a dropped cell phone when they were fatally struck by a driver.
Those numbers bore out at the national level as well. According to the last six years of available federal data, fatalities involving the use of portable electronic devices by pedestrians represented between 0 and .2 percent of pedestrian deaths.
Phones are to cars as video games are to guns. Read the rest
Kaiser Kuo (previously) is one of the best-informed, most incisive commentators on China -- he's a Chinese-American (literal) rock star, entrepreneur and writer whose presentations on China I've been privileged to attend several times, and each one was insightful, surprising and nuanced.
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Illegitimate, popular vote losing President Donald Trump's spokeslackey and vice president Mike Pence visited Ireland on official United States business this week, and did so in a way that will personally enrich Donald Trump and his idiot spawn. Read the rest
Here's a perfect frame from the UK parliament's video feed. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Secretary of State Andrea Leadsom and Home Secretary Sajid Javid are realizing one of their MPs is crossing the aisle to defect to the Liberal Democrats, costing the Conservatives their parliamentary majority.
The BBC:
Conservative MP Phillip Lee has defected to the Liberal Democrats ahead of a showdown between Boris Johnson and Tory rebels over Brexit.
Dr Lee, the MP for Bracknell, took his seat on the opposition benches as the PM addressed the Commons.
His defection means Boris Johnson no longer has a working majority in the House of Commons.
He said the government was "pursuing a damaging Brexit in unprincipled ways... putting lives and livelihoods at risk".
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It is all the fake media, she says.
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Exhibit A is this tweet, from the President of the United States of America, angered at the presence of criticism on his favorite channel:
Exhibit B is this almost-plaintive response from Fox News anchor Brit Hume, not quite able to plainly say Fox News doesn't work for him, but at least managing to say it isn't supposed to work for him.
Exhibit C is all the responses to Brit Hume from angry Fox News viewers, which don't need to be embedded here, or even read, because you already know exactly what they say. Read the rest
The New York Times reports that the DNC has whittled the Dem field down to 10 candidates—enough to fit on a single stage for the next debate—after another round of dismal polling for the tail-end vanity candidates.
• Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
• Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey
• Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.
• Julián Castro, the former housing secretary
• Senator Kamala Harris of California
• Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
• Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas
• Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont
• Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
• Andrew Yang, a tech entrepreneur
Pause to consider how overwhelmingly important it is to lower-ranked Dem candidates to be on that privately-owned, legacy-media stage. Read the rest
No clear leader of the pack, yet.
Trump foe may be charged by Trump cronies with lying to federal agents
The gall. Pardoned by Orange Julius, racist birther asshat Joe Arpaio is running for his old job of Maricopa County Sheriff.
The Guardian:
Joe Arpaio announced on Sunday – the second anniversary of his pardon by Donald Trump – that he will see re-election to his old job next year.
Arpaio, 87, is a Republican who was voted out of office in 2016 after 24 years as sheriff of Maricopa county. He said he would seek his party’s nomination again in the 4 August 2020 primary, running against his former chief deputy, Gerard Sheridan.
Perhaps this is what they meant about the dead walking the earth. Read the rest
Behold the President of the United States of America: "Trump suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting U.S."
Axios:
President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president's private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments. Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?" according to one source who was there. "They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?" the source added, paraphrasing the president's remarks.
It's like a dark sitcom: a lazy, indifferent president hates the job and pitches increasingly blithe acts of insanity in the hope that he will be 25thd out of office, but the GOP loves it and works round-the-clock to keep him strapped to the horse, while congressional Democrats are just too spineless and compromised to oppose him. Read the rest
