President Trump: "I'm not sure that I've ever even heard of the Category 5. I knew it existed, and I've seen some category 4s — you don't even see them that much but the category 5 is something that I don't know that I've ever even heard the term other than I know it's there."… Read More »
For the entertainment of many, this video has been making the rounds recently: For those who don’t follow British politics closely or know much about the history of the British Isles, a little background is in order. The voice here comes from John Cleese in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where he plays… Read More »
By Paul Woodward To see things clearly, we often need to break the patterns of habit. The Earth, physically and metaphorically — the ground of human experience — is the stationary foundation that forms the background of movement: our movement across its surface; the terra firma against which the oceans wash and above which… Read More »
Cara Buckley writes: Humans ruined everything. They bred too much and choked the life out of the land, air and sea. And so they must be vaporized by half, or attacked by towering monsters, or vanquished by irate dwellers from the oceans’ polluted depths. Barring that, they face hardscrabble, desperate lives on a once verdant… Read More »
In an editorial, the New York Times says: While its modern roots predate the Trump administration by many decades, white nationalism has attained a new mainstream legitimacy during Mr. Trump’s time in office. Discussions of Americans being “replaced” by immigrants, for instance, are a recurring feature on some programs on Fox News. Fox hosts Tucker… Read More »
Josh Rogin writes: Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) talks often about her January 2017 trip to Syria, when she met Bashar al-Assad, toured Aleppo after it had been reduced to rubble (by the Assad regime), and interviewed Syrian civilians and the regime-approved “opposition,” who unanimously told her Assad was a better option for Syria than the… Read More »
Cass R. Sunstein writes: Mueller made it clear that his largest concern is with Russia’s extraordinary effort to disrupt U.S. democratic processes. As he put it, “The Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” On one of the rare occasions when he went beyond his role as a lawyer and showed… Read More »
Trump says if you don’t love America, leave it. He’s been bashing the US for years. pic.twitter.com/b7humVud7W — Scott Dworkin (@funder) July 21, 2019 If Trump’s electioneering mantra, “we’re like a Third World country,” ever sounded like a hyperbolic economic assessment of America, have no doubt it was simply and crudely a dog whistle to… Read More »
In a letter to The Observer, Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sir Simon Schama, Neil Blair, Tracy-Ann Oberman, and Rabbi Julia Neuberger, write: Over the past four years, we have watched the unchecked spread of vicious antisemitism – anti-Jewish racism – in the Labour party with bewilderment and disgust – all the more so… Read More »
The New York Times reports: As Europe heats up, Greenland melts and the Midwest floods, many news organizations are devoting more resources to climate change as they cover the topic with more urgency. In Florida, six newsrooms with different owners have taken the unusual step of pooling their resources and sharing their reporting on the… Read More »
CNN reports: The US Department of Agriculture has suspended data collection for its annual Honey Bee Colonies report, citing cost cuts — a move that robs researchers and the honeybee industry of a critical tool for understanding honeybee population declines, and comes as the USDA is curtailing other research programs. It’s also another step toward… Read More »
Take Your Daughter To Work Day#UnwantedIvanka pic.twitter.com/nnTzm0Pu51 — Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) July 1, 2019 It’s hard to watch the Trump presidency — the definition of a kakistocracy (“government by the worst people”) — without anticipating its denouement, not so much as expectation but more so as wish. What end would be most fitting, even if… Read More »
In response to the latest allegation that he engaged in a sexual assault, Donald Trump’s first line of defense is to claim that the victim is not his kind of woman — he doesn’t deny that he is this kind of man. In reference to E. Jean Carroll, Trump says: “Number one, she’s not my… Read More »
An editorial in Nature says: In 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC, and more than 1,700 researchers, issued the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity. It cautioned that humans were inflicting “harsh and often irreversible damage” on the environment, and that current practices were endangering humanity’s future. More than 21,000 scientists have so… Read More »
The Guardian reports: The close encounter will have to wait. Astronomers have come up empty-handed after scanning the heavens for signs of intelligent life in the most extensive search ever performed. Researchers used ground-based telescopes to eavesdrop on 1,327 stars within 160 light years of Earth. During three years of observations they found no evidence… Read More »
Following Donald Trump’s reiteration that he would gladly receive electoral assistance from any source, Jack Shafer notes: Had Trump answered the hypothetical about taking campaign information from the Russians in 2020 in any other way than he did, it would have been read as a confession that he and his son did something wrong in… Read More »
