Reading

Created
Tue, 14/05/2024 - 00:30
You are one-fifth of a person to Donald Trump Donald Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen is trestifying this morning in Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial. He’s begun by explaining how Trump would would instruct him to pay creditors twenty cents on the dollar. Take it or get nothing. Even for struggling small, family businesses. Screw you. Anna Bower (Lawfare correspondent) tweets (thread): Before Cohen moved over to Trump Org, Cohen presented Trump with a bill for 100K, which Trump owed for work Cohen’s firm did on a real estate transaction. Trump told Cohen to come work for Trump Org, and Cohen agreed. Later, when Cohen mentioned the bill owed to his law firm, Trump said “Do you want to get fired on your first day?” The bill never got paid, Cohen says. Cohen said that he always reported directly to Trump. There were times when he asked Cohen to negotiate payments or bills. He provides an example: Trump University ran into trouble, and there were vendors who were unpaid. Cohen contacted the vendors, negotiated a reduction in what was owed. Mens rea on two legs Trump did not use email.
Created
Mon, 13/05/2024 - 23:00
Resisting the right’s fit of pique I’m trying not to repeat the mistakes of 2016. I really am. There was no way the country was crazy enough to elect Donald Trump president, I told myself. “He’s mentally unstable,” I told my parents one night while visiting for dinner. One well-heeled Bernie Sanders supporter, unnerved by Trump signs sprouting like weeds out in the county, printed and fabricated his own quarter-sized Clinton signs by the thousands in response. They went like the proverbial hotcakes. Then I spent the afternoon of Election Day 2016 greeting voters outside a nearby polling station standing a few feet away from Talks To The Sky. You know what happened later. This fall, she might be proudly wearing adult diapers outside her pants in solidarity with her king. Sadly, Americans are crazy enough to elect Donald “88 Counts,”professional huckster. They proved that once already. They left him in charge ahead of a global pandemic and got American carnage and the sacking of the U.S. Capitol.
Created
Mon, 13/05/2024 - 23:00

A 2023 Column Contest grand-prize winner, Laurence Pevsner’s Sorry Not Sorry investigates why we’re sick of everyone apologizing all the time—and how the collapse of the public apology leaves little room for forgiveness and grace in our politics and culture.

- - -

In the final round of the most important chess tournament of the year, two super grandmasters—two of the fiercest, most competitive chess players alive—apologized to each other. Fabiano Caruana, the American, had the white pieces against Ian Nepomniachtchi, the Russian. To understand why they apologized, we have to understand the unusual situation they found themselves in: they both had to win.

Created
Mon, 13/05/2024 - 22:00

What is the Forest Service’s new policy regarding the tick problem?
We locate the hellbeasts wherever they have made the mistake of existing and send them to the flaming valleys of the Underworld from whence they crawled out during phase one of The Reaping.

How will this be accomplished?
We won’t sleep or see our families until every blade of grass and every pile of leaves is free of the blood-soaked, virus-infected horrors that ticks are intent on inflicting on our people and way of life. For as long as it takes, we will breathe annihilation and drink destruction until Lord Beelzebub’s eight-legged hordes have returned to the fiery womb of anguish in which they gained their wretched powers.

Created
Mon, 13/05/2024 - 19:44
Why do so many people obsess about false conspiracies, but ignore the real ones? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th May 2024 I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe that groups of people conspire secretly against our interests to line their pockets, cover their backs or achieve political goals. By this definition I […]