Donald Trump Jr. asked a Russian lawyer at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting whether she had evidence of illegal donations to the Clinton Foundation, the lawyer told the Senate Judiciary Committee in answers to written questions obtained exclusively by NBC News.
The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told the committee that she didn't have any such evidence, and that she believes Trump misunderstood the nature of the meeting after receiving emails from a music promoter promising incriminating information on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump's Democratic opponent.
Once it became apparent that she did not have meaningful information about Clinton, Trump seemed to lose interest, Veselnitskaya said, and the meeting petered out.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Just to be abundantly clear: This could be accurate, or Veselnitskaya could be lying through her teeth and setting up Don Jr., because Putin remains unhappy about sanctions.
Either way, Don Jr. got himself into this mess by actively trying to collude with a foreign adversary to harm Hillary Clinton during the election.
"He ran the DOJ much like the Black Panthers would. That is a fact."—Fox News host Andrea Tantaros, on the air today, discussing the legacy of departing Attorney General Eric Holder.
Conservatives sure do love invoking the Black Panthers these days.
Despite reports that driverless cars could exponentially increase road safety, the FBI is worried about autonomous cars' affect on crime:
In a section called Multitasking, the report notes that "bad actors will be able to conduct tasks that require use of both hands or taking one's eyes off the road which would be impossible today."
One nightmare scenario could be suspects shooting at pursuers from getaway cars that are driving themselves.
Yes, that would be impossible today. Unless that bad actor has one friend.
I don't know about you, but I'm definitely willing to risk the potential SKYROCKETING CRIME RATES caused by robot accomplices in exchange for fewer serious car accidents.
Republicans do not live on the same planet we do. That is the only explanation I have left for shit like this:
Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), the fifth-ranking House Republican, laid the blame for gun violence at the feet of an unusual suspect: the children of "welfare moms" who commit fraud.
In a meeting with constituents earlier this month in Oklahoma City, a woman asked the GOP congressman what he was doing to combat all the children who were committing gun violence because they were high on psychotropic drugs. Lankford replied that he "agree[s] with that" and then went on to blame Social Security disability fraud for the rash of gun violence around the country.
..."I agree with that. I think there's a bunch of issues that, quite frankly, most liberals are afraid to talk about. [...] Where are we on all those psychiatric drugs? We've overmedicated kids. Quite frankly some of the overmedication of kids are because welfare moms want to get additional benefits and if they can put them on SSI through maintenance drugs, they can also put them on Social Security disability and get a separate check. That is wrong on every single level. Not only is it fraudulent to the government, but it also tells a kid with great potential, 'don't try because you're disabled.'"
Moms are diabolical, y'all. Especially "welfare moms," who are always stealing the stick-figure family decals off the rear windows of soccer moms' minivans, when they're not drugging up their kids and giving them guns to play with while Mommy defrauds the government.
In Fiscal Year 2011, the Inspector General's office opened up 4,600 fraud cases related to Social Security disability programs. This number includes a wide variety of fraud, including lying about one's marital status, stealing money from someone who has died, or unreported income. The actual number of people committing the type of fraud Lankford describes is a minuscule fraction. Meanwhile, nearly 10,000 people are gunned down in an average year.
Situations like this beg for an application of Occam's Razor. Which seems more likely to contribute to gun violence: "welfare moms" overmedicating their kids in order to commit Social Security fraud, or the vast proliferation of guns and how easy it is to obtain one?
WELFARE MOMS!
So this is the Republicans' current working theory: Anyone who uses guns to kill people is crazy. (Except, of course, vile nightmares fine upstanding citizens like George Zimmerman.) And it's either their mothers' fault because they made them crazy by medicating them for welfare fraud, or their mothers' fault because they failed to get them treatment for the crazy they already had.
The one thing we know for sure is that it's definitely women who are to blame.
by Shaker BrianWS, who may or may not become a full-time contributor someday based on our next visit to The Oracle with Neo.
So, my boyfriend and I just got a new place. I had to make copies of the keys, so I went full-tilt, faux-patriotic Republican. Mitt Romney would be so proud. That is, if he were able to feel emotions other than MONEY.
When I got them, of course I took a picture of them and sent it to Liss, with the message: "They unlock the AMERICAN DREAMTM!"
Followed shortly thereafter with: "OMFG I couldn't make this shit up… THEY DON'T WORK! OBVIOUSLY!"
It was especially surprising since that's the first time I've ever seen something with a bald eagle on it be anything but absolutely perfect.
I'm on my way back to the keysmith. Life is an adventure!
His career has shed light on the secrets of the universe, from the nature of space-time to the workings of black holes, but there is one conundrum that still baffles the world's most famous scientist.
In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. "They are," he said "a complete mystery."
I suppose that's meant to be charming or some shit, but one of the most brilliant male scientists on the planet talking about women as if we're a different species is not charming: It is rage-makingly Othering, and profoundly immature to boot.
You may have already heard that Time has selected its person of the year: "The Protestor." Despite Time's clever use of the singular (The Protestor sounds like a kinda cool superhero), once again time has avoided naming an individual person of the year.
Time has not selected an individual woman as its "X of the Year" since then-president of the Philippines Corazon Aquino was named Woman of the Year in 1986. In 1999, Time changed the annual year-end honorific, which had almost exclusively been a "Man of the Year" since its inception, to "Person of the Year," but it merely created an illusion of parity. Still no individual women.
"Person of the Year," my ass. If Time doesn't believe there's been a single individual woman deserving of the title in 24 years, then the least they could do is be honest and go back to calling it what it really is: "Man of the Year."
In 2009, Kate Harding made a familiar observation:
Jeff Bezos, George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and, as of yesterday, Ben Bernanke have all earned solo “Person of the Year” covers since the language was changed — as have Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton (twice each), George H.W. Bush, Ted Turner, Pope John Paul II, Newt Gingrich, David Ho, Andy Grove and Kenneth freakin’ Starr, since Aquino’s win. I am detecting a pattern.
This year Time named four runners-up. True story: the only woman among them is famous for marrying a famous dude.
I know that Time's person of the year is a gimmick designed to sell magazines, but gimmicks matter, particularly when the media make them major stories. As important as global protests have been (even when they've upheld key parts of the kyriarchy :ahem:), they're not exactly the work of a person. Time, I suggest you find a better name for your crappy award.
Nathan Lane to Play Cam's "Flamboyant Friend" on Modern Family
Swell.
Tony winner Nathan Lane is joining the ABC series next season, at least for one episode. Executive producer Steve Levitan just told us that Lane has been cast as Pepper, the ultraflamboyant friend of Cam and Mitchell on the show.
[Trigger warning for violence and victim-blaming.]
Not content to merely defend Mel Gibson because, hey, they're friends—and who needs principles when you've got big-time pals like Melly-boy?—today Goldberg used the platform afforded her by The View to go on the attack against Gibson's victim and former partner Oksana Grigorieva, detailing her angry suspicions about why Grigorieva released the tapes instead of going to the police.
Which, it should be noted, is not even accurate. Grigorieva was issued a restraining order against Gibson on June 21, more than a week before the first of the recordings was made public. But, even if Goldberg were right, and the release of the tapes predated the restraining order, it wouldn't be the first time a survivor of violence and harassment, especially in cases where the perpetrator is a powerful and/or famous man, had to go public with evidence in order to shame the cops into taking the accusations seriously.
[Transcript below.]
There's a lot to parse here in terms of the many shapes Goldberg's victim-blaming actually takes, which I'll leave you to do in comments.
I'll just quickly note two things: 1. When Elizabeth Hasselbeck is the voice of reason, you know you've really run off the rails. 2. There probably could not have been a more perfectly absurd guest panelist to bear witness to this trainwreck than Clay Aiken.
Whoopi Goldberg: You know what? Thank god none of us are going through it. [murmurs of agreement from the rest of the panel] Do you know what I mean? There but for the grace of god go we, and, you know, I've gotten a lot of— [Joy Behar says something] Sorry?
Behar: I wouldn't be in that position. I don't—I don't really identify with this at all.
Sherri Shepherd: But maybe not that one particular position, but—
Goldberg: Well, maybe not, but—maybe you wouldn't hit somebody and you wouldn't allow someone to hit you—
Behar: That's right.
Goldberg: You wouldn't tape somebody yelling at you on the phone. People tape stuff, I mean, it's going on and on and on—
Behar: No, I would do that. If I were in her position, I would have done the exact thing …
Elizabeth Hasslebeck: She's smart to do that. I think it empowers the woman.
[crosstalk; Shephard is siding with Goldberg and Hasselbeck with Behar]
Goldberg: But then why not just take it to the police and say, "This is what's happening"… Why is it, why is it at the top… [crosstalk] See, this is the thing that bothers me, and it bothers me whenever anybody does it: If there's a beef, take it to the cops! To the people who can take care of it. To release it and—
Behar: She got a restraining order.
[crosstalk; Shephard is still siding with Goldberg and Hasselbeck with Behar]
Shephard: Why do they have these tapes?
Goldberg: Well, that's my question!
Hasselbeck: It's also reported, too, and no one knows if this is true, that there was money offered to her to not say anything that was going on, so you have to understand, money is also power and can be used as a weapon, and if he indeed was using it to try to muffle her—right?
Goldberg: Listen, nobody knows that better than me! Nobody knows that better than me! But if somebody's kicking your behind, and punching you in the face while you're holding your kid, and you don't go to the cops FIRST, you go to f— Radar Online! [laughter as Goldberg covers her mouth because she almost let slip an f-bomb]
Clay Aiken: I'm a little scared of you right now!
Goldberg: We've gotta move on!
[crosstalk; Behar and Hasselbeck are not letting it drop]
Behar: —restraining order!
Hasselbeck: New tapes were just released this morning—
Behar: It's not that she didn't cover herself. She got a restraining order.
Goldberg: But WHEN did she get the restraining order? And how long have these tapes—
[crosstalk; Aiken looks like he wants to vomit all over the table]
Hasselbeck: Well, we'll all find out because it's all gonna be in the police report pretty soon.
With honorable mention to today's runner-up, the Washington Post, who inexplicably continue to pay Kathleen Parker to write this fetid shit:
If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president.
Phew. That was fun. Now, if you'll just keep those hatchets holstered and hear me out.
Oh my aching sides. The old "don't get violent with me, gender police!" chestnut never stops being heeeeelarious.
The rest of the piece is the usual patented Parker poppycock: Men and women are different in stereotypes whose respective Venn diagrams do not overlap (because one is on Mars and one is on Venus, amirite? HIGH FIVES!), Obama has feminine traits, therefore he's a woman, and women are stupid, which is why he's a failure, and we totes need a Real Woman, namely a conservative one who acts like a man, in that there Oval Office.
Blah blah blah.
Never mind the threadbare gendered analysis and the so-old-they-fart-dust [/spudsy] stereotypes on which it's based; Parker's ridiculous contention that Obama is the first female president isn't even fresh.
Kathleen Parker's column, this jalopy called. It wants its old, tired, and brokedown back.
Are you having a hot bromance with another dude? Well, grab your beach towel and slip on your mandals, because it's time for a mancation!
Ask Marc Van Driessche about a recent vacation, and he will describe an adrenaline-charged shark-diving expedition off the Mexico coast with two menfriends. While he enjoyed his up-close encounter with Bruce, a great white shark the size of a bus, the family stayed home.
"Menfriends"—seriously?
There were two spinster sisters who lived in the first floor apartment of my grandmother's rowhouse in Queens; Clara and Marie had lived in that apartment since their childhood, and neither of them had ever married or ever had children. When Clara died, Marie, then in her 80s, suddenly started going grocery shopping and on dinner dates with a man named Frank. Frank was referred to as Marie's "gentleman friend."
When I worked at a real estate office on the weekends in high school, back when Jesus was still riding dinosaurs, there was a realtor who everyone (except the boss) knew was gay. Fred's roommate and BFF sometimes came into the office with him on Saturdays, while I was there working the phones and dying of boredom. He was introduced to me as Fred's "gentleman friend."
Basically, what I'm saying is that "manfriend" reminds me of the antiquated term that was used for the boyfriends of old ladies and queers, by people who squirmed at the idea of ladies and queers doin' it.
But I digress. Back to the mancations with your menfriends.
Pop culture has a term for it: the mancation.
No, pop culture does not have a term for it. Spike TV and Men's Insecurity Weekly might have a term for it, but Lady Gaga's next single isn't going to be about mancations. I don't make many predictions, but I'm pretty confident about that one.
More men are getting away from family, work and household duties…
All the various Things That Suck, then.
…for trips with male friends who will watch your back, push you if you lose your nerve, and take care of themselves if they get seasick, Dr. Van Driessche says.
"Let's get one thing straight, Bob: I ain't holding your hair if you puke over the side of this here boat!"
They are departing from traditional male golf outings or fishing trips to engage in extreme sports, from off-road racing to machine-gun training.
Machine-gun training is my favorite sport. I like it almost as much as xxxtreme machete flinging.
Also, more men are heading to destinations long regarded as more alluring to women—many with added "man caves" and other mancation-style amenities, such as poker tables and cigar bars.
AND TITTAYS!!! Oh, sorry, I got carried away there. My apologies. The upstanding men of mancationing are interested in looking only at other men; that's why their wives aren't there.
The trend shouldn't be confused with the bachelor-party stereotype of drunken bar crawls or partying at casinos, says James Hills, founder of mantripping.com, a two-year-old Web site that helps men plan their trips. Nor are they "singles trips" aimed at finding partners, he says.
Instead, more men are using trips to deepen friendships, teach each other skills or push each other into adrenaline-charged activities that their families prefer to sit out. Others want to recapture the camaraderie of high school or college sports, or escape what they regard as an increasingly female-dominated world.
Fair enough. I mean, hell, women are even taking over the English language, creating absurd portmanteaus that lay their feminine claim on gender-neutral words. Get a load of these broads sullying "mancation" by mashing it with "vagina." I mean, what the fuck is a "vacation"?!
"My wife does girls' trips and she does stuff I wouldn't want to do. They go off and see 'Sex and the City' and get manicures. For me, that's not fun," Mr. Seligson says. "For me, there's just something great about being able to let loose and be a macho idiot with a bunch of other guys."
To get serious for a moment, there's nothing wrong with women doing something they want to do with their female friends, or men doing something they want to do with their male friends, but this rigid binary is just absurd to me. There are stereotypical female things I like to do with female friends, and there are stereotypical male things Iain likes to do with male friends, but that's coincidence, by virtue of the other people we know who happen to share that particular interest.
When I saw Brazil play the US at Soldier Field, that was an outing organized by my best girlfriend. When Iain's best mate last visited from Scotland, they went clothes shopping together. The last long videogaming session I had was with my mom. Iain's watching the World Cup with a girl! Many of my favorite activities typically associated with either gender are done with dudes—and I've been on holiday with male friends, straight and gay—because many of my closest friends are male.
My favorite person to do anything with is Iain, because he's my best friend. I wager he'd say the same about me. But there are some things he doesn't enjoy that I do, and some things I don't enjoy that he does, so we do them with someone else (or alone). Sometimes that's with other women, and sometimes with other men. And it's never because we feel some uncontrollable need to "let loose and be a [gendered stereotype] with a bunch of other [people of the same sex]."
There's a line between enjoying the company of other wo/men in an affirmative and celebratory way, and enjoying the void of wo/men because you define your wo/manhood in contradistinction to its opposite, and the line is not all that fine. Men who can't really feel "like a man" except in the absence of women have notions of what constitutes both manhood and womanhood so rigid and narrow that the only way to defend those boundaries is gender segregation; the slightest evidence of a woman behaving in a "masculine" way (enjoying the fine sport of machine-gun training, say) is a threat to their masculinity.
Which, really, is pretty tragic. I'd be sad for them if these buttholes weren't the jack-booted enforcers of the Patriarchy.
But I digress. Again.
Travel providers are tailoring offerings to male groups. Mancation Nation opened last year in Parker, Ariz., on the Colorado River, offering wake-boarding, golf, fishing, simulated dog-fighting in vintage airplanes, tactical-weapons training and a no-women-allowed residence. Visitor Don Ashforth, Escondido, Calif., says wake-boarding there with other guys was "kind of a primal thing. The camaraderie was incredible."
It's interesting, ahem, how many of these mancation activities are centered around weapons training, violence, and/or killing animals. These are men who feel powerless in their everyday lives, threatened by the slow erosion of limitless male privilege, and instead of embracing a new role in their families and at their jobs and in their lives, the power of a different sort of strength—the strength of compassion, of listening, of empathy, of being present and engaged, of loving hard and boundlessly—they are eking by with mancations where they restore their macho mojo with chest-beating male-bonding that has no place in a modern egalitarian world.
These guys don't need a vacation; they need a time machine.
According to Reuters "James Cameron took part in a brainstorming session with scientists, academics and Washington officials on Tuesday on how to contain the six week-old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."
Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy, and James Cameron met as "part of the federal government's ongoing efforts to hear from stakeholders, scientists and experts from academia, government and the private sector as we continue to respond to the BP oil spill."
Cameron has directed lotsofmoviesaboutwater, so he's clealy a "stakeholder." Good for him.
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