Meanwhile, apart from the District Council election, the other wild-card development in the HK protest saga is Trump signing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HKHRDA), which means HK could lose its special trading status with the US if Congress decides HK and/or China is coming down too hard on protesters, free speech and liberty in ( Read more... )

Or, "I wasn’t going to post anything about the election until I saw a Marianne Williamson debate clip set to the Twin Peaks soundtrack”.

I know nobody wants political content on this account but it's 2:30am and I am awake and putting Marianne Williamson's speech to Twin Peaks music pic.twitter.com/fSjP5wzrnR
- I will meet you on that field. (@ ( Read more... )

So now the Mueller report is publicly available (redacted, of course) and the hot take now is:

1. Mueller was indeed looking very narrowly at the Russian conspiracy part, but leaves no doubt that Russians were meddling in the election to help Trump, and Trump campaign officials were keen to get some help from them.
2. The reasons Mueller punted on ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

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Trump has declared his national emergency over the wall (or lack thereof), and I only just now have found some time to blog it, but luckily this may be the easiest blog post ever, so it won’t take much of your time.

1. There of course is no emergency except for the one that exists in Trump’s empty little head. And there are no reliable facts or ( Read more... )

Following the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford (which I didn’t watch, no) and the subsequent reactions, I do have a few things to add.

1. I believe her.

2. I’m not sure it matters, because the (male) GOP senators have made perfectly clear that they don’t care whether she’s telling the truth or not.

If they care about anything, it’s the ( Read more... )

I started writing this post back when Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement and the big concern then was (1) Trump forced him to retire because Kennedy’s son is tied to Russia somehow (which might be true but there's no hard evidence of this) and (2) Trump’s nominated replacement, Brett Kavanaugh, is a radical Trump conservative whose sole ( Read more... )

ITEM: D.Trump has issued a decree executive order putting an end to the policy of separating child immigrants from their families at the border - this being the policy that he and his staff have simultaneously said was (1) not his policy, (2) totally legal, (3) entirely the fault of Democrats, (4) Biblically justified, (5) intended as a deterrent ( Read more... )

We need to talk about DJ Trump and Jeff Bo Sessions and their zero tolerance immigration policy.

Because, damn.

1. The first thing to understand is that the legal situation and the process involved - and US immigration policy in general - is a lot more complicated than a lot of media reports make out. I recommend this Vox explainer and this NYT ( Read more... )

And while I was typing the last post, Samantha Bee is in trouble for calling Ivanka Trump the c-word. And naturally conservatives want TBS to fire her and cancel her show - allegedly in the name of fairness since Rosanne Barr was sacked by ABC for doing the same thing.

Also bloggable!

1. It’s not the same thing at all. Barr’s tweet was not only ( Read more... )