June 11, 2019

trump is nuts

President Trump has spent the last half day frantically retweeting his propagandists, who are pushing the absurd deception that Trump’s new deal with Mexico is a massive and historic victory. In reality, the agreement — which averts Trump’s threatened tariffs — consisted mostly of things Mexico already agreed to months ago.

Trump is in a rage over this — he repeatedly fumed at the New York Times for reporting it — and now he’s amplifying the notion that he won enormous concessions from Mexico by claiming that Mexico has secretly agreed to another major provision that will be revealed at some unspecified future time.

This has come packaged with a threat: Trump just tweeted that if Mexico does not soon take formal steps to ratify that secret provision, “Tariffs will be reinstated!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/10/trumps-latest-rage-threat-gives-democrats-big-opening-one-just-took-it/?utm_term=.18d557fdb7ca

June 9, 2019

Trump's lonely signature at the top of a D-Day proclamation is making the rounds on social media aft

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-signature-dday-letter-europe-2019-6

Trump's lonely signature at the top of a D-Day proclamation is making the rounds on social media after other world leaders signed at the bottom


Fifteen world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, signed the document in blue ink near the bottom of the text.

Trump, however, signed the document in the upper, left-hand corner:

June 9, 2019

Trump's late night twitter rants: Calls "Little" Donny Deutsch a "total loser"

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I know it is not at all “Presidential” to hit back at the Corrupt Media, or people who work for the Corrupt Media, when they make false statements about me or the Trump Administration. Problem is, if you don’t hit back, people believe the Fake News is true. So we’ll hit back!

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Donald J. Trump
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....other than to know he was, and is, a total Loser. When he makes statements about me, they are made up, he knows nothing!

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Donald J. Trump
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Little @DonnyDeutsch, whose show, like his previous shoebiz tries, is a disaster, has been saying that I had been a friend of his. This is false. He, & separately @ErinBurnett, used to BEG me to be on episodes of the Apprentice (both were bad), but that was it. Hardly knew him,..

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June 9, 2019

Trump lashes out at MSNBC -- still stewing about coverage of his administration hours after watching

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/06/trump-lashes-out-at-msnbc-still-stewing-about-coverage-of-his-administration-hours-after-watching-the-network/

A late morning round of golf failed to calm President Donald Trump down after he watched MSNBC earlier in the day.

Trump left the White House for “an unannounced destination” at 9:35 a.m. and arrived at Trump National Golf Club at 10:14, according to pool reports.

At 7:25 in the evening, Trump revealed he had watched MSNBC before going to his golf club — and he was not happy.

“Watched MSNBC this morning just to see what the opposition was saying about events of the past week,” Trump said, referring to journalists as “the opposition.”

“Such lies, almost everything they were saying was the opposite of the truth,” he continued, hours after being busted for lying about his trade war with Mexico.

“Fake news,” he claimed.

June 8, 2019

Calif man puts giant swastika in his yard. "what is a swastika?", "I just thought it'd be cool"

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CALIFORNIA MAN PUTS GIANT SWASTIKA IN HIS FRONT YARD, NEIGHBORS ARE OFFENDED, WORRIED ABOUT PROPERTY VALUE

A California man has shocked neighbors by having a 10 foot-wide Swastika built in his front yard.

Aerial-view images captured above Steve Johnson's one-storey home on Lindell Drive in El Sobrante, Contra Costa County, show a huge black concrete Swastika taking up a portion of his yard. The Swastika measures around 10 feet by 10 feet, according to Bay Area News Group.

In interviews with local news outlets, Johnson claimed he wasn't aware of what the sign represents. He said he liked the shape and denied that he supported the Nazis, while his neighbors expressed concern.

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Johnson spoke to reporters about his home's new feature. When asked about the sign in his yard, Johnson asked NBC Bay Area "What is a swastika?"

"I like swastikas," he said according to Bay Area News Group. "I think they look cool. I didn't do it to get attention. I'm not a worshiper of Nazis. I just thought it'd be a cool thing to put in there."

https://www.newsweek.com/california-man-puts-giant-swastika-front-yard-1442471?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true

June 8, 2019

Schumer "Now that that the problem is solved, I'm sure we won't be hearing any more about it"

https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1137177132172500992

This is an historic night!

@realDonaldTrump has announced that he has cut a deal to “greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States.”

Now that that problem is solved, I’m sure we won’t be hearing any more about it in the future. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1137155057667989511 …

June 8, 2019

wife of supreme court judge starts organization to protect Trump

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/04/ginni-thomas-trump-conservative-group/

GINNI THOMAS PLANS NEW CONSERVATIVE SUPERGROUP TO “PROTECT PRESIDENT TRUMP”

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Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, unveiled the new venture in a closed meeting of GOP lawmakers, donors, and Christian-right leaders last month, seeming to make reference to the movement disarray and electoral losses suffered by conservatives in the Trump era — and the gains made by left-wing groups and politicians.

“Our house is on fire and we are stomping ants in the driveway. We’re not really focused on the arsonists who are right around us,” Ginni Thomas said.

Some of the most controversial icons in conservative circles will be involved with other branches of Thomas’s new project, which is dubbed “Crowdsourcers.” One such project is titled “Protect Our Heroes,” led by conservative filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe.

The node of the project focused on political campaigns — slated to do business under the name “American D-Day” — will be set up by Cleta Mitchell, a well-known Republican campaign finance lawyer and partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner. D-Day will include a 501(c)(4) arm that can solicit undisclosed donations and a separate PAC registered with the Federal Elections Commission.

O’Keefe and Thomas did not respond to requests for comment. Mitchell, in response to an inquiry from The Intercept, wrote that it was not her “role to answer any questions on this. Sorry.” Asked who to contact about the new venture, Mitchell wrote, “No one. None of your business.”

THOMAS AND MITCHELL announced the suite of projects at an invite-only gathering hosted by the Council for National Policy in McLean, Virginia, in mid-May. The CNP meetings are influential and secretive gatherings designed to advance a hard-edged view of social and political causes.

At the CNP event, Thomas issued a dark warning about a “cultural revolution,” a confrontation conservatives might lose unless they “help explain to America the fight against America.”

June 8, 2019

GOP poll claims Trump is winning -- after bizarrely expecting 91 percent of 2020 voters to be over 55

GOP poll claims Trump is winning — after bizarrely expecting 91 percent of 2020 voters to be over 55

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/06/gop-poll-claims-trump-is-winning-after-bizarrely-expecting-91-percent-of-2020-voters-to-be-over-55/


On Friday, a new poll from GOP-affiliated Spry Strategies gave President Donald Trump some seemingly great news in North Carolina. The survey, conducted from May 25 to June 1, showed Trump leading former Vice President Joe Biden 11 points. Such a development would be incredibly surprising, given that Hillary Clinton held Trump to a 3.5-point margin in 2016.

As it turns out, however, the poll has a fairly significant flaw. According to the crosstabs, 70 percent of the respondents were age 65, and another 21 percent were age 55-64. In fact, only 9 of the 730 people polled were under the age of 34.

While it is true that senior citizens, who in recent years have skewed conservative, vote more reliably than younger people, an electorate that consists of 91 percent people over 55 is transparently ridiculous — particularly considering that presidential elections tend to be banner years for youth voter turnout.

There is little other data to support Spry Strategies’ assessment of the race. Morning Consult shows that as of May, Trump’s approval in North Carolina is underwater 4 points. It is not impossible for presidents to overcome a deficit in approval or favorability, but the idea the president would be in double digits in the state is highly unlikely.

June 8, 2019

Gov. Ron DeSantis has lost as many as seven top aides in the past 24 hours.

https://twitter.com/politicofl/status/1136739627304411136

June 8, 2019

Ditch the GPS. It's ruining your brain.

It has become the most natural thing to do: get in the car, type a destination into a smartphone, and let an algorithm using GPS data show the way. Personal GPS-equipped devices entered the mass market in only the past 15 or so years, but hundreds of millions of people now rarely travel without them. These gadgets are extremely powerful, allowing people to know their location at all times, to explore unknown places and to avoid getting lost.

But they also affect perception and judgment. When people are told which way to turn, it relieves them of the need to create their own routes and remember them. They pay less attention to their surroundings. And neuroscientists can now see that brain behavior changes when people rely on turn-by-turn directions.

In a study published in Nature Communications in 2017, researchers asked subjects to navigate a virtual simulation of London’s Soho neighborhood and monitored their brain activity, specifically the hippocampus, which is integral to spatial navigation. Those who were guided by directions showed less activity in this part of the brain than participants who navigated without the device. “The hippocampus makes an internal map of the environment and this map becomes active only when you are engaged in navigating and not using GPS,” Amir-Homayoun Javadi, one of the study’s authors, told me.

The hippocampus is crucial to many aspects of daily life. It allows us to orient in space and know where we are by creating cognitive maps. It also allows us to recall events from the past, what is known as episodic memory. And, remarkably, it is the part of the brain that neuroscientists believe gives us the ability to imagine ourselves in the future.

Studies have long shown the hippocampus is highly susceptible to experience. (London’s taxi drivers famously have greater gray-matter volume in the hippocampus as a consequence of memorizing the city’s labyrinthine streets.) Meanwhile, atrophy in that part of the brain is linked to devastating conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder and Alzheimer’s disease. Stress and depression have been shown to dampen neurogenesis — the growth of new neurons — in the hippocampal circuit.

What isn’t known is the effect of GPS use on hippocampal function when employed daily over long periods of time.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ditch-the-gps-its-ruining-your-brain/2019/06/05/29a3170e-87af-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html?utm_term=.7abdb9cfcb26