What rational person could approve ...?

What rational person could possibly approve of DUHnocchio's petulant, bullying, LYING, brag-fest?

The 6 Most Revealing Moments From the Presidential Debate | Robert Reich > .

Fun too!

 Jet suit paramedic tested in the Lake District 'could save lives': [weather conditions permitting]

A jet suit for paramedics which would see patients reached in minutes by a "flying" medic has been tested by the Great North Air Ambulance Service. A paramedic could "fly" to a fell top in 90 seconds rather than taking 30 minutes on foot.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-54331994 .

More sensible than the ~51% who are BrexTWITS

 Switzerland referendum: Voters reject end to free movement with EU.

Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to end an accord with the EU allowing the free movement of people. With all referendum votes counted, nearly 62% said they wanted to keep free movement, while 38% were against.

Swiss people are given a direct say in their own affairs under the country's system of direct democracy. They are regularly invited to vote on various issues in national or regional referendums.

Switzerland is not a member of the EU but has a series of interdependent treaties with Brussels which allow it to access to Europe's free trade area.

The move to rein in immigration was proposed by the Swiss People's Party (SVP), but opposed by the government. A similar initiative to introduce quotas on immigrants from the EU to Switzerland narrowly passed in a 2014 referendum, damaging Swiss-EU relations.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54316316 .

And another white teen ...

... with mental-health issues shot by police

Tragic, but unlikely to attract the attention of protesters.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54290575 .

Some good news

 He was saved by rescuers, not "God", but it's moving.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-india-54277326 .

How Prescient!

The Tyranny of Fragility: How Alexis De Tocqueville Foretold the Rise of Victimhood Culture:

I know of no country in which, for the most part, independence of thought and true freedom of expression are so diminished as in America … In America, the majority traces a tremendous circle around thought. Within its limits, the writer is free, but a great misfortune will befall those who depart from it. [The dissenter] will face disgusts of all kinds and everyday forms of persecution. [Those who condemn the dissenter] will speak loudly, and those who think like him, without possessing his courage, will stay silent and away. [The dissenter] yields and folds under the pressure of everyday life; he grows silent, as though taken with remorse for having voiced the truth … In Spain, the Inquisition never succeeded in preventing the spread of books that went against the religion of the masses. The Empire of the Majority fared better in America: it suppressed in the masses the very idea of publishing dissent.—Alexis de Tocqueville, translation by Samuel Veissière .

https://areomagazine.com/2020/09/21/the-tyranny-of-fragility-how-alexis-de-tocqueville-foretold-the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/ .

Born-LOSER-in-Chief

"To see why humor could be so effective in dealing with LIAR-in-Chief, you have to understand why he lies. People don’t tell the truth for many reasons, but the UNpresident’s lies generally fall into two categories. The first are boastful and self-aggrandizing claims, such as “Only I can fix it. ” This swagger betrays a fragile self-esteem, and while outlandish and amusing, the lies are typically harmless.

The second type of lie aims to deceive others in pursuit of a specific goal. For example, we now know, from a taped interview with Bob Woodward, that Pathogen-in-Chief knew in February that the coronavirus was deadly and transmissible by air, but he lied to the public, playing down its severity and discouraging the use of masks — a calculated deception that cost untold lives. [And that, in unnecessarily squandering lives, would decisively cost him the election in a more rational nation.]

This kind of lie is emblematic of individuals with antisocial traits who have a deficit in moral conscience. But if they also have strong narcissistic traits, they are exquisitely sensitive to criticism and especially to ridicule. Derisive humor threatens to expose them for the loser they secretly believe they are."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/opinion/debate-trump-biden-lie.html .

[I'd tweak the "secretly believe" in that statement. Multiply bankrupt, multiply divorced, multiply abandoned by bus-tossed cronies, widely despised, repeatedly incorrect Dimwit-in-Chief cannot help but encounter evidence of being a genetically-doomed loser. However, his only potent struggle is against believing incontrovertible facts. DUHnocchio can't handle the truth.]

Chubbier than ever

 Kim's gaining weight: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54291550 .

The incident is tragic and disgusting.

Fiddling Funds

It makes a change from fiddling with kids ...

Cardinal Becciu: Vatican official resigns unexpectedly: Cardinal Becciu became involved in a controversial deal to buy a luxury London building with church funds as an investment. The deal has since been the subject of a financial investigation.

The last cardinal to give up his right to vote for a new Pope was Cardinal Keith O'Brien who resigned in 2013 amid a sex scandal.

Vote him Out!

UNpresident Criminal-in-Chief booed at Supreme Court as he "pays respects" to Ruth Bader Ginsburg (video)

N.B. Narcissist-in-Chief appears NOT to respect anyone, not even his fawning acolytes if they dare to show disloyalty

What's the Russian for Lying Dictator?

Vladimir Putin Thinks He Can Get Away With Anything: Why has the poisoning of Alexei Navalny been met with Western silence? [Aside from the fact that LIAR-in-Chief is Putin's Puppet?]

Putin proves that he was LYING about Navalny's poisoning = Alexei Navalny has 'bank accounts frozen and flat seized'.

2060?

After dominating the world in carbon emissions? Too little, too late ...

Climate change: China aims for 'carbon neutrality by 2060': 

China is the world's biggest source of carbon dioxide, responsible for around 28% of global emissions.

With global climate negotiations stalled and this year's conference of the parties (COP26) postponed until 2021, there had been little expectation of progress on the issue at the UN General Assembly.

"We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 [meaning lots more concrete, lots more coal burnt] and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060." [By which time the planet will be cooked and Xi will be 100+ (read, almost certainly dead)]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54256826 .

Because viruses only transmit after 22:00?

Another piece of science-ignoring, illogical theatre ...

COVID: Pubs in Wales to close at 10pm from Thursday.

"Pubs, cafes and restaurants in Wales will have to shut at 10pm every night under new measures to control the rising rate of coronavirus, BBC Wales understands. Pubs will also be required to provide table service only.

The measures, to come into force on Thursday, follow a decision by the UK government to do the same in England. Sales of alcohol from off-licences and supermarkets after 10pm will also be stopped."

Bracing for Stupidity Turned Murderous

A poorly-educated, neurotic tribalist and rationality are soon parted ...

Antifa Conspiracy Theories and America’s Unraveling: Baseless rumors about wildfires in the West are a sign of danger ahead.

"This is an echo of something I wrote about in June: a hysteria in rural towns that they were about to be attacked by antifa, leading citizens to pull out their guns and gather to fight back. When the invaders never showed up, the vigilantes sometimes regarded this as vindication: They had scared off the attackers.

All this rumormongering leaves me feeling that the social fabric is unraveling, as if the shared understanding of reality that is the basis for any society is eroding. The ugliness also raises a question: If we see this unraveling now when the science is clear and the rumors are so manifestly groundless, then what might happen in November if the election results are close? Brace yourselves."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/opinion/sunday/wildfires-united-states.html .

[Aware that a) he never won the popular vote, b) his approval ratings have fallen towards the 0.000001% he deserves, and c) removal from office will leave Crook-in-Chief vulnerable to the prosecutions he deserves, Bully-in-Chief is dog-whistling for his belligerent supporters to start a civil war.]

Sad News

Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg | NYT > .

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Dying Wish: To ‘Not Be Replaced Until A New President Is Installed’ | MSNBC > .

Neal Katyal: It Would Be ‘100% Inappropriate’ For Selfishness-in-Chief To Nominate SC Justice | The ReidOut | MSNBC > .

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: US Supreme Court judge dies of cancer, aged 87.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54214729 .

Sad news. Bad news. The ghastly RepuGNican ghouls will try to fill her seat with another disgusting social/fiscal/religious CONservative. 

And then I read the following ...

Before Ginsburg’s Death, Bully-in-Chief Announced New Supreme Court Picks: The UNpresident, who views his commitment to a CONservative federal judiciary as critical to his 2016 victory, added 20 more names to earlier lists.

As expected: Ruth Bader Ginsburg: RepuGNicans vow to vote on Crook-in-Chief pick.

Shipping Narrow Minds

"The past is always the present in the United States of America. From the modern-day Tea Party to the protesters taking aim at the Confederacy's most celebrated general Robert E Lee; from the argument over whether Washington DC's American football team should call itself the Redskins to the dispute over whether we should still honour the Founding Fathers who owned slaves, no country in the world lives and contests its history with quite such passion and ferocity. The culture wars of contemporary partisan politics, the battles that make this country seem like shared land occupied by belligerent tribes, are so often truly history wars.

Only this week Clueless-in-Chief announced the creation of the 1776 Commission to promote "patriotic education" and "the miracle of American history". Yet another cultural salvo, it was intended as a counterblast to the 1619 Project conducted by the New York Times, an online educational series named after the year that the first slaves were brought to Virginia.

So where does the landing of the Mayflower fit within the American story? What significance should we attach to the arrival of these [stiff-necked, unpopular] English dissenters? How does it inform the present?

On this 400th anniversary, do the Pilgrim Fathers even merit all the fuss?"

[The puritanical religionists only merit celebration to those who do NOT decry intolerant, moralistic, bullying in the name of an invention and a long-dead Jew (if Yeshua ever lived at all).]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54199565 .

Overt & Covert Peril

Crook-in-Chief Is Wrong About TikTok. China’s Plans Are Much More Sinister: The West still doesn’t understand the scale of Beijing’s soft-power ambitions.

Since China adopted the National Intelligence Law in June 2017, all Chinese citizens and companies have been under a legal obligation to help the government gather intelligence (and keep any cooperation secret). The law allows China’s intelligence services to embed their people and devices or to requisition facilities in any premise, anywhere, for that purpose.

The Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party also essentially requires any company with at least three party members to form a cell tasked with carrying out the party’s wishes.

---
The U.S. government has grasped the danger of Huawei — a company it says has links to the Chinese military — as a leading supplier of 5G equipment: Beijing could tap it to order a viral attack that would incapacitate American homes and factories, or the national power grid and other critical infrastructure. Recent U.S. rules further restrict the sale of U.S.-made computer chips and other components to the company.
---

Washington is worried that the personal data of the many millions of Americans using the TikTok app could be siphoned off to China and misused. ... The danger posed by TikTok is real: In fact, it is only a stand-in for far greater risks.

The problem isn’t just TikTok. The tech giant Huawei — which the U.S. government blacklisted last year, calling it a threat to America’s national security — is another company with close connections to China. So is Zoom, the U.S.-based teleconferencing service provider established by a billionaire Chinese immigrant, which uses software partially developed in China.

There are also the Confucius Institutes, purportedly just a vast network of Chinese-language teaching centers but really also an instrument of Beijing’s propaganda and pressure tactics.

And there are many more smaller, but no less dangerous, Chinese entities or entities with strong Chinese backgrounds operating in the United States.

All are thoroughly embedded there, reaching deep into offices and homes — shaping how Americans work, learn and play. Companies with ties to China or its government now occupy critical choke points of American society.

This is no accident. President Xi Jinping has a dream — a “Chinese Dream” of global dominance — and his strategy for achieving that has two main prongs.

The first is the traditional and tangible hard-power push to set up military bases and seaports controlled by Chinese interests around the world, and it has been much discussed by China observers.

...

China’s move to establish physical footholds around the world is easy enough to recognize as evidence of a coherent game plan, in part because those perches are readily marked on a map and because other major powers positioned themselves in much the same way in the past. Beijing has also bragged about these projects — and its intentions — by giving them grand monikers like the Belt and Road Initiative.

Not so with its soft-power ambitions, whose growth has been much less noticed — at least until Putin's Puppet started picking a fight with Beijing. And yet these are much more intrusive, and potentially far more dangerous.

The Chinese government is essentially forward-deploying and setting up various outposts within the United States and other developed democratic countries, in classrooms, boardrooms and bedrooms.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/opinion/tiktok-china-strategy.html .

Question of Bias

Version 2.0 of the Media Bias Chart (2017) - Vanessa Otero

 

The Media Bias Chart by Ad Fontes Media rates various media sources on two different scales: political bias (left to right) on the horizontal axis and reliability on the vertical axis. On the chart, sources are concentrated in an "inverted-U" shape as media sources with a neutral bias are generally reliable in their original fact reporting, while sources with an extreme bias on either side often contain factually inaccurate information and propaganda. 

Ad Fontes is non-partisan. During the September 2020 media bias project, nearly 1800 individual articles and TV news shows were rated by at least three analysts with different political views (left, right and center). There were 20 analysts, each reviewed about 370 articles and about 17 TV shows. Each analyst rated approximately three articles from each of the over 100 news sources available for viewing on the Chart. As a result, there were nearly 7,000 individual ratings. 

 Otero sees the Media Bias Chart as an "anchor" that counteracts political polarization in news media, and aspires for Ad Fontes to become a "Consumer Reports for media ratings". She compared low-quality news sources to junk food, and described sources with extreme bias as "very toxic and damaging to the country". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Fontes_Media .

Cooler? Yes, it's September ...

 ... and then it will become hotter than ever.

US West Coast fires: I don't think science knows about climate, says Idiot-in-Chief:

[The implication being that the self-serving ignoramus knows anything about anything concerning the welfare of others or the nation.]

"Blazes in several states have burned vast areas of land and killed at least 36 people since early August. Scientists say human activities have driven up global temperatures. [An undeniable fact]

But Self-Interest-Personified has blamed 'poor forest management' for the fires that have burned almost 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of land in California, Oregon and Washington state." 

[Poor forest management? Oh. Trees left standing in an area ravaged by decades of climate-change induced drought. How dare the forests burn down and spoil the fiend's chances of rigging another election?]

Every Hottentot can dance

Ken Robinson, Who Preached Creativity in Teaching, Dies at 70: Dance, he said, is just as important as math. He was knighted for his work, and his [disruptive] TED Talk on schools and the arts was the most viewed of all time.

Ken Robinson in 2018. “There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics.”

...

“I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time, if they’re allowed to.”

As Sir Lawrence Olivier's Mr. Darcy observed in the 1940 production of "Pride and Prejudice, "Every Hottentot can dance". [In today's obsessive bandwagon search-for-slights mania, Olivier would have been cancelled for speaking a "racist" line aloud.] "Woke" ninnies aside, I think it would be more accurate to say that children PLAY all the time, if they're allowed to. Regardless, let's look at the math: 

Pre-COVID, in a 168-hour week, children spent roughly 

• ~70 hours in bed
• 32.5 hours at school (~25 hours of instruction)

Leaving ~ 65.5 hours for play (too often screen-time) and spontaneous dance.

Was Robinson serious? How could an extra hour of dance (regimented, rather than spontaneous) make a difference? Robinson shot his own need-for-dance classes in school argument in the foot. Even worse, useful-to-society creativity does not cross over from dance to useful intellectual innovation. 

Needless to say, many who had felt bored whilst learning how to learn, how to memorize, how to achieve self-discipline, how to master the essential rudiments of 20th and 21st century cognitive skills jumped eagerly on the Entertain-Me-Or-Else! bandwagon. Has cognitive creativity increased as a result of Robinson's One Trick Pony? Not that I have noticed. 

The NEW Racism

[To be against racism is to be against the regressive unfairness of racism in ALL its directions. Although black-against-white racism is understandable in a nation with a long and nasty history of slavery and black oppression, the current wave of blame-ALL-whites-for-every-real-and-imagined-slight is simply backlash RACISM. Typical of the media's knee-jerk click-bait failure to consider the big picture, the public is not given a balanced view of statistics.] 

Los Angeles police officers shot in 'ambush':

Two Los Angeles police officers are in a critical condition after being shot in what police are calling an ambush. Video of the incident shows a [short, stocky, black] figure approach the officers' vehicle, before opening fire and running away.

Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva called the act "cowardly". The suspect remains at large.

Almost 40 US police officers were killed in the line of duty in 2020, FBI statistics show eight of them the victims of an ambush.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54137838 .

[Some cops, particularly American cops, are racist thugs. However, ambush and attempted murder is NOT morally superior to the killing of unarmed (black AND white) citizens and suspects. 

Yes, unarmed whites are killed by trigger-happy cops. Their deaths are simply not reported by the cowardly bend-over-backwards press. America's rampant gun-culture has inevitably left cops scared for their lives in many confrontations --- as a result, blacks and whites are shot first and questions are asked later.]

Self-help for women? Shhhhhhhhhhhh.

NOT what men wanted women to realize ...

"Shere Hite ... startled the world in the 1970s with her groundbreaking reports on female sexuality and her conclusion that women did not need conventional sexual intercourse — or men, for that matter — to achieve sexual satisfaction.

...

Her most famous work, “The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality” (1976), challenged societal and Freudian assumptions about how women achieved orgasm: It was not necessarily through intercourse, Ms. Hite wrote; women, she found, were quite capable of finding sexual pleasure on their own.

However obvious her conclusions might seem today, they were seismic at the time and “sparked a revolution in the bedroom,” as Ms. magazine reported. For all the women who had faked orgasm during intercourse, the Hite Report helped awaken their sexual power and was seen as advancing the liberation of women that was rapidly underway."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/books/shere-hite-dead.html .

A racially-different spy is still a spy

US revokes visas for 1,000 Chinese students deemed security risk: 

The US says it has revoked the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese students and researchers who are deemed to be a security risk. The move follows a proclamation by UNpresident Putin's Puppetin May aimed at Chinese nationals suspected of having ties to the military. He said some had stolen data and intellectual property.

[Miffed that its spies have been detected and are to be ejected] China has accused the US of racial discrimination.

[BUT] Nearly 370,000 students from China enrolled at US universities in 2018-19.

[I'm not a fan of Racist-in-Chief and his xenophobic Badministration, but if authoritarian China detected potential spies, it would incarcerate them, not send them packing.]

DisUnited States

‘We’re No. 28! And Dropping!’: A measure of social progress finds that the quality of life has dropped in America over the last decade, even as it has risen almost everywhere else.

The United States, despite its immense [unequal] wealth, military power and [rapidly waning] cultural influence, ranks 28th — having slipped from (only) 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.
...
The United States ranks No. 1 in the world in quality of universities [inaccurate, imo*], but No. 91 in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are No. 97 in access to quality health care.

...

The Social Progress Index finds that Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Chile, Jordan and Albania, while kids in the United States get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan and Mongolia. A majority of countries have lower homicide rates, and most other advanced countries have lower traffic fatality rates and better sanitation and internet access.

The United States has high levels of early marriage — most states still allow child marriage in some circumstances [religionist pedophilia] — and lags in sharing political power equally among all citizens. America ranks a shameful No. 100 in discrimination against minorities.

The data for the latest index predates COVID-19, which has had a disproportionate impact on the United States and seems likely to exacerbate the slide in America’s standing. One new study suggests that in the United States, symptoms of depression have risen threefold since the pandemic began — and poor mental health is associated with other risk factors for well-being.

...

[edited for accuracy] The decline of the United States over the last decade in this index — more than any country in the world — is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate UNpresident Crook-in-Chief and that festered under leaders of both parties. Putin's Puppet is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration.

...
That’s why this is an election like that of 1932. That was the year American voters decisively rejected Herbert Hoover’s passivity and gave Franklin Roosevelt an electoral mandate — including a flipped Senate — that laid the groundwork for the New Deal and the modern middle class. But first we need to acknowledge the reality that we are on the wrong track.

We Americans like to say “We’re No. 1.” But the new data suggest that we should be chanting, “We’re No. 28! And dropping!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/united-states-social-progress.html .

United States Rank 28 .... "Great"? No way.

Dimensions
BASIC HUMAN NEEDS 92.08
FOUNDATIONS OF WELLBEING 83.14
OPPORTUNITY 81.89

Highest component scores
Water and Sanitation 98.97
Shelter 97.93
Nutrition and Basic Medical Care 97.61 (no mention of too-expensive for most)
Access to Information and Communications 93.30
Access to Basic Knowledge 92.42 (no mention of prohibitively expensive, generally low quality Higher Education)

Lowest component scores
Inclusiveness 61.24
Environmental Quality 72.18
Personal Safety 73.82
Health and Wellness 74.66
Personal Freedom and Choice 84.96

https://www.socialprogress.org/?code=USA .

I suppose that arrogant Americans can soothe themselves with the fact that China ranked #100.

Great? Normay [sic] Known as Norway to those who aren't ignorant orange bullies.

* US universities rank high on recent educational rankings because their research product (publications, citations) has historically been boosted by huge spending and high proportions of foreign academics. This is already changing, as European universities produce an increasing portion of progress.

Attention-seeking on mammary display

If you've got 'em, flaunt 'em. First, have your photograph taken. Then, deliberately flaunt rules. Next, whine. Finally, achieve international attention for displaying adipose plunge.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54099251 .

Wow, the police shooting of a white has made it into the news

[Another excessive-violence tragedy] A 13-year-old boy in Glendale, Utah, was shot several times by police officers after his mother called 911 for help with his mental health crisis. Linden Cameron, who has Asperger's, a form of autism, is now in a serious condition in hospital, his mother said.

Golda Barton said she had believed police attending on Friday night would use "the most minimal force possible". ... Ms Barton said she told the 911 operator that her son needed to be taken to hospital for treatment. He was experiencing a crisis because it was her first day back at work in almost a year and "he has bad separation anxiety", she said.

"I said, he's unarmed, he doesn't have anything, he just gets mad and he starts yelling and screaming," Ms Barton said. "He's a kid, he's trying to get attention, he doesn't know how to regulate."

...

According to data compiled and regularly updated by the Washington Post, 1,254 people with a mental illness have been shot dead by US police since the beginning of 2015. This represents 22% of all people shot and killed by police across the country over that period.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54041549 .

Classic Black Chip

Of Course Kamala Harris Is Articulate: Describing her this way sends a message that you think most Black people are not.

Bernie Sanders praised [Kamala Harris] in an interview on MSNBC: “I will tell you that Kamala is very smart, very aggressive, very articulate.”

and 

Steve Schmidt, said of Ms. Harris: “a formidable political leader in this country,” adding: “She’s smart. She’s quick on her feet. She’s articulate.”

[In themselves, those words are accurate, complimentary, and NON-racist. However, although not denying that too many white Americans have mistreated and disrespected the descendants of imported slaves, I have grown tired of recent reverse-racist determination to find poor-victimized-us insults where none were intended.]

Here's the Sanders quote with inserted slight-taking: "Bernie Sanders praised her in an interview on MSNBC: “I will tell you that Kamala is very smart, very aggressive,” he said. And then he delivered the inevitable, racialized compliment that makes many African-Americans cringe: “very articulate.”"

[The authors of the insertion presumably hope to promote a book titled: "“Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S.”" 

Good grief! Most individuals, irrespective of skin color, national origin, or first language are not particularly articulate. Some highly-educated individuals, particularly those parented by academics and academic professionals, ARE articulate. Only a new-racist would see racism in an accurate compliment.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/opinion/kamala-harris-articulate.html .

 

Contemptible-in-Chief spews venom again ...

Putin's Puerile Petulant Putrid Poltroonish Puppet: "McCain’s a War Hero Because He Was Captured, ‘I Like People That Weren’t’" > .
[edited for accuracy] General Bonespurs: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’: The UNpresident has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.

"When UNpresident Coward-in-Chief canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Putin's Puppet rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Draft-Dodger-in-Chief said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Narcissist-in-Chief referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed."

 ---

Traitor-in-Chief’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Cowardly Custard said in 2015 while running for the RepuGNican nomination for UNpresident. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Poseur-in-Chief did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Petulance Personified remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Sociopath-in-Chief told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the UNpresident told aides. A88hole-in-Chief was not invited to McCain’s funeral.

...

When lashing out at critics, Pettiness-in-Chief often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born. Selfishness-Personified finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible. (The cowardly UNpresident did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Pervert-in-Chief said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”)

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/ .


[Poltroon-in-Chief] Faces Uproar Over Reported Remarks Disparaging Fallen Soldiers: A report in The Atlantic [above] said the president called troops killed in combat “losers” and “suckers.” [Being an inveterate, self-protective LIAR] He strenuously denied it, but some close to him said it was in keeping with other private comments he has made disparaging soldiers.

[Needless to say, the private comments are in line with DUHnocchio's disgusting remark that most Westerners have heard about John McCain's horrific experiences as a prisoner of war. Needless to say, General Bonespurs is a fitting moniker for the draft-dodging Demander-in-Chief.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/us/politics/trump-veterans-losers.html .

[The UNpresidents many glaring character defects are no longer surprising. The dismaying aspect of the current fiasco is the manifest stupidity of any American willing to vote for such an utterly contemptible INhuman being.]

And some are stupid enough to believe the LIES

[Desperation-in-Chief] and the Attack of the Invisible Anarchists: Lurid fantasies about urban hellscapes are all he has left.

"With only two months left in the presidential campaign, [Sociopath-in-Chief] has evidently decided that he can neither run on his own record nor effectively attack Joe Biden. Instead, he’s running against anarchists who, he insists, secretly rule the Democratic Party and are laying waste to America’s cities.

There’s not much to be said about [Thug-in-Chief’s] claims that people “in the dark shadows” control Biden and that mysterious people dressed in black are menacing Republicans RepuGNicans, except that not long ago it would have been inconceivable for any major-party politician to engage in this kind of conspiracy theorizing.

There’s a bit more to be said about his claims of rampant violence and destruction in “anarchic jurisdictions” — namely, that these claims bear little resemblance to the mostly peaceful reality.

It’s not just the fact that premature reopening led to a huge second wave of infections and deaths. Equally important, from a political point of view, has been COVID-19’s geographical spread.

Early in the pandemic it was possible to portray COVID-19 as a big-city, blue-state problem; voters in rural areas and red states found it easier to dismiss the threat in part because they were relatively unlikely to know people who had gotten sick. But the second surge of infections and deaths was concentrated in the Sunbelt.

And while the Sunbelt surge appears to be slowly subsiding now that state and local governments have done what [Kleptocrat-in-Chief] didn’t want them to do — close bars, ban large gatherings and require masks — there now appears to be a surge in the [believe-LIES] Midwest.

What this means is that by Election Day almost everyone in America will know someone who caught the virus, and will also know that [LIAR-in-Chief’s] repeated promises that it was going away were [self-serving and, typical of the LIAR] false."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/opinion/trump-democrats-cities.html

How does a photograph guarantee anonymity?

Admittedly, it's an old photograph of a then-child, but individuals do not alter so dramatically that she would be unidentifiable.

"The injunction prevents the publication of their new names or addresses for the rest of their lives.

Shannon was the victim of a hoax kidnapping in 2008 staged by her mother Karen Matthews and Michael Donovan in a bid to claim a £50,000 reward.

The order was granted to protect Shannon and her siblings from any harm identifying them may cause."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-54011377

Here comes another wave ...

20-9-6 As predicted: U.S. Coronavirus Rates Are Rising Fast Among Children: As some schools begin in-person classes, data compiled by the American Academy of Pediatrics from the summer show that cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus have increased at a faster rate in children and teenagers than among the general public.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/31/us/coronavirus-cases-children.html

20-9-6 As predicted: A New Front in America’s Pandemic: College Towns: The coronavirus is spiking around campuses from Texas to Iowa to North Carolina as students return.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/colleges-coronavirus-students.html .

20-9-1 Millions of pupils return after historic shut-down:

[Big mistake. Huge. Happily, children are unlikely to die of COVID-19. Unfortunately, like bats, children make excellent disease vectors.]

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-53986549 .

Coronavirus: 'Add upset stomach in children to symptoms':

"We know that, thankfully, most children who get the virus will not be very ill with it - but we still do not know how much children may be spreading it."

In the study, testing only those children with fever, cough or changes in smell or taste would have identified 26 out of 34 or 76% of the symptomatic cases.

Adding gastrointestinal symptoms would have identified nearly all - 33 out of 34 or 97% - of the symptomatic cases, he explained.

"We are finding that diarrhoea and vomiting is a symptom reported by some children and I think adding it to the list of known symptoms is worth considering," Dr Waterfield said.

[A minority of adults primarily suffer gastrointestinal symptoms too.]

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53983963 .