Trump Calls Cut Comey and Qatar, Calm is Urged on Russia, and Infrastructure Week Ends With a Whimper: P.M. Links

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  Juanedc/Flickr

  President Trump hit back at James Comey today, saying the fired former FBI director lied during his testimony, but also totally vindicated him. I suppose both can be true.

• Sheldon Richman reminds everyone to take a chill pill on Russia.

• After selling billions of arms to Saudi Arabia, Trump tells Qatar to stop funding terrorist organizations.

• Overall, Trump's infrastructure week turned out to be kind of a bust, with his pronouncements being heavily overshadowed by the Comey hearing and resulting fallout. Still, don't give up hope on air traffic control privatization.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

President Trump hit back at James Comey today, saying the fired former FBI director lied during his testimony, but also totally vindicated him.

IN LIES THERE IS TRUTH!

[Rufus The Monocled]

Hello.

Hans?

Christian?

[Crusty Juggler - lamertarian]

Bubby?

[Aloysious]

Lavernius?

[Crusty Juggler - lamertarian]

Four links? My goodness.

Female prep school math teacher, 25, is charged with having sex with THREE male high school students

Nice.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Wood

[Zeb]

At the same time?

[Unlabelable MJGreen]

She's a millionaire.

[Don't look at me.]

Those poor boys, how will they ever recover from such trauma?

[Crusty Juggler - lamertarian]

My Adventures at the Segregated 'Wonder Woman' Screening

By the reaction upon arrival, it became apparent how Twitter outrage is not real life (surprise) and as I had predicted, that no one in the theater would care. This was a movie theater, not a college campus and everyone there was there for the same reason. It's the most anti-climatic case of a man buying a movie ticket in recent history.

Any apprehension dissipated, not when the movie started, but during the preview of the upcoming Justice League film, strangely enough. When Aquaman's Jason Mamoa came on screen with water splashing all over his tanned, shirtless tattooed chest, an entire theater of women wooed and whistled. They totally objectified him. There were similar hollers at the screen when Chris Pine emerges nude from a bath early on in Wonder Woman and awkward tension between his character Steve Trevor and Gal Gadot's title character.

[MarkLastname]

"They totally objectified him."
Isn't that, like, bad? Or good now? Or bad but in a good way? Like 'hurts so good' bad?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Sheldon Richman reminds everyone to take a chill pill on Russia.

Has Trump deregulated the FDA to the point that chill pills are now legal?

[Fist of Etiquette]

After selling billions of arms to Saudi Arabia, Trump tells Qatar to stop funding terrorist organizations.

Hey! Not all A-rabs are terrorists, Britschgi.

[Crusty Juggler - lamertarian]

Toward a Truly Feminist Blockbuster Cinema

If you have any doubt of the indelible mark the patriarchy has left on the modern blockbuster action sequence, you need only look to the repetition of "invade the body" climaxes, which we can probably blame George Lucas for. From Star Wars to Independence Day to the recent Tom Cruise flop Oblivion, our heroes take their vessel through a small hole in a giant mothership, fly deep into its center, than exploit its weakness and pull out before the whole thing explodes around them. You don't even need to read the foreword of Psychoanalysis for Dummies to see the naked anxiety on display there. As it happens, the most memorable of these sequences (including both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi) are fantastically exciting even to this day, so naturally they've been repeated ad nauseam, with diminishing returns.

Oh yeah.

[Zeb]

Well, how the hell else are you going to blow up the deathstar?

[Crusty Juggler - lamertarian]

Stimulating it's clitoris.

[MarkLastname]

So, if every time a thing goes into another thing, it's a rape metaphor, then when I eat food, am I metaphorically raping? Or being raped? Or both? To whom should I apologize and send money?

[Fist of Etiquette]

...Trump's infrastructure week turned out to be kind of a bust, with his pronouncements being heavily overshadowed by the Comey hearing and resulting fallout.

The Comey narrative was shovel ready.

[Crusty Juggler - lamertarian]

Hillary Clinton writes to Teen Vogue contributor: 'The Internet is not a friendly place for women'

Hillary Clinton penned a letter to Teen Vogue contributor Lauren Duca encouraging the 26-year-old blogger and columnist to "continue writing and speaking out."

"As we know all too well, the Internet is not a friendly place for women, especially those who aren't afraid to speak their minds and challenge established systems of power," Clinton wrote. "And so I applaud you, and hope you will continue writing and speaking out. Your voice is so important."

[Rufus The Monocled]

The internet is fine for women.

It has a problem with lying cunts.

[Rufus The Monocled]

This seems appropriate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnw8JRpXdAc

All I know is if Norm MacDonald dies there'd better be a god dang state funeral.

[Libertarian]

BTW, he was on Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" recently, if you're interested.

[Crusty Juggler - lamertarian]

I've been waiting for the right ENB story to post this link, but I shall post it now.

[Zeb]

And to the extent that it's an unfriendly place for women, it's also an unfriendly place in general. If it was a place at all, which it isn't.

[Unlabelable MJGreen]

QQ

[Aloisius Kohalich]

A safe space for women is a nunnery. Hillary, get thee there.

[MarkLastname]

Put this one in the "World to end tomorrow; women and minorities hardest hit" category.

[DRM]

Hillary Clinton pretending she's on the side of challenging established systems of power . . .

[Crusty Juggler - lamertarian]

Check out Aragog ? The Mexican cocktail made from Tarantula venom

If experiencing the thrill of borderline fatality excites you enough, we may just have to dollop of excitement that your lack luster to-do-list is looking for. Enter Aragog- an exquisite cocktail made from mango juice, lemon and a dash of Tarantula venom! Yup, you heard us. A drink only for the daring soul, this one comes with a drop of spidery malice in a glass!

MEXICANS WANT TO FEED OUR CHILDREN VENOMOUS COCKTAILS! BUILD THE WALL NOW!

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

You're all heart, Seattle times. Maybe, MAYBE a six-year long death spiral isn't Donald Trump's fault.

Two rural counties in Washington have become embroiled in the national health-care debate after the last insurer to offer coverage in the individual markets there indicated it was pulling out. It's not clear, in our supercharged political environment, if Republicans are to blame.

http://www.seattletimes.com/se.....l-markets/

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

But Premera Blue Cross, the last to offer individual insurance in Klickitat and Grays Harbor counties this year, said that wasn't why it was getting out of the counties.

"No," said Melanie Coon, a Premera spokeswoman, when asked if uncertainty caused by the GOP drove the insurer's decision.

Coon said rising costs prompted Premera to exit the individual markets in four rural counties, including Island and Skamania counties.

The decision "will help us keep cost increases lower for customers in other counties."

Isn't that another way of saying the ACA, also known as Obamacare, wasn't working as hoped in those four abandoned counties?

[Libertarian]

Not only are the republican showing their true ideological grit by failing to repeal Obamacare, but if they succeed in passing a watered-down repeal and replace bill, then they'll be making a political mistake as well. If O-care implodes now, it's all on the democrats, but if the republicans get their fingerprints all over a "fix," we'll know how CNN, et all will report the implosion then.

[GILMORE?]

After selling billions of arms to Saudi Arabia, Trump tells Qatar to stop funding terrorist organizations.

Look, i hate the saudis as much if not more than anyone here, but this doesn't even make sense.

Yes, the Saudis fund orgs which in turn fund terror. But US-made weapons we sell the Saudis aren't being used by terrorists. They're used by the Saudi regime which mostly serves to protect the Saudi regime from its own people. And to occasionally fuck with Yemenis, and to reassure its people about Iranian threats.

Basically, i don't see how selling Saudis arms (and taking their filthy lucre) has anything at all to do with 'terror'

The Qataris do fund terror, and where they don't fund it themselves, they enable financing and money-flows that help the terror orgs exist in the first place. They function as the middle-men for many Saudi financiers / donors. If you cut off the middle-men, it puts all the various funding sources in a bind about how to launder their cash.

I am aware that the sudden focus on them is partly just ME politics; my only point here is that the insinuation of some ironic contrast between US-arms-supply and Qatari terror-financing.... comes across as facile and stupid.

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

The Saudis themselves are terrorists. Or does "terrorism" only mean small time operators?

I has confoozhun. You can has help?

[Stormy Dragon]

When the Saudis say "terrorism", they don't mean terrorism terrorism, they mean Qatar was acting like it thought it was a real country and not just a Saudi client state, which is terrifying to the Saudi royal family.

[Stormy Dragon]

A neo-Nazi converted to Islam and killed 2 roommates for 'disrespecting' his faith, police say

[JeremyR]

Nazis and Islamists were pretty good buddies in WW2

[MarkLastname]

Now this is a brainbuster. Was he punching (I guess shooting?) up, down, or laterally?

[Stormy Dragon]

Well, I suspect the claims of conversion may not be sincere given that he never appears to have actually visited a mosque and bystanders claim he was screaming "Allah Mohammed" as the police were dragging him to the squad car.

I think the more important question was whether the bomb being built in his bedroom predates the "conversion" and if it was a solo effort or a group project with the other three neo-nazis living in the apartment.

[DRM]

There are plenty of records of Hitler saying it was too bad that Charles Martel won the Battle of Tours, since otherwise Germans would have become Muslim and conquered the world, rather than be chained by the meekness of Christianity.