monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

A remark made by U.S. President Donald Trump, that Japan drops bowling balls on U.S. cars during inspection to shut them out of the market, later described as a joke by the White House, has left Tokyo perplexed.

During a fundraising speech in Missouri on Wednesday that was transcribed by The Washington Post on Thursday, Trump criticized Japan for conducting unfair inspections on U.S. cars to keep them out of the Japanese market.

“It’s called the bowling ball test, do you know what that is? That’s where they take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and they drop it on the hood of the car. And if the hood dents, then the car doesn’t qualify. Well, guess what, the roof dented a little bit, and they said, nope, this car doesn’t qualify. It’s horrible, the way we’re treated. It’s horrible,” he reportedly said.

In Tokyo on Friday, a Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry official in charge of vehicle inspections said the president’s remarks were based on “a mere misunderstanding,” saying Japan has never conducted such tests.

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If he has gotten rid of the more established moneyed influences he had around him; he is going to make moves which might be contrary to what koch brothers/ wall street want, I think they will influence congress to get rid of Trump.

My point was not that because we can't fathom non-existence is proof that the concept is meaningless, it was that questions and doubts about it are perfectly understandable and should be addressed with respect rather than derision.

It may be that nothing pre-existed the Big Bang, but I don't understand how that can be and I think anyone who says they can is full of it.

But unless you possess a brain that is unlike the ones the rest of us have,
the primate brains that are not dependable and adequate tools to comprehend the universe correctly, how can you be so certain that the crowd you find to be so blindingly stupid are not in the ballpark?

Putin Critic Nikolai Glushkov Found Strangled To Death In London

“Obviously, he is joking about this particular test but it illustrates the creative ways some countries are able to keep American goods out of their markets.”

“Tennessee GOPers Explain Why They Wouldn’t Condemn Neo-Nazism

It’s beyond shocking that anyone in the year 2018 has to ask the RSLC or RNC why they won’t condemn neo-nazism,” Wexler-Waite said in a Friday statement. “The actions of the GOP-controlled Tennessee legislature are a punch in the gut to everything this country stands for and an insult to Jews, people of color, and all who have suffered at the hands of right wing extremists. There is zero excuse for why the legislature would even hesitate to pass this resolution and history will not forget the moment the Republican Party stood silent as its members condoned Nazis.”

Your audacity in falsely accusing others of your own failings never ceases to astound me.

Kyle Griffin
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@kylegriffin1
Jeff Flake in New Hampshire: "We have instead succumbed to what can only be described as a propaganda-fueled dystopian view of conservatism."

Nancy Reynolds looks like no one’s idea of a revolutionary, least of all her own. She has a quick and contagious smile, shiny coiffed hair, a bad knee, and four grandchildren. Heartbroken after the defeat of Hillary Clinton—for whom Reynolds had spent long hours canvassing in the fall of 2016—she marched in protest in January 2017. When the 2018 anniversary march rolled around, she made sure to fit it in, but it wasn’t easy. These days Nancy Reynolds has campaigns to run: as Hampton Township coordinator for one friend’s Pennsylvania state senate campaign; as a canvass organizer for the slate of first-time candidates she helped elect to Hampton town council in November 2017, breaking long decades of Republican dominance; and now as signature-gatherer for her own campaign for election to her local Democratic Party committee as well. A retired children’s librarian, Nancy has long been a powerhouse within her local community, which is nestled in Pittsburgh’s northern suburbs. Prior to 2016, local and state politics were not on her radar screen. Now they dominate her to-do list every day.

Similar stories to Nancy’s are unfolding in suburbs and towns all across her home state and the country. She and tens of thousands of other women, mostly mothers and grandmothers ranging in age from their 30s to 70s, are fueling an American political transformation that most media outlets are systematically missing, or at least misreading.

Books by Lara Putnam

The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica,

Nominee for the year's title in our category,