Mother of child in viral meme sends Steve King cease-and-desist for using image in fundraising

> The post in question, originally posted on King's Facebook page and website, encouraged donors to "fund our memes." The Facebook post was removed as of Monday evening, and the corresponding page on his website could not be reached.

Prince Andrew has provided "zero cooperation" regarding late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and has yet to respond to an FBI request for an interview, a US prosecutor said.

Religious groups in Queensland are pushing to keep LGBTIQ+ conversion therapy legal in the state after the Queensland government declared its intention to outlaw the practices last year.

@Memor-X That's the entire reason why Trump wanted to smear Biden: he doesn't want him to make it through the primaries, because Biden is one of the biggest names in the primary: Previous VP, strong backing from the Democratic old guard, well known among the voterbase. Trump wants Bernie Sanders to win because the classic GOP tactics work really well against him. Even Russia is supporting Sanders because they know Trump can win from Sanders.

@Memor-X Hang on, a Pornhub Premium sub is $30? Or did you just make up a number?

@Nzall i assume made up

@Nzall ahhhhhh

i thought it was to get dirt ready for later

No, that's a common misconception. Elections in the USA have changed to be closer to what you normally have in dictatorships: the ruling party tries to disenfranchise voters and make it harder to vote for opposition voters, while influencing the primaries of the opposition parties so the candidate you're most capable of winning against becomes your opponent. It's just that usually this happens covertly, while this time Trump made some massive blunders

twitter.com/ellenmcoyne/status/1222059154329808902

@Nzall offensive words that could be used out of context, such as the N word. lol, who is she kidding

@Memor-X I genuinely want to know what context she would consider it okay to use the N-word, apart from dumb examples to reporters about offensive words that could be used out of context

Like, you wouldn't even write a book report about Huckleberry Finn using that word

@Nzall joe biden also sucks, and the idea that he's most likely to win the general is not consistent with polling

@Unionhawk I would expect that after 2016 people would be more skeptical of polls

but even if they're accurate, Trump still wants Sanders to win the primaries because the GOP dirty tactics and general weariness of socialism will greatly hinder Sanders

I also want Bernie Sanders to win because this country sucks

Unrelated, but it's kinda funny to see Fox suddenly call for witnesses after the Bolton bombshell

@Unionhawk I also want Bernie Sanders to win, but tbh, my preference would be AOC to win via write in ballots.

@Wipqozn AOC can't even legally become president until 2024

@Nzall It doesn't mean it can't be my preference

a candidate needs to be at least 35 years old, and she doesn't turn 35 until 13th of October 2024

Yeah, but obviously "Must be 35" doesn't mean much. Look at Trump.

Anyways, not going to get into a debate about that, BUT, I just think she'd do a good job.

Also she likes video games and also I like video games too!

So gamers will finally stopped being oppressed.

@Wipqozn I don't disagree that she would be a suitable president, but she would also be the youngest president ever, and one of the youngest possible presidents ever

nbcdfw.com/news/local/…

👍

Netanyahu indicted

> Netanyahu has insisted he is innocent, calling the investigations an "attempted coup" driven by the left and the media.

Damn that sounds exactly like what Trump says

@Stormblessed Right wing dictators tend to be samey

If you're suggesting the US is a dictatorship that's wrong lol

> Prosecutors say that in the most serious case, known as Case 4000, Netanyahu advanced regulatory benefits worth more than 1 billion shekels (approximately $280 million) to his friend, millionaire Shaul Elovitch, who owned the Walla! News website as part of his control of the Bezeq telecommunications company.

> Prosecutors say that in exchange Netanyahu, who also served at that time as Israel's Minister of Communications, received favorable news coverage on Walla! as well as influence over the choice of stories and language used.

@GnomeSlice yeah I think that people who pretend Trump is a dictator are making dictators seem much less bad

He maybe wants to be one though

🙄

> The US ambassador to Hungary has said Donald Trump would “love to have the situation” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has while discussing the nation’s so-called “illiberal democracy.”

Remember this?

Trump's defense team literally argued this week that it would be unconstitutional to impeach him. And that the House and Senate have no right to oversight, and that the Courts don't have the right to mediate any dispute between them

@GnomeSlice Trump is acting like a dictator. he is abusive of the free press, attempting to interfere in elections through a myriad of ways, obstructing the opposition that's trying to hold him accountable, packing the courts with his own cronies to impact future policy for decades to come and doing his best to ignore existing laws, up to and including the constitution

They're literally arguing to have authoritarian powers

If you looked at the current US politics as an external neutral spectator, you're seeing clear signs of authoritarianism

And we all know that if (when) he gets acquitted by the ass-kissing senate GOP, Trump will take it to mean that he was right to think that as President he can do whatever the fuck he wants and nobody can stop him.

And he'll be right.

The intent is there, to some extent

Why the fuck do so many people bother to reply with so much shit every time Hillary Clinton tweets literally anything? 2016 was over three years ago

@Stormblessed It's still eternal 2016 though

Why to ppl bother with twitter period?

"How well would our institutions stand up to Trump" is a debate as old as time, but I think at this point, after 3 years of him purging the ranks of anyone with even the remotest morals and ability to stand up for the truth and for the law, and replacing them with his loyal cronies, that the answer is: "much worse than we feared".

Came out last night, but didn't see this linked above - more dirt from Bolton's book:

Bolton Book Reportedly Details Concerns That Trump Was Doing “Personal Favors” for Foreign Leaders

lmao

> “Bolton wrote in the manuscript that Mr. Barr singled out Mr. Trump’s conversations with Mr. Xi about the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE, which agreed in 2017 to plead guilty and pay heavy fines for violating American sanctions on doing business with North Korea, Iran and other countries. A year later, Mr. Trump lifted the sanctions over objections from his own advisers and Republican lawmakers,” the Times reports.

Which, of course he was

Anyone remotely familiar with anything he's ever said knows that's exactly what he would do

> “Mr. Barr also cited remarks Mr. Trump made to Mr. Erdogan in 2018 about the investigation of Halkbank, Turkey’s second-largest state-owned bank. The Justice Department was scrutinizing Halkbank on fraud and money-laundering charges for helping Iran evade sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department.” After multiple personal appeals to Trump to intercede in the matter, Erdogan told reporters in 2018 that Trump had agreed help resolve the investigation.

Because he doesn't understand at all

Yep

Barr's denials are always so oddly narrow:

> “There was no discussion of ‘personal favors’ or ‘undue influence’ on investigations, nor did Attorney General Barr state that the President’s conversations with foreign leaders was improper,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said in a statement Tuesday.

lol

So, you're denying that anyone used the literal phrase "personal favors"? Is that what you're saying, Barr, you lying crony?

So maybe someone actually used the phrase "favors of a personal concern"? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, it's basically just saying that's not how Barr framed it even though that's exactly what it was, which makes sense given Barr seems knees-deep in Trumpism

Like you can talk about a robbery as if you got a bunch of stuff for free, but everyone understands what you're referring to

@TimStone Yep. It's the same defense as "Trump never said he was entering into a quid-pro-quo with Ukraine" which... wouldn't have been how he would say it anyway

And who f'ing cares that the defendant denies the charges? Like that carries any importance at all

> I totally support @SenatorLankford's proposal that the Bolton manuscript be made available to the Senate, if possible, in a classified setting where each Senator has the opportunity to review the manuscript and make their own determination

lmfao

Lindsey buddy it's a book

On Amazon

Everyone is going to read that shit

To be fair, it hasn't yet gotten clearance approval to be published yet

Although I've heard people saying that Trump's discussions of it, even on twitter, are going to make it very difficult for him to successfully claim executive privilege about the conversations

It's definitely done though, so I can't imagine Bolton would let a little thing like rules, which apparently no one has to abide by anymore, get in the way of making a quick buck

@TimStone I think the rules about security clearance have some pretty big teeth, though. All this public discussion and leaks clearly complicate matters, but no, I think any former official can get into legitimate trouble printing a book without it being cleared

If the substance of it is just that the president did crimes though it seems hard to argue in court that there was a threat to national security

I would suspect at this point any of the more mundane items would have been brought up and addressed

@TimStone Fully agree, just pushing back on your "eh, he'll flout the rules, nobody will care" which just isn't true in this case, if anything in the book really is classified

Right, I meant it more in the sense that I can't see them outright blocking it for any legitimate reason

So given that it would seem unlikely it wouldn't get published anyway

In any case though it seems kind of not great for the defense that Graham is even entertaining this idea?

Right. Especially at this point when deeming anything classified would be (legitimately) questioned as an extension of the political coverup

@TimStone Schiff was on Maddow the other day, he was asked about the book, and said he'd prefer to subpoena Bolton's contemporaneous notes rather than a worked-over manuscript

Which makes a lot of sense to me

Yeah, agreed

> An ER doctor was charged with abusing his baby. But 15 medical experts say there's no proof

jfc :/

@TimStone The reporter was threatened with criminal charges for investigating and publishing the story

> Authorities in Wisconsin did not want you to read this story. First a prosecutor sought a gag order after I reached out seeking comment. Then a state agency sent me a cease and desist order warning of potential criminal charges. - @Mike_Hixenbaugh

@TimStone jfc indeed

@BradC Yeah, just absolutely wild. Mistakes happen, the fact that the state works so hard to pretend they don't should really bother more people!

If anyone should be fired, it's that incompetent nurse that can't tell a birthmark from a bruise

> QAnon conspiracy theorists are urging their fans to ward off the coronavirus by drinking bleach

I mean

I guess technically

@TimStone 🤔

@TimStone And the Darwin Awards go to...

What Trump allies and Republicans said about quid pro quo before the Bolton news

> “If you could show me that Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call,” Graham said, “that would be very disturbing.”

@BradC Even then he hedges, it "would be very disturbing" but he's not going to commit to do anything about it.

Which, of course, they have to walk back now, because of course there was a quid-pro-quo!

@BradC See, that's the beauty of "very disturbing". All he has to say is "I'm disturbed" and then go back to sleep at the wheel.

@Yuuki yep. "so disturbed.... zzzzzz...."

> US is evacuating Americans from Wuhan as death toll from new coronavirus exceeds 100 in China

uhhh

Not sure that's the right idea.

Unless you're going to evacuate them into quarantine.

@Yuuki It depends on whether they'll then put them into quarantine in the US

@Yuuki It's a chinese illness, it couldn't possibly affect americans /s

I'm honestly a little surprised that the numbers aren't any higher because this is quite literally the worst time of the year for there to be a pathogenic outbreak in China.

Problem is that at this point it's nearly impossible to properly quarantine people because you'd need to do a pretty invasive throat swab on everyone and then wait a couple hours to verify the diagnosis, especially if they're asymptomatic

It's right around Spring Festival, which is generally considered the most important Chinese holiday.

@Yuuki Yeah, China canceled most Chinese New Year events

So that definitely makes it so people are slightly less likely to infect others

But yeah, this would be like a pathogenic outbreak in the US during Thanksgiving, or during Spring Break

Pretty much the entire country would be traveling. It's the largest periodic human migration event, with numbers greater than the entire population of the US in transit in previous totals.

@Nzall Almost definitely worse because the US has mostly settled after its industrial revolution while China's still going through theirs.

> Lobbyist bought tropical land from Biden’s brother

Oh no I guess the Bidens are actually cancelled what a shame

> Eddie Gallagher referred to some SEALs as "cowards" & highlighted names, photos and — for those still on active duty — their duty status and current units, some former team guys say places the men and mission in jeopardy

> The Pacific Ocean is so acidic that it's dissolving Dungeness crabs' shells

Ah, cool, I'm sure that's normal and good

@TimStone I'm now curious as to how those gung-ho military Facebook pages that were supporting Gallagher will read with this news.

House GOP leaders warn of fundraising crisis ahead of 2020

so, so sad and concerning! :D :D :D

@BradC Related: coronavirus threatens Apple's plans to produce more iPhones

yeah, maybe not the most concerning news regarding the viral outbreak, buddy

> Trump just praised Pompeo "for the job he did on her" -- meaning NPR reporter who Pompeo mistreated. The latest case of Trump celebrating poor treatment of the media

Gross

@TimStone wow. That's just... wow

My understanding is that he's announcing his peace plan for the Middle East now, and lol

@TimStone (video)

> President Trump: "Today's agreement is a historic opportunity for the Palestinians to finally achieve an independent state of their very own…"

He starts with saying that he must be fair to the Palestinians, but you can see how they're just rigging this up to blame the Palestinians for "not embracing the opportunity given to them"

> Philly restaurant CEO: Know the risks before ordering from Grubhub, Postmates

> Last weekend, Grubhub "accidentally" added an incorrect menu for a restaurant on its marketplace. I dived a little deeper and found out the menu was from Reef Kitchens, a parking facilities manager now running delivery-only ghost kitchens

> Real estate people “can come up with ideas no normal people can think about,” says @netanyahu

lmfao

Anyway this is as much of a sham as expected so things are gonna get bad!

> The House has filed a new letter in court showing that Trump's impeachment team again contradicted the administration's legal position -- this time in the Mueller grand jury case. This time it was Ken STARR's argument that blew up the DOJ position

lol

>_>

yeah this is pretty much what I expected

I don't even know what to say other than this is an extremely Jared plan

except I think donald trump may be genuinely surprised when they get a "don't fucking insult me with this"

> Cincinnati just became the first city in the nation to require landlords to accept alternatives to security deposits

@TimStone the alternative is some insurance deal

Well, there are three choices, but the landlord gets to pick

I'm unclear why, given that, they'd go with anything but that option then

Which sucks because it involves a non-refundable fee, since it's insurance

a security deposit you in theory get back at the end of your lease

"in theory" anyway

Yeah

see the landlord forum posts about like "I'm looking for an excuse to keep the deposit but I can't find one what do", my grandmother getting charged for replacing the carpet in the apartment she just moved out of (the carpet was fine)

I'm also confused by one of the options that's "a reduced security deposit no more than the equivalent of 50 percent of the first month's rent"

If the landlord was going to do that they could have just done that to begin with, lol

But they won't because they're a landlord

> "He was very entertaining and very compelling. He did a lot of research and all that. It’s a completely different position than he was 20 years ago and I don’t know how academia can change that much."

lol thanks Joe great contribution

Detailed breakdown of the Trump team's defense strategy and arguments yesterday:

The Trump Team’s Legal Defense Was a Tour de Force of Hypocrisy

> Ken Starr argued that impeachment is no longer a constitutional provision that should be applied to a president. Michael Purpura argued that nobody ever heard Trump order a quid pro quo. Jane Raskin argued that Rudy Giuliani was a distraction, but also a great guy who did nothing wrong. Patrick Philbin argued that presidents never have to comply with congressional subpoenas they don’t like. Pam Bondi argued that corruption is rampant in Ukraine because of Joe and Hunter Biden.

> Eric Herschman argued that… well, he held a MAGA rally from the well of the Senate and argued that President Barack Obama should be impeached. Robert Ray argued that presidents cannot be prosecuted. And finally, Alan Dershowtiz argued that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense, while self-owning the fact that essentially no credible legal scholars agree with him.

> One would be forgiven for thinking all the legal gibberish was merely designed to distract and confuse those who tuned into the trial.

(ding ding!!)

Is it just me or is the usage of the term "virtue signaling" now it's own kind of virtue signaling?

Like I see that in a comment somewhere and I sorta immediately feel like I know something about the writer.

It's not just you.

@Yuuki So often its used to impugn motives; to suggest someone is bringing up (some issue) for reasons other than because they are sincerely concerned about it

Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly tells Sarasota crowd ‘I believe John Bolton’

@BradC Well then I'm virtue signaling all the time because I don't have a single candle or Babybel cheese in my house.

@BradC There are crowds to see John Kelly?

@Yuuki lol, I guess?

> Kelly spoke Monday at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall as part of the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall lecture series. The general worked with Bolton during his time as chief of staff, which ended in early 2019. Kelly said Bolton is an honest person.

"He's a warmonger, sure, but at least he's an honest one."

(made up quote by me, not by Kelly)

Well, now my pun makes a lot less sense now that I looked it up and it's not likely that "sincerely" derives from "sine cera".

twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1222225600775180289

> BREAKING NEWS (NEW YORK TIMES): Trump Appears to Be Resigned to the Senate Hearing From Witnesses

(breaking, about an hour ago... I'm behind on my twitter timeline)

BREAKING: Magnitude of earthquake off Jamaica and Cuba upgraded to 7.7 - USGS

(original report was 7.3, about 15 minutes ago)

holy moley, 7.7 is insane

> Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issues tsunami alert for Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and Cuba

Looks like they'll have to revise the largest earthquakes by year list on Wikipedia

More detail about the quake

And, the defense rests.

The're going to do 8hrs of questions tomorrow, and 8hrs on Thursday, alternating between sides

> A legal boomerang. If the White House went to court claiming executive privilege, they could very well end up with a federal court quickly deciding the President's actions involve crimes. My new article with Andrew Weissmann - Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw)

(Meta aside: Are we ever going to get back the auto-expansion of twitter links? I hate just posting a blind link, and manually constructing a quoted format is annoyingly labor intensive.)

I'm going to guess "no".

It's more work (updating in response to Twitter API changes) in return for the kinds of gain that the current management doesn't seem to care for (community-facing).

@BradC (Meta meta aside: Given the feeling that the company cares more about Twitter than about Meta which I will not otherwise comment on, clearly it should be top priority)

> But there is another threshold issue: if the proposed testimony involves evidence of criminal activity (more commonly understood as the “crime-fraud” exception in the context of attorney-client privilege).

I mean, Chat was already a low to non-existent priority before the current staff changes.

> Judges even warn counsel away from contesting the issue in these kinds of situations by noting that the court would then be compelled to determine if the relevant communications involved criminal activity.

George Papadopoulos out here having a real one

> Israel’s government plans to vote Sunday on annexing 30 percent of the occupied West Bank, officials say

@TimStone Wait, is her handle really Papadopouloss?

Yes, lol

goddamn, when your mom has a more zoomer twitter handle than you

Could we please NOT have a bill that requires school counselors to out trans students to their parents?

> Rep. Adam Schiff: "I don't think, frankly, that we could have made as effective a case for John Bolton's testimony as the president's own lawyers."

lol

@Nzall Ugh, gross

@TimStone Part of me is slightly worried at how much Democrats seem to like to use the Republicans own-goaling as a persuasive argument.

> The Daily Caller Sued Over ‘Relentless,’ ‘Xenophobic’ House IT ‘Conspiracy Theories’

Really don't know why that header image is animated but

> Bloomberg supporter Steve Ratner said on MSNBC this am that Bloomberg's goal wasn't to win a majority of delegates, but to stop Sanders from doing so

> I regret to inform you that Mike Bloomberg attempted to shake a dog’s mouth

The hell? 🤨

> On @cnni, Kushner says the map they released today was just "conceptual" and requires months more work. "I come from a real estate background. It was very very difficult to draw these lines & to get a map where you could have contiguity to a Palestinian state."

fjlkdsfalsdldsffl

> Jared Kushner to @camanpour: "It's a big opportunity for the Palestinians. They have a perfect track record of blowing every opportunity they've had in their past, but perhaps maybe their leadership will..do what's best to try to make the Palestinian people's lives better"

Oh my goooooood

JARED WHY ARE THEIR LIVES BAD NOW JARED

JARED

PLEASE TELL ME

WHOSE FAULT IS THAT JARED

"stop hitting yourself" ass

@TimStone Wait, didn't Israel just take that map, tuck it under their arm, and run for the endzone??

@TimStone See your earlier link above

@Unionhawk It's a mystery!

Is there a map with the proposed boundaries?

It's the image I posted somewhere up there

@MBraedley foxnews.com/politics/…

That looks like an extremer gerrymandered voting district

Is a district contiguous if you build a tunnel between two parts inquiring minds want to know

That map seems... not ideal

Trump’s Much-Hyped Middle East Peace Plan Deemed a Nonstarter: ‘Not a Peace Plan At All’

> “We categorically reject this deal,” says Palestinian leader Abbas of Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan, adding “We will not kneel down...Annexation of 30% of our territory is nonsense.”

yeah no shit

from Senator Chris Murphy:

> Any claim that this plan envisions a Palestinian state is just false. The plan allows Israel to control all security matters inside the Palestinian "state", and thus it's not a state at all.

I like the #PeaceSham hashtag

@TimStone It's funny because a flamethrower accurately describes the state of the situation at hand.

It's just such a blatantly bad faith proposal, which is not surprising but I would simply not embarrass myself like that, likely due to having a capacity for shame

it's on par with every so-called "peace deal"

@TimStone You say that now but when you're a Delaware refugee then you'll change your tune:

(a climate migration map from Ars Technica, blue is counties losing land to sea rise, red is population % increase due to migration)

(No, Florida won't become an island, for some reason they did it so that if a county loses any land the entire county is blue)

arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/…

But yes, what I'm taking away from this is that Delaware is the new Atlantis.

Breakdown by age in the latest Qunnipiac natl Dem poll

@TimStone Is a 30-40km tunnel even feasible?

@puzzlepiece87 lol I appreciate the depth of this take

this is the fundamental problem with a "two state solution"

it's always going to be something like this

@MBraedley I'm sure Jared's checks notes real estate expertise explored this issue

and is, therefore, not a solution

But the Chunnel is 50 km so I guess so, given the right conditions?

There are all the other reasons tunnels in a conflict zone seem Less Than Ideal, but

@puzzlepiece87 This would be reassuring if not for the fact that Delaware has little change in elevation :|

@TimStone yeah but the chunnel also links two separate countries not two parts of one country

Right it remains dumb, but @MBraedley was talking about the physical feasibility

and also the legal fun that could be had, does palestine control the tunnel or does israel

how do subsurface rights come into play

I think technically the parameters of the deal say israel controls the whole thing

so

how is that different from the status quo?

idk

@puzzlepiece87 They say "lose land" but how much land lost?

Probably not a question that can really be answered right off the bat.

Oh I don't know the difference between feet and inches, it'll just ruin the beach economy, whew

Narrator: It was in no way okay

I mean, my house was waterfront property for a couple days about checks notes two and half years back.

Well, not my house.

@Yuuki Not sure, good question. I didn't dig into this map too much besides for joking purposes. Since we're going to do fuck all to actually prepare for climate change anyway, I am not too emotionally invested in this modeling. :(

Yeah, you can check out the topographic maps of any given region and figure it out, I guess

@Stormblessed why do you think they are so chummy

speaking of which

President Donald Trump has unveiled long-awaited details of a US plan for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, warning it may represent the last chance at statehood for the Palestinians.

quite sure he's only talked to Netanyahu about this and not to Abbas which sorta doesn't make it sound like it's going to be a fair two state solution and more "Netanyahu gets a say what he wants, Abbas has to just accept it"

@BradC *looks at Ukraine Call Transcript* "can you do us a favor"

one can argue if Trump was using the Royal we

@TimStone everyone, stop, don't talk them out of it. this is perfect

if QAnons want to ignore the safety warnings because it's some conspiracy and off themselves, yet them. stupid mother nature always find a way

@BradC what? that their choices are Trump's Money or Trump's Money? thought that was the plan all along

@Memor-X now realizing that @TimStone already posted it

@TimStone so i guess Jared Kushner has done exactly what everyone has been saying, absolutely nothing

because quite sure this was his project

either he's done fuck all or he's done all the work and Trump is taking it claiming it as his work