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Washington Post Launches New “Bottomless Pinocchio” Rating For Trump’s Repeated Lies

Donald Trump

The Washington Post Fact Checker is beginning a new fact-checking rating for politicians – the “Bottomless Pinocchio.

That dubious distinction will be awarded to politicians who repeat a false claim so many times that they are, in effect, engaging in campaigns of disinformation.

The bar for the Bottomless Pinocchio is high: The claims must have received three or four Pinocchios from The Fact Checker, and they must have been repeated at least 20 times. Twenty is a sufficiently robust number that there can be no question the politician is aware that his or her facts are wrong. The list of Bottomless Pinocchios will be maintained on its own landing page.

The Fact Checker has not identified statements from any other current elected official who meets the standard other than Trump. In fact, 14 statements made by the president immediately qualify for the list.

Among the whoppers that Trump continues to repeat that qualify for the “Bottomless Pinocchio” include the Democrats ‘colluding’ with the Russians in the 2016 election (48 times); calling his tax cut legislation “the biggest tax cut in history (123 times); and boasting that the U.S. is experiencing ‘the best economy in the history of the country (99 times).

There’s much more at the link.

What a dubious distinction.

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Trump Argues Over Funding His Mexico Wall With Democrats As Cameras Roll

Donald Trump just sparred with expected Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and soon-to-be-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in the Oval Office with cameras rolling, over the passing of a budget bill that would include the funding for Trump’s precious wall.

Trump threatened a partial government shutdown if he doesn’t get the funding he wants.

From The Hill:

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security,” Trump told House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) during a contentious, 11-minute exchange at the White House.

“I will take the mantle,” the president added. “I will be the one shut it down, I’m not going to blame you for it.”

Trump’s vehemence left Pelosi and Schumer exasperated, with both leaders pleading with the president not to debate the funding request in front of the news media.

“Unfortunately, this has spiraled downward,” Pelosi said, after arguing with the president over the need for a border wall and whether Republicans have the votes to pass funding through the House.

“You will not win,” Pelosi told Trump.

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White Supremacist Sentenced To Life In Prison For Driving Car Through Charlottesville Crowd

James A Fields Jr.

The Washington Post reports that neo-nazi James A. Fields Jr., convicted of first-degree murder (among other charges) has been sentenced to life in prison and more for his actions.

James A. Fields Jr., an avowed neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white-supremacist rally, was sentenced to life in prison by a jury Tuesday after a trial that offered an unsparing view of the physical and emotional ruin he caused in this city with a burst of vehicular rage 16 month ago.

As he had throughout his two-week trial, Fields, 21, sat impassively at the defendant’s table, clad in a powder blue sweater, as the jury delivered its verdict at 12:20 p.m. after about four hours of deliberations that began Monday: life for first-degree murder; 70 years for each of five counts of aggravated malicious wounding; 20 years for each of three counts of malicious wounding; and nine years for leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

His overall sentence: life plus 419 years and $480,000 in fines.

Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in the attack as well as 35 others who were seriously injured.

In Virginia, a trial jury hands out sentences within certain guidelines.

The judge will officially sentence Fields on March 29.  At that time, the judge may reduce, but not increase, the prison time.

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Scientists: “Meddling” Kids Skew Studies By Trolling As LGBTQ

Scientists and researchers who study LGBTQ youth are finding a new (annoying) phenomenon: meddling kids who think it’s funny to troll giving exaggerated responses to surveys while identifying as LGBTQ, especially regarding eating habits or substance use.

Those ‘funny’ answers end up skewing data in regard to health issues and more.

From The Daily Beast:

NYU economics professor Joseph R. Cimpian, whose new study in the American Journal of Public Health explores this emerging problem, said that he was tipped off to its potential scale when he noticed how frequently the ostensibly gay kids on one survey reported being blind—way beyond what would be expected.

“What we found is that ‘gay’ kids are way more likely to be blind and to be deaf and to have three or more children of their own and all sorts of things,” he told The Daily Beast. “When you look at these data, you think, ‘This is ridiculous!’”

There was only one conclusion: “Clearly the kids are messing with us.”

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James Comey: Vote Trump Out In Landslide Without Impeachment

James Comey

During a Q&A session at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y in New York City on Sunday night, former FBI Director James Comey told the audience that the answer to the scandal-ridden Trump administration is voting him out in a landslide in 2020, not impeachment.

Via CNN:

“All of us should use every breath we have to make sure the lies stop on January 20, 2021,” Comey told an audience at the 92nd Street Y on New York City’s Upper East Side. He all but begged Democrats to set aside their ideological differences and nominate the person best suited to defeating Trump in an election.

Comey said he hoped that Trump would be swept out of office without being impeached. Framing the rise of Trumpism as a political ill the country needed to exorcise at the ballot, he expressed a hope that Americans would “in a landslide rid ourselves of this attack on our values.”

“Removal by impeachment would muddy that,” he said, and potentially leave a third of the country feeling like their chosen leader had been removed in a “coup.”

For what it’s worth, I wholeheartedly agree.

First, even though a Democratic-led House of Representatives might vote for articles of impeachment, the Republican-controlled Senate would never vote Trump out.

Second, the democratic process would be viewed as a much more widespread solution than, as Comey says, a Trumper-viewed ‘coup.’

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Donald Trump Rants About “No Smocking Gun”

Donald Trump

Donald Trump clearly had a terrible weekend after announcing his second chief of staff, John Kelly, would be leaving soon AND his prime pick to replace Kelly, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, publicly tweeted his decision to decline the offer.

So, Monday morning, the Trumpster was all ready to pick a fight. Taking to Twitter, he ranted:

“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun…No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,..which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!”

Legal experts weighed in:

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Two Men Arrested & Charged In Violent Hate Crime Attack On Gay Couple

Kealan Abraham (L) and Andre Duncan (R)

According to local Fox News affiliate, Andre Duncan, 39, and Kealan Abraham, 34, were arrested and charged with battery with a deadly weapon, battery with use of deadly weapon result of substantial bodily harm and conspiracy to commit criminal contempt.

The incident occurred near Vegas Drive and Simmons Street outside the gay couple’s home.

Charles Clements told police he and his boyfriend were followed home and attacked on November 29 as they arrived at their home.

The assault spilled onto their front patio where a glass table was knocked over and shattered. According to Clements, one of the men picked up a shard of glass and began to stab his boyfriend Vincent in the back puncturing his lung and breaking two ribs.

Clements said the men called Vincent a “faggot” and “an abomination” during the attack. Clements suffered head wounds.

Clements said neighbors heard the attack and then saw everything.

“Neighbors, everybody just looking,” he said. “Nobody called the police.”

Police said officers found Duncan’s driver’s license on the scene of the attack.

Vincent told police he recognized one of the attackers as a man who works with him at Walmart. That’s how the man knew about their relationship, he said.

“It was all about gay bashing,” Clements said. “The guy came up to my boyfriend’s job, calling him an abomination, calling him ‘fag.’”

When police went to Abraham’s home on December 2, Duncan’s car was present. According to police reports, he was seen leaving the home and drove to Walmart. Officers arrested him there.

Police arrested Abraham at his home.

Both men admitted to taking part in the fight but claimed there was not ‘hate crime’ aspect to the attack.

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News Round-Up: December 9, 2018

Some news items you might have missed:

• You could say things are going “swimmingly” down here in Puerto Vallarta. The views are very nice 🙂

• Speaking to OUT from the set of his new movie, Limited Partners, Billy Porter described the news of his Golden globe nomination for “Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series – Drama” for Pose as “unbelievable, it’s out of body, it’s surreal, it’s crazy. I’ve been in this business for 30 years, I’m speechless, and I’m a man of many words, so to make me speechless is a big deal.”

• GOP Sen. Marco Rubio warns a presidential pardon for former campaign chair Paul Manafort would be a “terrible mistake” and could “trigger a debate about whether the pardon powers should be amended.”

• Focus Features has acquired Michael Ausiello’s critically-acclaimed memoir Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies with Dan Savage and David Marshall Grant to co-write the screenplay. The memoir is an emotional, often funny, account of Ausiello’s 14-year relationship that ends with the heart-wrenching death of his husband Kit, who succumbed to a rare form of neuroendocrine cancer in 2015. Jim Parsons is set to star.

• Vanity Fair: Donald Trump wonders if he should dump Vice President Mike Pence in 2020?

• Robyn has released the official music video for her hit, “Honey,” featuring dancers cast from a call sent out on her Twitter account.

The chosen dancers were flown to London for the shoot from all around the world.

According to press materials, “Robyn wanted the process of making the video to also embody her mantra of bringing people together and communicating in person…It is a testament to love, sensuality and the loose feeling during the after-hours of a great party.”

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Axios: “We Now Know…”

Donald Trump

In light of this week’s sentencing recommendations from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, plus new details from former FBI Director James Comey at congressional hearings, Axios comes up with this list of “what we know” regarding the ongoing investigation:

We now know several Russian officials reached out to a half dozen Republicans very close to Trump and his campaign, including his eldest son, his closest adviser, his lawyer, and his campaign manager. We now know they took the meetings, often enthusiastically, during and after the campaign.

We now know Russia offered in those chats campaign assistance — “synergy,” they called it. We know now of no one around Trump who alerted the FBI of this effort to subvert our elections.

We now know that 12 Russian intelligence officers were indicted for hacking the DNC and systematically releasing material for the purpose of hurting the Clinton campaign via WikiLeaks.

We know that Trump associates Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi attempted — successfully, in some instances — to get in touch with WikiLeaks and that they are under investigation for whether they had advance knowledge about the email dumps.

We now know Donald Trump, Jr and others took a meeting with Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. We now know Don, Jr., when approached with the promise of dirt, wrote: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

We now know Trump was negotiating a Trump property in Moscow during the presidential campaign — and hid this from the public and lied about it. We now know Mueller believes, based on his court filing, the “Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government.”

We now know every arm of the US intelligence community concluded Russia sought to systematically influence the election outcome. We now know this was an unanimous conclusion, save one dissent: Trump.

We now know Trump officials continued talking with the Russians during the post-election transition. We now know Jared Kushner and Jeff Sessions failed to initially disclose any contacts with Russians on their government forms.

We now know Jared Kushner suggested a secret backchannel with the Russians, which had it happened, would have been free of US eavesdropping.

We now know Trump soured on FBI director James Comey, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and White House counsel Don McGahn in part over their handling of the probe.

We now know Paul Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, lied about his Russia contacts, was indicted, and is going to jail.

We now know Flynn lied about his Russian contacts, was fired and pleaded guilty, after agreeing to become a key witness in the investigation.

We now know Cohen lied about his Russian contacts, was indicted, and then flipped to become a key witness against Trump.

Axios’ final note – Robert Mueller knows a lot more than just the above.

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Trans Woman Wins Lawsuit Against NY Jail After Being Denied Prescribed Hormone Treatment

(image via Geoff Sterns/Flickr – CC License)

A transgender woman has successfully sued a county jail in New York state for denying her medically-prescribed hormone treatments for 16 months while incarcerated.

From Gay Star News:

In 2013, Jessica Sunderland sued the Suffolk County in New York state. She served a 16 month sentence at the Riverside Correctional Facility.

Sunderland said the jail refused to give her her prescribed hormone therapy even though she had started transitioning two year prior.

‘I had been transitioning for two years prior, and to have everything reverse itself… it was horrible,’ she told The Appeal.

In October, Sunderland won her case against the jail and its medical director, Vincent Geraci. A jury found the jail and Geraci had violated her constitutional rights. The court awarded her $280,000 in damages and $75,000 in punitive damages against Geraci.

According to the The Appeal, the jail kept giving Sunderland excuses about why it was not giving her hormones.

‘It was very uncomfortable to deal with the physical changes,’ she said. After multiple stalling tactics, the jail confirmed that Geraci decided she shouldn’t have hormone treatment.

‘I was told I wasn’t going to get it—at all,’ Sunderland said.

Geraci originally refused to prescribe Sunderland hormones because he claimed it would damage her liver. But also wrote in her medical records it was his ‘preference’.

According to The New York Times, the doctor had shared several anti-trans posts on social media.