Here’s another fun fact: Anthony Kennedy, who had a reputation as the “swing justice” on the Supreme court (he wasn’t), had closer ties to Trump than I could have imagined.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son loaned President Donald Trump over a billion dollars for his real estate projects, The New York Times reported.

Justin Kennedy was the head of Deutsche Bank’s real estate capital markets division and loaned to Trump when other banks wouldn’t.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

But don’t you worry. The crook who has profited most off of all these connections now has the power to appoint new judges who will then handle his crimes.

And don’t forget, the crook is confident that he has the power to pardon everyone who is guilty, including himself.

If anything, he has a phenomenal sense of bad timing. He opened his mouth again a short while ago.

Now, Observer is reporting that Yiannopoulos’ descent into the political gutter continues apace. Asked by Observer to comment on a story, Yiannopoulos texted, “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.” He sent a similar comment to a Daily Beast writer.

Yiannopoulos has also sent anti-Semitic messages to the writer and fact checker Talia Lavin. “This past weekend, the nationalist bragged on Facebook and Instagram that he’d sent $14.88 to The New Yorker‘s former fact checker Talia Lavin,” Observer notes. (1488 being a notorious code used by white supremacists to hail each other).

Amid the current brouhaha over civility, it is important to remember that so noxious a figure as Yiannopoulos was once courted and promoted by a White House aide and major Republican donors. The successful campaign to shun and marginalize Yiannopoulos, made in the wake of the BuzzFeed story, now seems more justified than ever.

And then, what do you know, Someone shoots up a newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Maryland, killing 5 people.

Police have confirmed five people are dead and a gunman is in custody after a shooting in the Capital Gazette building in Annapolis.

The exact number of casualties remains unclear, but several are gravely injured, Anne Arundel County police said.

Only one suspect was involved, police said.

“We’re still talking to the individual, we’re engaging the individual, we’re trying to find a motive,” Anne Arundel County police spokesman Lt. Ryan Frashure said.

Alas for Milo’s fame, the shooter was not inspired by him. He was — I know, you’re going to be shocked and surprised by this — an entitled white man with a history of misogynist stalking who was very angry with the newspaper for reporting on his abuse. He was also a Trump fan. I know! Who ever heard of such a thing?

McCarthy said the harassment and stalking began around 2009, after they became friends on Facebook. In 2011, she took him to court, where he pleaded guilty to criminal harassment and was placed on 18-months’ probation. Five days later, the Capital Gazette wrote a story titled, “Jarrod wants to be your friend.” It outlined Ramos’ alleged erratic behavior and included alleged emails he sent, telling McCarthy’s client: “go hang yourself,” “you’re going to need a restraining order now,” and “you can’t make me stop.”

“Mr. Ramos was obsessively angry about this particular story,” McCarthy said.

But don’t you worry. This will finally be the mass murder that will stir Republicans into action. Marco Rubio was quite upset that one of the survivors, with a shocked quaver in her voice, said “Thanks for your prayers, but I couldn’t give a fuck about them if there’s nothing else.”

Expect immediate legislation to bring an end to this incivility. Expect the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp all attempts to silence people who survive shootings. Expect the president to continue to call out reporters for violence.

Expect the Nazis to continue to thrive.

Anthony Kennedy has now secured his legacy. He stands with all the assholes who didn’t vote, or voted for a third party candidate, in the last presidential election — as a person who did nothing, who cared about nothing, who stood by and watched the country swirl down the drain.

Buh-bye. History will not be kind.

The Washington Post claims that “Liberal hostility toward Trump aides could galvanize the GOP base”, and implies that we all ought to be more like Mr Rogers.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican who is close with President Trump, was accosted by liberal activists on Friday night as she watched a documentary called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Ironically the film highlights Fred Rogers’s teachings of love and kindness, but Bondi had to be escorted from the theater in Tampa by police as partisans screamed at her.

Fred Rogers was a wonderful guy, and I would be delighted if American society were as civil as The Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Unfortunately, our King Friday XIII is planning pogroms, Queen Sara Saturday is sneering at anyone who cares, and Princess Tuesday made $82 million last year off her crony capitalist connections. If any hint of our reality were expressed in his puppet village, I’d like to think that Mr Rogers would be slapping the fuck out of those rotten puppets and burning the whole neighborhood to the ground.

“Kind” and “weak” are not synonyms. These are times when kindness needs to get off its butt, stand in a line, and fight back.

Also, see previous post.

Lindsay Shepherd is suing Wilfrid Laurier University for causing her emotional distress and making her unemployable by criticizing her use of a Jordan Peterson clip in a classroom. I can sort of see both sides in that argument: it is stressful for a TA to receive a rebuke for their teaching style, and the faculty committee was a bit heavy handed. But on the other hand, the faculty also have a responsibility to regulate what’s taught in lab and discussion sections, so they were well within their rights to tell her that was inappropriate.

It’s a stretch to claim it affects her future employment, though, because it was Lindsay Shepherd herself who recorded and released the contents of a private meeting. If these faculty were contacting prospective employers and telling them “don’t hire her, she likes Peterson”, that would be a different thing…did they do that? No? Then what’s made her unemployable is her release of the recording.

But OK, this does sound like something that should be settled in court.

What doesn’t, though, is that now Jordan Peterson is suing Wilfrid Laurier for defamation…for statements made in private, that were made public by Lindsay Shepherd. He is not suing Shepherd.

Comments in the meeting included a comparison of Peterson’s speech to Hitler, and a comparison of his opinion to that of an anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-women white supremacist. They also called him “academically suspect” and said he exhibited “charlatanism,” according to the unproven Statement of Claim.

Despite the fact that the meeting was private, Peterson and his lawyers allege the faculty should have known the content of the meeting could have lasting consequences.

“Although the individual Defendants did not personally disseminate and broadcast it further… they could have reasonably anticipated that … [Shepherd] would inform others of what had occurred,” the statement reads.

I don’t get it. I’ve said that Peterson is a charlatan, both publicly and privately. Is everyone on the planet who has pointed out that he is an incompetent fraud now liable to be sued? Is this how Peterson’s version of free speech works?

We now have the story behind this infamous photo.

“It was at this point, towards the end of the summit, that Chancellor Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada got together with some of the allies and really wanted to press Trump directly to sign the communiqué, that talked about the commitment to a rules-based international order. Trump was sitting there with his arms crossed, clearly not liking the fact that they were ganging up on him. He eventually agreed and said OK he’ll sign it. And at that point, he stood up, put his hand in his pocket, his suit jacket pocket, and he took two Starburst candies out, threw them on the table and said to Merkel, ‘Here, Angela. Don’t say I never give you anything,’” Bremmer described to CBS.

You know, right now Angela Merkel has a stronger claim to being “leader of the free world” than does the American president, and it’s annoying how little respect she gets.

This isn’t the first time Merkel, who has been chancellor since 2005, has had strange encounters with her male counterparts. In 2008, Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi once tried to play hide and seek with the chancellor, and in 2009 he kept her waiting for a meeting while he chatted on the phone. In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin famously brought a dog to a meeting with Merkel, who is known to be afraid of dogs. And former President George W. Bush surprised Merkel by giving her a shoulder rub in 2006.

She’s not progressive enough for me, so this isn’t an endorsement, but still…she’s so much better than Trump. And Berlusconi and Putin and Bush.

Oh, and Trump paid a visit to Minnesota yesterday. Duluth is way over on the other side of the state, though, so I didn’t go (yeah, that’s the only reason). He lied about a bunch of stuff, promised to win Minnesota in 2020, praised that great guy, Kim Jong Un, and praised himself.

“Our people are the smartest and hardest working. You ever notice they call the other side the elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I’m smarter than they are. I’m richer than they are. I became president and they didn’t and I’m representing the most lovely and best people on earth — the deplorables. You remember that?”

Hate the elites…and by the way, I’m more elite than they are.

And people cheered. That’s the most chilling part. People still cheer this cheesy old liar.

Say he got word that some terrorist had kidnapped hundreds of babies and was holding them hostage until the government met his ransom demands — and he’s no piker, he’s asking for tens of billions of dollars.

Well, I’m a little disappointed that no action hero has stepped forward to deal with this situation.

Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas, The Associated Press has learned.

Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.

Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care.

Rachel Maddow has the response I would make, because I’m no action hero either.