“Donald J. Trump reeled on Sunday amid a sustained campaign of criticism by the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq and a rising outcry within his own party over his rough and religiously charged dismissal of the couple,” Alexander Burns, Maggie Haberman, and Ashley Parker of the New York Times report. “The confrontation between the parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, and Mr. Trump has emerged as an unexpected and potentially pivotal flash point in the general election.”

Mr Tump is an idiot, so what’s there to expect? There will be plenty more stupidity between now and November.

“The surge in support for a third-party candidate is adding a new element of unpredictability into the presidential race,” Ben Kamisar of The Hill reports. “Should voters opt for a third-party candidate in large numbers, it could potentially tip the scales in crucial battleground states.”

“The first poll taken ahead of the repeat of the Austrian presidential election in October has put the previously defeated far-right candidate a few percentages ahead of his rival,” The Local reports.

“There is no shortage of people who could make it into the bad books of the European commission president,” Jennifer Rankin of the Guardian reports. Gee!

This is a painting of the anointing of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia during his coronation in 1896 by Russian artist Valentin Alexandrovich Serov (1865–1911). I think it’s a beautifully coloured painting. Normally, paintings of royal events are very dry in their pompousness, but this one is very lively.

“In the US, one of the world’s great democracies, maybe the greatest democracy, where democracy was born, before the French one, we see some excesses that are sickening,” France’s president, François Hollande, says.

“The archbishop of Dublin will no longer send his student priests to be trained at Ireland’s oldest seminary amid claims of sexual harassment, a culture of gay sex and the use of the gay dating app Grindr on the campus,” Henry McDonald of the Guardian reports. LOL!

“Saxony-Anhalt’s highest court is under fire for a precedent-setting lenient sentence on a former mayor convicted of Holocaust denial,” Deutsche Welle reports. “The far-right politician from former East Germany remains unapologetic.”

“The results of a new EU-wide survey suggest that Sweden has a more positive attitude towards immigration from outside of the union than any other member state,” The Local reports.

Fox News Poll
Hillary Clinton (Dem)	44%
Donald Trump (Rep)	35%
Gary Johnson (Lib)	12%

It would be a blessing if the Libertarian Party would overtake the Republican Party. I normally don’t mind the Republicans, but they need to feel the mistake of electing Trump as candidate. He’s simply not fit for office, as his latest fondness for using nuclear weapons illustrates.

“Donald Trump asked a foreign policy expert three times why the United States couldn’t use nuclear weapons if he becomes president, it has been claimed,” Nick Allen, David Lawler, and Ruth Sherlock of the Telegraph report. “Mr Trump, the Republican nominee, was said to have posed the question during an hour-long briefing on foreign affairs, saying: ‘If we have nuclear weapons why can’t we use them?’”

Gee!

“The potential loss of ‘passporting’ rights is the elephant in the room for businesses based in the UK. Without it, the other European financial centres looking to pick up business from London—Dublin, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris—will have an easier job persuading multinationals to flee the Square Mile,” Lisbeth Kirk of the EU Observer reports.

Why the EU would allow Britain to keep its membership privileges after leaving the union is beyond me. They voted Leave, so leave!

“European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker rejected Austria’s call for the EU to end membership talks with Turkey on Thursday, warning that it would be a grave error,” The Local reports.

I disagree. I think it’s time to put an end to the charade. There’s no chance of Turkey becoming a member for the foreseeable future.

“Florida senator Marco Rubio has said women infected with the Zika virus should not be allowed to have abortions, even if their babies have microcephaly, the severe developmental disorder than can result from infection with the disease,” Martin Pengelly of the Guardian reports.

I know where he’s coming from, but this is evil. Normally, anti-abortionists say they value the foetus’s life more than the woman’s right to her own body, but in this case the respect for both seem to be nil.

“In an unprecedented prerecorded video message aired Monday, Emperor Akihito expressed concern about how his advanced age is affecting the performance of his public duties,” Reiji Yoshida of The Japan Times reports. “The speech was widely interpreted as conveying his wish to abdicate in the near future.”

“WPTV happened to notice the man, who has a mustache and was wearing a red hat, behind Clinton,” Tory Dunnan reports. “It was Seddique Mateen , the father of Orlando mass shooter Omar Mateen.”

“In a new study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have located a set of brain areas that become active when people predict how objects move in the world based on physical laws,” Bahar Gholipour of the The Huffington Post writes.

“Officially titled the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Act’ and more commonly known as the ‘Kill the Gays’ bill, Lively’s vision was nothing less than a roadmap for the total persecution and eradication of homosexuals from Uganda,” Jameson Parker of Addicting Info reports. “In Lively’s original design, anyone caught engaging in homosexuality would be executed.”

“The Muslim ban, the David Duke denial, the ‘Mexican’ judge flap, the draft dodger denigrating John McCain’s military service, the son of privilege attacking an immigrant Gold Star mother and the constant revisionism and lying about past political positions taken are but a few of the lowlights that have punctuated Donald Trump’s chaotic chase for the presidency,” Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, writes in the Washington Post. “Any one of these offenses would have disqualified any other candidate for president.”

Swedish journalist Lotta Gröning has caused a stir after demanding that Norrland, the Sweden’s northernmost region, should hold a referendum on independence, The Local writes.

Personally, I think independence is overrated, but I would like to see Sweden—and Europe—move in a federalist direction, making political decision-making more local unless it’s better handled on national or European level.

“Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump about statements he had made the previous night, when he claimed Obama was ‘the founder’ of the terrorist organisation,” Michael McLaughlin of The Huffington Post reports. “Hewitt suggested Trump hadn’t meant his statement to be taken literally, but the candidate cut him off.”

“Just when it seemed impossible, journalism may have reached a new low,” Itay Hod of The Wrap writes. “The Daily Beast is under fire on Thursday after one of its straight writers lured gay (and closeted) athletes using dating apps for no apparent reason other than to shame them.”

Openly gay Amini Fonua, a Tongan swimmer competing at the Rio Olympics, tweets angrily:

@NicoHines You fucking disgust me. Do you realise how many people’s lives you just ruined without any good reason but clickbait journalism?

Imagine the one space you can feel safe, the one space you’re able to be yourself, ruined by a straight person who thinks it’s all a joke?

What is it about dictators and old age? Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is 92, and Cuba’s Castro is now 90! Perhaps it’s true that God only want the good to die young?

“You’re a wonderful mother, but what a lot of non-immigrant friends don’t always realise is that while it’s true that you want me to be happy, you want me to be so in a way that fits into a world you understand,” the anonymous gay man writes in his letter, published by the Guardian. “Maybe one day I could fit into your world, but for the time being, I’ll continue to play a role you at least partially recognise.”

“The Senator was the subject of protests for appearing at the event, a gathering of conservative pastors, in Orlando on the 2-month anniversary of the Pulse nightclub mass hate shooting,” Joseph Patrick McCormick of Pink News reports.

It says a lot about American conservatism that this man is considered a moderate.

I have a problem with shallow thinking based on feelings and fallacies alone. In most cases, that’s OK because the topic is of little or no importance. Euthanasia, however, is a serious topic of great importance, and there are valid arguments against assisted suicide, but Wesley Smith of the National Review—despite writing plenty on the issue—has none. The best he can do is a fabricated slippery slope:

Tomorrow, it will be the disabled who commit suicide cheered for “dying on their own terms.”

The day after that, perhaps, it will be a gushing story about an elderly couple who chose joint death rather than face prospective widowhood–as now occurs in Belgium.

When you think about it, there could be a whole new party industry created surrounding goodbye parties: Death cakes, “Goodbye forever” greeting cards. The possibilities are endless.

A stupid “argument” from a silly man!

A same-sex couple made history on Friday as they become the first gay people to be ‘married’ in a Protestant church in Berlin, The Local reports. It’s not really a legal wedding, but it ought to be. It’s about time Germany legalised same-sex marriage!

“Real Cold War veterans may be forgiven for finding the 2016 election a little odd,” The Economist writes. “The party of Eisenhower and Reagan has nominated a man who calls looting of foreign assets the highest priority for America in war and who sucks up to Russia.”

I read an article in Forward about the growing Jewish fundamentalism in Israel. As always, the reader comments became a battle between those Jews who hate everything modern and normal Jews not filled with hate. The first group tend to dismiss every non-Orthodox Jew as not being a real Jew who observes the Torah. In one such alteration, I found this comment that I really like:

So when was the last time you sacrificed an animal at the Temple? Stone any adulterers lately? Understandings of Torah evolve.

That is why we have thousands of years of Rabbinic interpretation. As if Torah itself is not enough. But you (or, more likely some old rabbi that you have imbued with divine infallibility) have decided that somewhere in the distant past, a final interpretation of all matters Torah has been issued and must be followed to the letter. No modern sages can exist because in your world view Jewish law was fixed at a magical point in the distant past.

And what exactly are you going to do about the doctrine of patrilineal descent, practiced universally for most of Jewish history until the “great sages” decreed that our forefathers got it all wrong for thousands of years, and the rule is really matrilineal?

You are a heretic if you elevate the opinion of men, or one man, above the Torah itself. That is what you are doing. You are worshipping dead rabbis—also a heresy.

“The World Health Organisation and the American Psychiatric Association should no longer classify transgender individuals as having a mental disorder,” Honor Whiteman of Medical News Today reports. “This is the conclusion of a new study, which finds that mental health issues among transgender individuals are largely fueled by stigma, rather than transgender identity itself.”

I knew that some large university libraries make regular copies of everything online, but I had no idea that this brilliant website archive existed. It’s fascinating to see how websites have evolved. Below is a screenshot of this website in December 2006.

Read More

“President Duterte scored the United Nations yesterday for hitting his aggressive anti-drug campaign, which he said has so far claimed the lives of 1,000 drug addicts and pushers,” Christina Mendez of The Philippine Star reports. “He complained that the UN is zeroing in on his administration’s drug campaign when it was quiet on mass killings in other countries.”

“Good news, Nordic Noir fans,” The Local writes. “It has been confirmed that The Bridge will definitely return for a much-hyped fourth season.” Yay!

“In his decade as a neo-Nazi skinhead in eastern Germany, Manuel Bauer says he beat up foreigners and disabled people, stabbed a cigarette in the eye of a 12-year old boy and assaulted a Muslim man and his pregnant German wife,” Madeline Chambers of Reuters reports. “Bauer, who led two racist gangs, the ‘League of Aryan Fighters’ and ‘Revenge Act’, says groups like his carried out violence on behalf of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), which has a seat in the European Parliament and five seats in one of Germany's 16 state assemblies.”

“A mentally disturbed man shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ stabbed a Jewish man in the northeastern French city of Strasbourg on Friday,” The Local reports.

From Hürriyet:

At least 51 people were killed and 69 others were wounded in a suicide attack at a wedding ceremony late on Aug. 20 in southeastern Turkey, the Gaziantep Governor’s Office has said, with the president saying the perpetrator was a child suicide bomber likely from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

“There are strong indications that the attack was carried out by ISIL. A suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 blew himself up. We know that ISIL has been trying to gain ground in Gaziantep for a while now,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told journalists in a press briefing in Istanbul on Aug. 21.

“If Trump had even the slightest idea about German politics he would know that Merkel has presided over a government that has an obsession with financial tight-fistedness,” Jörg Luyken of The Local writes. “Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble fastidiously sticks to the concept of schwarze Null, whereby the tax man takes in more than the government spends in a year.”

“A powerful earthquake that rocked central Italy on Wednesday left at least 73 people dead, the country’s civil protection unit said in the first official death toll,” The Local reports.

“Photographs have emerged of armed French police confronting a woman on a beach and making her remove some of her clothing as part of a controversial ban on the burkini,” Ben Quinn of the Guardian reports.

This is not only stupid, it’s a direct violation of people’s religious freedom.

Image: NASA/CXC/CfA/S. Chakraborti et al.

“Nigel Farage, the anti-EU British politician and former Ukip leader, will appear with Donald Trump at a rally on Wednesday, a week after the US presidential candidate branded himself ‘Mr Brexit’ and tapped one of the leading American supporters of Brexit to run his campaign,” Tom McCarthy, Ben Jacobs, Heather Stewart, and Dan Roberts of the Guardian report.

It makes sense, united in racism and narcissism as these two men are.

“Rafelo Vilni, a high-ranking official at the Islamic University in Lucca, Italy, recently wrote on his Facebook page, ‘There needs to be a final solution for Zionists’,” Itamar Eichner of Ynetnews reports.

“Wahhab’s particular version of Islam was the first of two historical accidents that would define Saudi religious influence centuries later,” Scott Shane of the New York Times writes in an informative essay.

“Burkinis must be banned throughout France, ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy said at his first campaign rally for the 2017 presidential election,” Ingrid Melander of Reuters reports. Madness!

France’s highest administrative court has overturned a ban on wearing the full-body burqini swimsuit, The Local reports.

“A jury has convicted an Atlanta truck driver accused of pouring boiling water over two gay men as the couple slept,” Cleve Wootson Jr of the Washington Post reports.

“Gay men strongly preferred the body odour of other gay men in the test which investigated the role played by smell in choosing partners,” Joseph Patrick McCormick of Pink News reports.

“An internal report looking at ways to make Sweden’s Migration Agency more efficient has proposed the agency gets rid of specialists dedicated to LGBT-related issues,” The Local reports.

Richard Jobson writes about the Romeo and Juliet of the punk era in the Telegraph. The 1983 book about Nancy, And I Don’t Want to Live This Life, written by her mother, Deborah Spungen, made a great impact on me growing up. It details the struggle of a family coping with a loved one’s mental illness and drug dependency. It’s a tragic story, but written with great love and affection. If you haven’t read it, do.

“We are going to rid of the criminals, and it’s going to happen within one hour after I take office,” Donald Trump says. “We will move justly, but we will move fast. Believe me.”

Anyone who believes it takes an hour to rid America of criminals must be as dumb as the man who promises it.

“This state-sponsored campaign of xenophobic disinformation is costing Hungarian taxpayers the equivalent of over €16 million—or approximately €12,000 per asylum seeker Hungary has been asked to take,” Lydia Gall of Human Rights Watch writes at EU Observer.

Hundreds of men were convicted before New Zealand passed the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1986, which removed criminal penalties, Radio New Zealand reports. The Justice and Electoral Committee is now accepting public submissions on the petition, which asks for a formal apology to those who were convicted, and for legislation to be passed that would expunge their convictions.