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Calm Before the Storm
What Did President Trump Mean by ‘Calm Before the Storm’?
President Trump was clearly looking to make some kind of news, but about what, exactly, was not clear. And the mystery, as it often does with a president whose statements baffle even his staff, only deepened the next day.
On Thursday evening, the White House told the presidential press corps that Mr. Trump was done with his public schedule for the day. But around 7 p.m., Mr. Trump summoned reporters who were still at work to the State Dining Room, where he was throwing a dinner for military commanders and their spouses.
Gesturing to his guests, he said, “You guys know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”
“What’s the storm?” asked one reporter.
“Could be the calm before the storm,” Mr. Trump repeated, stretching out the phrase, a sly smile playing across his face.
“From Iran?” ventured another reporter. “On ISIS? On what?”
“What storm, Mr. President?” asked a third journalist, a hint of impatience creeping into her voice.
As the generals shifted from foot to foot, Mr. Trump brought the game of 20 Questions to an end. He praised his beribboned guests as the “world’s great military people” and excused the stymied reporters, who returned to their workstations to start another round of: What was the president talking about?
By Friday, the White House was still unable to shed light on the matter; several of Mr. Trump’s aides said they had no idea what the president meant. But the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, wanted to make one thing clear: Mr. Trump wasn’t just teasing his favorite antagonists. He was sending a message.
“I wouldn’t say that he’s messing with the press,” Ms. Sanders told reporters. “I think we have some serious world issues here. I think that North Korea, Iran both continue to be bad actors, and the president is somebody who’s going to always look for ways to protect Americans, and he’s not going to dictate what those actions may look like.”
Suddenly, Mr. Trump’s preprandial banter took on an ominous tone. Maybe he was foreshadowing war with North Korea, which he has already threatened with “fire and fury” if the reclusive country aimed its missiles at the United States. Or perhaps he was predicting a clash with Iran, a week before he is expected to disavow the nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“He certainly doesn’t want to lay out his game plan for our enemies,” Ms. Sanders declared.
U.S. House of Representatives Passes 20-Week Abortion Ban
House passes 20-week abortion ban
The measure passed heavily along party lines, 237-189.
The bill allows exceptions in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman and wouldn't penalize women for seeking to get abortions after 20 weeks.
The legislation is likely to face a tough sell in the Senate. A similar bill passed the House in 2015 but was blocked by Senate Democrats.
With only a 52-seat majority it would be unlikely Senate Republicans could gather the 60 votes needed to move the legislation to President Trump's desk.
Skin Flutes
Semen-contaminated flutes might have been given to children, California school officials warn (archive)
Several school districts in Southern California warned parents this weekend that flutes and recorders given to children through a nonprofit music program may have been contaminated with bodily fluids. At least one district specified that those fluids could have been semen.
Local, state and federal agencies were investigating a male music teacher who visited schools in Southern California through a program called Flutes Across the World, according to updates from the Saugus Union School District, which serves the Santa Clarita area.
“The performer distributes a flutelike musical instrument made of PVC pipe or bamboo to students during a music lesson, and the allegation is that he contaminated some of these instruments with semen,” Saugus Union Superintendent Joan Lucid said in an email to parents on Saturday. “These allegations are deeply concerning, and I realize they raise many questions.”
The California Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Service were among the agencies investigating the program, the district said. Lucid said children were never alone with the music specialist, who was not a district employee.
Flutes "stained with a man's bodily fluids" issued to California schoolchildren
Flutes Across the World: Japan Edition.
Obama's former nanny "lives in fear in Jakarta slum"
Chinese Uighur Modeling
The LapBook Air
Eds! Let my Submission Go!
Here we are, two days after The Morgatory Blizzander took exception to one of my submissions that was approved by another ed. Strange, because TMB is not even an ed, he is only a coder, from what I understand, so how could his objection overrule the decision of an editor? The result, as documented in my last journal, is that my submission has been deep sixed, marked as hidden, so that it is not in the queue, not in the pre-queue, not anywhere! I request, respectfully, that the eds cease this act of censorship. TMB's objections are no more valid than mine, and since I thought this particular article important enough to be a submission to SoylentNews, TMB's objections are noted, but now I think he may actually be a Nazi. Which, as a Native American, seems strange. But I do remember a scene in the movie "Under the Volcano", starring Albert Finney, where a Metis riding on a bus, and wearing a National Socialist Party Pin, harasses a full-blood Native American Mexican. And then it hit me! Not about racial purity at all, since the half-breeds could feel superior to the full bloods, as long as they were not of the "right" blood. TMB is a mongrel. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I am one, too! But to object to an investigative piece looking into the alt-right, because he is afraid, and I repeat, AFRAID, that I am calling him a Nazi? Methinks the Buzzard protests too much. Let my submission go, eds! Let it go.
Donald Trump's Howard Stern Interviews Released
Breaking Frontpage!
Every Soylentil should, on occasion, pull back the curtain and see how sausage is made. Being the site this is, all the discussions by the editors are logged on IRC, and often it is very interesting what is said there:
[12:16:20] cmn32480: Could you please take a look at this story? TMB has some strong views we should not run it (see scroolback): https://soylentnews.org
[12:16:21] ^ �03Error�
[12:16:24] afk
[12:19:02] came from aris5tarcfhus..; wee probably shouldn't run it
[12:19:26] Bytram, that a couple white supremacists exist in the US is not news. running a story about it is not dissimenating news, it is furthering the nazi boogeyman myth and painting tens of millions on the alt-right as literal nazis when there are less than a hundred thousand white supremacists of any variety in the US.
[12:20:20] it serves no purpose but that of propaganda
[12:20:42] am puitting in my standing desk... will tak e apeek at it when I get a moment
[12:23:20] and it's not a speech issue. dingleberry is free to post it verbatim in his journal. it does not meet any criteria as a news story though.
[12:43:35] -!- TheMightyBuzzard has quit [Ping timeout: 276 seconds]
[12:46:01] Beware.... There are CLI programs (if somewhat arcane, can maintain many hundreds of systems) and also in GUI (easy to use, somewhat harder to leverage against hundreds of systems). Some of these have malware. Here's an example of one area where we found some.
[12:46:09] replace CLI/GUI with right/left
[12:46:25] I stand by my decisoion.
[12:46:39] NCommander: ^^ would you please take a look at this and weigh in if you would.
[12:46:46] -!- TheMightyBuzzard [TheMightyBuzzard!~TheMighty@Soylent/Staff/Developer/TMB] has joined #editorial
[12:46:51] I would love to stay and chat but I need to be AT work in about 10 minutes.
[12:46:59] blerg. my local nameserver took a shit.
[12:50:26] fuckin hell. it's my damned internet connection not my nameserver.
[12:53:15] Bytram, that MIGHT be valid if framed that way. leaving dingleberry's commentary makes certain it is framed otherwise.
[12:56:15] Looking
[12:56:55] Ugh
[12:56:59] * NCommander is on the fence
[12:59:11] TheMightyBuzzard, I get where you're coming on the boogeyman argument. The summary as it stands kinda sucks but the actual NYT article has a couple of interesting insights on it about the size and measure of the alt-right and relationship to hate groups.
[12:59:48] Possibly scrap the current summary, make it clear it's an op-ed piece, and that it's by definition opinion with a look inside these groups, and stick a disclaimer on it for good measure.
[13:00:52] the summary as it sits is complete crap and propaganda
[13:02:00] NCommander, have you ever hung with alt-right folks? the only relationship happening there is the extremely small hate groups agree on some issues while the vast majority are happy to denounce them if given half a chance.
[13:03:02] the biggest issue I see is the use of Alt-Right being easily transposed with Nazi
[13:03:10] that is in the NYT piece as well.
[13:03:19] ya, that's by design.
[13:03:53] i think the piece both the NYT Opinion piece and the story sub are hard left leaning propaganda and should get dumped.
[13:04:41] it isn't worth trying to make it an even reasonably even handed rewrite as the source is so far one way that theere is no center
[13:06:56] it's not even really the story that bugs me. the site could and has survive a bad story.
[13:07:51] it's that some of the folks in charge of picking what's worth reading genuinely thought this was. that disturbs me greatly.
[13:08:57] I've set the story for no display pending continued arguement
[13:12:26] emphasizing what cmn32480 said, in the first two paragraphs "extreme right" "alt-right" and "neo-Nazis" are used interchangeably. that is pretty solidly propagandizing.
[13:15:52] Hrm
[13:18:27] FYI: the internal definition of alt-right is something along the lines of "conservative, likely but not necessarily nationalist who sees the Republican party as not representing him/her anymore"
As I said, interesting. I have learned that TMB probably has actually hung out with alt-right types, and the we probably should not be running submissions by aristarchus. Moar Free Speech, Y'all!
Happy End of the World
I think I may have figured out at last what is making the Human Race so unhappy, and it's not just to do with chasing after little green pieces of paper. It occurred to me recently, but I'm getting rather forgetful these days. Let me see if I can remember.
