I guess that depends on what helicopter parenting means. This Times opinion piece cites evidence that children of highly involved parents with an authoritative parenting style (versus authoritarian) are on average more successful, happier and healthier adults.
There's a lot more devil in the details than this article let's on, but the general thesis is worth considering.
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THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019
At his recent rally in El Paso, Trump railed against the press and one of his unhinged supporters attacked a BBC News cameraman. Later, his spokesperson said the White House condemns violence against journalists.
Hollow words.
This morning Trump is portraying the press as "THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE," which gives license for any unhinged idiot who imagines himself a patriot to commit violence against journalists. Remember that Trump supporter from Florida who was sending mail bombs to the press?
Worse than that, Trump's attacks on the press are an appeal to the stupidity of people who ignore his tsunami of transparent, over-the-top lies, as if the people reporting on his compulsive lying are the liars. A free press, even though imperfect, is absolutely vital to government by the people and for the people, and it's the first target of every authoritarian thug who has ever destroyed the freedoms of such a society.
But he's not done with the media.
Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019
Is the First Amendment a hoax too? Retribution? Looked into? This is the mind of a wannabe dictator. Trump would jail or even murder his critics and opponents if he could.
And news this week is that over half of white Evangelical Christians believe Trump was chosen by God.
That. Is. Nuts.
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It never made sense.
I almost published posts expressing my skepticism about the alleged Jussie Smollet attack twice, but hesitated because it would be terrible to accuse a real crime victim of a hoax. Knowing that the police were working on the case, I assumed that the truth would eventually come out, and now it seems that it has.
Here are the problems I had with the case from the start.
First, at the time of the alleged attack, the temperature was in the low teens and the wind chill was even lower. I don't think muggers typically wander the streets when it's that cold, especially muggers motivated by bigotry rather than money. There aren't enough people out on the streets and it's too cold to wander around looking for such a specific target to mug.
Second, that neighborhood is very dark in the wee hours. How did the muggers spot Smollett? It would have been difficult to recognize from a distance that he was black, never mind that he's gay. It makes no sense that anyone would even prowl that particular neighborhood looking for a gay, black man.
Third, the muggers allegedly shouted "this is MAGA country." That's fuckin' crazy. No one here thinks this is MAGA country. They could have said it, but that's just a weird thing to claim.
Fourth, they wrapped a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him? So these muggers took off in their car, when it was 13 degrees, popped off Lake Shore Drive, then prowled the empty streets of an upscale neighborhood with bleach and a rope hoping they'd find a gay black man, yell "MAGA country!" then pour bleach on him? Maybe if we try to imagine that the attackers knew him and followed him and specifically targeted him, but the whole story strained credulity.
Initially, I thought it was possible that Smollet was attacked by a prostitute and didn't want to admit it. That might explain later reports that he didn't want to give his phone to the police, but someone might not want to give the police their phone for any number of reasons. For example, I wouldn't give the police my phone. I wouldn't want them tracking down my patients and questioning them, and I wouldn't want to be without a phone while the police are going through it. So reports that Smollett didn't give up his phone didn't impress me as especially incriminating. Rather, it was the implausibility of the entire account that left me skeptical.
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KABUL, Afghanistan — The driver of a car that was stopped in the middle of the road, blocking traffic, was shocked when a passing motorist rolled down the window and shouted at him, “Dirty donkey.”
He was even more surprised when he looked up to see that the insult came from a woman. A woman driving a car. A woman driving a car without wearing the obligatory hijab.
That was Laila Haidari, who runs a popular cafe in Kabul that allows men and women to dine together, whether married or not, with or without a head scarf, and uses the profits to fund a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts.
Nearly everyone addresses Ms. Haidari, 39, as “Nana,” or “Mom,” and her supporters describe her as the “mother of a thousand children,” after the number of Afghan addicts she has reportedly saved.
Haidari is campaigning against any negotiations that include the Taliban. I don't pretend to know the road map to peace in Afghanistan, but Haidari is a remarkable, courageous woman. I'm pretty sure Afghanistan needs more people like her and fewer reactionary fundamentalists with a history of mass executions.
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True story. pic.twitter.com/7rPCYi3IDG
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 15, 2019
ACA was passed by both the House and the Senate and signed into law by the president. It was not enacted as a phony emergency decree by a president who envies the powers of Putin, Erdogan and Duterte.
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"Regrets? I think everyone has regrets, and people who say they haven’t are either liars or narcissists. There have been many things in my life to have regrets about, in the sense I wish I could have changed them, or somehow made them not happen." - Lee Radziwill (1933-2019) pic.twitter.com/zXuZf0UxIL
— Rawaa Talass (@aRTprojectdxb) February 16, 2019
Some people say they have no regrets because they've learned something from everything they've experienced in life. There's some truth in that, but I think a close inspection of one's life should reveal a few things one simply shouldn't have said or done. A needless hurt to someone else matters more than any lesson one might learn from inflicting that hurt.
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1/2 I was in transit and didn’t see this “speech.” @TheAtlantic has done something valuable in printing the whole thing, verbatim.
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) February 16, 2019
Yes, I know papers routinely run transcripts, and everyone is familiar with how Trump talks.
But read from start to end, this one is dumbfounding. https://t.co/BZvyCvBCGW
2/2 A finite number of people— hundreds, maybe? of whom I’m one—have worked on remarks for prez's to give in this setting
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) February 16, 2019
Prez + staff actually *plan* these statements. You’ll find *nothing* before resembling the one today, which was like some crank saying “And another thing.." pic.twitter.com/3BmAth5XNP
3/3 This was only one drop in the vast briny sea of delusion, self-regard, and fantasy in Trump’s “speech” yesterday.
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) February 16, 2019
But: in case you were tempted to believe his claim that China has cleaned up its drug problem — unt-uh. For instance: https://t.co/Fgmn8NvdMT
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Sebastian, "Seb," Gorka is doubling down on the idea that RGB is actually dead, a rumor started by Qanon people. https://t.co/EEyo8EhJIW
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) February 15, 2019
Gorka is regarded with disdain in his own field of national/international security. His PhD is viewed by many as dubious and his alleged scholarship "inept." Nonetheless, or perhaps for those very reasons, he was retained by the Trump White House as a national security advisor, but he could not gain security clearance. Gorka is also a favorite of Sean Hannity, a man once described to me as the dumbest man in television by a Republican operative who worked in the White House for a past Republican administration.
You doubt any of this?
Review the headline. Gorka is trading in Ruth Bader Ginsburg is secretly dead rumors.
And he was in the Trump administration for 8 months.
This reminds me that Mike Flynn Jr. was pushing that Comet Pizza insanity which led to his ouster from the Trump transition team.
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— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2019
The President of the United States is mocking opponents with a song of consolation for people on the verge of suicide.
He. Is. Disgusting.
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“The goal is to get Trump’s stupidest voters to say ‘he's fighting!’” -Ann Coulter
Finding myself in agreement with Ann Coulter -- strange times we're living in.
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A Pipeline of Undocumented Immigrants Built and Maintained Trump's New Jersey Golf Club
The undocumented immigrant employees recently fired from President Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey golf club were not merely individual workers who "slipped through the cracks," but rather part of a "long-running pipeline" that ran from Central America to New Jersey — "a wellspring of low-paid labor," The Washington Post reported Friday.
One former Costa Rican maintenance worker told the Post that his "whole town practically lived there" working to build and maintain the golf club. The Post spoke with 16 former club employees from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, and Guatemala; all said that they had worked illegally at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, needing only a "crudely printed" fake green card and a fraudulent Social Security number obtained in the U.S., and that their managers knew of their status.
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what the hell happened to Lindsey Graham?
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Putin's adviser Surkov to those "who cry about Russian meddling in elections": "Things are much more serious: we meddle with your brains, we change your conscience - and you have no clue what to do about it".https://t.co/AuG9sLmNCX pic.twitter.com/qywd3efqra
— olexander scherba (@olex_scherba) February 11, 2019
I don't know about the Russians, but Trump has certainly wreaked havoc with the consciences of his supporters.
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It's been increasingly frustrating to enter a Starbucks, see a short line, and then have a long wait for my order because of mobile orders ahead of me. I didn't want another app and another way to spend money with my phone, but I gave in recently and joined the ranks of mobile order folks. I haven't been mobile ordering every time. Probably ordering ahead half the time.
Today, I didn't mobile order then decided I wanted something from Starbucks. I entered a downtown location, saw 5 or 6 people in line, which isn't a very long line for a downtown location at 9am, but decided to place a mobile order while in the store to compare mobile ordering with waiting in a relatively short line. Result: I received my food and beverage before the fifth person in line even got to the register. So that's it. I'm only using the mobile app to order from now on.
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