<snip>

"Normally, newly elected presidents enjoy a wave of goodwill that allows them to fly high at least through their first 100 days. Donald Trump has not been sworn in, and the honeymoon has already come and gone.”

<snip>

“(Trump’s) need to dominate every news cycle feeds an almost compulsive tweet habit,” he said. "It has placed him just about continuously at the center of the national conversation, and not always to his benefit.”

Krauthammer added Trump had not improved some of the flaws from his at times wild 2016 presidential bid.

“Nothing negative goes unanswered because, for Trump, an unanswered slight has the air of concession or surrender,” he said.

“Finally, it’s his chronic indiscipline, his jumping randomly from one subject to another without rhyme, reason or larger strategy.”

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/nick-kyrgios-takes-aim-at-us-president-elect-with-antidonald-trump-tshirt-20170109-gtoi25.html?platform=hootsuite

Australian tennis star Nick Kyrgios has made a strong political statement heading into the Australian Open, wearing an anti-Donald Trump t-shirt after his Fast4 victory over Rafael Nadal in Sydney.

Kyrgios, who was forced to scramble through his bag for a shirt after his laundry didn't arrive following his match against Nadal, is clearly no admirer of the US President-elect.
Kyrigios sports anti-Trump shirt

The world No.14 had just strapped ice on his injured knee when he was summoned to the post-match press opportunity, grabbing the eye-catching shirt so he could fulfil his media obligations.

The 21-year-old wore a shirt that had Trump's face covered with devil-like illustrations and the words "F--- Donald Trump" down the bottom.

Asked about the decision to wear the shirt, Kyrgios said: "It's pretty explanatory".

Former Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer became the first candidate to officially jump into the 2018 election pool Tuesday, by filing paperwork with the Secretary of State to set up a committee to run for governor.

It wasn’t a big announcement or the beginning of a speaking tour around the state. Rather, filing the paperwork is a prerequisite for Whitmer if she wants to begin accepting financial contributions to her campaign.

In an e-mail to supporters Tuesday, Whitmer said she is "no stranger to fights," including ones to "protect workers' rights, ... level the playing field," and "protect kids and to hold government accountable."

Whitmer, an East Lansing Democrat, said in the e-mail she remembers when Michigan was bold and didn't just face challenges, but beat them.

"That’s why I know we can build a Michigan with opportunities that rival those from our past," she said. "A state where opportunities are available to every Michigander – regardless of gender or race or religion or who you love or where you were born – if you work hard and play by the rules.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon gave expectant mothers a starter kit full of essential items for newborns, kicking off the "baby box" programme that's modelled on Finland's.

The boxes will be trialled for three months in Clackmannanshire and Orkney, and all Scottish newborns are scheduled to receive them by summer 2017.

The boxes contain items like clothes, nappies and books. The idea is to give all newborns an equal playing field.

“Scotland’s Baby Box is a strong signal of our determination that every child, regardless of their circumstances, should get the best start in life," Sturgeon said.



The box also includes a poem written by Scotland's Makar (National Poet), Jackie May. It's called "Welcome Wee One."

O ma darlin wee one
At last you are here in the wurld
And wi’ aa your wisdom
Your een bricht as the stars,
You've filled this hoose with licht,
Yer trusty wee haun, your globe o' a heid,
My cherished yin, my hert's ain!

O my darlin wee one
The hale wurld welcomes ye:
The mune glowes; the hearth wairms.
Let your life hae luck, health, charm,
Ye are my bonny blessed bairn,
My small miraculous gift.
I never kent luve like this.

In 1915, five years before women in the United States won the right to vote, American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman published Herland, a sui generis piece of steampunk speculative fiction about a fantasy feminist utopia. When I discovered the all-but-forgotten novel when it was reissued in 2014, I expected an unintentionally funny, naively fu­turistic throwback to a bygone time. Instead, I discovered a scorchingly relevant Victorian take on the nar­rative roots of patriarchal oppres­sion, which became, unfortunately, even more relevant post-election.

The story begins with narrator Vandyck “Van” Jennings, a smug gentleman-adventurer who joins a far-flung expedition to bring “civi­lization” to “savages,” because it’s the late 19th century, and that’s what all the cool kids are doing. Van has tagged along with his old school friends, Terry O. Nicholson and Jeff Margrave, an investor/explorer and a doctor, respectively, who like him were brought up on thrilling tales of manifest destiny and cultural imperialism. When their native guides allude to a mythical land populated only by women, the trio break off from the group to go find it, each envisioning a world that reflects their individual idea of “womanhood” and their particular brand of sexism: hostile, benevo­lent, and ambivalent.

Terry, a misogynistic, narcissistic bully whom Van describes as “rich enough to do as he pleased,” expects a country of beautiful, acquiescent, sexually liberated young girls, free enough from societal constraints to have fun with, but not so free as to be equal. Jeff, a cartoonishly idealistic Southern gentleman doctor “born to be a poet or a botanist,” imagines a land full of gentle, doe-eyed angels with cherubic babies bouncing at their sides at all times. Van, meanwhile, sees himself as the most “scientific” of the three, arguing “learnedly about the physiological limitations of the sex.”

All three expect what they've begun referring to as “Herland” to be “uncivilized,” an untamed, Arcadian expression of women’s inborn nature—whether sexy girl, saintly mommy, or fascinating, if vaguely repulsive, biological “other” to be studied and classified. If there’s one thing the men can all agree on, it’s that there will be nothing rationally, functionally, technologically, morally, or politically superior about a society made up only of women and girls. “We seemed to think that if there were men we could fight them, and if there were only women,” Van describes in the book, “why they would be no obstacle at all.”

The novel begins as a mansplaining epic: an exegesis about an ancient race of self-reproducing, parthenogenetic women, mothers all, who evolved over 2,000 years to produce one baby girl apiece, as authoritatively explicated by a guy who literally just met them. The first people Van, Terry, and Jeff encounter upon arriving in Herland are three lithe, flirtatious, teenage girls swinging from the trees. Ellador, Celis, and Alima are nothing like the girls back home; they are “erect serene, standing sure-footed and light as any pugilist.” The men follow them into town and soon find themselves surrounded by a cadre of older women—“old Colonels,” Terry calls them—who nonviolently block their path and escort them to their rooms. (“We found ourselves much in the position of the suffragette trying to get to the Parliament buildings through a triple cordon of London police,” Van says.)