Slowhand wrote:Never thought we'd live in an age where the word "shithole" is used so freely on CNN, but here we are.

thephan wrote:and to keep it political, on this day of service, is Trump hitting the course with white bread brothers? He seemed pretty gleeful that he had a 3 day weekend when he left town mid-day Friday for some sun and fun. I guess he got someone in the King family to vouch for him last week, so he was honored by King for King day. What an arse.

Today Trump arrived at Trump International Golf Club for his 93rd day at a golf club as president.

"Following comments by the president, I said my piece directly to him yesterday," Graham said in a statement. "The president and all those attending the meeting know what I said and how I feel.

"I've always believed that America is an idea, not defined by its people but by its ideals," the third-term senator said.

"I don’t see Donald as racist at all," Ivana Trump said on the UK's "Good Morning Britain" about her former husband.

Her remarks come after the president faced immense scrutiny for reportedly describing several nations as "shithole countries" during a meeting with lawmakers last week.

The business mogul's first wife said sometimes Donald Trump makes remarks that "are silly or he doesn’t really mean them."

When asked why he made the shithole comment, Ivana Trump replied, “Who knows?"

"He has so many people telling him left and right what to say and what not to say, and things like that. And sometimes it maybe gets confusing. I honestly don’t know," she said.

"But he is definitely not racist, I am sure of that," she added.

Ivana Trump also echoed Trump's remarks:

"I don't think Donald is going to do anything irrational. He is a stable genius, definitely. He is very stable, very focused, very organized. And when he sets his goal on something, he does it," she added.

“George Wallace was a staunch racist and we worked on his heart and ultimately George Wallace transformed,” Martin Luther King III said while speaking in Washington on the holiday named after his father.

“We got to find a way to work on this man’s heart,” he adding, referring to Trump.

thephan wrote:Probably belongs in its own thread, but her it is anyway with a link to the idea that it is a federal holiday:

MLK was 15 when his first speech was published. It ended with this line:


My heart throbs anew in the hope that inspired by the example of Lincoln, imbued with the spirit of Christ, they will cast down the last barrier to perfect freedom. And I with my brother of blackest hue possessing at last my rightful heritage and holding my head erect, may stand beside the Saxon--a Negro--and yet a man!


Also turns out that King skipped 9th and 12 grades, putting him at Moorehouse college when he was 15.

BANGKOK (AP) — Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed that they will try to complete the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled from violence in Myanmar within two years, Bangladesh's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

The ministry said a joint working group from the two countries finalized an agreement on Monday on the physical arrangements for the repatriation of the ethnic Rohingya. It said they agreed that the process "would be completed preferably within two years from the commencement of repatriation."

Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an initial agreement in November to repatriate the Rohingya, and the 30-member working group was set up last month to oversee the process. Many have questions whether Rohingya would return to Myanmar under the current circumstances, and whether Myanmar would accept them and allow them to live freely.