Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine:

Rich Anderson, the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party[,] wrote to the president of the University of Virginia yesterday. Anderson begins by explaining, “I understand the commitment that public servants make to serving with integrity, dignity, respect, and honor in their taxpayer-funded roles.” The letter concerns Donald Trump, though not in a way that follows intuitively from the premise that public servants must act with integrity, dignity, respect, and honor.

Anderson’s letter demands UVA open an ethics investigation into Larry Sabato, the director of the school’s Center for Politics. Sabato’s alleged ethics violation is a series of mean tweets from his personal account, concerning Donald Trump.

“Not an ethics violation, Your Honour.”… Read the rest

Milli Hill’s I will not be silenced is also relevant to that “mind your own fucking business” tweet of Christa Peterson’s. It is our fucking business; of course it is.

[T]oo many women have been silenced, and I don’t want to join them. There are conversations about women’s rights, women’s bodies, and the words we use to talk about women’s issues, which need to be had, but which have been made taboo in our current culture. And this is not healthy. Worse still, women like me have been used as an example to others of what happens to you if you raise questions. And others have seen these public draggings, and decided to keep quiet themselves. This kind of behaviour,

… Read the rest

No, that’s not right.

There are a lot of reasons it’s not right, but to take just one central one – that amounts to telling women that “gender” is none of our business, that the social rules and constraints imposed on women are none of our business, that the perceived inferiority and subordinate nature of women is none of our business, that feminism is none of our business. That claim is obviously absurd, and also obviously insulting. She might as well tell workers that unions are none of their business.

It’s especially repellent because she is a graduate student in philosophy. If gender is none of women’s business then everything is none of philosophy’s business – so what is she … Read the rest

This is RT, Putin’s rag, so take that into account, but I can’t find other news sources reporting on it yet:

London borough apologises for having actor in bare-bottomed monkey costume with mock genitalia encourage kids to read more books

Long but compelling headline, do admit. If that doesn’t encourage kids to read more books I don’t know what will.

Officials in London’s Redbridge borough were left red-faced after a library event designed to promote reading among kids featured a monkey character in a costume that included dangling fake genitalia and exposed buttocks.

The costume and the actor wearing it came from Mandinga Arts, a troupe of street performers based in Clapham South that has “a distinctive style bringing together

… Read the rest

This is an odd thing that happened.

1/2 During an event put on at the library today there was a performance by a Carnival Arts Company. Unfortunately one of the animal costumes was inappropriate which we were not aware of at the time of booking. We deeply apologise for the offence caused. This is being looked into

— Redbridge Libraries (@RedbridgeLibs) July 10, 2021

What do they mean “inappropriate”? It’s mostly about the dildo, but apparently also the bare bum. What they carefully don’t mention is that the event was for children. It wasn’t Kink Hour for Adults, it was a reading promotion event for children. What a dildo has to do with it is anyone’s guess.

3/3 happen again.

… Read the rest

I’m so sick of these commissars.

A childbirth campaigner says she was “cancelled” for suggesting violence in childbirth was committed against women rather than against “birthing people”.

It’s women. The violence is done to women. If we can’t name them we can’t do anything about the violence.

The flare-up began in November when [Milli Hill] was “tagged”, or name-checked, by a stranger in a post on Instagram. The person wrote: “Birthing people are seen as ‘the fragile sex’ who need to be kept under patriarchal authority by doctors.”

Hill replied: “I would challenge the term ‘birthing person’ in this context though … It is women who are seen as the ‘fragile sex’ etc, and obstetric violence [medical interventions performed

… Read the rest

So Wayne Couzens’s colleagues in the police called him “The Rapist.” Hawhaw, boys will be boys eh? Nicknames are enough, no need to do anything about him.

The Met Police hired Sarah Everard‘s killer despite him being disturbingly nicknamed ‘The Rapist’ and the claim that he drove around naked in 2015 – three years before he was hired in London, it has emerged.

Wayne Couzens’ ex-colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), where the 48-year-old joined in March 2011, reportedly gave him the nickname because he made some female officers feel uncomfortable.

And by “uncomfortable” they mean “afraid.”

The Met is under pressure to investigate how Couzens, who pleaded guilty to murdering 33-year-old Ms Everard after snatching her off

… Read the rest

Janice Turner on the difficulties of being young and female:

The young woman’s burden is always wanting to be liked. Not caring what others, especially men, think about you is the secret bonus of age. But girls crave approval. For my generation the bar was low: be pleasant and pretty. Now the arenas in which perfection must be achieved are manifold: school, career, looks, sexual allure, often of an extreme pornified type. 

It’s kind of a tricky combination, if you ask me.

This week The Crown actress Emma Corrin posted pictures of her body, thin to the verge of skeletal, her breasts bound flat with tape. This was “very new, very cool”, she wrote. “It’s all a journey right.”

… Read the rest

What was that about ethics?

Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., charged the Secret Service nearly $10,200 for guest rooms used by his protective detail during Trump’s first month at the club this summer, newly released spending records show.

He could of course charge them nothing, or charge them a nominal rate, but…no.

The Washington Post reported previously that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club — where he lived from January, when he left the White House, to early May — charged the Secret Service more than $40,000 so that agents could use a room near Trump.

He could have chosen to do it differently, but he didn’t.

Legal experts have said there are no laws to prohibit Trump’s company from charging

… Read the rest

Speaking of ethics…

To see one reason why the red-blue divide on vaccines is getting worse, just turn up the volume…

Here's my report from @DonLemonTonight pic.twitter.com/RH4Z0vbvHe

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 10, 2021

It’s a clip of Fox News hacks telling people to refuse to get the vaccination – in other words telling people to keep spreading a killer virus and to get it themselves, in other words killing people. For money and fame and whatever other frivolous rewards they get from this activity, what they’re doing is making a pandemic worse than it would be without their propaganda. They’re knowingly causing disease and death.

We live in a strange world.… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1413848743871397891 https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1413852939479916546 https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1413846720446967813… Read the rest

They’re doing this again! I guess because it worked out so well last time?

White House officials have helped craft an agreement under which purchases of Hunter Biden’s artwork — which could be listed at prices as high as $500,000 — will be kept confidential from even the artist himself, in an attempt to avoid ethical issues that could arise as a presidential family member tries to sell a product with a highly subjective value.

For fuck’s sake! Could it be any more blatant? Hunter Biden is not an artist any more than he was a legitimate qualified board member of Burisma. He exploited his daddy’s name to make the big bucks in that laughable “job” with Burisma and now … Read the rest

Wayne Couzens has admitted murdering Sarah Everard. You’ll never guess what his secret hobbies were.

…underneath the veneer of respectability was a sexual deviant who, fuelled by extreme pornography, was driven to ever more depraved actions to slake his desires.

Extreme porn isn’t all that deviant though; it’s not rare enough to be deviant. It seems that a lot of men like watching women get beaten and tortured.

Despite being an armed officer tasked with protecting politicians, dignitaries and VIPs, Couzens admitted regularly cavorting with prostitutes and was also suspected of taking dangerous body-building steroids.

Cavorting? I doubt they spent the time skipping and jumping around.

…privately Couzens is suspected of having a dangerous addiction to extreme pornography.

“Extreme” … Read the rest

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt of How Democracies Die tell us the biggest threat is not another insurrection but a steal.

The looming danger is not that the mob will return; it’s that mainstream Republicans will “legally” overturn an election.

They’re energetically at work on it now, like for instance all that voter suppression in Texas we were just reading about.

Last year, for the first time in U.S. history, a sitting president refused to accept defeat and attempted to overturn election results. Rather than oppose this attempted coup, leading Republicans either cooperated with it or enabled it by refusing to publicly acknowledge Trump’s defeat. In the run-up to January 6, most top GOP officials refused to denounce

… Read the rest

Somebody seems to have Marxism confused with theocracy. They’re not quite the same thing.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn continues her running feud with Taylor Swift, warning her that if we have a “socialistic govt,” the state would have to “approve her music,” and won’t “allow women to dress, or sing, to be on stage, or entertain.” pic.twitter.com/HGXziiai8K

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 8, 2021

… Read the rest

The game’s afoot.

https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/1413527354589200384

Steerpike tells us:

It’s not just the boardroom where such clashes are being played out. Mr S hears word that the editorial floors of the Guardian and its Sunday sister the Observer have become riven with tensions over the perennial problem of trans rights. WhatsApp groups are ablaze with talk that Observer commentator Sonia Sodha could become the next feminist hounded out of the group, following Suzanne Moore’s purging in November.

Sodha has incurred the displeasure of the Guardian’s vocal trans-rights faction for daring to suggest that women have a right to free speech and should not be threatened for having opinions. She now faces public attacks on Twitter from Guardian contributors, attacks that go

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Gendered language at the abortion clinic.

James Randi used to do an experiment where college students who had previously given their birth dates were each presented with a paper written by a “master astrologer” describing what the stars said about them, specifically. After they finished their personalized readings, they were each asked to rank how accurate they were on a 10 point (?) scale. There were lots of 8s and 9s, and even some 10s. On the whole, they were all impressed, and gave the astrologer high marks, too. Then they were asked to pass the papers to the student in the next desk.

It was the same reading, of course, with the … Read the rest

What next? Bus drives are Nazis if they don’t let you throw bottles at people on the bus? Servers in restaurants are Nazis if they don’t let you push over all the tables? Bouncers are Nazis if they eject you from the bar for throwing a punch? Dog walkers are Nazis if they don’t let you kick their dogs?

Fox News pushing boundaries again:

Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren on Thursday joined a growing number of right-wing pundits and politicians comparing covid-19 restrictions to Nazism.

To Nazism. Because of what? Are there concentration camps? Is there forced labor? Are there extermination camps? I’m not seeing the Nazism. I’m not seeing the Fascism and I’m sure as hell not seeing … Read the rest

Time to grow up now, people.

The headline:

Why Emma Corrin is using a chest binder

Oh I bet I know the answer to that one – because, like many others, she’s found a new way to be special and attention-worthy.

Who is she? An actor. She played narcissistic PrinCess DiAna in The Crown. Typecasting, it seems. So a different woman, poshly named Charlie Gowans-Eglinton, instructs us on how meaningful all this is.

Your response to the above may be largely generational. In the middle of the millennial age bracket at 33, I didn’t know about non-binary pronouns at school or even at university…But it’s a very small adjustment for me, personally, to make, isn’t it? Just swapping one word

… Read the rest

Another damn fool tries to erase the existence and needs of women, and thinks she’s progressive for doing it. I wish these people would hurry up and become adults.

I got pregnant four years ago, when I was 26, and had an abortion in my first trimester. At the time, I wasn’t in a position financially or emotionally to be a parent. I was unemployed, and I knew that choosing to have a child would make it very hard to get a job in the near future. I wasn’t in a living situation where I had room for a baby.

I didn’t feel ashamed about having an abortion. It was an easy decision for me. But as a 

… Read the rest