Trump has been busy today honoring some athletes.

At the White House today, Donald Trump is honoring the 2019 college football national champions before heading to Mar-a-Lago.

Before heading to Mar-a-Lago to put many thousands more $$ in his pocket at our expense.

He told the players, speaking about the presidency and himself: “You’ve got a good one now, even though they’re trying to impeach the son of a bitch. Can you believe that?”

Cool cool, but for the punchline, look at that photo.… Read the rest

Feminist women to give a talk on being canceled.

Oops, no, wait, scratch that – the talk has been canceled.

You can’t make this up: The New York Public Library has canceled an event, scheduled for Friday at the main branch, that was to feature women who have been canceled.

Organized by the Women’s Liberation Front, a feminist organization that supports a biological definition of gender, the “Evening with Canceled Women” was to feature “five fearless feminists” speaking out about “women’s rights to a life free of pervasive harassment, silencing, coercion, violence, forced lying and endless punishment.”

Well we can’t have that, now can we. Whatever next? Leaving the house without permission?

In a blog post, the WLF’s

… Read the rest

Jane Clare Jones also objects to Alison Phipps’s assertion that “‘Reasonable debate’ cannot counter unreasonable ideas,” calling it “a pretty staggering statement from someone who is supposedly in the business of dealing with ideas.” Isn’t it though? Isn’t it just self-undermining as all hell for an academic?

If taken at face value, ‘unreasonable’ here would mean something like ‘lacking in reasoned argument,’ or ‘not capable of being justified with compelling reasons.’ Maybe this is what Phipps means, but if so, she would have to, y’know, actually demonstrate that the many reasons we have given for our position are not, in fact, reasonable. Which would, indeed, be the entire point of asking her to intellectually engage with us, rather than just

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Top mediocrity at the New York Times David Brooks has perpetrated another fatuous column, this one saying vast inequality of wealth is because the top people create eleventy billion times as much value as the ants at the bottom. Paul Krugman raises an eyebrow.

My colleague David Brooks asserts that rising inequality is about productivity, not power. People used to say that a lot, but the preponderance of economic analysis has moved the other way, for good reasons 1/ https://t.co/cCuA1G4u86

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 17, 2020

Bear in mind that CEOs get lavishly rewarded even when they screw up massively. 3/ https://t.co/hV1HU2m8Ko

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 17, 2020

But don’t go thinking that’s just because the plutocrat class … Read the rest

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1217898701294919680… Read the rest

It’s ok though, Trump has a brilliant defense.

I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2020

Oh well never mind then.

A perfect phone call! Dialed it and spoke and stuck the landing on the hangup too. Just 10s across the board!

Usually, the Russian judge gives low marks to American competitors, but not this time. https://t.co/efPWp3mPq6

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) January 16, 2020

This reminds me of the time I so nearly made the perfect phone call but then at the last minute I illegally pressured the Ukrainian President to dig up dirt on a rival or lose out on military aid and I blew it. https://t.co/e4WWYrRWVi

—

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The Government Accountability Office, which is a non-partisan arm of Congress, says Trump broke the law.

President Donald Trump’s White House violated federal law by withholding military aid to Ukraine, a top government watchdog announced on Thursday, dealing a blow to the administration’s case against impeachment as the Senate prepares to put Trump on trial.

…

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO concluded in a report released Thursday morning. “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB

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Yet another one.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1217883182747570176

The red haze of fury that immediately descended prevented me from noticing the staggering rudeness of simply cc-ing Stock on an email to others as opposed to communicating with her directly. I guess that’s because the latter would require apologies? I guess it’s just simpler and quicker for the bullies in charge to discuss it among themselves and cc the people they’re bullying?

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1217883578639572993

I find this simply enraging. Preemptive “on second thought no” a mere week beforehand, on the basis of utterly spurious “health and safety issues” – which by the way are immediately nullified by the suggestion that a “transgender speaker” should be invited.

And all this in aid of the new and preposterous … Read the rest

Pink News reports:

The Argentinian football club Villa San Carlos has signed its first ever transgender player for the top women’s league, Primera Division A.

Funny how it’s always for the women’s league.

As well as being the first for the club, Argentine striker Mara Gomez, 22, will also be the first transgender woman ever to play in an official Argentine FA tournament.

Gomez previously played for Toronto City* and the amateur league side Malvinas, where she won two league titles and became the club’s top goalscorer.

A picture of her standing next to another of the team’s newest acquisitions, Ludmila Angeli, went viral as a piece of the country’s footballing history.

Possibly because Gomez towers over Angeli.

“Being

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This country is a sewer.

Fearing potential violence, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is declaring a state of emergency and is banning firearms and other weapons on the Capitol grounds in Richmond ahead of a gun rights demonstration planned for next week.

“Gun rights” fanatics are planning to converge on Richmond next Monday to complain about efforts to pass gun control laws, because hey, why would anybody ever want to control guns.

The event, hosted by Virginia Citizens Defense League, is expected to draw thousands of armed demonstrators, some from out of state. Organizers have said they hope to hold a peaceful event.

Can you imagine? Hundreds of random people armed with guns converging on one spot in one city?… Read the rest

Now there’s more.

Welp, here's another 390 pages of Lev Parnas messages, posted by the House: https://t.co/0x2GU1xaHe

Starts off with a fun one to Parnas from a Trump PAC official: "What should I send Don to tweet?"

A tweet from Jr. soon materialized. pic.twitter.com/DN5WEfR5Kg

— Andrew Prokop (@awprokop) January 15, 2020

Many of these messages haven't been translated. Biggest batches appear to be Parnas's messages with Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin, awaiting translation.

— Andrew Prokop (@awprokop) January 15, 2020

Apparent discussion of attempt to fire Yovanovitch:

2/10/19: Toensing: "Is there absolute commitment for HER to be gone this week?"
Rudy: "Yes not sure how absolute Will get a reading in morning and call you. Pompeii [Pompeo] is now aware of

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On another subject…

Just saying.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on All the poles are reversed.

If there is no difference between a cis woman and a trans woman, if “trans women are women” – then it shouldn’t make any difference.

But of course, there is a difference.

Anyway the more I see these stories, the more this runs through my head:

You’ve heard of TERFs, you’ve heard of SWERFs, now introducing the hot new radical feminism, WERFs.

That’s right, Women Exclusionary Radical Feminism, for when you want to call yourself a feminist but think the only women whose voices matter, are those women who have penises.

Do you think it is okay to threaten 60 year-old-women with baseball bats while still claiming … Read the rest

More from The Festering Sewer Dispatch:

On Monday, President Trump retweeted a fake image of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer in Middle Eastern garb standing in front of an Iranian flag. The badly-photoshopped image showed Pelosi wearing hijab and Schumer with a turban on his head. “Democrats 2020,” the text on the bottom of the image read.

https://twitter.com/D0wn_Under/status/1216667026191605760

Hur hur hur.

Telling Trump he can’t unilaterally commit an act of war is not the same as embracing the target of the act of war. It’s a little more complicated than that.

The fake image was just one of the anti-Pelosi messages the president retweeted on Monday, many of them using the same hashtag: #NancyPelosiFakeNews. Bot Sentinel

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The Daily Beast has the least cryptic reporting I’ve found on the Parnas Papers so far.

On the eve of a Senate trial to remove President Trump, House Democratic investigators have released a trove of documents obtained from the phone of Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani’s who was tasked with carrying out key parts of the plot to pressure the new president of Ukraine to do political favors for Trump.

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In one exchange from March 2019, Robert F. Hyde, a Trump donor and Republican Congressional candidate whose involvement in the Ukraine saga has not been previously detailed, sent texts to Parnas that implied he had access to people spying on Yovanovitch in Kyiv, according to the

… Read the rest