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The crowd roared

Jan 10th, 2020 8:38 am | By

Greg Sargent at The Post underlines the obvious: Trump is an abusive monstrosity bent on destruction.

At a rally in Ohio on Thursday night, President Trump drew deafening cheers by boasting about his order to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, deriding Democrats with petty schoolyard taunts and mocking the very idea that Congress should act to constrain his warmaking powers.

…

At his rally, Trump belittled House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “not operating with a full deck.” He derided House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff as “you little pencil neck.” The crowd roared, demonstrating how heavily Trump’s petty abusiveness figures as a factor in his appeal.

But what Trump really displayed here is that his deranged attacks on the

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments
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It’s a guessing game

Jan 9th, 2020 5:30 pm | By
It’s a guessing game

A British Columbia doula asks some questions:

Where do you see yourself in the hierarchy of birth? Are you at the bottom? The smallest player with the smallest voice? Or are you at the top?

Basically the doctor isn’t the boss of you. But what’s intriguing to me is the graphic that illustrates the hierarchy-dismantling.

Isn’t it fascinating that whoever created this graphic sees nurses and midwives as women and doctors as men, but the pregnant woman as the “birthing person”?

You’d think it would at least be consistent – nurse person, doctor person, birthing person, but no, the medical personnel are divided on the strictest of (outdated) lines. Somehow it’s only the one pushing out the baby who … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 25 comments


Pencils have their uses

Jan 9th, 2020 5:08 pm | By

Hmmm.

Trump’s campaign has been selling Schiff T shirts since last spring. For real.

Trump’s presidential campaign has started selling $28 “Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff” T-shirts that feature a drawing of Rep. Adam Schiff with a pencil for a neck and a clown nose.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 14 comments


Intentional calculated fraud

Jan 9th, 2020 11:42 am | By

We knew they knew, but now there’s even more evidence that they knew.

Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump took part in a fraudulent scheme to sell units in a luxury New York condominium-hotel and “knew they were lying”, according to a new book that explores how the current US president built his business empire.

Questions have long surrounded a criminal investigation into the Trump family’s dealings around the Trump SoHo that was dropped in 2011. Public disclosure of email correspondence revealed that Don Jr and Ivanka knowingly used figures that exaggerated how well the condos were selling in a ploy to lure more buyers.

Also how would they not know, also it was their responsibility to know. If you’re … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 9 comments
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Relaxing

Jan 9th, 2020 11:02 am | By

Meanwhile, during breaks from trying to start a war with Iran, Trump is trashing more environmental regulations.

The Trump administration plans to rewrite decades-old regulations to make it easier to build major infrastructure such as pipelines, which would have the effect of relaxing government efforts to fight the climate crisis.

“Relaxing.” That’s a nice word – a nice, soothing, pleasant word. The truth would be less pleasant: which would have the effect of weakening government efforts to fight the climate crisis. Or harming, ending, negating, nullifying, destroying. Relaxation really has nothing to do with it.

Trump announced Thursday morning the changes to National Environmental Policy Act rules, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


Would she be able to think critically?

Jan 9th, 2020 10:04 am | By

A heart-rending and infuriating but perhaps ultimately hopeful thread:

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209411070742529 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209414480683009 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209416112271361 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209418997956608

Oh god. Four years old. It’s unconscionable.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209420717641733

I think we can feel Carol’s fury with her – I think the typos are a kind of fury thermometer. I’m pretty sure I start missing keys when I get wrathful.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209422474993664

Great, the therapist thinks telling a girl that girls can have short hair and wear jeans is confusing while telling her she’s a boy is not confusing. I think we need a new Theory of Confusion.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209424228192258 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209426019209218 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209427734691841

Thinking critically is a good thing, including for therapists. Affirmation and Validation are not always the best thing for people.… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 11 comments


Breaking

Jan 9th, 2020 9:04 am | By

Many sources are saying it looks as though Iran shot down that plane.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Just wrapped a 2 day shoot

Jan 8th, 2020 4:33 pm | By

Speaking of DOCTOR Veronica Ivy formerly known as Rachel McKinnon…this is interesting.

https://twitter.com/SportIsARight/status/1214636591739748352

Would DOCTOR Veronica be getting a feature in Bicycling mag if he were still racing as a man? Would he still be doing a two day photo/video shoot if he were still racing as a man?

Of course not. He was a dud as a cyclist of the male category. Nobody would be paying the smallest attention to his cycling if he hadn’t jumped over to the other side, where it’s so much easier for a man to grab the top spot.

It’s a win-win, because he gets to steal medals that belong to women, and he gets to milk the resulting objections and anger for publicity … Read the rest

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One day we’ll tell kids

Jan 8th, 2020 4:18 pm | By

I think Glinner summed it up nicely this morning.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Sophomoric and utterly unconvincing

Jan 8th, 2020 3:48 pm | By

Top Trump stooges “briefed” members of Congress today, leaving them underwhelmed.

The quartet of US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the still relatively new defense secretary Mark Esper, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley and the historically-controversial CIA director Gina Haspel strode across Capitol Hill today to brief members of Congress on the Iran issues.

It would be like being briefed by the Marx Brothers, but less fun.

Senior Democrat and chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, Eliot Engel, who was deeply involved in the Trump impeachment inquiry, was unimpressed.

Democrat Pramila Jayapal said of the administration’s stated justification for assassinating Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in the Baghdad area last week: “There

… Read the rest

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What it might feel like for women

Jan 8th, 2020 12:41 pm | By

Many are praising Louise Perry’s review of Andrea Long Chu’s book Females. I like this passage:

The feeling of desperate, conflicted desire is a thread running through Chu’s writing. Where she departs from mainstream trans activism is in vocalising that conflict, rather than wishing it away: “What I want isn’t surgery; what I want is never to have needed surgery to begin with. I will never be natural, but I will die trying.”

It is impossible not to feel compassion, despite the fact that Chu does not spend even a moment wondering what it might feel like for cis women — a little over half the human race — to be the objects of all this longing. To engage

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 15 comments


Rebranding and its discontents

Jan 8th, 2020 12:05 pm | By

Rebranding: the conversation.

https://twitter.com/neelamheera/status/1214540037339189248 https://twitter.com/neelamheera/status/1214540336262983682

But they weren’t excluding people. There’s no need to name every subset of women in order to avoid excluding some particular subset. It can be a good thing to underline that all subsets are welcome, especially subsets that really do face oppression and neglect. (Which implies that I don’t think women who identify as men really do face oppression and neglect. That’s fair. I think the whole idea of being trans is a pretty elite phenomenon, and I also think not being constantly “centered” by everyone else doesn’t qualify as oppression and neglect.) It can be a good thing, but underlining that all are welcome does not require erasing the set.

Suppose you have a … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 13 comments
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We decided to take out the word “women”

Jan 8th, 2020 11:50 am | By

Oh has it indeed.

https://twitter.com/WNTTgra/status/1214954318975164427

What could be more “inclusive” than removing women from everything?

From the (sorry) Daily Mail article:

A gynaecological health charity has taken the step to remove ‘women’ from its brand name in a bid to be more inclusive of transgender men and non-binary people and  ‘create an awareness of barriers for others’.

Because it’s women, you see. Women are not allowed to create awareness of barriers for women: that would be selfish and unwomanly, because women are required to put others first at all times.

Cysters in Birmingham has chosen to ‘cultivate a community that is supportive’ by changing its registered name from ‘Cysters – Women’s Support and Awareness Group’ to ‘Cysters’. 

Nice … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 9 comments
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Quite a strange situation

Jan 8th, 2020 7:25 am | By

The Times Higher on what it’s like to be a gender critical academic:

“It is quite a strange situation to work somewhere where people make it clear that they loathe you,” reflected Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, on the backlash she faced for her views on gender identification.

Some of it is just hot air.

In late November, a failed campaign to bar her from speaking at the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s annual debate generated 6,300 likes on Twitter, but just five emails from outraged complainants.

And the campaign failed. Did I mention it failed? It failed, you know.

But it is at traditionally left-wing Sussex where Professor Stock has encountered some of

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Anybody can tweet a flag

Jan 7th, 2020 4:41 pm | By

This makes the blood run cold.

You know the one:

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


Result

Jan 7th, 2020 4:21 pm | By

So I guess this is what Trump was going for?

CNN:

At least 10 rockets hit al-Asad airbase in Iraq, which houses US forces, a Sunni commander of the paramilitary forces in a nearby town told CNN. The attack comes days after the US killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

The administration has sought to cast that strike as an attempt to de-escalate tensions with Iran, but Tehran has vowed revenge for the killing, which it says was an “act of war” and “state terrorism.”

Like hell it was an attempt to … Read the rest

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Trump the awesome Christian

Jan 7th, 2020 11:37 am | By

It doesn’t get much more phony than this:

They came to pray with their president, though in truth many came just to worship him. Donald Trump’s Friday launch of his so-called “coalition of evangelicals”, an attempt to shore up the support of the religious right ahead of November’s election, had the feel of any other campaign rally, except this time with gospel music.

An estimated 7,000 “supporters of faith” packed the King Jesus international ministry megachurch in Miami to hear the word of the president, and decided that it was good. The Maga hat-wearing faithful cheered Trump’s comments on issues calculated to resonate with his churchgoing audience, including abortion, freedoms of speech and religion, and what he claimed was a

… Read the rest

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What’s the harm?

Jan 7th, 2020 10:26 am | By

Paltrow and Goop are funny, but they’re not just funny – they’re also dangerous.

Why is the third a box of ashes? Because he died of flu at age 2. He’d been vaccinated but not all the herd had been.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments


The road to Manzanar

Jan 6th, 2020 5:12 pm | By

The NY Times reports:

Dozens of Iranians and Iranian-Americans were held for hours at Washington State’s border with Canada over the weekend as the Department of Homeland Security ramped up security at border ports after Iran threatened to retaliate against the United States for the strike that killed its top military leader.

More than 60 of the travelers, many returning from work trips or vacations, were trying to come home to the United States on Saturday when agents at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Wash., held them for additional questioning about their political views and allegiances, according to advocacy groups and accounts from travelers.

CBP says it’s not true, it was just a busy time at the … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Angry man interrupts to ask

Jan 6th, 2020 4:54 pm | By

Morgane Oger doing what he does, again.

Dude trying to get a big city library to suppress some women for him.

It’s not a “thesis” or a “core thesis.” It’s just reality. Men … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments