All entries by this author
Aug 18th, 2019 11:37 am |
By Ophelia Benson
How many people were slaughtered at that wedding in Kabul?
63.
Burials are taking place in the Afghan capital, Kabul after a bomb exploded at a wedding hall killing 63 people and wounding more than 180.
The Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind for the attack.
That tells you everything you need to know about any prospective “Islamic State,” doesn’t it. Oh, your state will be happy to murder people celebrating weddings to make a point? No thank you then, we’d like a better state than that. Much better. Infinitely better.
The groom who gave his name as Mirwais told local TV: “My family, my bride are in shock, they cannot even speak. My bride keeps fainting.
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Aug 18th, 2019 10:47 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Sigh.
There is a new star in the Kent women’s cricket team — its first transgender player is opening after one season.
Maxine Blythin, who is more than 6ft tall and under England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) rules can self-identify as a woman, has a batting average of 124 this season and has hit four centuries already.
Behold “Maxine”:
Fair Play for Women has said the policy is unfair, especially at a time when the game is improving opportunities for female players. A £20m semi-professional competition for women starts next year.
“Letting males who self-ID as women play in women’s competitions is demonstrably unfair,” the campaign group tweeted last week. “The ECB *knows* males have a performance advantage
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Aug 17th, 2019 4:21 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
As predicted, Margie Reckard’s funeral yesterday evening was massive.
“Never had so much love in my life,” Basco said on Friday as he beheld the crowds, many who waited in triple-digit heat, to attend Reckard’s memorial service and support a man they had never met.
When Reckard was killed, she left behind Basco, her partner of 22 years, who considered her his only close family. The couple had moved to El Paso a few years earlier and didn’t have many local relatives and friends.
Powerful images of a solitary Basco crouching and weeping in front of Reckard’s makeshift memorial had spread on social media.
Social media giveth and social media taketh away.
Harrison Johnson, funeral director at Perches Funeral
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Aug 17th, 2019 3:37 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Times on the trans Cultural Revolution:
More than a dozen academics, including several leading feminist professors, fear their freedom of speech is being silenced by students complaining they are transphobic.
They include Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at Oxford, and Kate Newey, professor of theatre history at Exeter. Rosa Freedman, professor of law conflict and global development, is believed to be under scrutiny at Reading University, and Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy, has faced several formal complaints organised by students at Sussex. Some of the women, along with other academics, say questioning of transgender policies is being censored on campus.
Policies but also truth claims. It’s forbidden to say women have a right to their own … Read the rest
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Aug 17th, 2019 10:14 am |
By Ophelia Benson
On today’s social calendar: a likely clash between Proud Boys and Antifa in Portland:
Portland is preparing for a large far-right rally on Saturday that may be the largest in a series of demonstrations that have descended on the city in the Trump era.
Police in the Oregon city are fearful of an outbreak of violence at the “End Domestic Terrorism” rally, which is targeted at Portland’s antifascist groups, who in recent years have clashed with rightwing activists in running street battles.
The protest has been promoted primarily by Floridian Joe Biggs, a member of the rightwing Proud Boys organization. Biggs is a combat veteran and a former employee of the conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones’s Infowars network. He claims
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Tags: Trump
Aug 17th, 2019 8:38 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Another event Trump did, this one at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, was a kind of Stakhanovite exercise.
The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.
“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch
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Tags: Trump
Aug 17th, 2019 8:16 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump at his New Hampshire rally Thursday night was either worse than ever or every bit as bad as he’s always been.
His speech was at times a greatest hits album of favorite lines, replaying the 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton and bashing the news media, Democrats and America’s allies in Europe. Typically rambling, veering on and off script seemingly at random over an hour and a half, he repeated points he had already made earlier in the evening as if he did not remember already making them.
So pretty typical then.
His talk was also marked by repeated inconsistencies. The same president who last year said trade wars were “easy to win” told his supporters that “I never said
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Tags: Trump
Aug 16th, 2019 5:20 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
I posted about Antonio Basco Wednesday so here’s the latest.
At first, it seemed like Margie Reckard’s funeral would be a small affair.
The 63-year-old, who was killed when a gunman opened fire in an El Paso Walmart this month, left behind few relatives, and none live in El Paso. Her husband, Antonio Basco, had no other family and invited anyone to show up.
Elodia Perches, co-owner of La Paz Faith–Perches Funeral Home, said the funeral home has received more than 400 flower arrangements so far.
One local florist said her business delivered more than 50 arrangements, with orders coming in from New York and Michigan. One of those arrangements came from the family of a victim of
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Aug 16th, 2019 2:53 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Borowitz Report:
After rebuffing Donald J. Trump’s hypothetical proposal to purchase Greenland, the government of Denmark has announced that it would be interested in buying the United States instead.
I say we take the offer.
“Denmark would be interested in purchasing the United States in its entirety, with the exception of its government,” the spokesperson added.
But but but we have checks and balances.
If Denmark’s bid for the United States is accepted, the Scandinavian nation has ambitious plans for its new acquisition. “We believe that by giving the U.S. an educational system and national health care, it could be transformed from a vast land mass into a great nation,” the spokesperson said.
The only condition is … Read the rest
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Aug 16th, 2019 11:48 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Incident in Trump’s USofA:
The wife of an Arkansas jail administrator was arrested and charged with assault several days after police say she pulled a gun on four black teenagers who were going door to door to raise money for their high school football team.
Police in the eastern Arkansas city of Wynne, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) northeast of Little Rock, said the incident happened Aug. 7. Police responding to reports of “suspicious persons” found the four children on the ground, with Jerri Kelly, who is white, standing over them holding a gun, Memphis TV station WMC reported.
The officer let the children stand up, and they told him they had been selling discount cards to raise money
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Aug 16th, 2019 11:27 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Originally a comment by Artymorty on As if women are completely invisible.
I wish more people in the press would stop framing these laws as adding to the rights of trans males, and instead talk about what they really are: laws that take the right away from women to decide for themselves when and how much they’re willing to accommodate trans-identified males in their spaces. The trans lobby pushes the idea that all trans-identified males are genuinely as harmless as women — analogous to gentle, effeminate homosexuals. (I’m picturing that naive cosmologist from yesterday and her “keep being fabulous!” comment and how inappropriate it is to apply the word “fabulous” to the likes of Karen White or Jonathan Yaniv … Read the rest
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Aug 16th, 2019 11:08 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Greenland to Donnie Two-Scoops:
No.
Greenland on Friday dismissed the notion that it might be up for sale after reports that U.S. President Donald Trump had privately discussed with his advisers the idea of buying the world’s biggest island.
“We are open for business, but we’re not for sale,” Greenland’s foreign minister Ane Lone Bagger told Reuters.
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“If he is truly contemplating this, then this is final proof, that he has gone mad,” foreign affairs spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, Soren Espersen, told broadcaster DR.
“The thought of Denmark selling 50,000 citizens to the United States is completely ridiculous,” he said.
This is Trump we’re talking about. He thinks everything is for sale.
“I am sure a
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Tags: Trump
Aug 16th, 2019 10:53 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh no, are we seeing the death of tough-guy masculinity? It seems that Trump apologized to someone for something.
President Trump called and left a voicemail apologizing to the man he mocked as overweight, a White House official says. He confused him for a protester last night in New Hampshire. “That guy’s got a serious weight problem,” Trump said. “Go home. Start exercising.”
Maybe technically that doesn’t really count as an apology, because it’s not “sorry I did the thing”but “sorry I did the thing to you, I thought you were one of the Evil People who dare to protest my rallies.”
Maybe it counts and maybe it doesn’t, but either way it’s grotesque. I suppose he raised … Read the rest
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Tags: Trump
Aug 16th, 2019 8:08 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Holly Lawford-Smith on bad news out of Australia:
I know the sex self-id bill was expected to pass, but I’m still kind of in shock that it did, 56 v. 27 at Lower House yesterday. It’s just surreal, that Labour & the Greens are supposed to be progressive parties (whose members would probably call themselves feminists), and yet they’re pushing through legislation that replaces sex (an objective characteristic that affects how people are treated) with gender identity (a subjective characteristic that may play no role at all in how you are treated). Women in Australia still face a range of serious issues, including but not limited to pregnancy and breastfeeding discrimination, insufficient research into female-specific medical problems, subjection to
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Aug 15th, 2019 5:44 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Buy Greenland jokes:
David Frum:
Buy Greenland. Tow it into the Gulf of Mexico. Airflow over melting ice cools Texas and Florida. Global warming problem solved!
Yoni Appelbaum:
Honored sirs, I am PRINCE KIELSEN and I am contacting you with exciting opportunity. I recently inherited an island but need a small amount of cash. Send a money order for $600,000,000 to my account and I will give you “Greenland.”
John Noonan:
All I’m saying is why settle for Greenland when Canada is right there for the taking
Robby Soave:
Uh, we should definitely buy Greenland. Have any of you looked at a map? It’s like, gigantic. It’s bigger than freaking Africa.
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Aug 15th, 2019 4:30 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Donnie Two-Scoops wants to buy Greenland.
In meetings, at dinners and in passing conversations, Mr. Trump has asked advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, listened with interest when they discuss its abundant resources and geopolitical importance and, according to two of the people, has asked his White House counsel to look into the idea.
I can see it now – casinos, golf courses, condo towers with DONALD TRUMP in letters 60 feet high, shooting ranges stocked with the last remaining elephants and lions, McDonalds and Burger King on every corner, only white people allowed.… Read the rest
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