This is what unions do now? They “work against” feminism that they label “trans-exclusionary” so that feminism will become about men who want to “live as” women rather than those boring wrong-headed malevolent people called women? The union for academics is telling women at Cambridge that they have to pretend to think men are women or be ostracized and demonized by their own god damn union?
On Wednesday, four scholars of constitutional law answered questions from the House Judiciary Committee on what constitutes an impeachable offense. Here are the highlights. pic.twitter.com/knd6Pb6Vnc
Trump’s thugs are pretending to be outraged that law professor Pamela Karlan said the sacred name of Trump’s youngest child when making a point about what Trump cannot do. She was asked to compare what kings can do and what Trump can do, given constitutional constraints.
Kings could do no wrong because the king’s word was law. Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article Two does not give him the power to do anything he wants. I will give you one example that shows the difference between him and a king, which is, the Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility. While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.
So, as you see, she wasn’t talking about Barron the person at all, she was talking about the name chosen by his parents in honor of the eponymous financial newspaper as well as the ancient nobility.
The Trump administration Wednesday formalized work requirements for recipients of food stamps, a move that will cause hundreds of thousands of people to lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Brandon Lipps, the deputy undersecretary for the USDA’s Food Nutrition and Consumer Services, spent about 18 minutes on a call with reporters outlining the changes to the rule that will take effect April 1.
“We’re taking action to reform our SNAP program in order to restore the dignity of work to a sizable segment of our population and be respectful of the taxpayers who fund the program,” Perdue said. “Americans are generous people who believe it is their responsibility to help their fellow citizens when they encounter a difficult stretch. That’s the commitment behind SNAP, but, like other welfare programs, it was never intended to be a way of life.”
And yet low wages very much are intended to be a way of life, so Perdue and the rest of the greedy sadistic pigs should not be pretending that poverty is some kind of rare and temporary glitch in the normal working of things.
The USDA rule change affects people between the ages of 18 and 49 who are childless and not disabled. Under current rules, this group is required to work at least 20 hours a week for more than three months over a 36-month period to qualify for food stamps, but states have been able to create waivers for areas that face high unemployment.
The new rule would limit states from waiving those standards, instead restricting their use to those areas that have a 6 percent unemployment rate or higher. The national unemployment rate in October was 3.6 percent.
Meanwhile, wouldn’t Prezeedent Trump like to play some more golf at our expense?
During the call Wednesday, the USDA said that about 688,000 people would lose access to food stamps. That’s down from its earlier estimate that 750,000 people would be affected.
The USDA said that this was an extension of President Donald Trump’s April 2018 executive order, called “Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility,” that aimed to create more work programs and limit public assistance.
You don’t reduce poverty by taking away food stamps, you increase it. They don’t want to reduce poverty, either, because if poverty were reduced who would work for them for bad pay in crap conditions?
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, said this rule would do little to help anyone find work. All the rule change does is strip people from accessing the benefit, she said.
“This Administration is out of touch with families who are struggling to make ends meet by working seasonal jobs or part time jobs with unreliable hours,” Stabenow said. “Seasonal holiday workers, workers in Northern Michigan’s tourism industry, and workers with unreliable hours like waiters and waitresses are the kinds of workers hurt by this proposal.”
That’s what Trump and his loathsome partners in crime want.
Barack Obama’s former doctor, who served the 44th president for over two decades before his presidency, voiced concern for Donald Trump’s health after the president’s unscheduled weekend visit to a physician placed his well-being under scrutiny.
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Speaking on CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday’s Erin Burnett OutFront, Dr. David Scheiner expressed his worries about the president’s allegedly failing mental health, which he claims is demonstrated by his occasional inability to string together coherent sentences.
“These aren’t words, these are slips of the tongue,” Scheiner said. “These are words he can’t find and this is happening over and over again. Comedians joke about it, but it’s not a joking matter. I think there is a neurological issue that is not being addressed. And if he’s having an MRI of his head over there, I would be very pleased because I think he needs it.”
“The worry that I have is maybe he’s having small strokes,” Scheiner said. “We’ve had that once before in the White House when Woodrow Wilson was president. His inability to find words is peculiar and has not been explained, and I think one has to think of it as a possible neurological issue.”
His inability to find, say, use words is very peculiar, and very disturbing in his job.
Obama’s Doctor, new: -Extremely worried a/b Trump’s inability to find words -cites unaddressed neurological issues -suggests MRI -poss small strokes
If you read this TL you know word finding issues are a key symptom of the PSP version of Frontotemporal dementia. It gets worse. pic.twitter.com/ip15kjwHTO
Senate Republicans will vote this week to confirm a lifetime federal judge who claimed that fertility treatments and surrogacy have “grave effects on society, including diminished respect for motherhood and the unique mother-child bond; exploitation of women; commodification of gestation and of children themselves; and weakening of appropriate social mores against eugenic abortion.”
Sarah Pitlyk, President Donald Trump’s nominee to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, argued those points in opposing a California statute that protects the right to assisted reproductive technology like in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and gestational surrogacy.
On top of child welfare concerns, there are also examples of surrogate mothers being exploited by agents and kept in inhumane conditions.
Financially and socially vulnerable women can be targets for surrogacy recruitment, attracted by the sums of money on offer. A surrogate in Ukraine, for example, can earn up to $20,000 (£15,507) – more than eight times the average yearly income.
However, there have been reports of poor treatment of surrogate mothers, with some agencies refusing to pay surrogates if they do not obey strict requirements or if they miscarry.
Exploitation concerns have led to many countries shutting down their previously booming surrogacy industries, while last year the UN warned that “commercial surrogacy… usually amounts to the sale of children”.
Pitlyk sounds like a terrible nominee, but reservations about the surrogacy industry are not the same as anti-abortion fanaticism.
Democratic counsel Norm Eisen asked the legal experts testifying at today’s impeachment hearing whether the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden was an impeachable act, even though the country ultimately did not launch the probe.
“The attempt itself is the impeachable act,” said Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, who noted that Richard Nixon’s efforts to cover up the Watergate break-in were ultimately unsuccessful. But the attempts themselves clearly constituted impeachable behavior, Feldman said.
Pamela Karlan and Michael Gerhardt echoed that opinion with hypothetical situations emphasizing the soliciation itself is the issue.
Seems only right, doesn’t it? Failure doesn’t render the attempt perfectly fine.
Constitutional scholar Noah Feldman: "If we cannot impeach a president who abuses his office for personal advantage, we no longer live in a democracy—we live in a monarchy, or we live under a dictatorship." https://t.co/T7ONhXv599#ImpeachmentHearingspic.twitter.com/bu9dGqsuvp
From the department of “you really can’t make this up”: the New York Times is reporting that Rudy Giuliani traveled to Europe this week to meet with former Ukrainian prosecutors who have pushed baseless corruption allegations against Joe Biden.
The Times reports:
Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.
The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.
By “Tuesday” they mean yesterday. By “Wednesday” they mean today. Rudy Doodey is doing this while the impeachment hearing is under way. We live in strange times.
Kate’s gig took place in the immediate aftermath of some Facebook misogyny so braying that it was simultaneously almost impossible to believe and entirely expected. Kate gets called “bitch” a lot on Facebook and other sundry internet places so she called her tour “Bitch”, intending to talk about that. Facebook was entirely sanguine about the bitch-calling business but decided that Kate’s calling her own gig “Bitch” violated their community guidelines so they refused to advertise the York one even though Kate had paid them to do that. Consequently, the show wasn’t well-advertised.
Yeah. Like I said, almost impossible to believe but at the same time entirely expected. It’s why I went to the show. I’ve seen Kate perform before and am a big fan of her telling off religious idiots on those Sunday morning god shows we don’t seem able to rid ourselves of so I would probably have gone to the gig anyway but I hadn’t heard about it until Facebook STREISAND’D it. York is half an hour south of where I live so the ticket sold itself.
The show was upstairs in The Artful Dodger, a pub that, to be fair, Fagin himself would feel comfortable doing business in. There was an excellent dog who seemed to live there. I think he was trained to stare at people playing the fruit machine, basically daring them to put more money in. When they ran out of money he came to be stroked by me. He was no Bullseye but he cheered me up no end. I’d forgotten that all pubs in York smell of the river when it has been raining, which is to say they smell of sewerage and not-Bullseye distracted me from that with his antics.
The pub was fairly rancid and the beer wasn’t good, but the gig was upstairs, through a portcullis. The upstairs was kind of Downton Abbey but with cheap electric heaters in violation of every health and safety rule ruled. It was nice, but there weren’t a lot of people there, presumably because of the Facebook business. There was quite a lot of trying to make the projector work. Part of me wanted to point out that in the hundred or so computer science conferences I’ve been to and the hundreds more CS meetings, the projector never worked either and you’re usually better off without the bugger. But it being sorted out was fun and friendly. People teetered around on a ladder pressing buttons, that alone was worth the price of the ticket.
Then the gig started with a support act, Andrea Louise Watson (@andanina) who was very good. She was introduced as someone who had been to one or more of Kate’s stand-up classes. I don’t know whether Kate is a good teacher but Andrea was funny. Highlights included a story about how – when she had to slam on her brakes – she was most worried about whether her vibrator would roll to the front of the car. It probably isn’t the sort of story even I would tell in front of my elderly mother, but Andrea’s mother was there in the front row obviously and rightly proud of her daughter. If Andrea does other gigs, go and see her if you can.
Then it was Kate’s turn. She was very animated. She said some things that many people in the audience didn’t seem to know how to react to. It wasn’t calculatedly ‘edgy’ stuff, it was anecdotal, all the time referring back to the hateful idea that women aren’t supposed to say that kind of thing. It was fun to watch people try to decide whether or not it’s OK to say it. A big part of the routine was Kate putting on a bitch dress – as defined by the likes of Disney and Facebook. It hammered home the point in the way Kate always does.
It was a good gig. From my perspective better because it was small, gathered around the health-and-safety-violating electric heaters. Kate probably had an entirely different perspective because she presumably wasn’t paid as much as she should have been for a solid performance which she obviously and rightly enjoyed.
Kate is as smart and funny as any other comic I’ve seen and she’s not fucking about. Her anecdotes aren’t jokes, they’re descriptions of having fun and the hostile reactions people seem to have about, mostly, female sexuality.
All the stars, go and see Kate if you can. Andrea too.
US President Donald Trump called Justin Trudeau “two-faced” Wednesday after Canada’s Prime Minister was caught on camera appearing to joke about Trump with other world leaders at a Buckingham Palace event the night before.
So…until that moment he thought Trudeau liked him?
I don’t know why I keep being surprised, but I do. My theory of mind isn’t good enough to grasp the complete lack of theory of mind in Trump.
The video appeared to show British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte having a laugh about Trump’s behavior during the summit.The 25-second clip, which has gone viral and was first reported by CBC, begins with Johnson asking Macron why he was late.
“Is that why you were late?” Johnson asked.Macron nodded, as Trudeau replied, “He was late because he takes a … 40-minute press conference at the top.”At no time in the video do the leaders mention Trump by name, but Trudeau’s comment appeared to reference Trump’s lengthy remarks to the press during their earlier meeting on Tuesday.
That’s what he does, isn’t it – he talks endlessly. He talks and talks and talks and talks. He must think that’s what he’s there for. He says almost nothing, but he says it over and over and over. It’s either Alzheimer’s or cumulative stupidity, but either way it’s embarrassing and dysfunctional.
Trump spent Tuesday in meetings in London headlined by a clash with a key ally, France. He met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Macron and Trudeau, making extended remarks and taking questions from the press on each occasion.
Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Macron was remarkably tense as the French President refused to back down from remarks that Trump called “nasty” and “insulting.” Last month, Macron had described NATO as suffering from “brain death” caused by American indifference to the long-time alliance.
Trump complaining about someone else being “nasty” and “insulting.” Oy oy oy.
And Trump does the thing he always does when someone else is talking* which is to jerk his head around in apparent annoyance, roll his eyes and blow out his cheeks in boredom until it’s his turn. Then say something absolutely blithering to the deep embarrassment of everyone else on the planet.
Over here we have Trumps junior – Johnson and Farage – stoking our xenophobic instincts. It’s as though we forgot to tell foreigners how much we hate them for a few decades, while all the time employing them to do vital jobs for low pay and then throwing them out of the country with no possibility of appeal and lying about it. But now it’s suddenly OK to tell them we hate them as well as acting as though we do.
The only UK party leader who is worth listening to is Nicola Sturgeon, and she’s not even a real sturgeon. She answers questions with actual answers rather than pustulant bluster, gish-gallop or outright equivocation. She puts bad interviewers in their place by telling them why she thinks they’ve asked the wrong question instead of droning on about something else. She’s head and shoulders smarter than Johnson and Farage and Corbyn. She opposes Trident. She opposed austerity. She agrees that the climate is the biggest emergency we will ever face. She’s a feminist who believes feminism should be at the front line of politics.
I rather wish we could have her as Prime Minister.
* Unless it’s a woman speaking, in which case he can just bellow an insult at her and make a lunge for her crotch.
The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released its report on its central findings in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and buried within it were details on phone calls between Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California and several key figures implicated in the inquiry.
The report said that “phone records show contacts” in April between Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee and one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Congress; Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who’s now Trump’s personal lawyer; the Ukrainian-born businessman Lev Parnas; and the investigative reporter John Solomon, who has written several articles for The Hill peddling conspiracy theories about Ukrainian election interference.
So that kind of looks as if…he had a hand in it? Up to the elbow perhaps?
Macron talks like an adult on a serious subject, in an informed way – in a language not his own. Trump can’t even talk like an adult in his own language, let alone an informed one.
Yes it’s probably the law that they have to put you on the table and put your feet in the stirrups and tell you to let your knees fall wiiiiide apart and then…um…I guess give you a good hard poke in the balls with the speculum?
UCU is the University and College Union; UoE is University of Edinburgh.
The UoE UCU Branch is aware of a teach-out scheduled for Wednesday morning discussing gender and sex. While the branch supports academic freedom, this event will not be held under the UCU banner as it contravenes national and local equality and inclusion policy.
Can you clarify for all national members and fellow branches, how your branch perceives a talk about sex and gender to contravene national and local equality and inclusion policy? Also how does pulling such a talk actually support academic freedom? @ucu ?
Trump on Adam Schiff: "I think he's a maniac. I think Adam Schiff is a deranged human being. I think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious. I think he's a very sick man." pic.twitter.com/Ta591vESgj
An Edinburgh University event discussing how gender issues are taught in Scotland’s schools has been cancelled amid claims that the safety of women speakers and attendees was at risk.
The research seminar on schools and gender diversity, organised by the university’s Institute for Education, Teaching and Leadership, was due to be held next week, but despite plans for increased security staff, the event has been postponed.
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Organisers had arranged the event in light of the Scottish Government’s plan to produce new schools guidance on supporting transgender pupils, after it announced that previous advice, written by charity LGBT Youth, was to be replaced as it risked “potentially excluding other girls from female-only spaces”.
What “other girls”? Which kind? Actual girls, or boys who identify as girls?
The event was set to discuss what the new guidance should look like and how “curricula, pedagogies, pastoral care and safeguarding practices” should be developed to ensure all children and young people can “interrogate gender norms whilst ensuring that gender-nonconforming and transgender-identifying pupils are safe, supported and included in schools”.
But the terms of current trans dogma have made it impossible to do both those things. Feminist girls are not allowed under the terms of that dogma to “interrogate gender norms” because doing so is instantly and threateningly branded “transphobic” just as this event has been.
However, the event was branded “transphobic” by the university’s Staff Pride Network which wrote to management in an attempt to have it stopped. In a blog members of the Network said the seminar would have a “harmful impact” on the “trans and non-binary community at the University.”
One of the Network’s members, Dr Katie Nicoll Baines, also urged EventBrite, the online ticketing site, to take the seminar from its website, claiming on Twitter that it was “actively platforming speakers with a history of transphobic hate speech” and encouraged people to register for the event, to prevent genuine attendees from being able to get tickets.
See? We’re not allowed to question gender norms, it’s only trans people and their “allies” who are allowed to do that. If we persist they will simply shut us down. Feminism has been eliminated and trans dogma has taken its place.
Yesterday, a source at the University said the organisers had originally tried to invite LGBT and transgender organisations to take part “to look at what research is telling us and find a way forward”, but they had refused to “share a platform” with the other speakers.
“Then there was an attempt to sabotage the event through the ticketing system, and the university management were asked to get involved but they did not do so. The organisers were told that there was going to be too hostile an environment to hold the event and while there would be nine security guards they couldn’t guarantee the safety of speakers or attendees – most of whom would likely be women – which is pretty terrifying.
“It has made many women academics feel unsafe on campus and that they are on their own.”
Feminist women are the oppressors now. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.
Members of the University’s Staff Pride Network had previously resigned en-masse because the women’s rights event went ahead, but the organisation has since relaunched.
In its blog on the now-postponed event, it says: “The Staff Pride Network Committee are relieved the event is not going ahead at this time and we are working with the University to provide a safe, inclusive environment for ALL staff and students to work and study.”
No, not all. Not feminist women. The Staff Pride Network Committee are working hard to exclude feminist women from any kind of safe inclusive environment.
