C. S. Lewis once wrote a short story [pdf] hinting at how he viewed women. It’s a fantasy, in which an Oxford academic (which Lewis was) is visited by a former student – male of course – and, to the narrator’s annoyance, a woman the student is engaged to. Suddenly everything goes queer, and the narrator finds himself in an unfamiliar landscape.

My first idea was that something had gone wrong with my eyes. I was not in darkness, nor even in twilight, but everything seemed curiously blurred. There was a sort of daylight, but when I looked up I didn’t see anything that I could very confidently call a sky. It might, just possibly, be the sky of a very featureless, dull, grey day, but it lacked any suggestion of distance. “Nondescript” was the word I would have used to describe it. Lower down and closer to me, there were upright shapes, vaguely green in colour, but of a very dingy green. I peered at them for quite a long time before it occurred to me that they might be trees. I went nearer and examined them; and the impression they made on me is not easy to put into words. “Trees of a sort,” or, “Well, trees, if you call that a tree,” or, “An attempt at trees,” would come near it. They were the crudest, shabbiest apology for trees you could imagine. They had no real anatomy, even no real branches; they were more like lamp-posts with great, shapeless blobs of green stuck on top of them. Most children could draw better trees from memory.

The sunlight was similarly vague; so was the grass underfoot.

The full astonishment of my adventure was now beginning to descend on me. With it came fear, but, even more, a sort of disgust I doubt if it can be fully conveyed to anyone who has not had a similar experience. I felt as if I had suddenly been banished from the real, bright, concrete, and prodigally complex world into some sort of second-rate universe that had all been put together on the cheap; by an imitator. But I kept on walking toward the silvery light. Here and there in the shoddy grass there were patches of what looked, from a distance, like flowers. But each patch, when you came close to it, was as bad as the trees and the grass. You couldn’t make out what species they were supposed to be. And they had no real stems or petals; they were mere blobs. As for the colours, I could do better myself with a shilling paintbox.

He kept going.

I reached the light sooner than I expected, but when I reached it I had something else to think about. For now I met the Walking Things. I have to call them that, for “people” is just what they weren’t. They were of human size and they walked on two legs; but they were, for the most part, no more like true men than the Shoddy Trees had been like trees. They were indistinct. Though they were certainly not naked, you couldn’t make out what sort of clothes they were wearing, and though there was a pale blob at the top of each, you couldn’t say they had faces.

He struggled on, and came to a shop.

Here I had a new surprise. It was a jeweller’s, and after the vagueness and general rottenness of most things in that queer place, the sight fairly took my breath away. Everything in that window was perfect; every facet on every diamond distinct, every brooch and tiara finished down to the last perfection of intricate detail. It was good stuff too, as even I could see; there must have been hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of it. “Thank Heaven!” I gasped. “But will it keep on?” Hastily I looked at the next shop. It was keeping on. This window contained women’s frocks. I’m no judge, so I can’t say how good they were. The great thing was that they were real, clear, palpable. The shop beyond this one sold women’s shoes. And it was still keeping on. They were real shoes; the toe-pinching and very high-heeled sort which, to my mind, ruins even the prettiest foot, but at any rate real.

And then he stumbled into the presence of a gigantic woman, and is suitably repulsed. After a bit more shock-horror-repulsion he finds himself back in reality again, and offers his guess at what had happened to him.

My view is that by the operation of some unknown psychological—or pathological—law, I was, for a second or so, let into Peggy’s mind; at least to the extent of seeing her world, the world as it exists for her. At the centre of that world is a swollen image of herself, remodelled to be as like the girls in the advertisements as possible. Round this are grouped clear and distinct images of the things she really cares about. Beyond that, the whole earth and sky are a vague blur.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say Lewis didn’t think much of women.

Now there’s a heartwarming story:

The Royal National Lifeboat Institute has been forced to defend its work saving lives overseas after an article on the Mail Online sparked an angry backlash on social media.

The story highlighted how the charity – famed for its distinctive orange lifeboats manned by volunteers – spends £3.3m a year on projects in Tanzania and Bangladesh yet has been forced to cut around 100 jobs in the UK.

And that “sparked a backlash” because…it’s so wrong to save the lives of people in Tanzania and Bangladesh? They really want to go there?

People need to get inoculated against trumpbrain, immediately. Infection with trumpbrain kills your compassion stone dead and you can never get it back.

The RNLI was forced to issue a statement in which it stood by its international work that “saves (mostly kids’) lives” and said the amount spent overseas totalled just 2% of its expenditure and was public information.

Well you see it’s not the overseas part that galls. It’s the…cough…cough cough…the Tanzania/Bangladesh part. I’m sure you understand. Don’t make me say it.

Out of control:

The nation’s top intelligence official is illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint, possibly to protect President Donald Trump or senior White House officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff alleged Friday.

Schiff issued a subpoena for the complaint, accusing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of taking extraordinary steps to withhold the complaint from Congress, even after the intel community’s inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of “urgent concern.”

They’re not allowed to do that.

Schiff indicated that he learned the matter involved “potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community,” raising the specter that it is “being withheld to protect the President or other Administration officials.” In addition, Schiff slammed Maguire for consulting the Justice Department about the whistleblower complaint “even though the statute does not provide you discretion to review, appeal, reverse, or countermand in any way the [inspector general’s] independent determination, let alone to involve another entity within the Executive Branch.”

Especially when it’s Bill Barr’s wholly submissive Justice Department.

Officials in Maguire’s office acknowledged Schiff’s subpoena late Friday.

“We received the HPSCI’s subpoena this evening. We are reviewing the request and will respond appropriately,” said a senior intelligence official. “The ODNI and Acting DNI Maguire are committed to fully complying with the law and upholding whistleblower protections and have done so here.”

No they’re not and no they haven’t.

The rapey bros are circling the wagons.

Donnie TwoScoops:

Now the Radical Left Democrats and their Partner, the LameStream Media, are after Brett Kavanaugh again, talking loudly of their favorite word, impeachment. He is an innocent man who has been treated HORRIBLY. Such lies about him. They want to scare him into turning Liberal!

Naturally a rapist says another rapist is “an innocent man” – the rapist thinks he’s entitled to rape, and that women who object are lying whores who should be set on fire.

Brett Kavanaugh should start suing people for libel, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue. The lies being told about him are unbelievable. False Accusations without recrimination. When does it stop? They are trying to influence his opinions. Can’t let that happen!

The Justice Department should come to his rescue, meaning the corrupt and contemptible Barr should find a way to punish the women who say Kavanaugh shoved his penis in their faces, the reporters who reported on it, and probably Ilhan Omar just for good measure.

CNBC reports:

The tweets followed a report in The New York Times, published Saturday evening, which was written by the two authors of a new book about the sexual misconduct allegations that dogged Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings last year. The authors wrote that they had uncovered an instance of sexual misconduct that did not publicly emerge in those hearings.

The two authors, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, wrote that one of Kavanaugh’s classmates at Yale notified senators and the FBI that he had witnessed Kavanaugh disrobe at a party during his freshman year, after which “friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.”

“Disrobe” is a prissy word to use there. He pulled his pants down. It was a vulgar act and should be described in blunt words.

Kamala Harris:

I sat through those hearings. Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to the American people. He was put on the Court through a sham process and his place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice.

He must be impeached.

We have two sexual harassers (at minimum) on the Supreme Court. The women who were forced to testify about their harassment were put through hell as punishment for their compelled testimony. Great system we have going here.

Oh look, what do you know. Ronan Farrow an hour ago:

Two @nytimes reporters, @rpogrebin and @katekelly, spent months independently reporting out Deborah Ramirez’s allegation against Brett Kavanaugh and found it credible—and documented another serious claim of misconduct with an eyewitness

Raw Story:

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is facing a new allegation of sexual misconduct — that the FBI reportedly knew about, but did not investigate.

The new allegation was discovered during a 10-month investigation by New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly.

“During the winter of her freshman year, a drunken dormitory party unsettled her deeply. [Deborah Ramirez] and some classmates had been drinking heavily when, she says, a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it,” the newspaper reported. “During his Senate testimony, Mr. Kavanaugh said that if the incident Ms. Ramirez described had occurred, it would have been ‘the talk of campus.’ Our reporting suggests that it was.

“We also uncovered a previously unreported story about Mr. Kavanaugh in his freshman year that echoes Ms. Ramirez’s allegation. A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly,” the report said.

The FBI did not investigate.

Bezos is a bajillionaire, and part-time workers at Whole Foods are having losing their health insurance. Hey that’s capitalism! Bajillionaires don’t get their bajillions by spending any percentage of said bajillions on their workers if they can possibly help it. But this is great, it teaches workers not to be dependent – on either the state or the employer – but to go out there and build their own healthcare out of the trees they cut down on their homesteaded farm, as our grandparents did.

(Remember that news item the other day about Charles Koch spending millions of his precious stash to keep workers from getting better pay or benefits, so that they wouldn’t be dependent? Yeah. That.)

Amazon.com Inc.-owned Whole Foods Market is changing medical benefit eligibility requirements next year that could leave as many as 1,900 part-time workers without coverage.

Employees will have to work at least 30 hours a week to qualify for a healthcare plan beginning Jan. 1, up from the current eligibility requirement of 20 hours, the company said in an emailed statement. The change will affect just under 2% of the chain’s workforce, Whole Foods said.

If they’re in school or have another job that makes it impossible for them to work 30 hours a week at Whole Foods? Well then they can’t have health care, that’s all. They should have thought of that before they decided to be Americans.

Jarvis Dupont at the American Spectator (kind of a National Review with jokes?) is also impressed that Sam Smith is now drum roll a person of plural.

This is of course the most amazingly positive news, and a fantastic leap forward for genderqueer progressiveness. Someone as famous as Sam [OK. Have to admit I’m still struggling here, was he on American Idol?] coming out as non-binary will inspire anyone else out there who may have heard of them and is battling under the weight of their own inflated ego, to embrace their narcissism as if it were a sexual orientation. After all if we are unable to love ourselves, how can we be expected to be able to tell everyone else what is right and what is wrong with any sense of sanctimonious certainty?

I have added my pronouns (HE/HIM) to my Twitter bio in solidarity with those whose sense of self-importance must at times be so overwhelming they find it difficult to talk about the complexities of their gender for hours at a time…but by Cthulhu, they still manage it, because they are not going to let the callous ignorance of bigotry win.

It’s all so sad because Sam Smith told us to be kind when he made his earth-shaking announcement, yet here we are making jokes about it instead. And forgetting to call him “them” as I just did. SO TERRIBLY SAD.

I don’t think you can sue people for telling a true story.

Edward Dickinson Tayloe II is is the descendant of a “First Family of Virginia,” a euphemistic way of saying white, rich, socially prominent before the American Revolution and—through the Civil War—slaveholding.

The Tayloes’ legacy as one of the largest slaveowning families in the state is well-documented. Amidst nearly 30,000 historical papers donated to the Virginia Historical Society by the family itself are plantation ledgers detailing the expansion of the Tayloes’ enslaved work force over the 19th century, an evidentiary accounting of how the exploitation of free black labor allowed the family to amass wealth, land, and political power.

Which they passed down through the generations, which is why Edward Dickinson Tayloe II is not working in a chicken processing plant today.

Facts about the Tayloe family’s slaveholding past—including the regularity with which it engaged in the heartless practice of splitting up enslaved families—appeared in a brief profile of Edward Tayloe published this March by the Charlottesville, Va., newspaper C-Ville Weekly. In response, Tayloe employed a strategy once frequently used by those of means to silence critics that’s seen a resurgence in recent years: He filed a lawsuit alleging defamation and demanding a fortune in damages.

The profile of Tayloe was a brief section in a longer article about the plaintiffs in Monument Fund v. Charlottesville, another piece of litigation in which he is involved. In March 2017, roughly one month after the Charlottesville City Council voted to take down a local Confederate monument, Tayloe and 12 other co-plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the city to prevent the marker’s removal.

That of course is the statue that summoned the neo-Nazis to descend on Charlottesville and shout “Jews will not replace us!” where reporters could hear and record them. That is Tayloe’s Glorious Cause: a statue of a general who fought to preserve the “right” to own slaves.

Along with the monument plaintiff profiles, the C-Ville Weekly piece briefly quotes Jalane Schmidt, a University of Virginia associate professor, public historian and well-known African-American activist in the Charlottesville community. After a lengthy list of cruelties the Tayloes forced upon their enslaved laborers, including using family separation as a punishment policy for their enslaved laborers, often sending “rebellious slaves” far from their loved ones as a warning to other enslaved laborers, Schmidt is quoted as saying, “For generations this family has been roiling the lives of black people, and this is what [plaintiff Tayloe] chooses to pursue.”

And that’s why he’s suing her.

So I suppose his lawyers will have to argue that generations of slavery didn’t roil the lives of the people subjected to it? That seems like a tall order.

This time the ACLU gets it right.

Schmidt’s defense is being handled by the ACLU of Virginia. Provence and C-Ville Weekly / C-Ville Holdings, LLC are represented by attorneys Mara J. Gassmann and Jay Ward Brown of Washington, D.C., firm Ballard Spahr. The newspaper, Provence, and Schmidt all declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation. In court papers, the ACLU labels Schmidt’s remarks “political speech at the very core of the First Amendment’s protections.” The filing goes on to describe Tayloe’s defamation claim as a form of legal payback, meant to have a chilling effect on Schmidt’s free speech. “It is intended to send a clear message to others who wish to opine on matters of public concern in which Plaintiff is involved,” the ACLU writes, “disagree or critique Plaintiff Tayloe, then you, too, will face the threat of a lawsuit.”

Let’s learn more about the Tayloes.

In addition to vast landholdings in Virginia and the District of Columbia, by 1851 the family owned “at least seven plantations in Alabama” worked by more than 450 enslaved people who were “valued at $334,250”—or the equivalent of more than $11 million in 2019. Enslaved laborers were rotated amongst Tayloe properties and frequently sold off, with historian Eric Burin writing that “the Tayloe slaves were always being torn from loved ones.”

At the outset of the Civil War, Edward Dickinson Tayloe II’s great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, was rumored to be the wealthiest man in America. A year later, the U.S. federal government paid him $1,095 as compensation for two enslaved women he was forced to emancipate under an 1862 law—making him one of the nearly 1,000 white enslavers who received the only slavery reparations this country has ever paid.

That’s right: nobody ever paid the actual slaves a dime in reparations.

There are multiple monuments to Confederates in Charlottesville — including the statues of Lee, who never visited the town, and Jackson, who passed through post-mortem, as his body was carted to its final resting place—but just one plaque to the majority of people who lived there in that era, a small text-only sign set in the ground: “SLAVE AUCTION BLOCK: On this site slaves were bought and sold.”

So tell us more about how Tayloe is the victim here.

I think “Rachel” McKinnon may not quite understand the motivations here.

Transphobes are obsessed with me. They obsessively monitor everything I say and do. They lie about what I say. And they read stuff that isn’t there into what I do say.

Many feminists do take an interest in McKinnon; I do for one. I do check out his tweets sometimes – not daily or every other day, but still fairly often. But there are reasons for that, reasons that have to do not with how awesome he is or what magical powers he has, but with what a remarkably horrible person he is. We track him the way NOAA tracks hurricanes. We don’t need any Sharpie to draw additional destruction onto McKinnon; he provides it all willingly.

He’s claiming the dancing skeleton in the cemetery was because it’s Friday the 13th.

Gaslight much?

There’s an organization (or perhaps a person) called Gender Inclusive Schools. It has a Facebook page of the same name. I saw people passing around a post from last June:

“Biological sex” is a myth and
the term has no place in the classroom.
We need to be honest with students and teach them about the expansive and variable genders of people who exist in their communities.

People are leaving comments and Gender Inclusive Schools is hiding them all, calling them ignorant and in need of adapting their assumptions to new understandings. All this made me curious about what exactly this organization (or person) is and whether it has any clout and if so how much, and what exactly the source of its or his expertise is. I’d like to know because the organization (or person) says it advises schools on how to gender. I suspect there is no expertise and the org/person is just winging it, aka making it up.

It has a website. Here’s what you find on the home page:

Gender Inclusive Schools provides HRC’s Welcoming Schools Professional Development training on LGBTQ inclusive practices and supports for transgender students. We also offer consultation to school staff and administrators as they strive to proactively create gender inclusive school climates. We specialize in helping schools navigate sensitive conversations, especially when administration find themselves in situations that require new learning.

Based on what?

From all appearances it is in fact just one guy, and he doesn’t seem to have any real expertise at all.

About Me

DAVE EDWARDS (HE/HIM/HIS)

Dave Edwards has served as special education teacher in Chicago Public Schools, a teacher and administrator in several MN public school districts, and is currently the lead instructor in the residency-based Emotional Behavioral Disorders licensure program at the University of MN Twin Cities. He is also a 3rd year PhD student, funded by an Office of Special Education Programs Leadership Training grant.

That’s all nice I guess, but how does it qualify him to set up to tell schools what to do and how to do it?

Maybe it doesn’t matter; maybe he in fact is just one self-important guy with a website but no customers. I hope so. But even if he is I still wonder why people like him feel entitled to do this kind of managing in public schools, especially when he thinks

“Biological sex” is a myth and
the term has no place in the classroom.

Oh good lord will people ever get a grip?

Sam Smith, who, I read, is a celebrated singer:

Today is a good day so here goes. I’ve decided I am changing my pronouns to THEY/THEM ❤ after a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out…

And who he am is “they/them.” Cue the trumpet fanfare!

Or to put it another way, who gives a fuck?

The “politics” of self-obsession is not a pretty sight. Embrace yourself all you like, but don’t be telling us about it!

But he does. He does tell us about it.

I’m so excited and privileged to be surrounded by people that support me in this decision but I’ve been very nervous about announcing this because I care too much about what people think but fuck it!

It reads like parody but apparently isn’t. He needs people to support him in saying “his” pronouns are they them? He must be as fragile as a soap bubble.

I understand there will be many mistakes and mis gendering but all I ask is you please please try. I hope you can see me like I see myself now. Thank you.

I don’t see you at all, or care.

P.s. I am at no stage just yet to eloquently speak at length about what it means to be non binary but I can’t wait for the day that I am. So for now I just want to be VISIBLE and open. If you have questions and are wondering what this all means I’ll try my best to explain…

Ah that’s all you want, is it, to be visible. Narcissist much?

It’s catnip to narcissists, this pseudo-political fad. Catnip.

Not a smart shopper.

At a mid-August fundraiser in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Ivanka Trump was asked to name the personality traits she inherited most from her parents.

Without much of a pause, Trump told the crowd of roughly 120 high-end donors that her mother gave her an example of how to be a powerful, successful woman.

Uh, no. Her mother was married to Donald Trump. Not powerful, not successful.

And her father? He passed onto her his moral compass, she said, according to two event attendees.

His…………

What could he possibly have shown her? What could it be, that she mistook for a “moral compass”?

Ivanka Trump‘s comment about the traits she inherited from her father echoed a similar comment she made at the Republican National Convention in 2016, when she told the audience: “My father taught my siblings and me the importance of positive values and a strong ethical compass.”

But he didn’t though. We know that. He has no “positive values” and he sure as hell doesn’t have a strong ethical compass. All his compasses point to him. His idea of just and right is whatever is gratifying or flattering or profitable to him and painful to his enemies. Princess Ivanka is probably telling the truth that he taught her to see things the same way, but that’s not what anyone else would call “ethical.”

Arwa Mahdawi at the Guardian raises the burning question of pronouns.

Little attention used to be paid to pronouns. In recent years, however, they have become a cornerstone of the culture wars.

It’s all been such a mistake. It should have been prepositions that became a cornerstone of the culture wars. We could argue over whether “in” is patriarchal, whether “with” is heteronormative, whether “for” is socialist.

Pronoun preferences are a favourite joke among unimaginative reactionaries who use them as proof that “snowflake millennials” just want to feel special.

Meaning, people who make pronouns a cornerstone of the culture wars are imaginative? I don’t see it, myself. I think the pronoun wars are peculiarly dull and empty, and not imaginative at all.

Meanwhile, pronoun introductions have become an established feature of some progressive spaces and university campuses. Many view this as a positive step towards a more nuanced understanding of gender. As Darius Hickman, a 23-year-old non-binary poet in New York says, these introductions mean people who don’t conform to traditional views of binary gender don’t feel alienated.

But you see that isn’t a more nuanced understanding of gender. It’s the opposite. Darius Hickman’s claiming to be non-binary positions other people as binary, in other words as conforming “to traditional views of binary gender,” in other words as less special than he is. That’s not nuanced, it’s self-promoting. A more nuanced understanding of gender would involve realizing that nobody conforms 100% to traditional views of binary gender, and remembering that feminists have been quarreling with traditional views of binary gender for more than half a century. Darius’s view of himself as more special than most people should not be mistaken for a more nuanced understanding of gender.

“Relying on clocking people’s gender based on appearances is harmful, especially since some people – oftentimes non-binary folks – can happen to look strictly binary, and a simple pronoun check makes things easier for everyone, including folks whose gender isn’t easy to tell.”

Maybe there could be a law? Like the yellow star law? Everybody has to carry either a purse or a gun or a unicorn, so that we can clock everybody’s gender at a glance – wouldn’t that solve it?

Also, as I keep pointing out, memorizing special pronouns for a bunch of strangers in no way makes things easier.

Mahdawi gets there too, which is a relief.

I should probably note that although I identify as a Progressive Lesbian™, the pressure of pronoun introductions often makes me feel uncomfortable. Actively announcing myself as a she/her makes it seem like I’m making my entire identity about my gender, which feels regressive.

Further, while pronoun introductions are supposed to be about recognizing that gender is complex, it sometimes seems as though they – paradoxically – reinforce gender binaries. Announcing yourself as a “she”, “he” or “they” would appear to buy into the notion that a “he” is completely different from a “she” – and if you don’t subscribe to traditional gender roles you should identify yourself as a “they”.

Quite so. That’s not more nuanced, it’s less nuanced. A lot less.

That’s no good.

A Republican state lawmaker from Texas has caused outcry for tweeting “My AR is ready for you Robert Francis” after Democratic presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke pledged to ban and confiscate AR-15 military-style rifles.

That’s no good. People shouldn’t have military weapons if they’re not in the military, people shouldn’t threaten to kill people who want laws saying we can’t have military weapons if we’re not in the military. That’s no good at all.

Within hours, Twitter took down Briscoe Cain’s post, which O’Rourke’s campaign labeled a “death threat”. “It violates our rules for threats of violence,” a company spokesperson said late Thursday night.

…

Earlier, Cain, a 34-year-old “conservative Republican” lawyer who represents a district outside of Houston, Texas, had mocked Twitter users who called his comment a threat of violence. “You’re an idiot,” he told one commenter. When O’Rourke called the tweet a death threat, and said it proved that neither Cain nor anyone else should own an AR-15, Cain responded, “You’re a child, Robert Francis.”

Because telling someone your assault rifle is “ready for you” is so adult?

Cain, who did not respond to an emailed request for comment, appeared to defend his tweet as simply a version of a popular slogan among American gun rights activists – “Come and take it” – which generically dares any politician to try to confiscate their guns.

Meaning, if any politician tries, the brave gun rights activists will shoot them. That is indeed a threat of violence. That’s the whole point of it.

This is no good.

What higher purpose could a billionaire have than to get poor people thrown off food stamps and Medicaid?

Last December, an innocuously named nonprofit, the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), wined and dined Republican politicians and White House staffers at a Walt Disney World resort, according to a new report from the Center for Public Integrity. The pitch: make it harder for poor Americans to access government programs meant to help them get on secure financial ground, especially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, and Medicaid.

In other words, make already poor people even poorer. Take the already pathetic hanky of a “safety net” and shred it more.

FGA is heavily financed by a powerful Wisconsin foundation birthed by the wealthy, conservative Bradley brothers, multiple nonprofits affiliated with rightwing billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, and two dark money vehicles funded by Koch and Bradley charitable nonprofits. A number of FGA executives and board members work or have worked for other connected Bradley- and Koch-funded think tanks and political groups.

Filthy-rich people using their filthy riches and their time and effort to make the poor poorer. Not to make the poor less poor; not to lift every boat; but to take the little bit of assistance they get away from them. What a life goal.

(I know how they do it. They think of it as “teaching them self-reliance”; as “weaning them off dependence on government handouts.” That’s how they do it. The filthy swine.)

It’s enough to make you wish you believed in hell.

Someone has commented on Know her name, the post about Chanel Miller and the guy who raped her. It’s a first-time comment and I’m not going to let it appear on the post like a normal comment. I’m going to quote it in a post instead, like an abnormal comment.

Only 3 months? Brock Turner’s life was completly ruined. He lost his scholarship to Stamford was banished from the campus for life, lost his membership in the amateur swim association so he can never swim in competion again, lost his once in a lifetime bid to try out for the olympic swim team, is now a convicted felon and sex offender so he can never enroll in any school in this country and must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life so that 50 years from now when he’s 70 something he still has to deal with the mistake he made thinking that this drunk party girl wearing a “skintight” dress (see police report) wanted to hookup. Nobody else involved in this nightmare takes ANY responsibility. Now Chanel Miller has a huge grin on her face and the adoration of millions of maladjusted so called “victims” and some may very well be victims but not Chanel Miller she will now make millions on a worthless dishonest book. Yes she looks so traumatized probably the most traumatized millionaire in history.

Please, tell us more about the cis privilege women have.