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.

Dirtier more toxic water please; that’s what we want.

The Trump administration is changing the definition of what qualifies as “waters of the United States,” tossing out an Obama-era regulation that had enhanced protections for wetlands and smaller waterways.

Thursday’s rollback is the first step in a process that will allow the Trump administration to create its own definition of which waters deserve federal protection. A new rule is expected to be finalized this winter.

The repeal ends an “egregious power grab,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler says. He adds that the 2015 rule had provoked 31 states to file complaints and petitions for legal review.

“We’re delivering on the president’s regulatory reform agenda,” Wheeler says.

It’s not “regulatory reform.” It’s throwing out regulations protecting water and wetlands for the sake of profits for the few. Laughably, it’s the Environmental Protection Agency doing it. The Trump EPA.

The EPA chief unveiled the shift in U.S. water policy Thursday during an event at the National Association of Manufacturers headquarters in Washington, D.C. Wheeler spoke alongside Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works R.D. James, who joined him in signing the repeal of the 2015 rule.

Adding that the EPA has already finalized 46 deregulatory actions under President Trump, Wheeler says the agency has “an additional 45 actions in development.”

Down with clean water! Up with pollution! Down with wetlands, up with floods and vanishing birds and fish!

In response to the EPA’s action, Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, issued a statement saying, “This unsubstantiated action is illegal and will certainly be challenged in court.”

Trump first ordered a review of the Waters of the United States rule in February 2017. He said at the time that while it is “in the national interest to ensure that the Nation’s navigable waters are kept free from pollution,” the policy must also promote economic growth and minimize regulatory uncertainty — and not overstep states’ authority.

Yeah. Let’s keep promoting economic growth until the entire Amazon rain forest disappears and all the tundra melts and more of Greenland turns to water. There will be three very rich humans left.

Sometimes an unpopular opinion is unpopular because it’s kack. This one for instance:

Unpopular opinion: hating on astrology is masculine distaste for female-coded interest in emotions and psychology which feeds misogyny that denies women access to scientific spaces

Say what? If you’re interested in emotions and psychology talk about them. What’s astrology got to do with it? Also astrology is pre-scientific handwaving. Also defending astrology seems like a pretty inept way to give women access to “scientific spaces”…whatever those are.

The tweets @karenmcgrane was replying to:

Unpopular opinion: your just-for-fun flirtation with astrology apps is normalizing belief in anti-scientific bullshit that undermines important, life-and-death public health and policy debates.

I used to work at a company that sold daily horoscopes as a service, delivered by text message. The underlying system was a text file containing 100 lines of general advice. Every day it would join together 3 at random for each horoscope and send them out. It was very profitable.

A very profitable scam. I don’t think criticism of that scam is masculine distaste for female-coded interest in emotions and psychology.