Fox News is obsessed with Ocasio-Cortez.

A study found that the New York City Democrat was mentioned 3,181 times on Fox News Channel and its sister Fox Business Network during the six-week period of Feb. 25 to April 7, or just under 76 times a day. Not a day went by when she wasn’t spoken about on Fox.

The liberal watchdog Media Matters for America, which did the research, called it an obsession and said the first term representative has become the network’s latest bogeyman, “someone for hosts and guests to demonize, knock down and refer to whenever grievances need to be aired against the Democratic Party.”

I’m sure they’re professional about it though.

Tucker Carlson has called her an “idiot wind bag,” a “pompous little twit,” a “fake revolutionary,” ″self-involved and dumb,” a “moron and nasty and more self-righteous than any televangelist.”

Not so professional then.

Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney illustrated another reason that Fox would pay so much attention to Ocasio-Cortez.

“We have an AOC segment every day, almost every single hour,” he said. “She’s good for our ratings.”

The way Trump is for Don Lemon’s, no doubt. On the other hand, there’s Trump and then there’s Ocasio-Cortez. They’re not exactly comparable.

Siiiiiiigh

As the world stared in wonder this week at the first image of a black hole, a new star was born here on Earth: Katherine Bouman, a 29-year-old postdoctoral researcher who developed an algorithm that was key to capturing the stunning visual.

On the ugliest corners of the Internet, however, this sudden fame for a young woman in a male-dominated field couldn’t stand. A corrective was quickly found in Andrew Chael, another member of the Event Horizon Telescope team, who, not coincidentally, is white and male.

On Reddit and Twitter, memes quickly went viral contrasting Bouman with Chael, who — per the viral images — was actually responsible for “850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code that were written in the historic black-hole image algorithm!”

The implication was clear: Bouman, pushed by an agenda-driven media, was getting all the attention. But Chael had done all the real work.

Oh yes, that agenda-driven media that is always giving all the credit to women while ignoring men. In what galaxy?

What hostile sexism looks like: Dr. Katie Bouman’s reputation is being battered across multiple platforms. Her Wikipedia profile, marked for deletion, fake accounts, her work attributed to a man (he’s renounced the lies). “Trolls” doesn’t capture it: organized sexist harassment. https://t.co/81uooZp8cJ

— Soraya Chemaly (@schemaly) April 13, 2019

Squalid Sarah Sanders pulls us down some more:

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Sunday that she doesn’t think congressional Democrats are “smart enough” to review President Donald Trump’s tax returns should they succeed in obtaining the documents.

“This is a dangerous, dangerous road and frankly, Chris, I don’t think Congress, particularly not this group of congressmen and women, are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump’s taxes will be,” Sanders told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.

Yes, that’s what the executive branch is supposed to do: go on tv to call the legislative branch stupid.

“My guess is most of them don’t do their own taxes, and I certainly don’t trust them to look through the decades of success that the President has and determine anything,” she said, adding that attempts to obtain the returns are “a disgusting overreach.”

The decades of success facilitated by decades of cheating, lying, theft, and corruption. Those decades of success.

The Far Corner Café:

Click to embiggen.

I wanted to post about this yesterday but I couldn’t find reporting that got all the facts in one place. The Guardian has collected them:

Democrats including leading candidates for the presidential nomination have fiercely condemned Donald Trump and other Republicans’ efforts to smear the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, while urging other party leaders to do the same.

Attacks labeling one of two Muslim women in Congress as unpatriotic are “dangerous” and risk “inciting violence”, prominent progressives said on Friday, after Trump shared a video attacking Omar that included graphic footage of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Let’s not pretend that such things don’t risk inciting violence. We know they do.

Just last week, a Trump supporter in New York was charged with threatening to kill Omar. On Friday, Trump escalated attacks on Omar, tweeting “WE WILL NEVER FORGET!” with a video edited to suggest Omar was dismissive of the September 11 attacks.

The video used part of a speech last month to the Council on American-Islamic Relations in which Omar discussed the problem of Islamophobia, describing “the discomfort of being a second-class citizen”. After September 11, she said, advocates “recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties”.

The Fox-Trump faction zeroed in on “some people did something,” which is not the best choice of words but then the Fox-Trump people make some pretty terrible word choices themselves. Trump’s tweeting of that video is disgusting, as is the fact that he pinned it.

Rightwing critics have used an edited clip of the “some people did something” comment to falsely claim Omar, a migrant from Somalia, is un-American or not loyal to the US. Fox News and the New York Post, both owned by Rupert Murdoch, have devoted high-profile coverage to the misleading claims. Republican party chair Ronna McDaniel has also attacked the congresswoman.

Omar and others have called such smears a “dangerous incitement” to violence. Rashida Tlaib, the other Muslim American woman in Congress, was the first on Friday to call for Democrats to “speak up”.

“Enough is enough,” she wrote. “No more silence, with NY Post and now Trump taking Ilhan’s words out of context to incite violence toward her, it’s time for more Dems to speak up. Clearly the GOP is fine with this shameful stunt, but we cannot stand by.”

The Republican party and, in particular, the president.

Trump’s tweet on Friday came less than a month after a major white supremacist terror attack targeting Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand. The president’s own comments and falsehoods about September 11 have long attracted criticism.

He has repeated false claims about “thousands and thousands of” Muslims in New Jersey celebrating on the day itself; his business received money meant for small businesses affected by the attack, even though his businesses were not; he has claimed to have helped clear rubble from the attack site, a claim for which evidence does not exist; he has said he watched people jump from the World Trade Center towers from Trump Tower, four miles away, which would not be possible.

Perhaps most famously, in an interview hours after the attack on the World Trade Center, part of attacks in which 2,977 people were killed, Trump described his shock and disbelief. Then he added a comment that left his interviewers “stunned”.

Trump, claimed, falsely, that one of his own buildings had been “the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan”, after the World Trade Center.

“And now it’s the tallest,” he said.

How about putting that on the front page of the NY Post?

The pundits are declaring Elizabeth Warren irrelevant (after years of announcing she should run for president when she had only just started being a senator and was focused on that), but her ideas matter either way.

But since her initial announcement in December, Warren’s campaign has rolled out a series of detailed policy proposals in quick succession, outlining structural changes to major industries, government functions, and regulatory procedures that would facilitate more equitable representation in the federal government and overhaul the economy in favor of the working class. These policy proposals have made Warren the Democratic party’s new intellectual center of gravity, a formidable influence who is steadily pushing the presidential primary field to the left and forcing all of her primary challengers to define their political positions against hers.

The Democrats desperately need more of that. They’ve been letting themselves be dragged to the right since forever, and they need to knock it off.

Warren outlined a huge overhaul of the childcare system that would revolutionize the quality, cost and curriculum of early childhood education, with subsidies for families and a living wage for caregivers. It’s a proposal that she talks about in the context of her own career when, as a young mother and fledgling legal mind, she almost had to give up a job as a law professor because childcare for her young son was too expensive.

Warren has also proposed a housing plan that would limit huge investors’ abilities to buy up homes, give incentives for localities to adopt renters’ protections, and build new public housing. Crucially, and uniquely, her housing plan would also provide home ownership grants to buyers in minority communities that have historically been “redlined”, a term for the racist federal housing policies that denied federally backed mortgages to black families. The provision, aimed to help black and brown families buy their first homes, is a crucial step toward amending the racial wealth gap, and it has helped sparked a broader conversation within the party about the need to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves – a concept that Warren has also endorsed.

It’s easier to kneecap candidates than it is to kneecap ideas.

More of that cis privilege that women are so loaded with: a bill criminalizing most abortion is now law in Ohio.

The six-week abortion ban known as the “heartbeat bill” is now law in Ohio. That makes Ohio the sixth state in the nation to attempt to outlaw abortions at the point a fetal heartbeat can be detected.

Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill Thursday afternoon, just one day after it passed the Republican-led General Assembly. The law is slated to take effect in 90 days, unless blocked by a federal judge.

Now known as the “Human Rights Protection Act,” SB 23 outlaws abortions as early as five or six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. It is one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

Once they realize they’re pregnant, it’s too late to stop being pregnant. Hahahahaha got you there, women! Sucks to be you. Shoulda thought of that before you decided to be born female, huh?

“The essential function of government is to protect the most vulnerable among us, those who don’t have a voice,” DeWine said as he signed the bill.

Is that right? Then let’s save flies, mosquitoes, bacteria, mildew spores, bed bugs. They don’t have a voice! It’s up to us to protect them!

Also note that DeWine is never going to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.

The Ohio Senate originally passed the bill last month. The Republican-led House Health Committee then made several changes before sending it to the House floor, where it passed by party-line vote.

Beyond changing the name, the Ohio House version allows for the use of transvaginal ultrasounds to detect a fetal heartbeat even earlier in a pregnancy.

The bill institutes criminal penalties for doctors who violate the law. Doctors who perform abortions after detecting a heartbeat would face a fifth-degree felony and up to a year in prison. The legislation also allows the State Medical Board to take disciplinary actions against doctors found in violation and impose penalties of up to $20,000.

It will probably go to the Supreme Court. The forced-pregnancy views are the majority there.

No Pride Parade for you, Edmonton.

It is with heavy hearts that we inform you that the Board of Directors has voted to cancel the 2019 Edmonton Pride Festival. In light of the current political and social environment, it has been determined that any attempt to host a Festival will not be successful. Please keep in mind that we are a not-for-profit organization run almost solely by volunteers.

It has always been the goal of the Edmonton Pride Festival Society to host a safe and enjoyable event that is as reflective and encompassing of the entire community as possible, however given current events, we do not feel that this is attainable for this year.

Daily Hive has the details:

The cancellation announcement comes less than one week after a controversial meeting that saw police called after members of Shades of Colour, a community APIRG group that exists to advocate for queer and trans Black people, Indigenous people, and people of colour, arrived to make speeches during the meeting.

I had to look up “APIRG” – Alberta Public Interest Research Group.

According to a post published on Shades of Colour’s Facebook page, The Edmonton Pride Festival Society believed that Shades of Colour and RaricaNow, a non-profit organization that promotes the rights of LGBTIQ+ refugees and newcomers in Canada, had arrived to protest, which prompted the call to police.

Shades of Colour states that neither their members nor RaricaNow’s members were protesting.

…

Following EPFS’ decision to cancel this year’s Pride Parade, Shades of Colour issued a release stating their disappointment at the outcome.

“It is with profound disappointment that we express our appallment at the actions carried out by the Edmonton Pride Festival Society, which culminated in their decision to cancel the 2019 Pride Festival,” an April 10 Shades of Colour post read.

“We are calling this decision for what it is: namely, a disavowal of deep systematic problems in the framework of EPFS as well as an attempt to dismiss, target, and put out of play the efforts put on the part of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour in the LGBTQ2S+ to point towards alternatives on how this organization carries out its activities.”

The parade was stopped for half an hour last year when people protesting the presence of cops and the military brought it to a halt.

In the months leading up to the April 4 meeting, Shades of Colour had laid out a list of seven demands for the 2019 Pride Parade, which included that the event open with a “protest lead by QTIBPOC, trans folks and their allies” that would replace the Pride Parade, and that all participants of said protest be either approved or denied by Shades of Colour and RaricaNow following an application process.

The demands also included that both Shades of Colour and RaricaNow be supplied with $20,000 each of the annual funds, that the SOC Team and the RaricaNow team be provided with money to access ongoing training, that $1,500 be provided to fund a SOC organized QTIBPOC sober dance party on the evening of pride, that a public accountability statement outlining the harm the EPFS has caused the QTIBPOC community be written along with a public commitment to rectifying that harm, that Shades of Colour and RaricaNow be featured on the front four pages of the Pride Guide, and that EPFS work with RaricaNow to support QTIBPOC refugees and newcomers.

So, that’s not a “protest,” that’s a set of demands, and quite exorbitant demands at that.

H/t Screechy Monkey

Ratzinger is back, telling us the rapey priests problem is all the fault of liberalism.

“Why did paedophilia reach such proportions? Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God,” Benedict wrote in the 6,000-word essay published on Thursday in the German monthly Klerusblatt, the Catholic News Agency and other conservative media.

No. What was absent was recognition that other people are not Things for one’s own sexual gratification. What was missing was the minimal decency to refrain from traumatizing children for personal pleasure.

Benedict also faulted church laws that gave undue protection to accused priests. During the 1980s and 1990s, he wrote, “the right to a defence [for priests] was so broad as to make a conviction nearly impossible”.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict spearheaded reforms of those laws in 2001 to make it easier to remove priests who abused children. Benedict took a hard line against clerical sex abuse as the Vatican’s conservative doctrinal chief and later as pope, defrocking hundreds of priests accused of raping and molesting children.

Francis has blamed the scandal on a clerical culture in the church that raises priests above the laity.

At his retirement in 2013, Benedict had said he would devote his remaining life to penance and prayer, leaving Francis to guide the church. He said in the introduction to the essay that Francis and the Vatican secretary of state had given him permission to publish. The Vatican confirmed it was written by Benedict.

Church historian Christopher Bellitto questioned if Benedict, who turns 92 next week, was being manipulated by others. He said the essay omitted the critical conclusions that arose from the pope’s February sexual abuse summit in Rome, including that “abusers were priests along the ideological spectrum, that the abuse predated the 1960s, that it is a global and not simply western problem, that homosexuality is not the issue in pedophilia”.

Emphasis mine. The abuse long predates the 60s, which suggests to me that it probably goes all the way back, because why wouldn’t it? We’re surely well familiar with the fact that some men feel perfectly entitled to use other people for their personal sexual jollies, with no compunction or concern about what those other people might prefer. We’re also well familiar with the fact that being a Catholic priest seems to do nothing to prevent that entitled feeling…and probably only encourages it because priests have such power over believers, as I gather Francis is arguing.

So, no. It ain’t the 60s and it ain’t the absence of god.

Foreign Policy pointed out in August 2017 that Wikileaks declined to publish material damaging to Russia.

In the summer of 2016, as WikiLeaks was publishing documents from Democratic operatives allegedly obtained by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange turned down a large cache of documents related to the Russian government, according to chat messages and a source who provided the records.

WikiLeaks declined to publish a wide-ranging trove of documents — at least 68 gigabytes of data — that came from inside the Russian Interior Ministry, according to partial chat logs reviewed by Foreign Policy.

…

In the months leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of potentially damaging emails about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign, information the U.S. intelligence community believes was hacked as part of a Kremlin-directed campaign. Assange’s role in publishing the leaks sparked allegations that he was advancing a Russian-backed agenda.

…

WikiLeaks in its early years published a broad scope of information, including emails belonging to Sarah Palin and Scientologists, phone records of Peruvian politicians, and inside information from surveillance companies. “We don’t have targets,” Assange said at the time.

But by 2016, WikiLeaks had switched course, focusing almost exclusively on Clinton and her campaign.

Just some possibly useful background.

The Wagga Feminist asks a question:

So can someone explain (in a way that is logical and makes sense) why men wearing woman face in drag (exaggerated stereotypes cos I have never seen a woman look like a drag queen) is ok but white people in black face (exaggerated stereotypes of black people) is not ok. And just to be clear, focus on the first part, I know why black face is not ok, I just don’t see how drag is any different yet it is acceptable. Is it because the target of ridicule are women?

I’ve wondered the same thing.

I suppose one answer is that misogyny is even more pervasive than racism, but really that’s just the same question. Why is misogyny even more pervasive than racism? Why is it more socially acceptable than racism?

It’s not a trick question; I don’t know the answer.

Jim Wright on the Texas Congressman who wants to mandate death for women who have abortions, all of them:

Texas state Congressman Tony Tinderholt — a Republican, but of course — has reintroduced a bill before the state legislature that would outlaw abortion WITHOUT EXCEPTION and mandate the death penalty for any woman who has the procedure — even if they traveled out of state to get it.

This isn’t the first time.

Tinderholt previously introduced this bill in 2017. He had to be put under state police protection, because Texas women threatened to kill him, and they meant it.

But see, Tinderhold feels this draconian measure is necessary because WOMEN don’t take personal responsibility for sex.

Yes, you read that correctly.

“Right now, it’s real easy. Right now, they [women] don’t make it important to be personally responsible because they know that they have a backup of ‘oh, I can just go get an abortion.’ Now, we both know that consenting adults don’t always think smartly sometimes. But consenting adults need to also consider the repercussions of the sexual relationship that they’re gonna have, which is a child.”

Women don’t take personal responsibility for sex. And thus, Tinderholt says, his bill would would completely remove access to abortions and “force” women to be “more personally responsible” with sex.

Note “consenting adults” means the mother gets put to death and the father is … something something gazpacho not actually responsible for anything — certainly not to any degree of responsibility approaching DEATH.

Read on.