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Progress?

Trump has a low opinion of most Americans.

Who?

Oh.

Tiny as in smaller than most high schools. But good enough for Trump!

In all fairness, we hate him right back. Our reasons are better though.… Read the rest

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Progress?
By Ophelia Benson, November 15, 2020

Trump has a low opinion of most Americans.

Who?

Oh.

Tiny as in smaller than most high schools. But good enough for Trump!

In all fairness, we hate him right back. Our reasons are better though.… Read the rest

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Progress? 

Trump has a low opinion of most Americans.

Who?

Oh.

Tiny as in smaller than most high schools. But good enough for Trump!

In all fairness, we hate him right back. Our reasons are better though.… Read the rest

A return to public civility 

Lisa Allardice talks to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

The reason for our call is the announcement that Adichie has won the public vote in the Winner of Winner’s award, celebrating 25 years of the Women’s prize for fiction. She won the award, when it was sponsored by Orange, in 2007, for her epic war novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, beating many of the biggest names in contemporary fiction.

The prize that was necessary because the people who awarded prizes kept overlooking women.

She hopes that the election of Biden will usher in a return to public civility. “I’m really excited at the idea that the discourse across the country will not sound like childish name calling. There’s

… Read the rest
“DIRT BAG” 

Oh goody – another man on a site purportedly for women, raging about a woman who writes something he dislikes.

Remember went J.K. Rowling went fully mask off about her transphobia in June, publishing an essay on her personal website about how she thinks trans women pose a threat to cis women’s personal safety? And how she, the second-highest paid author in the world worth at least $670 million, feels “police[d]” by trans randos on Twitter who don’t like her tweets (and all while failing to mention the concurrent worldwide uprising against the actual police that was just getting started at the time, to boot)? I know! Truly bananas! If I were a multimillionaire who hated trans women,

… Read the rest
They stop yelling at you when they get intubated 

Yikes. They go on thinking it’s fake even when they have it.

… Read the rest

The same shredded sweatpants 

Patricia Marx in the New Yorker last July:

With so many people homebound these past few months, indoors has become the new outdoors. It is where you exercise, digitally chat with friends, and, of course, work. But it is also still the indoors, where you sleep, eat, and putter. This can make for frequent wardrobe changes. Or you can give up and wear the same shredded sweatpants day after day. In April, a Florida circuit judge named Dennis Bailey sent a letter to local lawyers about proper attire during Zoom court hearings. “It is remarkable how many attorneys appear inappropriately on camera,” he wrote. “We’ve seen many lawyers in casual shirts and blouses, with no concern for ill-grooming, in

… Read the rest
So true! 

There’s always a tweet.

Trump: not losing with dignity.

Early this morning:

Oops he slipped up, he said “He won” – … Read the rest

So much deference 

Nicely done.

… Read the rest

Under attack from all sides 

More on the misogyny and murder issue:

The police – waylaid for 18 months by a hoax and having only started to take the case seriously once “innocent young girls” (their words) and not just sex workers had been killed – had shifted the responsibility for public safety on to women themselves, urging them not to go out after dark.

But on 25 October, with her boyfriend away in London on a CND march, Lea decided she would not stay at home. She went to the pub to plan her 21st birthday party and after a few drinks walked through Leeds University’s Headingley campus to get her bus home. It was then she was approached by a man who

… Read the rest
They didn’t bother to search his garage 

Joan Smith on Peter Sutcliffe and misogyny:

I am so angry, all these years later. When I heard that this insignificant little man had died, more than four decades after he ruined the lives of so many women, the anger and hurt came rushing back. I remember it as though it were yesterday: the fear we lived with in the north of England, the suspicion about neighbours and colleagues, the sense that we couldn’t rely on the police to protect us.

We couldn’t even rely on them to catch him, even though Peter Sutcliffe was hardly anyone’s idea of a criminal mastermind. He spoke to the women he targeted, letting them hear his Yorkshire accent and see his

… Read the rest
The risks 

Benjamin Wittes on Trump’s Tantrum:

There exists no law or rule that compels a president to acknowledge the legitimacy of his defeat—or even the fact of it—except in the very limited sense that he has to vacate the office.

And he doesn’t have to do that until January 20. Until then he can tantrum his wee socks off.

So yes, the president is allowed to sulk. He is allowed to be the sorest of sore losers. He is allowed to once again display before the entire world the complete triumph of ego over patriotism, of self-interestedness over public-spiritedness, within his heart. There is, actually, nothing to do about it if he wants to play it this way; there is

… Read the rest
Those who mattered 

The mass-murderer of women Peter Sutcliffe died in prison yesterday. Women everywhere braced for more reporting that focused on him instead of the women whose lives he stole. The Yorkshire Post got it right.

… Read the rest

Erasure by inclusion 

Today I learn that there’s a group called Zero Tolerance. Of what? Violence against women.

Zero Tolerance is a Scottish charity working to end men’s violence against women by promoting gender equality and challenging attitudes that normalise violence and abuse.

Good, good. (Mind you, in these troubled times, we need to be careful to say sex equality, but that’s a detail.)

We work to end violence against women through tackling the root cause of this violence – gender inequality. [sex equality]

We began in 1992 with a groundbreaking and radical Edinburgh-based poster campaign. The campaign successfully brought the issue of violence against women out from behind closed doors and into public consciousness by asserting that violence

… Read the rest
The chosen hill 

Another one of those “Just a reminder that bullshit bullshit bullshit” tweets.

Yeah. Nobody ever heard of it until the invention of trans.

… Read the rest
Ti-i-i-ime 

Oops. He almost accidentally conceded.

Time has already told.… Read the rest

#UseYourBrain 

I think there’s a misunderstanding.

“My body, my choice” doesn’t mean you can for instance use your body to punch or kick or stab people. It doesn’t mean you can use your body to grab other people’s groceries or puppies or umbrellas. It doesn’t mean you can risk infecting other people during a lethal pandemic.

This nitwit shouldn’t have been “proud” to tell her colleagues that … Read the rest

Cleavage and Cross 

The law and order party, let’s not forget.

… Read the rest

Not new 

Ah yes, disdain for the idea that slavery was something of a mistake on the part of the people who colonized what became the US. (The forcible colonization also a mistake btw.)

“New” – it’s not new. As many wiser heads pointed out.

… Read the rest

All the norm-breaking things 

Journalist Garrett Graff on Fresh Air yesterday:

GROSS: Let’s start with a couple of the – what you consider most norm-breaking things President Trump has done so far to interfere with the transfer of power.

GRAFF: The biggest one has to just be the simple fact that he has not yet accepted the projected winner of the election being Joe Biden. This is a very different situation than we faced in 2000 with the Florida recount. The state victories across the country are definitive. They are decisive. And Joe Biden looks like he’s actually on his way to a comfortable victory in the Electoral College. And the fact that now, more than a week after the election, Donald Trump

… Read the rest
Actual consequences 

This is nuts.

[O]ne thing Biden cannot do at this point is move into any government office space or receive government funding for the transition.

A key, if little-known Trump administration official has yet to determine formally that Biden won the election, holding up some crucial resources traditionally available to the president-elect.

Under the 1963 Presidential Transition Act, it’s up to the General Services Administration, or GSA, to determine or “ascertain” the winner of the presidential election, at least as far as starting the process of turning over the keys to the new administration goes.

…

In a statement, the GSA said its administrator “ascertains the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid

… Read the rest
The most secure in American history 

How about that.

Here’s the full statement:

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result. 

“When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each … Read the rest