David Brooks. Again. He tries my patience.

Suppose Mitch McConnell hadn’t blocked every single bill the Democratic House sent to the Senate?

Plus…

He tries my patience.

This is how one inspires women in leadership?? Really?

It says “the LGBT community” but the ugly cluttered poster is all about the T. And what does inspiring women in leadership have to do with gender unicorns and being told to “embrace discomfort”? Like, what, women don’t get enough opportunities to embrace discomfort just in trying to navigate the world, now they have to put up with people ostensibly concerned with women ordering them to embrace discomfort and get all worked up about pronouns?

Piss off, is all I feel like saying to that poster.

Here’s a bigger version for easier reading:

Yes I too understand why people ask this: it’s because they’re intrusive controlling impertinent creeps.

Boom, 20+ years of friendship thrown overboard.

Also notice the unctuous gluey nonsense about how it would mean a lot to a lot of people if person A stopped following person B on Twitter. If Steve is right about that then people need to get a fucking life.

What’s Ronson known for? Well…

We live in stupid times.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Needs.

Here’s a personal anecdote about an encounter I had with Canadian pro-sex-work feminists:

A couple years ago when I ran an event venue I booked a women’s storytelling group and the theme of this particular gathering was something like “What makes you happy?” It was billed as an evening for amateur women speakers to share stories of finding empowerment in doing things for themselves — doing what makes them happy instead of doing things for the sake of others’ feelings. Quickly sold out; 200+ capacity; about a half a dozen speakers. Sounds great! I happened to be filling in as a bartender in the Hall that night so I was able to watch the whole thing.

Turns out not one, not two, but THREE of the speakers were former sex workers — two prostitutes and a phone sex operator. (And by all appearances they all seemed quite middle-class.) Two of them gave talks that were entirely about their sex work and how “empowering” it was. It was so bizarre. I mean, an event that’s supposed to be about women doing stuff for themselves instead of for others, and it was completely overrun by women talking about men paying to use women’s bodies for the sake of men’s pleasure. (ALL of the speakers preambled some blather about it being a safe space and pledged that they were opposed to “TERFS AND SWERFS” — ugh, “TERFSANDSWERFS TERFS’N’SWERFS TERFSSSWERFS” they kept saying it, and they slurred the words together as if the phrase was so familiar by now it just melded into one word and there was no need to bother enunciating each individual syllable anymore.)

As I recall it, the two sex worker talks had the same themes: they both kept repeating that their sex work was empowering and I did it because I wanted to, not because I was forced to. But they both endured horrible childhood sexual abuse from older relatives; both were suicidal as teens as a result of the sexual abuse; both were explicit that they turned to sex work in a kind of self-harming way, as an attempt to process debilitating mental health issues around their sexual abuse — self-hatred; body hatred; psychological issues to do with father figures; sexual trauma; etc. Doesn’t that sound like the opposite of empowerment to you? Sure as hell does to me. They sounded like victims. What it sounded like to me was that these women were seeking to destigmatize their trauma; they wanted us to understand why they dropped out of university and fell into prostitution for a while, and their doth-protest-too-much assertions that it was all so “empowering” were, like, a way to try to claim some control of their life’s narrative and frame it around courage and dignity, or something. It’s one thing to want people to understand that prostitutes are human beings deserving of compassion and dignity but that’s not the same thing as endorsing prostitution and even going so far as to celebrate it as female empowerment. (Of course, it’s exactly because prostitutes are human beings deserving of compassion and dignity that rational people want to end prostitution.) I think that distinction was entirely lost on every one of those speakers. Like with the trans debate, this is a men’s rights movement masquerading as a women’s rights one, and it’s turning everything upside down. I still can’t believe 200 women paid to see a group of women talk about self-empowerment and self-enjoyment and got an infomercial for prostitution instead, and the current social climate is so toxic and intimidating that I didn’t see a single one of them withhold her applause.

Mike Burns at Media Matters on Limbaugh being loathsome way back in 2011:

Rush Limbaugh has a long and ugly history of race baiting. Yesterday was no exception. Limbaugh said that First Lady Michelle Obama was booed at a NASCAR event because she has exhibited “uppity-ism.” Today, however, Limbaugh acted as if nothing controversial had happened.

Mm, yeah, what could possibly be controversial about that.

What Limbaugh said:

NASCAR people, as are most people in this country, are mature, tolerant people who fully understand when they’re being insulted and condescended to. And they remember being called bitter clingers. They know that in their hearts the Obamas don’t like them. We’ve taken notice of this as has, by the way, Chris Matthews and a lot of congressional Democrats are also fully aware that the Obamas just don’t like a lot of people and they don’t like hanging around a lot of people.

What utter bullshit. He should read Becoming to underline what bullshit it is. How much time has Limbaugh spent with school kids gardening? How many public schools has he given encouraging speeches in?

I’ll tell you something else: We don’t like paying millions of dollars for Mrs. Obama’s vacations. The NASCAR crowd doesn’t quite understand why when the husband and the wife are going to the same place the first lady has to take her own Boeing 757 with family and kids and hangers on four hours earlier than her husband, who will be on his 747.

I’m sure he’s been very hard on Trump’s travel habits. Right? Hasn’t he?

NASCAR people understand that’s a little bit of a waste. They understand it’s a little bit of uppity-ism. First ladies have not been known to hop their own 757s four hours ahead of their husband when they’re both going to the same place.

That is absolutely a racist dogwhistle. He knows it, Michelle Obama knows it, he knows Michelle Obama knows it. The man is a turd.

Limbaugh’s comments were highlighted by ABC News, The New York Times, The Daily Caller, the Huffington Post, and Mediaite, which described them as “obvious race-baiting.” ABC’s Jake Tapper noted that “uppity” means “presumptuous but is loaded with racist connotations” and is “[o]ften used to describe African-Americans who don’t know their place, in the view of white society.”

Tapper also pointed out that when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas denounced the investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee into allegations that he had sexually harassed Anita Hill he called it “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.”

…

Today Limbaugh again discussed Michelle Obama’s appearance at the NASCAR race, referred to her as Mooch-elle (as is his custom), and called the booing “totally understandable.” But he didn’t even bother to discuss the controversy, much less apologize for his racially charged remark.

Give that man a medal.

Now Trump is hating on public schools. Naturally: schools are there to make guys like him a profit.

If for some reason you haven’t been clear about what President Trump thinks about traditional public schools, consider what he said about them in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

There was this: “For too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.”

That’s cute. It makes public schools sound like gulags.

Trump spent most of his education-related comments on the subject of “school choice,” which he and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have put at the top of their education agenda. DeVos has said her chief priority was expanding alternatives to traditional public schools, which she once called “a dead end.”

A dead end because they don’t make anyone rich. Every human activity should make a profit for someone.

Ugh.

Repeat to infinity and beyond.

Trump, Limbaugh, medal, of freedom.

There was Mother Teresa, “a heroine of our times,” and Rosa Parks, “a living icon for freedom in America.” Elie Wiesel kept “watch against the forces of hatred,” while Jackie Robinson “struck a mighty blow for equality, freedom, and the American way of life.”

I wouldn’t have led with Anjezë Bojaxhiu aka Mother Teresa, since she was an enemy of freedom and not the friend to the poor she was made out to be; the other three are much better illustrations of the point. There are humanitarians, and then there are their opposites. Rush Limbaugh is their opposite. Limbaugh despises humanitarianism and mocks it for fun and profit.

Now, joining them and other recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award bestowed by the government on a civilian, is Rush Limbaugh, “the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet.”

Spoken like a true bully. What’s the highest value? Fightingandwinning!

“Rush Limbaugh, thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country,” Trump said.

Bollocks. Limbaugh got rich doing what he does; it has nothing to do with devotion to our country or to anything else that’s not Rush Limbaugh.

But before first lady Melania Trump could finish draping the medal around Limbaugh’s neck, critics of the talk-show host began to recirculate online some of the most derogatory and inflammatory remarks he’s made over the course of his career against women (whom he has regularly labeled “feminazis”), black people, Native Americans, immigrants and the disabled community, among others.

(Why “the disabled community” but not “the immigrant community”? Commonalities are not the same thing as communities. Bad journalistic habit.)

They pointed to the time Limbaugh — a divisive media figure who has been accused of racist and sexist remarks — called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” because of her support of women’s access to birth control. Or when he promoted the debunked birther claim* that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Or when he questioned why Native Americans would be upset about their forced removal and ethnic cleansing since “they all have casinos.” Or when he compared asylum seekers coming to the U.S. border to the invasion of Normandy. Or when he said that actor Michael J. Fox was faking the symptoms of his Parkinson’s disease.

*the lie

…

Limbaugh’s fans and supporters, on the other hand, said it was fitting that such a role model would get public recognition. Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany thanked the host for having “inspired a generation.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) agreed, calling the honor “well-deserved.” Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, ripped Democrats for not rising to their feet in the House chamber for Limbaugh.

Yes, why wouldn’t they leap to their feet to applaud an honor given to a guy who makes a lot of money insulting and jeering at the underdogs of the world?

It never stops.

You couldn’t make it up. A woman is invited to give a lecture, and a man takes to Twitter to wonder how he can “proceed” in this tragic emergency.

Yes, bub, it is indeed a matter of freedom of speech and no-platforming, as well as a matter of sexism and misogyny, a matter of bullying and silencing, a matter of meddling and shutting down.

I wonder how much Christopher Lloyd would like it if he were invited to give a lecture at a university and another academic denounced him on Twitter and mused aloud about how to prevent him from giving that lecture. Would he think that was perfectly all right because he still has “numerous platforms” which he “uses daily”?

Note the unconscious sexism of that bit. He’s repulsed that Kathleen Stock has ways to say things in public and that she uses them, daily. The hussy! How dare she! Why doesn’t she know her place?!

It just never stops.

Rush Limbaugh said what now?

Just five years ago, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh went on a pro-tobacco rant on his show, during which he downplayed the risks of smoking, said it’s “a myth” that secondhand smoke causes illness or death and argued that smokers aren’t at any greater risk than people who “eat carrots.”

Smoking and eating carrots are not mutually exclusive.

“Smokers aren’t killing anybody,” the conservative host declared in an April 2015 segment of the “Rush Limbaugh Show,” then argued that tobacco users should be thanked because their purchases generate tax dollars that fund children’s health care programs.

“I’m just saying there ought to be a little appreciation shown for them, instead of having them hated and reviled,” Limbaugh said. “I would like a medal for smoking cigars, is what I’m saying.”

So smoking is a right-wing cause? People on the left are all stupid smoking-avoiders because it’s so politically correct, and good honest folks on the right all smoke like chimneys because God and country and tobacco? Is that it?

Fast forward to Monday, when Limbaugh, 69, went on his radio show to announce that he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Limbaugh said he has begun treatment for the cancer, but didn’t go into details, the Daily News reported. He only said he had noticed shortness of breath close to his birthday on Jan. 12, then had two professionals diagnose the cancer on Jan. 20.

I wonder if he’ll find a way to blame the left for that too. We messed with his pleasure in smoking, and we made him have lung cancer.

On his show, Limbaugh talked about the glamour of smoking and how “cool” it was, the Daily News reported.

That is neither cute nor funny nor politically incorrect. It’s just bad. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known, and smoking is not healthy, so using a popular radio show to promote its coolness is bad. Very bad.

This isn’t like other protests. This is the protesters threatening, browbeating, and assaulting people attending a discussion of women’s rights. It’s mostly men threatening and assaulting mostly women.

The woman in the pink hat is holding a sign that says “women’s voices matter,” and a large man lunges at her and shoves her. So…women’s voices don’t matter? They’re going with that? That’s what they want to tell us?

The “protesters” hop up and down screaming “TERFs out!”

They’re not protesting exploitation or oppression or injustice…they’re protesting women who are trying to defend their rights against men who demand – with menaces – admission to the category “women” despite the brute fact that they are men. That’s not a glorious cause, that’s not a people’s flag, that’s not freedom, that’s not no child shall go hungry, it’s not anything resembling a path to a better world. It’s men bullying and pushing and demanding and punishing. It’s the same old boss just like the same old boss. It’s ugly, it’s angry, it’s mean, it would stamp on you if it could.

More on the “have you ever considered doing sex work?” question:

Members of Parliament were in the House of Commons for debate on a Conservative motion seeking to condemn the decision by the Parole Board of Canada to release a convicted murderer on day parole in Quebec City and allow him to “meet women, but only to meet [his] sexual needs.”

So that’s a question for conservatives? And MPs on the left think it’s fine to send male murderers out to get their “sexual needs” met? I’m on the left, but I lean toward thinking women don’t exist to meet the “sexual needs” of murderers (or anyone else). I lean toward thinking women aren’t a kind of implement for the use of men.

Conservatives have hammered the government over the past week on why the case managers for the killer allowed him to search out women to fulfill his “sexual needs” and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said last week an investigation is taking place.

Why only conservatives? The NDP think that approach is just fine?

“I would ask the honourable member to consider listening to the voices of sex workers,” said NDP MP Laurel Collins, who represents the riding of Victoria.

All sex workers are pleased to have murders on day parole sent to them for getting the ol’ needs met?

“Sex workers are saying that sex work is work, and I also ask the honourable member if he considers the Harper government’s decision to implement Bill 36, which criminalized the work environments, the establishments that sex workers go to to feel safe, that criminalized their ability to hire security, if he acknowledges that this is a factor in this death and many others.”

Pimps, you mean?

So pimps are there to protect the women from murderers?

I don’t think so. Pimps are there to take a cut.

In response to Collins, Viersen said: “I would just respond to that by asking the honourable member across the way if it’s an area of work that she has ever considered and if that is an appropriate –”

His remark immediately prompted calls of “shame on you” from other members in the House of Commons.

I don’t think so. I think he has a point. I think there is a real issue about “privileged” women (and men of course) promoting “sex work” who would never do it themselves and would likely not be thrilled if their daughters took it up. I think that’s what he was talking about, and it is a relevant question. The “sex work” performed by women who meet the “needs” of men is not work like factory or farm or transportation work.

Good question.

On a completely unrelated subject, what does pole dancing have to do with football? And what does football have to do with pole dancing?

Being woke on the cheap – the very, very cheap.

It’s about those pronouns.

If everyone stated their pronouns, allowing those with a non-traditional gender identity to blend into the crowd, the quality of life of countless people could improve markedly, with negligible inconvenience caused to everyone else.

I am a cisgender, straight, white, male, middle-class Tory. If even I can muster enough self-awareness to recognise the uniqueness of others’ experiences and make small changes to the way I behave as a result, such as adding “he/him” to my social media bios, then you definitely can too. There is no basis for defying this that is both rational and compassionate.

It’s so easy – aka cheap. He can go on being Tory and thus ignore all the material difficulties that hinder people who are not middle-class and white and male, but at the same time he can “state his pronouns” and thus feel like a good conscientious person.

To refuse flat-out to even entertain the notion that others might have experiences and perspectives that you, an unimaginably privileged cisgender person, does not is indicative of calamitous levels of single-mindedness and bigotry. An unwillingness to do something so simple as stating your pronouns irrespective of its demonstrably momentous positive effect suggests a stark absence of humility and compassion.

Ah yes, we unimaginably privileged cisgender women, how dare we not “state our pronouns” in solidarity with men who want to “identify as” women and steal all their athletic prizes.

Privileged people like myself who identify as cisgender can never even begin to comprehend the experiences of by those who do not. 

I begin to suspect this is satire. Why is this shiny prosperous dude in such a lather about the agonies of trans people while he’s so indifferent to every other kind of marginalization there is?

Jason Reed is a student, freelance writer and treasurer of the LSE Conservative Society.

Something in the water at LSE?

Another filing:

White House Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President Jared Kushner violated the Hatch Act during a CNN interview on Sunday, according to a complaint filed today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). Throughout the interview, Kushner advocated on behalf of the Trump campaign while appearing in his official government capacity on behalf of the Trump administration.

The Hatch Act prohibits executive branch employees from “us[ing their] official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” Throughout the interview, Fareed Zakaria and Kushner openly discussed Kushner’s strategy to re-elect President Trump, while Kushner was identified in his government capacity.

Using the office to campaign for another term of having the office is an unfair advantage, which is why Congress passed a law forbidding it.

“Jared Kushner, like so many other senior officials in the Trump administration, has shown a complete disregard for ethics laws with a pattern of continuous violations,” said CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder. “The tone is set at the top. President Trump has made clear that he will not follow the rules himself or discipline those in his administration who do not, and his top advisors are acting accordingly.”

“Kushner’s blatantly political behavior while acting in his official capacity is a clear violation of the Hatch Act. The rules are in place to prevent the powers of the federal government from being used to unfairly benefit any candidate, and it is about time this administration started to follow them ,” said Bookbinder.  

About time? Nah. Three-plus years past time.

Since President Trump’s inauguration, CREW complaints have led to reprimands of an unprecedented number of Trump administration officials, including Dan Scavino, Nikki Haley, Stephanie Grisham, Raj Shah, Jessica Ditto, Madeleine Westerhout, Helen Aguirre Ferre, Alyssa Farah, Jacob Wood, Kellyanne Conway and Lynne Patton. Following CREW’s complaints against Kellyanne Conway, OSC took the unprecedented step of recommending Conway be removed from federal service in a scathing report detailing her numerous ethics violations. 

This one will be filed with all the others, of course.

No free press for you.

President Donald Trump’s targeting of CNN is moving to yet another arena: The annual presidential lunch with television network anchors.

CNN anchors are being excluded from Tuesday’s lunch, three sources said on Monday night.

Do they have a reasonable expectation to be included? Yes, they do.

Trump, like presidents before him, typically invites anchors from all the major networks to dine with him at the White House in advance of his State of the Union address. The lunch conversation is considered off the record, but it gives the anchors a sense of the president’s state of mind before they anchor SOTU coverage. “Despite Trump’s persistent attacks on the news media, he’s kept up such traditions,” Politico pointed out last year.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer attended last year’s lunch. Blitzer has been attending these lunches longer than almost any other anchor — 20 years in a row.

So the “not you” is pointed and spiteful. It’s not part of Trump’s job to be spiteful.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham did not respond to a request for comment on Monday night.

Of course she didn’t. She serves the spiteful toad.

The president has directed his ire at CNN dozens of times over the past three years. He has declined all of CNN’s requests to sit down with him for an interview and has denigrated both the network as a whole and some of its individual journalists. His administration also suspended chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass until a federal court ruled in CNN’s favor.

We’re more broken every day.

Ah yes, a remarkable achievement.

Laurel Hubbard kept alive her hopes of competing at Tokyo 2020 when she won the women’s super-heavyweight contest at the Roma World Cup, the first Olympic qualifying event of the year.

It would be a remarkable achievement should she make it because Hubbard, who will be 42 on February 9, ruptured ligaments in her left elbow at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast and thought her career was over.

But not all that remarkable given the fact that Hubbard is a man and he’s competing against women.

Hubbard, who competed at national level as Gavin Hubbard before transitioning in her thirties, may find that her fate is not entirely in her own hands.

The woman who took the Commonwealth Games and Arafura Games titles, 19-year-old Feagaiga Stowers of Samoa, needs to be in the top eight of the final rankings to take an automatic qualification place for Hubbard to have a realistic chance.

Should Stowers make it, Hubbard would battle it out with Charisma Amoe-Tarrant, formerly of Nauru and now competing for Australia, for the Oceania slot.

In other words Hubbard hopes to take a slot away from a woman.

From Tatsuya Ishida:

So Trump doesn’t know where Kansas City is. I’m sure lots of people don’t, and the name does suggest that it’s in Kansas, but still, a president should know things like that. It’s not a random small town, it’s an important city in the Midwest or West or Plains States or whatever you want to call it – in the Heartland, if you like. It has a lot of cultural chops. Presidents should have a decent knowledge of US geography.

But does it really matter? Yes.

But here’s why Trump doesn’t get a pass. Because he and his administration have made a HUGE point of picking out the slip-ups of past politicians and questioning people over their supposed lack of knowledge of geography.

He talked about Obama’s flubs, he talked about Hillary Clinton’s purported imminent collapse, he talks about Biden’s flubs.

At a campaign rally in November 2019, Trump said this of Biden:

“They have him all freaked out because he makes a mistake every time he speaks. I can just see these handlers because they’re handlers like they use on horses. ‘Alright, get him off now, he’s been up there long enough!’ So they’re screaming, ‘Get off! Get off! Sleepy Joe, get off the stage! Please! Please, Joe, you’re doing fine. Joe, you’re doing fine. You’re doing fine.'”

And at a campaign rally in Milwaukee just last month, Trump again mocked Biden for forgetting which state he was speaking in; “When you do that, you can’t really recover,” Trump concluded.

And then…

Trump’s own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly challenged an NPR reporter to find Ukraine on a blank map after she asked him some questions regarding the President’s interactions with the country.

And she found it at once, so since then he’s been lying about it. (I wasn’t there. I didn’t see her find it. But come on – she has advanced degrees in international relations. It’s not like trying to locate a particular city on a blank map, or even one of the Baltic countries. She says she pointed it out at once and I believe her.)

The reason stuff like Trump’s Kansas flub can’t be totally ignored is because if the shoe [were] on the other foot — and it has been! — we know that Trump not only doesn’t ignore it, but seeks to make the flub some sort of sign of either declining mental ability or a lack of intelligence.

When he’s always the stupidest person in the room.