Now Toby Young gets in on the act – hey all you lefty types think money should be more equitably shared so how come you don’t think the same thing about access to women, huh huh huh?

Robin Hanson, Alek Minassian, incel rebellion, Elliot Rodger, Chad and Stacy, blah blah.

Hanson wasn’t defending these two mass murderers, but querying why incels had been dismissed in the media as ‘self-pitying’ and ‘lonely weirdos’ in the aftermath of the Toronto attack, often by the same journalists and commentators who decry other forms of inequality. Why are terrorists who murder people in the name of redistributing wealth, like Che Guevara, lionised by the left, whereas terrorists whose aim is to draw attention to sex inequality are detested? A columnist on the Scottish Daily Record said Minassian was a ‘pathetic little boy who can’t get a girlfriend’. I don’t suppose the same journalist would describe the late socialist hero Jimmy Reid as a ‘pathetic little man who couldn’t afford a nice car’.

Sigh.

One can never tell – is he (whichever – Hanson, Douthat, Young) really that stupid or just pretending to be to wind us up? It’s right there in the words – girlfriend versus car. Now do you see what we’re getting at? A girlfriend is not like a car. How? A girlfriend is a person and a car is a thing. A girlfriend has thoughts and plans and ideas and feelings; a car has an engine and windows and wheels.

It works the same way with women on the one hand and money on the other. Women have minds; money does not.

Women are not things to be distributed. You’d think this would be too fucking obvious to say, yet they keep ignoring it, either genuinely or ad arguendo. Neither is acceptable.

The New York Times introduces us to a fascinatingly original and independent-minded couple in a large west coast city:

When Amanda Davidson, a 42-year-old Los Angeles-based artist and writer, welcomed her firstborn child in December — a boy named Felix — with her partner Isaac Schankler, 39, a composer, she chafed at the assumptions the medical staff members made about how the pair wanted to identify themselves as parents.

“‘Hi, Mommy! Where’s Daddy? Mommy needs to know this, but so does Daddy,’” she said with a big laugh. The binary clashed so much with how the couple sees themselves and exists in the world — she’s queer-identified, and her partner goes by pronouns they/their/them and uses the gender-neutral title Mx. — she refrained from calling herself anything vis-à-vis Felix for the first two weeks of his life.

Oh, my, that must have been awful. Couldn’t the medical staff members see at a glance how not Mommy and Daddy our eccentric pair are?

Isaac Schankler, left, and Amanda Davidson are among a wave of gender-nonconforming parents reconsidering the labels of “mommy” and “daddy.”

CreditChris Schell

So…that’s Isaac on the left in the suit and tie and short hair, and that’s Amanda on the right in a dress and long hair and lipstick…so…uh…how could medical staff possibly call them Daddy and Mommy respectively? Don’t they…uh…realize that Isaac and Amanda are queering all the things?

Naming is particularly important to the pair as a means of signaling their queerness, since they “pass” as a straight couple. “We don’t look visibly queer,” Ms. Davidson said, “So in some ways, our choice of names helps us affirm our identities.”

…

Ellen Kahn, the director of the Children, Youth & Families Program at the Human Rights Campaign, said the gender binary that underlies “mother” and “father” doesn’t jibe with some parents’ self-understanding and self-presentation: “For queer parents who don’t think of themselves as gender conforming, ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’ may be a little discordant with the way they think about themselves.”

Which is what, exactly? More special than everyone else? More thoughtful and rebellious and quirky and interesting than all those stupid “binary” couples with their suits and dresses and short hair/long hair?

Katie Herzog at The Stranger finds the whole thing rather annoying.

Now, I will admit that my first reaction to this article was to roll my eyes back in my head and pull out my application to a lesbian seperatist commune in Taos, but then I remembered that it’s against the rules to question other peoples’ identities (unless that person is Rachel Dolezal) so I reigned in my annoyance.

But then I read it again, and I thought about some lesbian friends of mine back in North Carolina who just had a kid last year. Unlike Davidson and Schankler, who, I presume, used the body parts they were born with to make a kid, my friends had to go about it the old fashioned ways: turkey baster, with sperm purchased from a sperm bank.

That was the easy part.

The hard part was the adoption, which they had to do if they wanted both parents to have parental rights.

It’s a cumbersome, stressful, and expensive process, but many attorneys specializing in LGBTQ family law recommend it. And so, this married couple who conceived a child together had to get background checks, have home visits with social workers, get reference letters, sign affidavits attesting to how their child was conceived, and have meetings with the county clerk—all so that Heather, who literally has two mommies, could legally have two mommies.

Now, same-sex adoption laws vary by state, but in many places, it’s still an arduous, time-consuming process that no heterosexual couple who birthed a child together would have to engage in. And, in most countries, it’s not even an option. It’s also something that Davidson and Schankler would never have to deal with, because, regardless of their pronouns, they are still, in the eyes of the law (and, lets be real, society) a plain old heterosexual couple. While I’m sure it is painful for them to be seen as straight when they feel they are queer, every time the New York Times or New York mag or whoever else elevates couples like this, they ignore the very real trials and tribulations that actual same-sex couples go through in a legal system that isn’t equipped to handle us.

That plus there’s the whole thing of what looks like deliberately creating a kind of “oppressed” status for themselves so that they can hang with the cool kids who already have actual oppression. It looks, in short, like exactly what people mean by “appropriation,” in a strikingly obnoxious form. Davidson and Shankler “pass” as exactly what they are, so they claim to be “queer” in the most nebulous and indeed meaningless sense possible. Herzog sums up:

I realize that I’m not the LGBTQIAS (the “s” stands for “straight”) hall monitor, but while everyone and their abba has decided that queerness is more about haircuts and pronouns than who you bone, actual queer people are still second class citizens under the law. As of 2018, only 22 states have full protections preventing housing, employment, and public accommodation discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people. And yet, the Times devotes column inches to a “queer” couple whose big struggle was resolved by adopting the Hebrew word for dad. Just an idea, but perhaps the next time the paper of note writes about LGBTQ families, maybe they could actually talk to a few.

Won’t somebody please think of the queer straight people?

Maryam Namazie writes:

Egyptian Atheist and Youtube Vlogger Sherif Gaber has disappeared and is most likely arrested when trying to leave the country on Wednesday 2nd May. He sent a message to friends telling them he was stopped and taken to an interrogation room at Cairo airport and his passport confiscated. No one has heard from him since. The last message from Sherif on Wednesday 2nd May at 11:08 am Cairo time:

“I am suppose to be traveling to Malaysia at 12:05 Cairo Time, an hour from now. The police took me and made me wait in this room for 2 hours and I’m still waiting> they took my belongings and my passport. If I don’t update you in one hour know that I was arrested.”

We demand Gaber’s release. Atheism, Blasphemy, Apostasy are not crimes. #FreeSherifGaber
#AtheismNotACrime
#BlasphemyNotACrime
#ApostasyNotACrime

Guest post by Bruce Everett

I’ve always had a lingering suspicion about the rule to “never punch down/only punch up”. What started out as a heuristic for comedians seems to be apt at morphing into a kind of social contagion along the lines of what Bertrand Russell wrote about in ‘The Superior Virtue of The Oppressed’.

Yes, people are oppressed to varying extents. No, that’s not good. Neither is taking advantage of people’s social standing to enact sadism for shits and giggles. Conflict occurs across the power differentials. That’s not disputed.

But in practice, and especially in groups of people, this rule doesn’t always seem to work so well.

For one, it appeals to people’s sentiments and naturally, people forget why the rule exists and just try and wing the spirit of it, whatever the fuck that may be. Eventually you can wind up with things like “the most oppressed in the room can do whatever the fuck they want, including not putting up with any doubt that they are the most oppressed in the room, which is LITERAL VIOLENCE!”

Pretty soon after things metastasize this far, without reference to any material fact you wind up with people in unassailable positions, irrespective of whether or not they as an individual or as a member of a social group, are actually most oppressed, effectively with license to do anything to members of any other oppressed group. And when they actually do “anything”, people act all surprised and then make excuses.

I can’t help but notice this also seems more pronounced when the person on the receiving end is a woman, and the person dishing it out is a man. Maybe that’s just my biases.

Then there are the pile-ons. The first step is for the purported or actually most oppressed person to have a go at someone who may very well have actually done something wrong, who may actually be an oppressed person themselves… and then a bunch of usually white, upper-middle class shits will come along and harangue the person on the receiving end for “punching down”. Never mind if they’ve just condescended to someone more disadvantaged than them – they’re doing it in alliance with The Most Oppressed, so all’s good.

“Oh, it does feel ever so good to be able to condescend to someone less advantaged than me, and for it to make me such a good ally, Tarquin. This system licenses it!”
“Oh, I know. It’s especially good when I do it to old feminists. It’s like calling them “bitch” or “feminazi”, but without the fear of being seen as a sexist pig. Just be sure to bring someone along who is able to punch up first – you only need to bring one of them. #TokenismYay“

Even people who are aware that social justice causes/activist circles attract narcissists like ants to a picnic, will fail to realize that the mere prospect of the status of unassailability within such a milieu is all that much more attractive. There is inherent vagary in “don’t punch down” and don’t think for a second narcs won’t weaponize it if they can.

“Which way’s down in this case?”
“I’m not sure. Better be cautious and assume the shouty person knows.”
“Oh, yes. And we’d better not doubt them, because that’d be punching down too!”
“True. We must signal our support by following through when their voice is too hoarse to repeat themselves!”
“Oh dear, they just kicked the shit out of that lesbian.”
“That’s not good. But remember, we can’t expect people to be perfect in their activism and it is difficult to be a activist and suffer from the social stigma of Morgellons at the same time. Perhaps if we give them more time and attention in future, this kind of thing won’t happen again. We need to love them more!”
“Yes. Is it time tell the lesbian off now?”
“Of course. But I don’t think we use the word “lesbian” anymore.”
“[At lesbian] DAMN YOU… THING!?! You provoked them! How would you like to be a Furry with Morgellons? Non-human animals are the most oppressed group!”
“COSPLAY ISN’T A JOKE, L… THING! SHOW SOME FUCKING EMPATHY YOU PIECE OF SHIT!”
“You’re such a good feminist, Tarquin. #woke“

And of course, just addressing this is practically impossible. The terms of the problem preclude discussing it from any angle other than that of the outsider.

And there’s the bait and switch between strict and equivocal definitions as the last barrier. For decision making within the group, the definition is equivocal, and made up on the fly for the convenience of whoever is in power. For criticism from outside the group, any questioning of “don’t punch down” is defined into literally excusing abusing disadvantaged people – end of story.

I can’t think of any solution other than to step away and start again once this shit takes hold. At least, not outside of groups that allow you to clear house with elections. Even then, that’s hard and requires the opportunity to organize.

I don’t envy people who don’t have the option to walk away.

Yesterday it was hooray god, today it was hooray guns.

President Trump on Friday addressed the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting here in a speech that served as a rallying cry to his base, an attack on his detractors and a signal of his strong support for the gun rights group after suggesting months earlier he was open to some firearm restrictions.

For a few hours after Parkland he pretended to care, then it was back to normal.

But any streak of independence from the NRA was gone Friday, as Trump allied himself with some of the gun group’s biggest priorities in a rambling, 45-minute speech that focused as much on his foreign policy agenda, approval ratings and the latest in the Russia investigation as it did on gun policy.

His speeches are all rambling, because he’s that insufferable guy who thinks every word he utters is fascinating no matter how trivial and self-involved.

“Your Second Amendment rights are under siege,” Trump told the NRA members, whom he referred to as patriots. “But they will never ever be under siege as long as I’m your president.”

That’s “rambling” all right – i.e. a flat contradiction.  Your rights are under siege, but they will never ever be under siege as long as I’m your president, and I’m your president now, but your rights are under siege. QED.

To bolster his case for arming teachers and adding guards, Trump argued “there is no stronger deterrent for a sick individual than the knowledge that their attack will end their life and end in total failure.”

Wrong. Lots of shooters intend the attack to end their lives.

While Trump used the speech to firmly embrace the NRA’s agenda, he also treated it like a campaign rally — urging members to vote in the midterm elections, boasting about the improving unemployment numbers, touting the recent tax cuts, criticizing the media and lambasting the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election.

The campaign part is secondary really; the reason he loves doing this is because it’s a chance to brag about himself and get cheers and applause in response. It’s his happy place.

What’s that thumping sound? The bus wheels rolling over Rudy Giuliani.

President Trump undercut his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Friday, and said the former New York mayor will eventually get the facts right regarding a payment to a pornographic actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

Everything “has been said incorrectly,” Mr. Trump said, blaming the media coverage and Mr. Giuliani’s short time on the job.

Oh yes, he was an intern until just the other day, he’s a total novice, he can’t possibly be expected to know all the facts yet, and that’s why it was a great idea for him to talk to Sean Hannity.

Mr. Giuliani, who joined Mr. Trump’s legal team last month, “started a day ago,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to reporters on Friday as he left Washington to attend a National Rifle Association convention in Dallas.

“He’s a great guy,” Mr. Trump said. “He’ll get his facts straight.”

So Trump told a ridiculous boob lie – what, in order to illustrate how unimportant it is to get the facts straight?

And then, note the trip to hang out with the extremely right-wing National Rifle Association, in callous disregard or outright contempt for Parkland and all the other mass shootings since the last NRA convention.

Mr. Giuliani kicked off the confusion with an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, surprising even some of Mr. Trump’s other attorneys.

In a series of Twitter posts the following morning, the president backed up what Mr. Giuliani said. But, on Friday, Mr. Trump said that everything said about the transaction “has been said incorrectly.”

“It’s actually very simple,” the president said, without elaboration.

Presidents don’t elaborate. You’re supposed to listen, and believe. That’s it.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Are they objective?

He’s implying that that’s not “objective”…But an objective observer (who hadn’t just popped out of an eggshell fully mature yesterday) has a million reasons to think Comey is more likely to be telling the truth than Trump is. An objective observer can remember that clip on Air Force One when Trump lied about who paid Stormy Daniels and whether he knew about it, to name just one item. Trump lies constantly; Comey not so much.

No, no, that’s not how it works. You can’t go using evidence to reach an uncomfortable conclusion. “Objective” means that you either (1) are “keeping an open mind” and refusing to decide whether you believe the allegations; or (2) have decided, like Giuliani, that the allegations are false. Disagreeing with Rudy is, ipso facto, proof of a lack of objectivity.

Have you learned nothing from sexual assault and harassment cases?

“I can’t possibly come to any sort of opinion on the allegations against Famous Dude. All I have to go on is detailed eyewitness accounts from the victims and other witnesses, corroborating accounts from people they complained to, documentary evidence, and Famous Dude’s generally skeevy attitude towards women. As a true skeptic, I couldn’t possibly form an opinion until all of these witnesses are brought before me in a courtroom, which I know will never happen.” = OBJECTIVE

“Although I remain open to further evidence, and any actual criminal punishment would have to await a prosecution and conviction, it appears from the detailed eyewitness accounts from the victims and other witnesses, corroborating accounts from people they complained to, documentary evidence, and Famous Dude’s generally skeevy attitude towards women, that Famous Dude has harassed women. And so perhaps that should have some social consequences.” = NOT OBJECTIVE

“I’ve had beers with Famous Dude, and I believe him when he says these women are all lying bitches.” = OBJECTIVE

The Post annotates Giuliani’s chat with Hannity.

GIULIANI: Here’s what it’s all about. It’s real simple. The American people can follow this along with me. Are they objective?

HANNITY: Are they?

GIULIANI: Well, right now, a lot of things point in the direction of, they made up their mind that Comey is telling the truth and not the president.

Ok wait. He’s implying that that’s not “objective”…But an objective observer (who hadn’t just popped out of an eggshell fully mature yesterday) has a million reasons to think Comey is more likely to be telling the truth than Trump is. An objective observer can remember that clip on Air Force One when Trump lied about who paid Stormy Daniels and whether he knew about it, to name just one item. Trump lies constantly; Comey not so much.

GIULIANI: He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation. He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that. And, he couldn’t get that. So, he fired him and he said, I’m free of the guy, and he went on Lester Holt. Lester Holt’s interview was as good as anybody could do, better than I think any of the people around Mueller could have done, and Lester Holt asked him, why did you do it? He said, I did it because I felt that I had to explain to the American people the president was not the target of the investigation.

No he didn’t. That’s not what he said at all. So there’s Giuliani either lying about or failing to remember accurately an important fact. So much for objectively deciding who is telling the truth.

GIULIANI: And even Jake Tapper pushed him, like, really hard, I’m talking about Comey. Comey had no answer for why he didn’t say this, even though he had done the same thing for Hillary.

So, you can’t blame the president for feeling, I am not being treated the same way they were.

But, again, it’s the difference between a closed investigation and an open one. I can grasp that as a random citizen with no legal training, so I’m well convinced former prosecutor Giuliani can…so he’s bullshitting.

GIULIANI: I know James Comey. I know the president.

Sorry, Jim, you’re a liar. A disgraceful liar. Every FBI agent in America has his head down because of you. It would have been good for God if God had kept you out of being head of the FBI.

HANNITY: Explain where he lied.

GIULIANI: Well, he lied about his conversation with McCabe. He knew all of McCabe’s conflicts. McCabe should testify against him. He lied about his conversations with the president. He only told the truth when the president said, I made — we know Donald — I’m sorry, Mr. President, he was Donald before.

He lied about the fact that they talked about whether the president was a subject or target, then he immediately changed it. It’s one lie after another.

How does Giuliani know Comey lied about his conversations with the president? Was he in the room? Did he have a wiretap on Comey? Where does he get his certainty?

HANNITY: Rod Rosenstein — everyone forgets when he wrote that recommendation to fire Comey. He said the FBI cannot be reestablished if he stayed at the helm.

GIULIANI: Yeah, why? Because he’s a liar. His conduct of the Hillary Clinton investigation was a total disgrace. If Hillary Clinton had been elected president, he wouldn’t have lasted past day one. We know she would have fired him.

I don’t think she’d deny that today. She was right. We should have fired him. When I say we, I mean the collective we here, day one.

That’s seven times so far he’s called Comey a liar.

HANNITY: Well, wait a minute. And you have a guy who hates Hillary and loves Donald Trump during the interview. That would be the Hillary standard. That’s not going to happen with Robert Mueller.

GIULIANI: We’re not going to get that. Could we accept something less than that? Yes. Could we accept a situation in which they are telling us basically we believe Comey, who is now a pathological liar, as opposed to Donald Trump? Then the answer to that is no.

Eight times.

GIULIANI: Also Comey and McCabe contradicting each other. One of them has to be lying. I mean, I actually think Comey is lying. I think Comey is a big liar than McCabe. McCabe isn’t a situational liar. He’s a much big liar.

So, if this were equal system of justice, they’d all be prosecuted.

Nine ten.

Meanwhile, Jupiter.

NASA has released new images of Jupiter, taken by the Juno Spacecraft. pic.twitter.com/rf9hCLNlcJ

— Blue sign (@BluesignV) May 1, 2018

Mike Pence fancies himself the Voice of Morality in the Trump administration – which is odd since you can’t work for Trump without stepping deliberately into a moral sewer, but anyway he does fancy himself that.

So it is worth noting what Pence, the Trump administration’s righteous man, did in Arizona on Tuesday. According to the Hill’s Jacqueline Thomsen:

Vice President Pence praised former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of contempt of court, as a “tireless champion of … the rule of law” during an event in Arizona on Tuesday.

Pence said at the tax event that he was “honored” by the former sheriff’s attendance, and called Arpaio a “great friend of this president and tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law,” to cheers from the crowd.

A tireless champion of the rule of law who was convicted of violating a federal court order to stop arresting and detaining people for no reason other than his own whim (and the fact that they looked “Mexican” of course). He was convicted of violating a federal court order. That’s not a tireless champion of the rule of law. In Arpaio’s case it’s also a mean racist shit.

Daniel Drezner quotes the National Review:

Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt last summer for willfully violating a federal court order. Specifically, he was convicted of violating an order that he cease arresting and detaining people for whom there was no plausible criminal charge — i.e., the court asked him, pretty please, to stop detaining Mexicans for publicity purposes. Arpaio says he was arresting illegal immigrants, and he may well have been, but it is not a criminal offense simply to be illegally present in the United States. (That is a civil matter.) Until such a time as Congress passes a law making such presence a crime (and delegates enforcement of that federal statute to the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz.), arresting people under color of law for that non-crime isn’t law enforcement — it’s lawlessness.

But Sheriff Joe has a thing for arresting people who haven’t committed any crime. He arrested a Republican critic — the county supervisor — on trumped-up charges in 2008 and ended up handing over $3.5 million of taxpayers’ money in a wrongful-arrest settlement. He tried to bully the mayor of Phoenix in much the same way, demanding phone logs and other records as part of a nonsensical “investigation” designed to silence a critic. In another spectacular abuse of power, Arpaio teamed up with a friendly county attorney and filed a federal lawsuit seeking the federal prosecution of several judges and lawyers — his political enemies — under the RICO organized-crime statute. Arpaio, being Arpaio, held a press conference announcing the investigation, which the federal courts immediately threw out as “patently frivolous.” Millions more taxpayers’ dollars were paid out in settlements.

That’s not The Nation or Mother Jones or American Prospect, it’s National Review. Like Trump, Arpaio is a bad man who does bad things. It’s not political or “partisan”; it’s just the truth.

Originally a comment by Claire on It’s not optional.

My husband and I have been talking about what an interview between Mueller and Trump would look like. If this were literally any other politician, they would answer carefully, with narrow answers, resist the urge to elaborate, and if possible, try to answer the question they want to answer rather than the one they were asked. And if needed, plead the fifth.

I think Trump is constitutionally incapable of all of these things, including pleading the fifth. Because once you plead the fifth, you have to shut up. That requires considerable self-control, because social animals that we are, most people are uncomfortable to sit in silence. Sitting in silence letting suspects fill the room with noise is what good investigators do.

Trump has some of the poorest self-control I’ve ever seen in an adult, and you know he’d be “oh I plead the fifth on that question because you know this a made up story and Comey, what a liar that guy was, he was part of the Deep State… you know the Deep State is working to destroy me because they’re all Democrats and they’re mad because Crooked Hillary should have won, they said I couldn’t get to 270 and boy were they wrong and there’s no collusion because you know, this Russa thing is a hoax and I never pay for hookers I don’t need to do I look like a man who needs hookers…then Putin said I can fix this for you because it’s a rigged system, rigged system that’s what I call it, have you ever heard that term before I came up with it myself I like the sound of it, and you know, this is all a plot by Democrats and your team is full of Democrats…” etc etc ad nauseum.

And Mueller will smile and nod and write everything down.

Fred Wertheimer and Norm Eisen explain very crisply why the two leaders of the House Freedom Caucus have no business trying to impeach Rosenstein.

Throughout our nation’s history, the House has recognized that impeachment power was not intended to be used for political, partisan or ideological purposes.

Yet apparently no one got the word to Republican Reps. Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio. The two leaders of the House Freedom Caucus have threatened Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with impeachment and now, led by Meadows, Freedom Caucus members have actually drafted articles of impeachment against Rosenstein.

His supposed offense? He had the temerity to refuse to throw open Justice Department files related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing criminal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Those two guys who got arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks for doing what white people do all the time? They settled with the city.

Two black men arrested for sitting at a Philadelphia Starbucks without ordering anything settled with the city Wednesday for a symbolic $1 each and a promise from officials to set up a $200,000 program for young entrepreneurs.

The men and their lawyer told The Associated Press the settlement was an effort to make sure something positive came out of the incident.

“We thought long and hard about it and we feel like this is the best way to see that change that we want to see,” said Donte Robinson, one of those arrested. “It’s not a right-now thing that’s good for right now, but I feel like we will see the true change over time.”

They’re young entrepreneurs themselves. I think it’s brilliant jiu-jitsu to turn the degrading treatment they got into opportunities for others. (One hopes Philly won’t focus the program exclusively on young white entrepreneurs.)