Clinton: Donald Trump says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese…
Trump: <interrupting> I NEVER SAID THAT
Oh rilly? Jim provided the screenshot:
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
11/6/12 1:15 PM
He said it.
Trump lies like a rug.
The story of how Trump treated Alicia Machado is truly ugly. Janell Ross reported on it today in the Washington Post:
The Clinton campaign viewed Machado’s experience with Trump behavior as so damning that Monday night, the campaign released a new commercial — almost a short documentary — featuring Machado. Speaking in Spanish, Machado described Trump as a man filled with grudges, racism and frightening anger, a man who contributing to her struggle with an eating disorder and, in keeping with another Trump critique Clinton raised on the debate stage, the owner of the pageant which did not pay her what she was due under the terms of her contract.
He defended his non-payment of contractors and others during … Read the rest
Trump kept up a running commentary while Clinton was speaking, although he seldom wrested the floor from her. https://t.co/loX3erQrYw pic.twitter.com/HoHf2ib0Qp
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) September 27, 2016
Ezra Klein notes the coherence gap between Clinton and Trump, and what it means.
Of course, it’s obvious what it means. You couldn’t miss it. It rose off the debate like steam. Clinton has the skills needed for this job, and Trump does not. Trump does not remotely have those skills – not even a little bit. He doesn’t have truncated versions of those skills, he has their opposites. He doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s talking about.
… Read the restTrump did his best to be fair. He interrupted Clinton 25 times in the debate’s first 26 minutes. He talked over both her and moderator Lester Holt with ease. But the show of dominance quickly ran into a
Then there’s Trump’s attitude to women.
At the end of Monday night’s presidential debate, Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of taunting one of his former Miss Universe contestants about her weight.
Clinton said the Republican nominee’s criticisms of Alicia Machado, a Venezuelan who won the Miss Universe contest in 1996, was “one of the worst things he said” about women. “He called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina.”
It’s a wonder he didn’t make her clean his toilets.
… Read the restWhile Trump appeared to dispute Clinton’s accusation on the debate stage, he called into Fox and Friends Tuesday morning and once again called Machado fat.
“I know that person. That person was a
Trump says they tampered with his microphone.
… Read the rest“I had a problem with a microphone that didn’t work,” he said on “Fox and Friends.” “My microphone was terrible. I wonder, was it set up that way on purpose? My microphone, in the room they couldn’t hear me, you know, it was going on and off. Which isn’t exactly great. I wonder if it was set up that way, but it was terrible.”
“It was on and off, and it was much lower than hers. I don’t want to believe in conspiracy theories, of course, but it was much lower than hers and it was crackling, and she didn’t have that problem,” he added. “That to me was a bad problem,
Can I watch this thing? I don’t know. It will be torture.
Here’s one place to watch it: ABC on Facebook Live.
If we don’t see each other again…it was a good ride.… Read the rest
Protecting your right to do something, doesn’t mean I think you’re right to do it. Don’t ban the hijab, but don’t exoticise or glamourise it either. The#RegressiveLeft‘s pandering to conservative Islam has become so entrenched that Playboy magazine just featured a hijabi model, unironically billed as a symbol of an ‘independent woman’, a ‘Renegade’.
Wearing the hijab does not make a woman a symbol of an independent woman. On the contrary, it makes her a symbol of a dependent, submissive, obedient woman, owned by men and dressed according to the dictates of clerical men.
God damn. Sometimes you just have to wonder…Do they have blackouts between words, or what? What can explain a grotesque juxtaposition like this in an article by Phil Torres asking if new atheism is irrelevant?
… Read the restTo this day — 12 years after the movement was inaugurated by Sam Harris’ compelling book The End of Faith — new atheism remains dominated by white men, even though women comprise 44 percent of the “religiously unaffiliated” demographic in the contemporary United States.
Despite these shortcomings, I would argue that new atheism — led by luminaries such as Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Boghossian — is not only more important today than 12 years ago, but that it could
Another item for blasphemy week – except of course it’s blasphemy week every minute, every second.
A self-proclaimed atheist youth was arrested in Indian city of Kolkata for ‘hurting religious feelings’ after he re-posted a critique of Islam on Facebook.
Tarak Biswas, 32, reportedly routinely criticised several religions on the social media, evoking strong reactions and sparking debate. The youth, however, was held after he re-posted the material relating to Islam from another website.
People ought to be free to criticize religion. Religion claims huge power over people, so we have to be able to dissent from it. But of course part of the huge power religion claims over us is the power to prevent us from dissenting from it, … Read the rest
A petition signed by more than 14,000 Saudi women calling for an end to the country’s male guardianship system is being handed to the government.
Women must have the consent of a male guardian to travel abroad, and often need permission to work or study.
Support for the first large-scale campaign on the issue grew online in response to a trending Twitter hashtag.
I’m sure the government will be very conscientious about exactly how it cuts the petition into strips.
… Read the restMany workplaces and universities also demand a guardian’s consent for female employees and students, although it is not legally required.
Renting a flat, undergoing hospital treatment or filing a legal claim often also require a male guardian’s
CFI is throwing a dissent party all week in honor of blasphemy day Friday.
… Read the restThis week, let’s take a stand for the right to question and criticize ideas and beliefs, and demand an end to the attacks and arrests of those who exercise that right.
International Blasphemy Rights Day is this Friday, September 30, and in the days leading up, we invite you to be a part of the fight for this most fundamental of human rights. On Friday we’ll make a very important announcement to help us do even more.
In too many countries around the world, criticizing religion is illegal. We’ve seen the consequences of these laws too many times — when a tweet or a post
.@newtgingrich A former professor of history, reduced to sneering at knowledge of facts. How dignified.
—1) (@Popehat) September 25, 2016
Newt Gingrich: Clinton is a fox who knows many things you can fact check. Trump is a hedgehog who knows one very big thing: We need change
Popehat: A former professor of history, reduced to sneering at knowledge of facts. How dignified.
Furthermore, this “one big thing: we need change” item – come on. We always “need change.” There are always countless things large and small that need alteration, so saying that is empty. Of course we need change; that’s not one big thing, it’s just a pointless truism.
In August the Clarion Project (a contentious source) published the cartoon that Nahed Hattar posted on Facebook, with a translation of the dialogue:
The cartoon is translated below by Clarion Project Arabic Affairs Analyst Anwar el-Iraqi.
In Green: In paradise…
Allah: “May your evening be joyous, Abu Saleh, do you need anything?”
Jihadist: “Yes Lord, bring me the glass of wine from other there and tell Jibril [the Angel Gabriel] to bring me some cashews. After that send me an eternal servant to clean the floor and take the empty plates with you.”
Jihadist continues: “Don’t forget to put a door on the tent so that you knock before you enter next time, your gloriousness.”
He was being … Read the rest
Paul blogs Katha Pollitt’s conversation with Annie Laurie Gaylor:
… Read the rest“We have to start talking about abortion as a normal part of women’s lives,” Pollitt told us. “It always has been.” And in fact, even religions have not been, and are not always, tied to the notion that a fertilized egg is equivalent to a full person. She talked about the “wiggle room” that Southern Baptists allow for abortion, and how in Judaism, the woman is the “first person” of priority when there is a question of primacy.
A major stumbling block when it comes to abortion is the ingrained perception of women’s bodies as somehow being community property. Part of this is exacerbated by what Pollitt called the “baby-fication”
A prominent Jordanian writer, who was on trial for sharing a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam, has been shot dead outside a court in Amman where he was due to appear.
Nahed Hattar, 56, was charged with inciting sectarian strife and insulting Islam after posting the cartoon on Facebook this year.
The cartoon, entitled The God of Daesh (Isis), depicted an Isis militant sitting next to two women and asking God to bring him a drink.
Hattar was arrested in August and released on bail early this month. On Sunday, he was shot in the head three times as he arrived for a hearing.
Because he shared a cartoon deemed “offensive” to Islam – to Islam, which … Read the rest
Originally a comment by iknklast on If not at a Center for Ethics, then where?
The school where I did my masters slipped in my mind when they caved to the demand of a donor that they censor an art exhibit. Students being told their art couldn’t be hung because it offended someone who walked through the building with their nose in the air, holding a fistful of cash in one hand and the leash of the university administration in the other. What lessons do those students learn? They learn that they will need to conform to a lifeless, commercial art if they want the chance to be seen, to work in the field they love.
I watched our local … Read the rest
Paul reports that the panel discussion on free speech and safe spaces was…lively.
Thoroughly opposing the notion of safe spaces was Maryam Namazie, forcefully declaring that the rise of safe spaces is due almost entirely to identity politics, and that they are really a form of censorship. “Universities should be unsafe spaces for ideas you might not be comfortable with,” she said, arguing that identity politics have a homogenizing effect in marginalized communities, stifling dissent from within.
Twitter featured a lot of strong feeling on this one.
… Read the restMore clarity about the lines of disagreement emerged when the discussion addressed the dis-invitation of certain speakers, something Namazie has had first hand experience with. Namazie and Haider advocated for protest as a
One more Fidalgo post for now: Wendy Kaminer on free speech.
A free-speech stalwart herself, authoring a magazine piece on atheism as “the last taboo” that was formative to this writer, Kaminer tells this conference full of the irreligious that free speech and freedom of and from religion are “inextricably linked,” and warns that there exists now there is a “progressive retreat from free speech.”
Yes about that magazine piece; same here. I’ve admired Kaminer’s writing for decades. I sometimes disagree with her, but I always see her point.
… Read the restIt’s an extremely touchy issue here, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Straightaway, it was clear that some folks in attendance were in full agreement with Kaminer, and others were
Another talk courtesy of Paul: Gulalai Ismail, Founder and Chairperson of Aware Girls…which she established at the age of 16. I learned of her the day Malala was shot, and we’ve been social media-friendly ever since. She’s wonderful.
… Read the restShe particularly highlighted Pakistan’s hostility to women, which she sees as a direct product of its rejection of free expression and secularism in favor of the Islamisation of society. Dr. Ismail discussed the Council of Islamic Ideology, which advises and guides official parliamentary legislation based on fundamentalist religious beliefs. It recently pushed for the rejection of a law written protect women from domestic abuse, something that seems like an obvious good.
Not to them. Instead they offered a new version, allowing
