Well at least President Shithole has canceled his trip to the UK, knowing how much they hate him over there.

Donald Trump has shelved plans to open the new US embassy in London next month, according to reports.

Concerned about the welcome he would receive in the UK, the President is understood to be sending US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson instead.

…

Mr Trump had been due to come to London to open the new £750m embassy, but was said to have abandoned the idea as he feels unhappy about the scale of the visit and the arrangements made.

He is said to be unhappy about the lack of “bells and whistles” surrounding the event and the fact

The disgust-horror at menstrual blood kills another woman.

KATHMANDU, Nepal — The last time anyone saw Gauri Kumari Bayak alive, she was gathering grass and firewood. Considered impure because she was menstruating, she was about to sleep outside in a cold hut.

She never woke up.

According to the police, Ms. Bayak is the latest victim of a very old tradition in rural Nepal, in which religious Hindus believe that menstruating women are unclean and should be banished from the family home. She was found dead on Monday, apparently having asphyxiated after building a small fire inside the hut to keep warm.

Get outside, woman, with your disgusting shedding of the endometrium that is every human being’s first source … Read the rest

Adam Zyglis… Read the rest

Robert Reich offers some optimism (and a way to make a difference for those of us in the US):

Every time I post about another outrage perpetrated by Trump and his enablers, several of you ask “What can I do?” The answer is to do what hundreds of thousands are already doing – join with others in Indivisible groups to “kick the bums out,” as the old saying goes.

It’s working. Yesterday, one of the most right-wing members of Congress, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA 49), announced he will not seek reelection. Issa is the second California Republican to retire this week. He joins a growing list of GOP House retirements.

One reason for Issa’s – and the other GOP

More on that arrest of a teacher who objected to a pay raise for an administrator.

Deyshia Hargrave previously spoke out against the Vermilion Parish School Board (VPSB) for voting to give the standing superintendent nearly $30,000 raise, which she claimed was a “slap in the face” to hard-working teachers who haven’t seen a boost in pay in years.

…

Since those in attendance at Monday’s board meeting were allowed to comment on superintendent Jerome Puyau’s pay raise, Hargrave chose to make mention of the “serious issue” she had with such action occurring.

“I have a serious issue with a superintendent or any person in a position of leadership getting any type of raise,” Hargrave said before the board

Mei Fong asks how much more are men paid.

About 50 percent, in the BBC journalist Carrie Gracie’s case. Over the weekend, Ms. Gracie quit as the broadcaster’s China editor and announced she was returning to London. “Enough is enough,” she wrote, in an astringent open letter, describing how she discovered last year that the BBC paid two of its four international editors — men, of course — 50 percent more than the female editors.

(I think it was closer to twice as much.)

It says something when it’s considered an advancement for women just to get to the bargaining table and ask for equal pay. Many of us never even get that far.

More than a decade ago,

There’s that teacher in Louisiana who was arrested and handcuffed for asking questions at a school board meeting about why an administrator was getting a raise while teachers hadn’t had a raise in years.

Deyshia Hargrave had a question for the Vermillion Parish School Board: Why was the superintendent getting a pay raise when teachers like her and other school employees hadn’t had one in years?

“I feel like it is a slap in the face of all the teachers, cafeteria workers and any other support staff we have,” she told the board in a public meeting Monday. “We work very hard with very little.”

What happened next might have stayed in the tiny Louisiana town of Abbeville, about 150

A little girl in Pakistan was raped, strangled, and thrown into a dumpster. She was seven.

As her relatives tell it, Zainab’s horrifying last few hours unfolded like this: The child had been staying with her aunt while her parents traveled to Saudi Arabia to perform the umrah pilgrimage. On Thursday, relatives say, she left home for a nearby Koran recital. She never returned.

On Tuesday, police found her body in a dumpster about a mile from her home in Kasur, a city in Punjab province. According to early autopsy reports, Zainab had been raped multiple times and strangled four or five days earlier.

She was seven. Seven. Seven.

The condemnable & horrific rape & murder of little Zainab

Another example of how not to amplify support for your cause: Pensacola Women’s March on Facebook:

Trigger Warning and Content Warning for comments:
Transphobia, Cissexism, Racism, mention of Sexual Assault, Genital Mutilation, Misogyny and Trans-Misogyny.

The Pink P*ssy Hats represent a very concentrated and thus, exclusionary sect of feminism that ignores, neglects, and ultimately harms the fight for global women’s liberation. The entire concept is based around the idea of biological essentialism and shared womanhood (Mia McKenzie, Black Girl Dangerous): two incorrect ideas that women are all on the same level despite conflicting classes, races, sexualities, etc. and are also bound by “the power of the vagina”. This is a very popular concept developed and expanded upon during the

Bien sûr, c’est normal. There are Christina Hoff Sommerses and Ella Whelans in France too, and they join their anglophone sisters in saying this has gone too far.

Just one day after Hollywood offered a show of support for the #MeToo movement on the Golden Globes red carpet and stage, a famous actress on the other side of the Atlantic lent her name to a public letter denouncing the movement, as well as its French counterpart, #Balancetonporc, or “Expose Your Pig.”

Catherine Deneuve joined more than 100 other Frenchwomen in entertainment, publishing and academic fields Tuesday in the pages of the newspaper Le Monde and on its website in arguing that the two movements, in which women

Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on Spiked says solidarity is the work of the devil.

That is, equality was won by was won by ordinary women standing up for themselves one at a time and separately and without conferring or joining forces in any way whatsoever. Yeah! No need for solidarity, no need to organize, no need for campaigns, just each woman square her shoulders and be as great as she can be.

This is the story conservative America tells itself over and over again about how equal rights were fought for.

I grew up hearing that Rosa Parks was really tired one day after a hard day’s work, so she refused to give up her seat on … Read the rest

David Brooks being even more willfully wrong and middleminded than usual.

Let me start with three inconvenient observations, based on dozens of conversations around Washington over the past year:

That is, let him start with congratulating himself for Going Against the Tide, for Thinking For Himself, for Not Following the Herd.

First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by.

Are.you.fucking.kidding.

If they’re going there to have a meeting with … Read the rest