Asley Parker at the Post points out that Trump is becoming a pariah. (Not thoroughly enough or fast enough, is my first thought.)

Less than two years into his first term, Trump has often come to occupy the role of pariah — both unwelcome and unwilling to perform the basic rituals and ceremonies of the presidency, from public displays of mourning to cultural ceremonies.

In addition to being pointedly not invited to McCain’s funeral and memorial service later this week — while former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush will both eulogize the Arizona Republican — Trump was quietly asked to stay away from former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral earlier this year. He also opted to skip

Paul Krugman joins the people warning us of how easily it can happen here.

What Freedom House calls illiberalism is on the rise across Eastern Europe. This includes Poland and Hungary, both still members of the European Union, in which democracy as we normally understand it is already dead.

In both countries the ruling parties — Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary — have established regimes that maintain the forms of popular elections, but have destroyed the independence of the judiciary, suppressed freedom of the press, institutionalized large-scale corruption and effectively delegitimized dissent. The result seems likely to be one-party rule for the foreseeable future.

Trump is working hard (if tweeting is working hard) to do all … Read the rest

Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed reports on the Daily Nous “does the word ‘TERF’ belong in an academic journal?” post:

TERF is an acronym meaning “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” While the term has become controversial over time, especially with its often hateful deployment on social media, it originally described a subgroup of feminists who believe that the interests of cisgender women (those who are born with vaginas) don’t necessarily intersect with those of transgender women (primarily those born with penises).

Er, entirely those born with penises, surely.

To some feminists, that notion is obvious: the experience of having lived as male for any period of time matters. But some trans scholars and allies say that notion is in and of

Buon giorno.

That's how you start a Wednesday! Colorful sunrise this morning over the Cascades due to high clouds moving into the area. #WAwx pic.twitter.com/ckNksbegal

— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) August 29, 2018

Adding an even better one.

https://twitter.com/katieboerTV/status/1034813953170259968

And the one from their roof.

https://twitter.com/katieboerTV/status/1034793538070822912… Read the rest

Now have some of the other kind of comments on the Daily Nous piece, the “women have privilege over trans women” kind.

There’s the last coment (comments now being closed), which concludes with:

I’m not usually the one who lobs the “check your privilege” grenade, but in this case, we’re seeing extremely privileged people – upper-middle-class cis academics – casting aspersions on a highly marginalized class – transwomen.

Of course, for “upper-middle-class cis academics” read “women.” The authors of the piece are all women, as well as being PhDs in philosophy. The commenter, I think it’s fair to guess, has no idea whether all or any of them are “middle-class” or not – perhaps they all grew up in … Read the rest

That discussion about use of the word “TERF” at Daily Nous has generated a lot of useful comments – some useful for the horrible clarity with which they spell out that yes, women do indeed have privilege in relation to cis women while the reverse is most definitely not the case, and others for less tooth-grinding reasons.

For a top example of the latter there is Jane Clare Jones’s comment this morning on a thread about what is meant by “oppression” and how/whether it applies to women and/or trans women:

Homophobia is not a form of oppression, it is a form of discrimination, which arises as an adjunct of patriarchal oppression. The same is true of the discrimination against trans

Daaaaamn. More on the David and Aimee Challenor matter:

More thoughts on the #DavidChallenor case. I’ve now read about the Lifetime Ban on any pets being kept in the house, because of the hoarding, chaos, and overcrowding, that resulted in severe neglect and animal cruelty. David had a criminal conviction for this.
I’ve also read the Family Court judgement giving detail on how the children were kept in these exact conditions. Yet, three children were repeatedly failed by our community, and had to stay in the same conditions that disqualified the adults from keeping pets.
The Adult Challenors’ characters become clearer. They don’t come across sympathetically. Any reasonable adult person, upon reading what I’ve read, would have questions about

Oh gee, what was that I was just saying about the cruelties of Catholic “industrial schools” and orphanages toward the children captive in them? Christine Kenneally at BuzzFeed has a big story on the US branch. In spite of all the recent coverage of priestly child abuse, she says, the abuse in orphanages is all but unknown.

It is the history of unrelenting physical and psychological abuse of captive children. Across thousands of miles, across decades, the abuse took eerily similar forms: People who grew up in orphanages said they were made to kneel or stand for hours, sometimes with their arms straight out, sometimes holding their boots or some other item. They were forced to eat their

Trump’s distraction for today:

Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

Uh huh, he’s going to force Google to … Read the rest

Another gerrymander, another no.

A panel of three federal judges held Monday that North Carolina’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to aid Republicans over Democrats and said it may require new districts before the November elections, possibly impacting control of the House.

The judges acknowledged that primary elections have already produced candidates for the 2018 elections but said they were reluctant to let elections take place in congressional districts that courts have twice found violate constitutional standards.

Stubborn in North Carolina, aren’t they.

 … Read the rest

The Guardian ran an excited piece about Aimee Challenor back in early June:

Aimee Challenor has raised her sights since she became a Green party member three years ago. She didn’t think she was suited to politics then. “I’d stopped going out because I was worried about how the world saw me. But politics has been a kind of rehabilitation,” she says. “I was a 17-year-old trans girl in Coventry. I thought I’d deliver leaflets at the general election.”

Far from not suiting politics, she is now standing to be deputy leader of the Green party. Voting takes place in August, when members will also select a new leader, after Caroline Lucas, the party’s first and only MP, announced

A guest post at Daily Nous by Dr. Sophie Allen, Dr. Elizabeth Finneron-Burns, Dr. Jane Clare Jones, Dr. Holly Lawford-Smith, Dr. Mary Leng, Dr. Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, and Dr. Rebecca Simpson:

We write to register in public a complaint with a recent issue of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (PPR). Two papers in this issue, the first by Rachel McKinnon and the second by Jason Stanley, used the term ‘TERF’, which is at worst a slur and at best derogatory. We are extremely concerned about the normalization of this term in academic philosophy, and its effect in reinforcing a hostile climate for debate on an issue of key importance to women…

“TERF” is widely used across online platforms as a way to

Jane Clare Jones on trans activism and intersectional feminism:

As many of you know, there was an act of vandalism by trans activists on an historic building where women were meeting to discuss the GRA proposals.

In Plymouth, on Saturday.

One of the posters the TRAs stuck up was this, which got me thinking (again) about the connection between trans activism and intersectional feminism.

When trans ideology first came on the radar (or my radar) around 2011/12, it came in a kind of trans activism/intersectional feminism pincer movement. This wasn’t an accident. So, my question is: what work is intersectional feminism doing to support trans ideology?

So, first off – CAVEAT. Nothing I’m about to say really has much

Originally a comment by Omar on McCain and Palin.

Despite having intelligence that 80% of the Vietnamese people supported Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh army, US Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy favoured the most unheroic and antidemocratic minority side, leading to a war in which there were about 5 million Vietnamese killed overall, and probably about 15 million injured. So this issue of Trump vs McCain is a hard one.

Does one support Trump, the man McCain calls “Captain Bonespurs” for his Vietnam draft-avoidance on somewhat dubious and debateable medical grounds, or does one support McCain: the man who fought heroically for the totally rotten cause of the murderous neo-colonial puppet regime of the Saigon Mafia? You know, … Read the rest

In UK news:

A man who held a 10-year-old girl captive in his “torture den” attic where he electrocuted her while playing out his sadomasochistic fantasies has been jailed for 22 years.

David Challenor, from Coventry, subjected the child to a campaign of abuse which included tying her from a beam, whipping her and giving her electric shocks.

A court heard how the 50-year-old would dress up as a small girl in adult-sized baby dresses and nappies before carrying out the attacks at his home.

…

Police searched his property and found bondage gear including sex aids, gaffer tape, dummies, a stun gun and ropes hanging from the beam in his dungeon-style attic.

The Green Party has issued … Read the rest

My point exactly.

Much has been said about the contrast between the late John McCain – war veteran, bipartisan statesman, noble truth-teller – and a man who seemed way less likely to become president, Donald Trump.

But as the Arizona senator, like Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt, spent his twilight years raging against the coarsening of civic life, he must have been aware that his legacy would include a decision that helped unleash the very forces he came to despise.

Wednesday marks the 10th anniversary of McCain unveiling Sarah Palin, a say-anything, gun-toting political neophyte, as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election. It was an act of political desperation that left Washington aghast. It delivered a short-term boost

So how is the pope’s visit to Ireland going? Not all that swimmingly.

On the second day of a difficult mission to win back the confidence of Irish Roman Catholics, Pope Francis awoke on Sunday to a bombshell accusation from within his own citadel.

A former top-ranking Vatican official released a 7,000-word letter asserting that the pontiff had known about the abuses of a now-disgraced American prelate, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, years before they became public.

The official, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a conservative critic of Francis and a former apostolic nuncio to the United States, claimed that the pope had failed to punish Cardinal McCarrick, who was suspendedin June after allegations that he had coerced seminarians