Zinnia Jones showing the usual empathy for women and girls:
Right up there with Hannah Mouncey in solidarity with girls and women.… Read the rest
It just is
Sep 9th, 2018 9:59 am | By Ophelia BensonThe genius of Dave Rubin:
Dave Rubin goes full Dinesh D'Souza, says Progressives are the real racists because it "actually is just true, it just is". pic.twitter.com/BAJ4DVnrUY
— IDW Misrepresenter (@aiizavva) September 8, 2018
The racist ideas of the day are not coming from conservatives and libertarians, they’re really not, and they’re certainly not coming from classical liberals. They’re coming from the progressives, that actually is just true, it just is.
Mmhm. Sam Harris insisting that Charles Murray was and is right that brown people are stupid is not a racist idea of the day, fer sher.… Read the rest
It was you, Donnie
Sep 9th, 2018 9:44 am | By Ophelia BensonTrump and his thugs are pretending to think the anonymous “hero” is a security threat.
“We’ll find out if there was criminal activity involved,” vice-president Mike Pence told Fox News Sunday. “I think the president’s concern is that this individual may have responsibilities in the area of national security.”
Don’t be schewpid, of course it’s not. Trump’s concern is Trump.
Pence was echoed by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union as the hunt for the author continued.
“There could be a national security risk at hand,” she warned. “It depends on what else has been divulged by this individual … Anybody who would do this, you don’t know what else they’re saying.”
Please. The … Read the rest
Trump should be shackled
Sep 8th, 2018 5:59 pm | By Ophelia BensonIs Trump wrong in the head? Yes, Trump is wrong in the head. Woodward’s book says so, anomynous really anomynous I mean anonymous says so, mental health experts say so.
None of this is a surprise to those of us who, 18 months ago, put together our own public service book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”
My focus as the volume’s editor was on Trump’s dangerousness because of my area of expertise in violence prevention. Approaching violence as a public health issue, I have consulted with governments and international organizations, in addition to 20 years of engaging in the individual assessment and treatment of violent offenders.
All … Read the rest
Oops, that was the carotid artery
Sep 8th, 2018 5:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonA man has been jailed for six years for killing a woman he stabbed in the throat during a “bizarre and violent” sex game.
Jason Gaskell severed 21-year-old Laura Huteson’s jugular vein and carotid artery with a knife while having sex at his home in Hull on 27 February.
As one does. You know how it is – you get warmed up, everybody’s panting like a dog, and out comes the knife.
… Read the rest“It appears you harboured a desire for, and regularly put into practice, a particularly extreme form of sexual activity in that you enjoyed sadomasochism whereby you held the throats of sexual partners very tightly and regularly used a knife in the midst
Kavanaugh lied under oath
Sep 8th, 2018 10:41 am | By Ophelia BensonAt Slate, Lisa Graves reports that Brett Kavanaugh received stolen emails and lied about it under oath.
… Read the restMuch of Washington has spent the week focusing on whether Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. After the revelations of his confirmation hearings, the better question is whether he should be impeached from the federal judiciary.
I do not raise that question lightly, but I am certain it must be raised.
Newly released emails show that while he was working to move through President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in the early 2000s, Kavanaugh received confidential memos, letters, and talking points of Democratic staffers stolen by GOP Senate aide Manuel Miranda. That includes research and talking points Miranda
Dear Sirs: please fire all the women
Sep 8th, 2018 9:35 am | By Ophelia Benson
So. Lucy Bannerman in the Times (the one in London):
A transgender lecturer orchestrated a smear campaign against academics across the UK in which universities were described as dangerous and accused of “hate crime” if they refused to accept activists’ views that biological males can be women, it can be revealed.
Natacha Kennedy, a researcher at Goldsmiths University of London who is also understood to work there under the name Mark Hellen, faces accusations of a “ludicrous” assault on academic freedom after she invited thousands of members of a closed Facebook group to draw up and circulate a list shaming academics who disagreed with campaigners’ theories on gender.
In other words this is a trans woman. Isn’t it interesting that … Read the rest
Every woman out there
Sep 7th, 2018 5:19 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe state of this.
https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1036362423370797056
If you didn’t know better, you’d look at the picture and think the “not ok” bit was the huge man playing football on a women’s team…but no, that’s not what Hannah Mouncey means at all. What Hannah Mouncey means is “not ok” is excluding huge men from playing football on women’s teams. It’s not ok to say “No, you can’t endanger women by playing on their teams when you’re built like a god damn tank.”
Risking the women’s broken bones, concussions, smashed faces – that’s perfectly fine, and it’s progressive, and it’s top intersectional.
What a selfish pig, and proud of it. It’s astounding.… Read the rest
That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work
Sep 7th, 2018 3:27 pm | By Ophelia BensonObama gave a talk at the University of Illinois today. The Atlantic has the full transcript.
… Read the restI’m here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, need to determine just who it is that we are, just what it is that we stand for. And as a fellow citizen, not as an ex-president but as a fellow citizen, I am here to deliver a simple message, and that is that you need to vote because our democracy depends on it.
Now some of you may think I’m exaggerating when I say this November’s elections are more important than any I can remember in my lifetime. I know
Opining
Sep 7th, 2018 12:02 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump still thinks it’s illegal to criticize him.
President Donald Trump said Friday he wanted Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation into who authored the explosive anonymous opinion article published in The New York Times earlier this week.
“Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was, because I really believe it’s national security,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Yeah no that’s not a reason. That “because” isn’t. What Donald Trump “really believes” ≠ the law.
… Read the restIt’s not clear what national security reasons would prompt a Department of Justice investigation. It is not a crime to leak information that is not classified.
Asked for clarification whether the president was directing Sessions to investigate
The corrupt bargain Washington Republicans have made
Sep 7th, 2018 11:38 am | By Ophelia BensonMichelle Goldberg at the Times notes how Kavanaugh evaded all questions about whether he will protect Trump from law enforcement when he is on the Supreme Court, and notes that unless two Republicans suddenly discover a conscience he’ll soon be on the Court.
… Read the restHe will owe his elevation to Trump, who is in effect an unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign finance crime that helped him achieve his minority victory. There’s every reason to believe that Kavanaugh will shield the president from accountability or restraints on his power. Yet even Republicans who think Trump is a menace are desperate to confirm his judicial pick.
What we have here, in miniature, is the corrupt bargain Washington Republicans have made with a president
Kavanaugh wouldn’t say
Sep 7th, 2018 10:36 am | By Ophelia BensonKavanaugh is being very deferential to Trump.
Justice Neil Gorsuch called President Trump’s personal attacks on federal judges “demoralizing” during his confirmation hearing last year. “When someone criticizes the honesty, the integrity or the motives of a federal judge, I find that disheartening,” Gorsuch said, adding: “I’ve gone as far as I can go ethically.”
Not very far, but far enough for Trump to fly into a rage and talk about withdrawing the nomination. (He had to be talked out of it.) Kavanaugh is being way more prudent.
… Read the restThe president’s second nominee for the Supreme Court demurred, for example, when asked whether it was appropriate for Trump to say that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “mind is shot
Dude’s a symptom
Sep 7th, 2018 10:19 am | By Ophelia BensonFormer President Obama on Friday delivered a blistering criticism of the political tactics of his successor President Trump, saying he had built on the fears of the powerful as they look to diminishing importance in a rapidly changing nation.
“It did not start with Donald Trump,” Obama said during a noon speech at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “He is a symptom not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years, the fear and anger that’s rooted in our past.”
Naturally; Trump isn’t intelligent enough to originate anything. But by god he does have a talent for connecting with The Evil in people, and drawing it out and … Read the rest
Apparently Giuliani is the boss of everything
Sep 6th, 2018 5:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonGiuliani says Trump will not answer questions. Mind you he’s been saying that for weeks, but maybe now he’s saying it for real no backsies.
President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president’s attorneys told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said questions about obstruction of justice were a “no-go.”
Because look: he stole the election fair and square and now he’s in there and you can’t do a damn thing about it so ha.
… Read the restGiuliani’s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview
Flores? Who’s that? Some illegal?
Sep 6th, 2018 2:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonJust in case you were worried that the Trump mob is too busy looking for moles to keep on torturing people they don’t like – worry no more: they’re still at it.
… Read the restThe Trump administration announced a new rule Thursday that would allow immigrant children with their parents to be held in detention indefinitely, upending a ban on indefinite detention that has been in place for 20 years.
The rule, proposed by the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, goes into effect in 60 days and will allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to keep children with their mothers in detention facilities while their cases for asylum play out in court.
…
A DHS official speaking
Eat the poor
Sep 6th, 2018 12:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is what those “unsung heroes” who are secretly trying to keep Trump from smashing all the porcelain are actually doing: giving huge tax cuts to billionaires while seeing to it that poor people are thrown out of the food stamps program. Please tell us more about how noble and courageous they are.
… Read the restNearly two million low-income Americans, including 469,000 households with young children, would be stripped of benefits under the House version of the farm bill being considered this week by congressional negotiators, according to an analysis by a nonpartisan research firm.
The bill, a multiyear spending measure that narrowly passed the House in June, includes a proposal to reformulate income and expense criteria for the 42 million
Unwavering faith
Sep 6th, 2018 11:48 am | By Ophelia BensonAhh good, he still has support from a friend.
Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims “unwavering faith in President Trump.” Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2018
Catch 22 22 22 22
Sep 6th, 2018 11:15 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Democrats at the Kavanaugh hearing are throwing down.
… Read the restOn Day 1, Senate Democrats tried to stop the hearing before it even started. On Day 3, they went into full-on revolt: One by one, starting with Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), they threatened to release confidential documents about President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Brett M. Kavanaugh.
“I am going to release the email about racial profiling, and I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate,” he said. Within the hour, Booker did just that.
Other Democratic senators soon joined in, threatening to release confidential emails and documents from Kavanaugh’s time as a lawyer in the George W. Bush White House. Senate Minority Leader Charles E.
“If you want to know who this gutless loser is”
Sep 6th, 2018 11:03 am | By Ophelia BensonSarah Sanders ventriloquising the lunatic she works for:
For those of you asking for the identity of the anonymous coward: pic.twitter.com/RpWYPHa6To
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) September 6, 2018
The media’s wild obsession with the identity of the anonymous coward is recklessly tarnishing the reputation of thousands of great Americans who proudly serve our country and work for President Trump. Stop. If you want to know who this gutless loser is, call the opinion desk of the failing NYT at 212-556-1234 and ask them. They are the only ones complicit in this deceitful act. We stand united together and fully support our President Donald J. Trump.
We might as well be brawling in a bar.… Read the rest
