Sigh.

NARRATOR: There are in fact no "heads of countries" calling asking why Sen. Schumer is not approving "otherwise approved Ambassadors." The heads of other countries know that McConnell, not Schumer, is majority leader, and that there is only a 50-vote threshold for confirmations. https://t.co/R9RBbfP7aG

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 31, 2018

… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/DeneMiles/status/1079797266603335680… Read the rest

It seems Louis CK is back, and Matthew Dessem at Slate has heard the bootlegged tape.

And what he’s been up to, judging from the material, is bemoaning the money he lost, fuming over young people and political correctness, and writing some really killer jokes about the respective penis sizes of various ethnic groups. It’s not just that it’s not funny: it’s positively sickening. Here, for example, is the way C.K. ends a bit about visiting his doctor (described earlier in the joke as old, and Jewish, and touchy-feely):

And he said, “You need to stop eating ice cream.” I said, “You need to go fuck yourself. And don’t ever touch me again, you old faggot. You old fucking

This isn’t particularly terrible in the great scheme of things, but…

…but it irritates.

I have a couple of minor resolutions for 2019 (draw more, cook more) but my major one is to understand my own gender identity and expression better. If that means nails and dresses, fabulous; if something else, I'm excited to find out.

— Josh Spero (@joshspero) December 30, 2018

Why does it irritate? The public announcement of plans for self-absorption, for one thing. “My major resolution for 2019 is to spend more time contemplating the glory of me.” That and the fact that it’s presented as right-on and enlightened. That, to my mind, is one of the most glaring problems with the ideology of transitude: the … Read the rest

Ah I found the source of the Eureka march story.

HERE IT IS ON FACEBOOK

December 28 at 9:25 AM

The below PSA has just been released. Thank you to the women and men who helped make this decision.

Humboldt County organizers and supporters of the annual Women’s March have decided to not hold a rally in Eureka on January 19th. This decision was made after many conversations between local social-change organizers and supporters of the march.

The local organizers are continuing to meet and discuss how to broaden representation in the organizing committee to create an event that represents and supports peoples who live here in Humboldt. Up to this point, the participants have been overwhelmingly white, lacking representation

This Eureka Women’s March story is starting to piss me off, because it’s broken out of the far-right enclave now but I still can’t find a primary source – neither the Facebook group nor the putative press release.

The Washington Post for instance – it just repeats the reporting without linking to the sources it cites.

Organizers of the 2019 Eureka Women’s March, originally scheduled for Jan. 19, said in a statement that the decision came after numerous conversations with leading local activists and supporters of the march.

“Up to this point, the participants have been overwhelmingly white, lacking representation from several perspectives in our community,” the Facebook statement read. “Instead of pushing forward with crucial voices absent, the

Peter Beinart says the authoritarian nationalist wave has one commonality:

[B]esides their hostility to liberal democracy, the right-wing autocrats taking power across the world share one big thing, which often goes unrecognized in the U.S.: They all want to subordinate women.

To understand global Trumpism, argues Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist at Texas A&M, it’s vital to remember that for most of human history, leaders and their male subjects forged a social contract: “Men agreed to be ruled by other men in return for all men ruling over women.” This political hierarchy appeared natural—as natural as adults ruling children—because it mirrored the hierarchy of the home. Thus, for millennia, men, and many women, have associated male dominance with

Errr…what?

News from northern California:

The organizers of the annual Women’s March have decided not to hold a rally in Eureka on Jan. 19, as previously planned, because they say participants do not represent the diversity of the area.

Excuse me? How can they possibly know that? People at a march can just show up, and the organizers can’t know in advance how “diverse” they are or aren’t.

“This decision was made after many conversations between local social-change organizers and supporters of the march,” organizers said in a press release.

They said organizers will continue to meet and discuss how to broaden representation to create an event that represents Humboldt County.

“Up to this point, the participants have

People tried hard to de-platform Caroline Norma but they didn’t quite get there.

Five days before I was scheduled to speak at a conference on Historical Materialism at the University of Sydney, I received an email from the organizers, explaining that they had refunded my registration fee and struck me from the conference program. They told me that comments I’d made in an online opinion piece three years earlier made my attendance inconsistent with “the commitment of the Historical Materialism Sydney conference organizers to creating an inclusive space for people with diverse gender identities.” In the greatest of ironies, my piece had criticized leftists for playing wedge politics in order to purge radical feminists from progressive circles. The conference was

Do women actually act like this? I don’t mean aren’t all women naturally gentle and benevolent at all times, because of course we’re not, but do we act like this? In my experience no, we don’t, not ever, because we can’t. We just can’t. We wouldn’t get away with it, it wouldn’t work, no one would put up with it for a second, no one would be intimidated by it, no one would keep saying “I apologize, ma’am,” no one would just stand there while we kicked a display to the floor.

Men, though? Even some men who are not bad guys, but…they nevertheless let themselves lose their temper that way, and shout that way, and intimidate everyone in sight … Read the rest

Some people have a very strange idea of “morality.” The BBC reports:

A female Islamic State group member accused of letting a five-year-old girl die of thirst in scorching sunlight is facing war crimes charges in Germany.

The 27-year-old German, identified as Jennifer W, and her husband bought the child as a house “slave” in the IS-occupied Iraqi city of Mosul 2015.

Her husband chained the girl up outside after she fell ill and Jennifer W did nothing to save her, prosecutors say.

…

The five-year-old girl was among a group of prisoners-of-war when Jennifer W and her husband bought her.

German media say the child may have been a member of the Yazidi minority, many of whom were

The New Yorker posts a cartoon by Emily Flake on Facebook.

Our old friend the intersection between god and Santa again…but many commenters instead saw anti-Semitism.

–I agree this smacks of Anti-Semitism. At the very least a typically erroneous Christian stereotype of Jewish scripture.

–This is antisemitic. And it’s sparking hateful comments.

–This would be funny, if it wasn’t anti-semitic!

–That feels really antisemitic. And not funny.

–One anti-semetism from your increasing pathetic magazine. Shame on you..

Etc. There’s even a whole essay on it at Religion News Service!

The idea of an “Old Testament Santa” is anti-Judaism 101.

First of all, the very term “Old Testament.”

“Old Testament” is an unconscious piece of anti-Judaism. “Testament” means “covenant.”

To say