In a public box

Nov 13th, 2019 9:16 am | By

Day one of the impeachment hearings.

I’ve just realized, partly because of something Schiff said in his opening statement and partly because/while reading in the Guardian’s live coverage

Echoing his closed-door testimony, Bill Taylor said in his opening statement that he was told “everything” Ukraine sought, including a White House visit and the frozen military aid, was tied to a public announcement of investigations into Joe Biden and the 2016 election.

…that all this and more is going to come out and be nailed down and in the record, and if then nothing happens, we’ll be on the record as knowing all this and nailing it down and then saying no problem.

I know that’s obvious, we’ve all known that … Read the rest



Padding the CV

Nov 12th, 2019 5:42 pm | By

Somebody with a high-up job at the State Department got the job by telling a bunch of whoppers.

A senior Trump administration official has embellished her résumé with misleading claims about her professional background — even creating a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it — raising questions about her qualifications to hold a top position at the State Department.

An NBC News investigation found that Mina Chang, the deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, has inflated her educational achievements and exaggerated the scope of her nonprofit’s work.

Chang, who assumed her post in April, also invented a role on a U.N. panel, claimed she had addressed both the

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He’s disloyal!

Nov 12th, 2019 4:25 pm | By

Trump still thinks working in his administration=working for him.

President Trump has discussed dismissing the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, because Mr. Atkinson reported a whistle-blower’s complaint about Mr. Trump’s interactions with Ukraine to Congress after concluding it was credible, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

He’s been whining about the subject for weeks.

The president has said he does not understand why Mr. Atkinson shared the complaint, which outlined how Mr. Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals at the same time he was withholding military aid from the country. He has said he believes Mr. Atkinson, whom he appointed in 2017, has been disloyal, one of the people said.

In … Read the rest



Ask me my sign

Nov 12th, 2019 4:03 pm | By

T-Mobile has big news for us – not an object or plan we might to give them money for, but an employee relations story.

Another Way to #BeYou: T-Mobile Brings Gender Pronouns to Retail Stores

At T-Mobile, #BeYou has become an employee mantra — so much so that it’s displayed on magenta-painted walls in company hallways around the country.

Really? How awful. Seriously. How gorge-risingly eye-rollingly horrible. Work is work, it’s not a therapy session and it’s not a theater for narcissism. Be You on your own time; at work pay attention to Not-You.

But it’s more than just a catchphrase. It’s representative of the company’s longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion that is truly part of its DNA. With

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A whole switch in ideology

Nov 12th, 2019 11:02 am | By

Another move – finally!! – to give men a little attention for a change.

For the first time in its four-decade history, Dunedin’s Rape Crisis centre will work with sexual abuse victims of all genders.

The shift is part of a major overhaul of the organisation, which also includes changing its name to the Otepoti Collective Against Sexual Abuse (OCASA).

The move has been met with cautious optimism by the head of a New Zealand male survivors group, who said the more support organisations could work together, the better.

OCASA development co-ordinator Angelo Libeau said the historically women-only organisation had changed its constitution to work with people of all genders.

Good, because why should everything be about women all … Read the rest



Why Stephen Miller is trending

Nov 12th, 2019 10:54 am | By

In We already knew this but more so news, the SPLC has a new report on just how racist Stephen Miller is.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller shaped the 2016 election coverage of the hard right-wing website Breitbart with material drawn from prominent white nationalists, Islamophobes, and far-right websites, according to a new investigative report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Miller also railed against those wishing to remove Confederate monuments and flags from public display in the wake of Dylann Roof’s murderous 2015 attack on a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and praised America’s early 20th-century race-based, restrictionist immigration policies.

There’s this trove of emails, see.

The SPLC story is based largely on emails provided by

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Peak stupid

Nov 12th, 2019 9:38 am | By

The University and College Union – UCU – in the UK has issued a position on trans inclusion [pdf].

It doesn’t start well.

UCU has a long history (from predecessor unions) of enabling members to self-identify whether that is being black, disabled, LGBT+ or women.

Oh really? I don’t believe that. UCU members can just “self-identify” as black or disabled even if they’re obviously…not? They can “self-identify” as lesbian or gay even if their sex lives and love lives are in fact entirely straight?

I don’t believe a word of that. And it’s the first sentence, so there you go.

UCU women’s conference passed an advisory motion in 2017.

Women’s conference reaffirms:

That our women’s structures within the union belong

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Women’s sports are prospering so it’s time to give them to men

Nov 11th, 2019 4:47 pm | By

Outsports, self-described as “the leader in LGBTQ sports news & commentary for athletes, coaches & fans,” tweets:

For decades, women’s sports have existed to create opportunities for cis women and non-binary athletes. It’s finally time to include trans women in the growth and prosperity of women’s sports. Let’s have that conversation.

For decades, women’s sports have existed to create opportunities for women – but not all that many decades, and it took a fierce struggle, and the struggle for funding and coverage and fairness continues. Yes, women’s and girls’ sports exist to create opportunities for women and girls to play sports , and why shouldn’t they? That was the whole point, remember? Girls didn’t get that much opportunity, and … Read the rest



If you understand

Nov 11th, 2019 12:01 pm | By

A wisdom tweet:

I think the sentence “cis people shouldn’t be in charge of trans people’s healthcare” is just as true as “men shouldn’t be in charge of women’s healthcare”. If you understand why one is true, take some time to realise that it’s the same reasons that make the other true.

Well let’s slow down. Is the one true? Is it a general truth that “men shouldn’t be in charge of women’s healthcare”? In what sense of “in charge”? Setting policy, or administering policy that is already in place? Is it true that no men should be part of an administration that includes women’s health? My answer would be no. I think women should be involved, certainly, but … Read the rest



Who, us?

Nov 11th, 2019 11:37 am | By

Grifter Princess Ivanka has the gall to say her crime family is not profiting from Donnie’s presidency.

Ivanka Trump brushed off criticism that her family has profited off the presidency and said Friday a big difference between her family and Democrat Joe Biden’s is that President Donald Trump amassed his fortune before he entered politics while Biden’s wealth is “derivative” of his time in office…

Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser, pushed back against nearly three years of ethics complaints and lawsuits accusing the Trumps of trying to turn the presidency to their financial advantage.

His hotel a short walk from the White House? The one where Barr throws expensive parties? And foreign governments book stays? His golf course in … Read the rest



Lev who??

Nov 11th, 2019 10:24 am | By

The NY Times reports:

Not long before the Ukrainian president was inaugurated in May, an associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s journeyed to Kiev to deliver a warning to the country’s new leadership, a lawyer for the associate said.

The associate, Lev Parnas, told a representative of the incoming government that it had to announce an investigation into Mr. Trump’s political rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and his son, or else Vice President Mike Pence would not attend the swearing-in of the new president, and the United States would freeze aid, the lawyer said.

The claim by Mr. Parnas, who is preparing to share his account with impeachment investigators, challenges the narrative of events from Mr. Trump and Ukrainian officials

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Not just a horse

Nov 11th, 2019 9:56 am | By

It seems Don Junior was booed out of his own book event because he’s…not right-wing enough? Jeez, conservatives are so easily triggered. Pass me a hanky.

Donald Trump Jr. apparently failed to grasp the hypocrisy in refusing to answer questions for an event to promote his new book, Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us, which is dedicated to mocking liberals and their so-called political correctness.

But the president’s eldest son’s missteps were not lost on the audience at UCLA on Sunday, where his own supporters, frustrated with the lack of a Q&A opportunity, filled the event with incessant booing.

So then his girlfriend, a former Fox “News” performer, taunted them with not being … Read the rest



The right of men to access women’s bodies

Nov 11th, 2019 8:55 am | By

Julie Bindel wrote about Sophie Wilson and Spearmint Rhino a week ago, starting from the humiliation of Labour under Corbyn:

Sophie Wilson, a 23-year-old Sheffield councillor who was last week selected as Jeremy Corbyn’s candidate for Rother Valley, has campaigned against feminists trying to close a notorious club, and for the “right” of women to “choose” to work there.

Last year, Wilson was carpeted by Sheffield City Council after a complaint about her online conduct was partially upheld. She had tweeted that the women protesting the existence of lap dancing clubs in the city — many of whom are survivors of sexual exploitation — were “trashy SWERFS”. Another tweet read: “SWERFS and TERFS are usually one in (sic) the

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It was easy for him to accept because he’s 4

Nov 10th, 2019 4:37 pm | By

Even Parents Magazine? What next, The Mainstream Herald? The Churchy Gazette? Middleground Digest?

Headline:

Mom’s Viral Post Celebrates That ‘Some Women, Some Non-Binary People, & Some Men’ Get Their Periods

Yunh hunh, and some bats make webs, some spiders echolocate, some tigers knit, some orcas play Bach cello suites, some houses are made of cotton candy, some cars can climb trees, some hats can fill out tax forms – let’s see some viral posts celebrating that.

Last month, Always announced that the Venus symbol would be removed from their sanitary products’ packaging to be more inclusive of transgender and non-binary people. “For over 35 years Always has championed girls and women, and we will continue to do so,” Always’

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The Spearmint Rhino feminists

Nov 10th, 2019 3:55 pm | By

Janice Turner in The Times:

A friend told me his student daughter had become a feminist activist. Check out her Facebook page, he said. So I did, expecting posts on the gender pay gap or #MeToo. Instead I discovered the campaign to which she and her mates devoted their energy was to save the Sheffield branch of Spearmint Rhino.

Seriously? A lap-dancing club? Indeed, a multinational lap-dancing corporation, where men from London to Las Vegas can pay near-naked women to grind on their crotches in private booths. Spearmint Rhino, whose posters of strippers dressed in sexy uniforms for “naughty schoolgirl” parties were banned by the advertising watchdog, and which exists to flatter and feed the sexual entitlement

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Just too much to shred

Nov 10th, 2019 3:29 pm | By

A tale of the German Democratic Republic (aka the GDR aka East Germany) and doping:

40 years of the official GDR were done, the Berlin Wall was about to be dismantled to the sound of the scuttling feet of Stasi (secret police) operatives dashing for the archive and the shredder.

Thankfully, there was just too much to shred, too much to hide, too many notes to wipe from the slate of history. They included scribblings of the precise dosages of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs – some of them clinically trialled on human guinea pigs – that fuelled the GDR sports medals and records factory.

The Stasi kept files on about 5.6 million people. The archive of what

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With all due contempt

Nov 10th, 2019 11:54 am | By

More moles:

Former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley alleges that two of President Trump’s senior advisers tried to recruit her to secretly undermine the administration from the inside.

That’s Business Insider’s way of wording it.

In her explosive new memoir, Haley claims former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly attempted to bring her in to subvert the president, according to The Washington Post which obtained the book prior to its release.

Haley refused their attempts to convince her to “save the country,” noting Tillerson and Kelly were suspicious of and threatened by her relationship with the president. During her time in the administration, Haley demonstrated an “obligation

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A sub-department of the Social Justice Movement

Nov 10th, 2019 10:31 am | By

Ray Blanchard interviwed at Quillette:

I published my early writings on autogynephilia in specialty journals with very small circulations. I intended them for a tiny readership of clinicians who specialized in the assessment and management of gender-dysphoric patients. However, this work attracted the attention of two individuals who decided to promote it more broadly, one online (Anne A. Lawrence) and one in a book (J. Michael Bailey). These efforts, especially the book, enraged three influential trans women—two of them senior academics—who attempted to get Bailey fired from his teaching position at Northwestern University for writing it. This campaign has been documented in detail by Alice D. Dreger, a medical historian. Paradoxically, the efforts of trans

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The threshold is high

Nov 10th, 2019 9:24 am | By

I guess that’s one way to go – “Look, the president says stuff like that all the time, so because he says it all the time, it can’t be impeachable.”

Jesse Lee tweets:

Thornberry admits it was inappropriate for Trump to pressure a foreign country for political smears, but not impeachable because Trump does it all the time.

Thornberry’s argument:

There’s not really anything that the President said in that phone call that’s different from what he says in public all the time. So is there some sort of abuse of power that rises to that threshold that is different than the American people have been hearing for three years? I don’t hear that.

It’s not different from … Read the rest



It’s an uncomfortable feeling

Nov 10th, 2019 8:41 am | By

Jonathan Freedland on Labour and antisemitism.

For most progressive-minded, remain-leaning folk, is it even a dilemma? I’m not sure. To them the logic must seem simple and straightforward: they want to eject a cruel and useless government and stop Brexit, and that means denying Boris Johnson a majority and replacing him with Jeremy Corbyn, who will end austerity and hold a second referendum. Job done.

But it’s not that simple for him, much as he would like it to be.

The thought of it prompts in me, and the overwhelming majority of the community I grew up in, a fear that we have not known before.

I’m referring to Britain’s Jews who, for the first time in their history,

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