Perish the thought

Jul 31st, 2020 5:19 pm | By

Ah no, you would never dream of politicizing anything.

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Jacketless Jim

Jul 31st, 2020 4:11 pm | By

Don’t mess with Fauci.

Shirtsleeves Jordan’s “point” is that people are told not to go to church so why won’t Fauci tell people not to go to protests?

Which is stupid because as Fauci keeps pointing out, it’s not his job to make laws, it’s his job to give medical advice.

Jim Jordan is a representative because he gets to run in a rather peculiar … Read the rest



He has a thick skin

Jul 31st, 2020 12:03 pm | By

Diddums.

A trans footballer who endured online abuse after announcing she was joining a professional team said the experience has been “hurtful.”

That is, a man who wants to play football against women has received some pushback.

Sammy Walker, 29, from Bristol, was targeted by Twitter users who labelled her a “paedophile” and claimed she was stealing places from female players.

Because he is stealing a place from a female player. That’s how that works. If the team gives a place to him then there’s a woman who didn’t get that place.

“I fought tooth and nail to be me, and it obviously hurts,” she said.

Heedless of how his tooth and nail fighting affects women, isn’t he. Male-typical … Read the rest



Where does confidence come from?

Jul 31st, 2020 11:20 am | By

I always wonder how Jolyon Maugham QC can be so confident about the wack things he says. I don’t wonder it so much about Adrian Harrop and Owen Jones, because they’re rather childish and undisciplined and silly, but I have this idea that QCs have to do better than that. (To be sure, Harrop is a medical doctor and you’d hope that would apply to him too, but he’s just so goony that it seems futile to wonder further.)

Like this thing for instance.

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It was going to be relegated to Democratic states

Jul 31st, 2020 10:04 am | By

Vanity Fair has a big new article on how Prince Jared made himself the boss of the administration’s coronavirus testing plan, and how that plan just disappeared because they’re all fools and hacks.

By early April, some who worked on the plan were given the strong impression that it would soon be shared with President Trump and announced by the White House. The plan, though imperfect, was a starting point. Simply working together as a nation on it “would have put us in a fundamentally different place,” said the participant.

But the White House said Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaah we don’t need to do that.

Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation

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Feminists in Turkey

Jul 31st, 2020 9:17 am | By

So let’s read this piece about violence against women in Turkey.

Feminists in Turkey have called on the rest of the world not to forget the original context of Instagram’s #challengeaccepted trend, which was supposed to draw attention to skyrocketing rates of gender-based violence in the country before it was co-opted by western celebrities.

Femicide, violence against women and so-called “honour” killings are deeply rooted issues in Turkey. Last week, the country was rocked by the brutal killing of Pınar Gültekin, a 27-year-old student, who was allegedly killed by an ex-boyfriend.

Why would that be? Funnily enough, the Guardian story doesn’t mention the word “Islam” or the word “religion.”

Campaigners are also deeply worried about fresh efforts by 

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That word

Jul 31st, 2020 9:02 am | By

Sometimes the juxtapositions on Twitter can be…I dunno, striking, ironic, poignant, something like that.

One:

Two:

Violence against women in Turkey. Not “individuals with a cervix,” not generalized “people,” not “non-men”; women.… Read the rest



Guest post: This fluidity in all of us

Jul 30th, 2020 6:33 pm | By

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on A woman is whoever wants to be a woman.

‘Childhood pretending’ – I am reminded of doing mask-work while doing acting training (which can be alarming – some odd things come out, and the emotions called forth can be overwhelming), and of the way a Noh actor (the shite – which is pronounced, roughly, ‘shte’ and not the way you might suppose, though it may be there are some real shites among Noh actors, as there are among all actors), having put on his mask, looks into a mirror to allow the spirit of the character to enter him. And I feel that when you are acting well, it is as though … Read the rest



You gotta get ’em up there, girls!

Jul 30th, 2020 5:19 pm | By

Did you know that women menstruate? How gross is that? Let’s never mention it again.

Offensive, crude, vulgar, unnecessary, embarrassing and grotesque. That’s Tampax’s current television ad – now banned – according to complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland.

The advertisement features the host of a talkshow called Tampons & Tea asking her studio audience how many of them ever feel their tampon. When her guest, a young woman, raises her hand to indicate that she does, the host tells her that she shouldn’t and that it might mean her tampon is not in far enough. “You gotta get ’em up there, girls!” the host says. The ad then shows how to insert a tampon correctly –

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Not even welcome

Jul 30th, 2020 4:27 pm | By

Interesting observation.

Just imagine Trump there. Trump who was sued along with his father for racial discrimination in housing.

The Justice Department sued Donald Trump, his father, Fred, and Trump Management in order to obtain a settlement in which Trump and his father would promise not to discriminate. The case eventually was settled two years later after Trump tried to countersue the Justice Department for

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A woman is whoever wants to be a woman

Jul 30th, 2020 1:32 pm | By

What has happened to people? What have they done with their brains?

Why do people – especially women, especially feminist women, but really any people – say things like that? When they’re so obviously absurd? So like baby talk? It’s just not true that a woman is whoever wants to be a woman, any more than it’s true that a tree is whoever wants to be a tree or … Read the rest



Pointed

Jul 30th, 2020 1:01 pm | By

Trump last week on John Lewis:

Trump today on Herman Cain:

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En banc

Jul 30th, 2020 12:25 pm | By

Flynn case not over yet.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit says it has scheduled oral arguments in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Aug. 11.

A smaller panel of judges within the D.C. Circuit ruled earlier that a lower-court judge must terminate the case against Flynn, as requested both by his attorneys and — in an unusual wrinkle — the Justice Department.

That lower-court judge, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, said he wanted to probe the reasons for the government’s move, but the smaller appellate panel ordered him to stop that work and simply end the matter.

Sullivan asked for the full appeals court to consider the case,

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Berated for wearing masks

Jul 30th, 2020 10:01 am | By

Murderous.

Vanity Fair says that’s just a fraction of it.

After Congressman Louie Gohmert tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, Capitol Hill staffers sounded off on the apparent public health nightmare that is working for Republican lawmakers. Responding to reporting on Gohmert’s diagnosis, an aide told Politico’s Jake Sherman that the far-right representative hadn’t just refused to don a mask himself—he’d also “berated” the staff he required to work in the office for wearing them, seeking to, in his words, “be an example to America on how to open up safely.”

Other Republican aides soon 

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Pompeo goes all metaphorical

Jul 30th, 2020 9:32 am | By

Pompeo is talking to the Senate foreign relations committee.

Mike Pompeo has been questioned on the decision announced yesterday to pull nearly 12,000 US troops out of Germany, bringing 6,400 of them back to the US, and how that squared with Pompeo’s claims to be leading a tough policy towards Russia. He confirmed the state department was “very involved at the strategic level” but argued that bringing the troops home did not mean they were “off the field.”

Uh…that’s exactly what it means.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked him whether the impact on relations with Germany had been taken into account, to which Pompeo replied: “This is personal for me I fought on the border of East Germany when I

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A 1 in 70 chance

Jul 30th, 2020 8:56 am | By

Rape is basically not a crime except in very rare cases.

The number of people prosecuted and convicted for rape has fallen to the lowest level since records began, prompting outrage and concern from campaigners, who say the crime is being decriminalised.

People? They mean men. Women can’t rape. It’s men who are being allowed to rape with impunity, not people.

Prosecutions and convictions more than halved in three years while rapes increased. Fewer rape cases were referred by police and in turn the Crown Prosecution Service took an even smaller number of those cases to court.

Police recorded 55,130 rapes but there were only 2,102 prosecutions and 1,439 convictions in England and Wales in 2019-20. Three years earlier,

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Another coronavirus fatality

Jul 30th, 2020 8:14 am | By

Maybe now they will pay attention?

Herman Cain, a onetime Republican presidential candidate and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, has died from coronavirus, according to an obituary sent from his verified Twitter account and Newsmax, where he was launching a television show.

I wonder how he caught it.

As a co-chair of Black Voices for Trump, Cain was one of the surrogates at President Donald Trump’s June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma — which saw at least eight Trump advance team staffers in attendance test positive for coronavirus. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh has told CNN that Cain did not meet with Trump at the Tulsa rally.

Trump was out face to facing with people in Texas yesterday, not … Read the rest



No, we want a lazy VP

Jul 29th, 2020 4:18 pm | By

Oh no, it turns out Kamala Harris is too ambitious to be Vice President. So unlike Biden, who thinks he’s just the right guy to be president even though he’s 78 years old and has a scary shiny facelift.

… reporting on deliberations inside the campaign suggests their decision-making is being shaped by the same sexist concerns about women in leadership that helped keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House four years ago. While it’s unclear if the accounts are accurate or present a complete picture, the story they tell is deflating, familiar, and harmful—that the campaign is distrustful of women who are ambitious or who otherwise display leadership traits that somehow don’t seem to bother people when exhibited

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Not clear why ACLU guy is telling lies

Jul 29th, 2020 3:00 pm | By

Chase Strangio is not an honest interlocutor.

That’s not honest. He’s telling a lie. (Sue me, Chase!) We don’t want trans people to die, and what would be the point of wanting them to “disappear”? People don’t “disappear.” We want trans people to stop trying to force us to share or agree with or endorse or celebrate or act in accordance … Read the rest



The AFFH rule that Trump ripped up

Jul 29th, 2020 2:26 pm | By

More on Trump’s “you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood” tweet.

Because he didn’t want to bother his tenants by making them live … Read the rest