Aug 20th, 2020 4:17 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The BBC a couple of weeks ago:
Twelve months into her gender transition, Grace McKenzie was recruited out of the blue to join the Golden Gate Women’s rugby club in San Francisco.
Cue Rebecca Solnit to remind us how awesome and accepting San Francisco is.
McKenzie says playing rugby has given her a platform to “just focus on living and enjoying myself” – but a new proposal to ban trans women from women’s contact rugby could bring that to an end.
Because, oddly enough, women’s safety and right to fair competition is more important than one trans woman’s “platform to enjoy herself.”
“There’s a lot of rhetoric out there about where trans people fit into sports overall, and it
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Aug 20th, 2020 12:30 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh and let’s not forget Trump’s tax returns.
A federal judge on Thursday cleared the way for Manhattan’s top prosecutor to get Donald Trump’s tax returns, rejecting a last-ditch attempt by his lawyers to block a subpoena issued to his accounting firm.
US district judge Victor Marrero’s ruling echoes his prior decision in the case, which was upheld by the US supreme court last month. The high court returned the case to Marrero so Trump’s lawyers could get another chance to challenge the subpoena issued by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr.
Trump, through his lawyers, has argued that the subpoena was issued in bad faith, might have been politically motivated and amounted to harassment of him, especially
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Aug 20th, 2020 12:03 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
What’s the deal with Stephen Miller? How did he get to be a racist fanatic?
Jean Guerrero’s new book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda follows Miller through a conservative media landscape where key figures — including right-wing radio talk-show host Larry Elder; David Horowitz, who founded the David Horowitz Freedom Center; and former Breitbart chief Steve Bannon — propelled the rise of a man who now influences who gets to be an American.
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“I just became all the more fascinated with trying to understand how a descendant of Jewish refugees who grew up in Southern California — how does that person become the person crafting Trump’s harshest rhetoric and policies, targeting people fleeing violence
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Aug 20th, 2020 9:46 am |
By Ophelia Benson
A tweet yesterday:
What proposal? You may think they said what proposal in a preceding tweet but they didn’t. Maybe they deleted something, maybe they’re just sloppy. I searched and found a BBC story from July 20.
World Rugby could ban transgender athletes from playing women’s rugby because of safety concerns.
It would be the first international sports federation to prohibit transgender women from competing.
World Rugby said it had undertaken a review of its “rugby-specific
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Aug 20th, 2020 7:56 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Life under a dictator:
The Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny is in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit after a suspected poisoning.
“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into his tea,” his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, tweeted. “That was the only thing he drank this morning. The doctors say that the toxin was absorbed more quickly because of the hot liquid. Right now Alexei is unconscious.”
An outspoken critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Navalny was returning to Moscow by plane from Tomsk in Siberia when he began to feel ill. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk and he was taken to hospital. A
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Aug 20th, 2020 7:16 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Seems to be a busy morning. Steve Bannon has been arrested for fraud, and a breaking news banner at the top of that story says a judge has thrown out Trump’s challenge to the Manhattan DA’s subpoena of his tax records. Also Trump melted down the rest of the way while watching the Dem convention last night.
So, Bannon.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been arrested after being charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through their campaign “We Build the Wall.”
Bannon, along with three of his associates, w[as] indicted by investigators at the U.S. Southern District of New York on Thursday. They allege that the group of conservative leaders defrauded donors and that
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Aug 19th, 2020 5:28 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Philip Bump at the Post says why Trump’s failure to disavow QAnon is so dangerous:
The FBI was concerned enough about the emergence of “anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories” last May that it issued a formal intelligence bulletin to American law enforcement agencies. It warned of people being inspired to engage in “criminal and sometimes violent activity” by such philosophies, given that they “tacitly support or legitimize violent action.”
So Trump thinks they sound nice.
The spread of QAnon is seen by federal law enforcement as a threat to the public. There are obvious cases in which QAnon is used by disturbed individuals as a rationale for their action, as in the murder of a reputed
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Aug 19th, 2020 5:17 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Axios has more on Trump’s playdate with QAnon.
QAnon is a sprawling internet conspiracy theory that baselessly alleges that a powerful cabal of sex traffickers within the “deep state” is engaged in a global fight to take down Trump. The FBI identified fringe conspiracy theories, like QAnon, as domestic terrorist threats in 2019.
Why would sex traffickers want to take down Trump though? It’s not as if he’s a vocal opponent of sex trafficking or any other form of sexual exploitation.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a vocal supporter of QAnon, won the Republican nomination in Georgia’s deep-red 14th Congressional District runoff last week. Trump tweeted his congratulations and called her a “future Republican Star.”
Well he had to say something… Read the rest
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Aug 19th, 2020 4:37 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Others are not quite so cheery about QAnon as Trump is.
I read some of that West Point one. It’s interesting.
Anyway it’s ok, a reporter explained it to Trump and he caught on perfectly.
And he says we are akshally, we’re saving the world, we’re saving the world from a radical left philosuffy that will destroy this country, an when this … Read the rest
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Aug 19th, 2020 3:42 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump is asked about QANON. His response is that they like him.
What else does he need to know? Nazis? “They like me very muccchh.” Mass murderers? “They like me very muccchh.” Pedophile rings? “They like me very muccchh.” Putin? “He likes me very muccchh.” Jeffrey Epstein? “He liked me very muccchh.” Michael Flynn? “He likes me very muccchh.” … Read the rest
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Aug 19th, 2020 12:18 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump:
Jim Wright:
Guy who wanted you to inject bleach now wants you to buy shitty cheap tires made in a foreign country to own the libs.
Also, his MAGA hats are made in China.Remember when Republicans got mad and started throwing their Keurigs off balconies before they figured out they didn’t actually know how to make coffee for themselves?
Looking forward to Republican Pinterest where they offer tips on making
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Aug 19th, 2020 11:43 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The verbal re-engineering continues. A self-described “Trans & Queer Centered Full-Spectrum Doula & Childbirth Educator” wants to know what you and you and YOU call that thing where you give a baby milk that your body produces and the baby derives nourishment thereby.
While we’re working to dispel stigma around feeding babies from our bodies this month, I just want to pipe up with a little reminder that this practice goes by many names for many different people! For some of us, it’s chestfeeding, for some of us it’s bodyfeeding, and for some of us it’s something else! What words do you use to talk about feeding your baby the milk that your body makes?
I gotta say, “bodyfeeding” sounds … Read the rest
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20 comments
Aug 19th, 2020 10:58 am |
By Ophelia Benson
It’s a clothing line. Of course it is.
Amazon has removed a clothing line emblazoned with an offensive slogan referring to Kamala Harris from its website after complaints from Twitter users who branded it “unacceptable”.
The T-shirts, tank tops and hoodies which had the words “Joe and the hoe” written in red, white and blue in the style of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Harris’s campaign logo, were on sale for between $24.99 and $42.99.
Ok but you can’t seriously expect people to ignore the opportunity of a great rhyme can you? I mean it cries out for product placement. His name is Joe, and she is – ? Right? Come on. You know … Read the rest
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Aug 19th, 2020 9:34 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Meghan Murphy was also unimpressed by Solnit’s rhapsody on her own hippitude. (Do I like to beat everything to death? Yes, I do, why do you ask?) Meghan Murphy does excellent unimpressed.
The increasing banality of Solnit’s writing might explain why she published a 1700 word letter in The Guardian, in response to nothing and no one, never making clear why this and why now. Perhaps she has a hat from which she can pull hot takes, or perhaps a predictable and dull editor requested the polemic for clicks. A writer myself, it strikes me that these kinds of pieces are what happens when one runs out of things to say.
“Dear ladies who are fearful and hostile to
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Aug 18th, 2020 5:33 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
That’s nice.
DeAnna Lorraine ran for Congress in Pelosi’s district; she lost the primary in March. She’s a self-employed “life and relationship coach.”
There was this the other day too:
https://twitter.com/mcannonbrookes/status/1294064126948327424
What is wrong with people?… Read the rest
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Aug 18th, 2020 11:30 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Female people aren’t human, they are merely the mechanism for creating humans and the mechanisms that make more humans and mechanisms, and so on. No mechanism is permitted to say no to the duty of a mechanism. It doesn’t matter if the mechanism is too small to create a human, the worst that can happen is that the mechanism will permanently break in the attempt. Nothing of value is lost.
Scores of Brazilian women have taken to the streets to protect a 10-year-old child who was being persecuted by religious extremists for trying to legally undergo an abortion after being raped, allegedly by her uncle.
So she’s a child, so she was raped, so the rapist is her uncle, … Read the rest
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