Yesterday’s treat, by way of surreal punctuation to the three nausea-inducing debates, was a “traditional” event that “traditionally” features lashings of “good-natured” jokes between rival presidential candidates. Groan. Must we? Must we have things like the White House reporters’ dinner and the Al Smith dinner and “roasts”? The whole thing is excruciating. Last night’s was of course especially excruciating. (I’ve never seen an Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner before, and I’m glad I haven’t. Not the least of the horrors of this one was the prominence of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the guy who complained about the New York Times’s reporting on the Catholic church’s enabling of child-raping priests. Dolan protected the child-raping priests for decades.)

It was tense

An item by Jhenah Telyndru:

Here’s a little thing I made; feel free to pass it on!#votenasty #nastywoman

Pestilence, war, famine, and…pronouns.

The University of Toronto has slapped down a professor who openly criticized the use of gender-neutral pronouns and political correctness at the post-secondary institution.

Jordan Peterson, a psychology prof, was sent a letter Tuesday that told him that he must refer to students by whatever pronoun they wish — not just ‘he’ or ‘she’ — and that he must also refrain from making public statements on the topic.

Whatever pronoun they wish? What if every student comes up with a different “pronoun”; how is Peterson supposed to refer to them [or whatever “pronoun” “they” are using instead of “them”…] in that case? Is he expected to memorize every single new pronoun? Will he be punished … Read the rest

The Daily Mail shares a group of upsetting photos of a woman being beaten with a stick in Aceh, Indonesia, for “standing too close to her boyfriend.”

Heart-wrenching images show a screaming young woman flogged in front of a jeering crowd for breaking Islamic laws as floggings reportedly spike in Indonesian province.

An unidentified woman screamed out in pain as she was caned 23 times in Indonesia’s Aceh for breaking the province’s strict Islamic law forbidding intimacy between unmarried couples.

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia that enforces sharia law and people face floggings for a range of offences, including gambling, drinking alcohol and gay sex.

The evil god strikes again – inspiring fanatics to hit people with sticks… Read the rest

Zineb El Rhazoui is still speaking out.

Zineb El Rhazoui was 1,500 miles away, on vacation in Morocco, when gunmen forced their way into the Paris offices of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015, fatally shooting nine people. As the publication’s religion writer, she would ordinarily have also been present at the editorial meeting which was targeted by terrorists Saïd and Chérif Kouachi — motivated, it is thought, by the magazine’s controversial depictions of Muhammad and various Muslim clerics.

For the 20 months since the massacre of her colleagues, El Rhazoui has remained steadfast in her critiques of extremist Islamism, including publishing two books — even in the face of death threats.

She has … Read the rest

Clown car.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined a teleconference last night hosted by the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) to discuss the presidential election, warning the group that if Hillary Clinton is allowed to nominate Supreme Court justices, she could pick “fanatics who want to impose a secular America on the rest of us” and who might even go so far as to require churches to remove the words “our Father” from the Lord’s Prayer.

Mature citizens? Meaning old, or meaning grown-up as opposed to like-Trump?

Anyway – no, she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, and isn’t going to. Sit down and stop being so ludicrous, Newt. Be a Mature American Citizen.

Claiming that recent WikiLeaks emails show that

Asra Nomani and Masih Alinejad (of My Stealthy Freedom) on Nazi Paikidze-Barnes’s boycott of the Women’s World Chess Championship:

To us, Paikidze should not have to boycott the tournament, which an Iranian Woman Grandmaster said would hurt the progress of women’s chess in the country. Instead, Iran should respect her choice, make the headscarf optional and lift its ban on women who choose not to cover their hair.

The 22-year-old U.S. chess champion’s sincere protest is a remarkable checkmate to the government of Iran and other fundamentalist elements in our Muslim societies, who peddle “hijab” as a virtual sixth pillar of Islam for women.

If Allah is so desperate for women to wear hijab, why didn’t he (yes he) … Read the rest

A judge threw out the charges against Amy Goodman on Monday.

Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now, was facing riot charges related to a report she filed earlier this month from a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. At a hearing Monday in Mandan, North Dakota, Judge John Grinsteiner ruled there was no probable cause to support the allegations, and he dismissed the case.

The attempted prosecution caused an outcry among environmentalists and free-press advocates. “We are dismayed that a prosecutor has filed charges against Amy Goodman, who was just doing her job by covering protests,” wrote Carlos Lauría of the Committee to Protect Journalists in a statement.

Yet again, this isn’t really a good thing, … Read the rest

Those trade deals, and the way free trade can overrule all kinds of regulation – environmental, labor, consumer, all of it. The New Republic asked Bernie Sanders about that.

I don’t think that anybody would debate that the gap between Democratic leadership and grassroots America is very, very wide, and that has a lot to do with the fact that over the last 30 to 40 years, Democrats have spent so much time raising money. People are just astounded by the amount of time somebody like Hillary Clinton spends talking to 20 people so she can walk away with a few hundred thousand dollars, rather than relying on ordinary people.

One issue that will affect working people is the

Bernie Sanders urges us to keep in mind that change never happens overnight.

I would ask people to take a look at history and to understand that change never, ever, ever comes about in a short period of time. To take a look at the struggles of the civil rights movement, of the women’s movement, of the union movement, of the gay movement, of the environmental movement, and to understand that all of those movements took years and years and are still in play today.

“It’s not gonna happen overnight. You gotta put your shoulder to the wheel and keep going.”

In the campaign, what we did is show the American people that the ideas the establishment had