Speaking of the rage and threats and violence that have become the new normal – Oregon’s governor has extra security these days, thanks to the worked-up rage of the gangsters who tried to steal Malheur.

After a series of hostile threats this year — beginning with the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation and continuing after Brown called for tighter gun rules in Oregon — the governor’s security detail has quietly taken steps to increase protection levels.

Some measures remain unidentified. But others are visible.

They don’t always say where she’s going, for instance.

And while threats against Oregon governors aren’t new, Brown’s staff said it’s taking the increasingly aggressive tone of recent threats seriously enough to keep in regular

So you type “angry trump hitler” into Google and pop, Google knows what you mean.

Not what you want. Hot rage is not what you want in a head of state. Chronic hot rage is really not what you want in a head of state. Trump is unmistakably a horrible human being, a bully of the worst kind. His candidacy makes me ashamed to be a Yank.

… Read the rest

Helen Pidd and Jon Boone at the Guardian have more details on the apparent murder of Samia Shahid.

Such crimes are often triggered by women defying centuries-old patriarchal codes and daring to make their own choice about who they marry, or how they live their lives. Shahid not only married a man of her choice, she also divorced her first husband, her cousin Shakeel, a man Kazam says she was pressured to marry in a lavish wedding in Pakistan in 2012.

The marriage had been arranged when she was young and it is believed Shahid was expected to apply for a visa for Shakeel so he could join her in the UK. “The nearer [the wedding] day came, the

Originally a comment by Steamshovelmama on An extended discussion with their homeopath.

This is one of the appealing things about most “alternative therapies”. You’re paying through the nose for the “therapist”‘s time so you get a nice comfy sit down with a cup of tea and have a long chat with someone who is basically there to listen to you talk about your problems. There’s no rush, there’s time to talk about all those neurotic little issues – which we all have but which medical doctors don’t want to hear about because theres’s nothing they can do about them. Then you go home with (or having had) the equivalent of a sugar pill which, yes, probably does do … Read the rest

Ah yes, Ann Coulter exists. I’d forgotten.

You know what this convention really needed? An angry Muslim with a thick accent like Fareed Zacaria.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) July 29, 2016

Those pesky immigrants with their foreign accents – Lafayette, Einstein, Wiesel, Rushdie – how much richer and wiser we’d be if we’d kept them all out.

Also I wonder how many languages Ann Coulter speaks fluently. My informed guess is that the number is precisely one. She’s contemptuous of Khizr Khan for speaking a second language with an accent, and apparently indifferent to the soldiers who went on being alive after Khan’s son told them to step back while he went forward to check out a vehicle…which exploded, … Read the rest

Ok here’s some good news though.

(Mind you, it’s the kind of “good” news that’s just the undoing of some bad news, as so much of what passes for “good” news is these days. Or maybe it’s always like that.)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has struck down North Carolina’s horrible voter ID law.

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down North Carolina’s requirement that voters show identification before casting ballots and reinstated an additional week of early voting.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit was an overwhelming victory for the Justice Department and civil rights groups that argued the voting law was designed

I’m glad I was never tempted by Jill Stein. The Washington Post reports (uncritically) her woo-based ideas:

Did she think vaccines were harmful?

“I think there’s no question that vaccines have been absolutely critical in ridding us of the scourge of many diseases — smallpox, polio, etc. So vaccines are an invaluable medication,” Stein said. “Like any medication, they also should be — what shall we say? — approved by a regulatory board that people can trust. And I think right now, that is the problem. That people do not trust a Food and Drug Administration, or even the CDC for that matter, where corporate influence and the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of influence.”

But a lot of people … Read the rest

The Indian writer and activist Mahasweta Devi has died.

Devi was an outspoken proponent of equal rights.

She famously made a speech at India’s prestigious Jaipur literary festival where she said all humans had the fundamental “right to dream”.

“I would remember her as one of the most important writers in India because of the subjects she chose and remained faithful to them,” publisher Urvashi Bhutalia told the BBC.

“Her writing was a political battle for the downtrodden and she never compromised on her ideas. She was a very kind human being.”

A number of her works, including the best-selling Breast Stories, have been translated into English from Bengali, and are also studied in universities across India.

She was … Read the rest

In Uttar Pradesh yesterday a shopkeeper murdered a Dalit couple because they owed him 15 rupees – 22 cents.

Police told the Press Trust of India news agency the incident took place in Mainpuri district early on Thursday as the couple were on their way to work.

They were stopped by Ashok Mishra, the owner of a village grocery, who demanded that the couple pay the money for three packets of biscuits that they had bought for their three children a few days ago, reports say.

The couple reportedly told him they would pay after they received their daily wages later in the evening.

“While Mishra kept shouting for the money, the couple started walking towards the fields. Mishra then

Trump is such a sleaze. The racism is worse, the lack of inhibition is more terrifying, but the sleaze is more shaming and disgusting.

They tripped in the dark and accidentally deleted Melania Trump’s website and biography.

The disappearance of Trump’s elaborate website comes just days after news outlets, including The Huffington Post, raised serious questions about whether she actually earned an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Ljubljana, which is in Trump’s native Slovenia. Her online biography claimed she had, but a book about her life published earlier this year says she left the university after one year so she could pursue a modeling career.

Well maybe it was a one-year degree. Architecture is pretty simple, … Read the rest

Speaking of misogyny, and threats against women – Jessica Valenti has felt compelled to leave social media because of threats to her daughter age 5. Valenti is a writer, remember – social media are part of writers’ equipment now. Being forced off social media is crippling. It’s a figurative form of kneecapping.

On Twitter, popular writer Jessica Valenti wrote: “This morning I woke up to a rape and death threat directed at my 5 year old daughter. That this is part of my work life is unacceptable.”

Valenti, author of 2007’s Full Frontal Feminism and co-author of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape in 2008, becomes the latest in an increasingly

Naz Shah is accusing the Pakistani authorities of trying to cover up the murder of Samia Shahid.

Pakistani police investigating the death told the Guardian on Sunday that there were “no visible injuries or signs of violence” on Shahid’s body when it was found last Wednesday in the family home in Pandori, Jhelum, 50 miles (80km) south of Islamabad.

A postmortem report released on Thursday shows that her body did in fact have a “reddish brown linear horizontal bruise measuring about 19cm extending from just below [the] right ear and around the neck”.

The Guardian has seen photographs of Shahid’s body, which appear to confirm the finding. There also appear to be two purple welts around her neck. Naz Shah,

Joan Smith on the resurgence of misogyny.

The murder of Jo Cox rightly caused an outpouring of emotion, from shocked disbelief to calls for more civility in public discourse. But memories are short, especially in the feverish atmosphere of a Labour leadership contest. I could hardly believe my ears when Owen Smith, in a campaign speech about equality, said he was upset that Labour did not have the power to “smash” Theresa May “back on her heels”.

…

Woman-hating has come roaring back, borne on a tide of recession, economic uncertainty and religious extremism. In this country, we have just witnessed misogyny in its “jokey” form, prompted by May’s arrival at No 10 Downing Street. “Heel, Boys” declared

Oh hey gee what do you know – there’s a huge bruise on Samia Shahid’s neck. Maybe she grabbed herself by the neck when she had her “heart attack” or was it her “asthma” attack.

Police in Pakistan investigating the death of a 28-year-old British woman have confirmed a bruise was found on her neck after her death.

Samia Shahid’s husband claims she was murdered in a so-called honour killing.

There was a 7.5in (19cm)-long mark around her neck below her right ear, police said.

Meanwhile, her first husband has been granted “pre-arrest bail” and is expected to offer himself for interview, according to police.

The move means he cannot be arrested in connection with her death, for an

On Fresh Air yesterday, a guy who wrote a book about Roger Ailes. Roger Ailes resigned last week as CEO of Fox News on account of a flood of accusations of sexual harassment. It turns out it was all very open – women had to say Yes to the Harassment if they wanted to get anywhere at Fox.

GROSS: So sum up where we are now in terms of how many women have come forward alleging that they were sexually harassed by Ailes or by somebody else at Fox News. And I should say, we’re recording this at 9:00 in the morning. And I’m not sure if that number is going to change by the end of the day.

Zeynep Tufecsi says that WikiLeaks put women in Turkey in danger with its latest dump of stolen information.

Just days after a bloody coup attempt shook Turkey, WikiLeaks dumped some 300,000 emails they chose to call “Erdogan emails.” In response, Turkey’s internet governance body swiftly blocked access to WikiLeaks.

Turkey’s response was widely reported as “censorship.” Wrong, says Tufecsi.

Journalists and anti-censorship activists who I am in touch with in Turkey have been combing through the leaked documents, and I am not aware of anything “newsworthy” being uncovered. According to the collective searching capacity of long-term activists and journalists in Turkey, none of the “Erdogan emails” appear to be emails actually from Erdogan or his inner circle. Nobody seems to

Trump won’t be releasing his tax records, because he’s better than you.

A top aide to Donald Trump said Wednesday that the Republican presidential nominee “will not be releasing” his taxes. “Mr. Trump has said that his taxes are under audit and he will not be releasing them,” Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort told “CBS This Morning.”

That “auditing” nonsense has nothing to do with it; it’s just code for he doesn’t want to plus fuck you.

Trump has pushed back in recent months on calls from Democrats and some Republicans, namely former GOP nominee Mitt Romney, to release his tax returns.

Conservative columnist George Will this week argued Trump doesn’t want to release his taxes because

West Yorkshire police are looking into the suspicious death of Samia Shahid in Pakistan.

Samia Shahid had previously been harassed by a family member in Bradford last September, the West Yorkshire force has confirmed.

…

Bradford West MP Naz Shah is also investigating Ms Shahid’s death.

“I’m not going to rest until I’m satisfied I know the cause of her death – we need to investigate it fully,” said Ms Shah, who has written to the prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, calling for Ms Shahid’s body to be exhumed.

“It’s very suspicious circumstances,” she added.

The fact that she was young and healthy. The fact that her family disapproved of her divorce and re-marriage. The fact that her family … Read the rest

It’s time to “soften” Hillary Clinton’s image. Gotta soften that baby right up. Can’t have any hardness around.

At a time when many voters say they don’t trust Hillary Clinton, her husband sought to soften her harder edges.

I have an idea. How about she just transitions, instead? Wouldn’t that be a lot easier?

 … Read the rest