An actual feminist fighting an actual oppressive patriarchy…. https://t.co/Ex0N4DDHwO
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) December 26, 2018
Well thank fuck we have Jordan Peterson to tell us which oppressive patriarchies are actual, right?… Read the rest
Robert Reich (an economist) on Trump and the stock market dive:
… Read the restLet’s get this straight:
(1) Trump doesn’t want the public to think the stock market has tanked because of his government shutdown, his trade wars, and the $1.9 trillion increase in the nation’s debt caused by his tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. (Actually, these are major reasons for the market’s drop.)
(2) So he’s blaming the Fed and its chair, Jerome Powell, for raising interest rates. And he’s ordered his staff to find a legal rationale for removing Powell. (Trump has no legal authority to do so.)
(3) Which is spooking investors even more, because they worry Trump will try to infringe on the independence
Nick Cohen says the reason Corbyn and pals are so chill about Brexit may be that old Leninist magic.
Labour has inherited the mental deformations of the Leninist style of doing business: the leadership personality cult, the love of conspiracy theory, the robotic denunciations of opponents, and most critically for our current crisis, the ineradicable fantasy that the worse conditions for the masses become, the brighter the prospects of the far left are. Disaster socialism is its alternative to disaster capitalism.
You know the one: don’t support reformist candidates because they will merely make things slightly better and thus kneecap more radical reforms. The idea is clear enough but…risky.
… Read the restLabour’s leaders don’t sound remotely fearful, however. When asked about
Turmoil at the Miss Universe Pageant:
The Miss Universe pageant is once again embroiled in controversy, this time because all contest losers have identified as winners, demanding that the pageant’s organizers recognize their subjective identities as objective truth.
Dozens of contestants came out as winners, but the allegedly open and inclusive pageant organizers refused to crown all of them champions in keeping with their internally felt reality.
“It’s bigoted and disgusting,” said one woman from South America. “Despite the fact that I have declared myself to be a winner, as my feelings have dictated, they have thus far refused to crown me Miss Universe along with Miss Philippines. It’s 2018, people.”
What kind of “inclusive” pageant is that? Excluding … Read the rest
Here’s a new distinction – for the first time ever the US is on the Reporters Without Borders list of most dangerous countries for journalists. High five?
… Read the restAt least 63 professional journalists were killed doing their jobs in 2018, a 15 percent increase over last year, said the group, Reporters Without Borders. The number of deaths rises to 80 when all media workers and people classified as citizen journalists are included, it said in its annual report.
The world’s five deadliest countries for journalists include three — India, Mexico and, for the first time, the United States — where journalists were killed in cold blood, even though those countries weren’t at war or in conflict, the group said.
Speaking of Wall and the border and holiday festivities and telling brown people to get out, we’ve killed another child in custody.
An 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died in United States custody early Christmas Day, according to the United States Customs and Border Protection.
The boy died just after midnight on Tuesday at a hospital in Alamogordo, N.M., where he and his father had been taken after a Border Patrol agent saw what appeared to be signs of sickness, according to a news release from the agency.
Trump says he’ll never let the government re-open until he gets Wall, and that federal workers are telling him that’s what they want too.
“I think they understand what’s happening,” he said. “They want border security. The people of this country want border security.”
“It’s not a question of me,” he continued. “I would rather not be doing shutdowns. I’ve been at the White House. I love the White House, but I wasn’t able to be with my family. I thought it would be wrong for me to be with my family, my family is in Florida, Palm Beach, and I just didn’t want to go down and be there when other people are hurting.”
Hurting but wanting Wall … Read the rest
I think Trump’s sudden lurch into rational skepticism at a socially inappropriate moment is hilarious, but I’m not going to pretend the whole “don’t tell the kids Santa is a story” routine makes any sense.
What’s the point of telling one’s children a lie that you know they’ll find out is a lie long before they’re out of childhood? Why not just tell them it’s a story? Adults don’t tell children pumpkins are the personified Spirit of Halloween, so what’s with all the “Shh shh don’t spill the beans” silliness? Apart from anything else I don’t see why parents would want to give their children reason to think Mommy and Daddy make a habit of lying to them.
Donald Trump, answering phone call from 7-year-old on Christmas Eve: "Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at seven it's marginal, right?" pic.twitter.com/VHexvFSbQ1
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 25, 2018
And a very merry krissmuss to you too sir!
Trump, after railing on Comey, says: "It’s a disgrace what’s happening in this country. But other than that, I wish everybody a merry Christmas." pic.twitter.com/9OdrmHU5Es
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 25, 2018
The new improved Christmas Carol:
The Christmas Eve grievances billowing from the White House on Monday formed a heavy cloud of Yuletide gloom.
In his third straight day holed up inside the White House during the partial federal government shutdown that he initiated over his demand to construct a border wall, President Trump barked out his frustrations on Twitter: Democrats are hypocrites! The media makes up stories! Senators are wrong on foreign policy — and so is Defense Secretary Jim Mattis!
Wah! Wah! Wah wah wah!
… Read the restTrump said war-ravaged Syria would be rebuilt not by the United States but by Saudi Arabia. “Thanks to Saudi A!” he tweeted, two weeks after the Senate unanimously rebukedthe kingdom’s crown prince
Claire McCaskill tells us what we already suspect – Senate Republicans know Trump is many cards short of a deck but they keep shtum because Republicans.
… Read the restIn the interview, the blunt-speaking Missouri Democrat, reflecting on her election loss to Republican Josh Hawley — a political novice whom she also referred to as a “bright shining object” — also didn’t mince words for the Republican Party.
While she warned that history “will judge some of my colleagues harshly that they didn’t stand up to this President at some of the moments where he has been unhinged about particularly the rule of law,” she also said that GOP senators have privately conceded they can’t speak out against Trump because of backlash they’d
Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice in the Times yesterday:
… Read the restThis country’s national security decision-making process is more broken than at any time since the National Security Act became law in 1947. Nothing illustrates this dangerous dysfunction more starkly than President Trump’s reckless, unilateral decisions to announce the sudden withdrawal of all 2,000 United States troops from Syria and to remove 7,000 from Afghanistan.
These decisions went against the advice of the president’s top advisers, blindsided our allies and Congress, and delivered early Christmas presents to our adversaries from Russia and Iran to Hezbollah and the Taliban. The costs of this chaos are enormous, starting with the blunt, unnerving resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, one of the last
https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1077309430084059137… Read the rest
Once again Peter Tatchell steps in to patronize women and tell us how to do better.
Martina #Navratilova tweets (& then deletes) rant about #trans athletes She promises to educate herself. Her tweet was wrong but she's apologised. Plus one misguided tweet does not cancel out her decades of equality activism. Time to forgive & move on https://t.co/twOuT4KISq
— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) December 23, 2018
There was no “rant.” She doesn’t need to “educate herself” (Peter Tatchell, on the other hand…). Her tweet was not wrong and she shouldn’t have to apologize. Her tweet was not “misguided” and she doesn’t need to be “forgiven” by Peter Tatchell.
https://twitter.com/Jessie_XL/status/1077000297640349696
https://twitter.com/Jsoosty/status/1076990940236132353
https://twitter.com/Leadinglady0609/status/1076942116708904961
I scrolled through the replies for a long time and … Read the rest
The Treasury Secretary causes the Dow to plunge.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened sharply lower Monday after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin shocked investors worldwide over the weekend by tweeting that he had spoken to the CEOs of the six largest U.S. banks to ensure they were liquid.
He really did – he tweeted it.
Today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation's six largest banks. See attached statement. pic.twitter.com/YzuSamMyeT
— Steven Mnuchin (@stevenmnuchin1) December 23, 2018
The Post was predicting it last night.
… Read the restTreasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin startled financial analysts, bankers and economists on Sunday by issuing an unusual statement declaring that the nation’s six largest banks had ample credit to extend to American
The current public meltdown.
Mitch McConnell just told a group of people, and me, that he has been in the U.S. Senate for 32 years and the last two have been by far the best & most productive of his career. Tax & Regulation Cuts, VA Choice, Farm Bill, Criminal Justice Reform, Judgeships & much more. Great!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2018
The most important way to stop gangs, drugs, human trafficking and massive crime is at our Southern Border. We need Border Security, and as EVERYONE knows, you can’t have Border Security without a Wall. The Drones & Technology are just bells and whistles. Safety for America!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2018
… Read the rest“The
Robert Reich’s friend thinks the end is near.
… Read the restThis morning I phoned my friend, the former Republican member of Congress.
ME: So, what are you hearing?
HE: Trump is in deep shit.
ME: Tell me more.
HE: When it looked like he was backing down on the wall, Rush and the crazies on Fox went ballistic. So he has to do the shutdown to keep the base happy. They’re his insurance policy. They stand between him and impeachment.
ME: Impeachment? No chance. Senate Republicans would never go along.
HE (laughing): Don’t be so sure. Corporate and Wall Street are up in arms. Trade war was bad enough. Now, you’ve got Mattis resigning in protest. Trump pulling out of Syria,
So apparently Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are running the country. Trump threatened a shutdown; he backed away; he flipped again.
So what caused Trump to flip back? Some have suggested that he bowed to backlash from high-profile conservative pundits — notably Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh — who lambasted the president for appearing to concede on the wall funding.
It may or may not be true, but it’s more plausible than it would be for any other president, even the most corrupt or dim-witted. (Isn’t it interesting that Trump is both crookeder than Nixon and dumber than Reagan and Bush 2? And meaner than anybody ever?)
… Read the restCoulter, during a podcast on the Daily Caller, said Trump’s White
Another patronizing “here’s how you be perfect like me” thread from some authenticated woke genius, a thread full of glib claims that fall apart if you breathe on them and smug instructions on how high to jump when we’re told to jump.
Hello cis friends, here is a reminder that it's okay to feel confused about trans rights. It's something very much outside of our experience and therefore hard to imagine.
Do you know what our role is when we feel confused like this? It's to shut the hell up and listen.
— Fiona Longmuir // Looking for Emily is out now! (@fionalongmuir) December 22, 2018
Bad beginning, taking “cis” as 1) a meaningful and useful descriptive and 2) an … Read the rest
