Good people on both sides. On both sides.

After the Republican-dominated legislature in Wisconsin passed a package of bills to strip power from the incoming Democratic governor for nakedly partisan purposes, NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd spuriously claimed that such maneuvers were not unprecedented because Democrats had done the same thing to Republican governors in the past.

There is no evidence of that — and Todd offered none.

On December 9’s Meet The Press, after detailing some of the changes that Republicans are making — in both Wisconsin and Michigan — and describing them as “a couple of end runs around the November election results,” Todd said: “Now, this has happened before in many a legislature.

Daniel A. Kaufman at the Electric Agora thinks we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of civil rights, as traditionally understood.

The fight for civil rights was born with the original women’s movement of the late 19^th century and may very well may die with the contemporary gender-identity movement that has engulfed both feminist and gay and lesbian activism.  If allowed to continue and become even more generalized (and I don’t see why it wouldn’t, given its current trajectory), this “identificationism” will absorb the black, Latino, and other racial and ethnic justice movements as well.  What a bitter irony it is that after surviving more than a century under the relentless assault of the forces of reaction,

Lesbians not welcome on Baltimore’s LGBTQ Commission’s Law and Policy Committee:

The Baltimore LGBTQ Commission’s Law and Policy Committee recently held an emergency meeting aimed at eliminating lesbian representation on the Commission. Several women who are longtime residents of the region attended on the evening of December 4, 2018, to support the woman targeted by the meeting, twenty-five year-old Julia Beck. Julia has stated that her reasons for seeking this advisory role are unequivocally and unapologetically woman-centered: “I joined Baltimore’s LGBTQ Commission to represent lesbians in local government,” and to “defend the rights of lesbians as homosexual women.” Julia is the only lesbian on the Law and Policy Committee, and possibly the only woman on the entire Commission willing

The narrative is becoming clearer.

In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign even as Russian agents made more efforts to influence him. At the same time, in this account he ordered hush payments to two women to suppress stories of impropriety in violation of campaign finance law.

The prosecutors made clear in a sentencing memo filed on Friday that they viewed efforts by Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to squelch the stories as nothing less than a perversion of a democratic election — and by extension they effectively accused the

Lobster guy has a funny one today.

He's casually called a "climate change denier," for example, which is an appallingly treacherous term of criticism, used to denigrate someone personally by associating them with Holocaust deniers. The ethics of anyone who employs it should be instantly questioned. https://t.co/K9lRIrlE9I

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) December 8, 2018

Ok not really funny, exactly; more like sinister. Of course it’s not “appallingly sinister” to talk of climate change denial and to call particular people deniers. There is such a thing as denial, and there are deniers; the words are not confined to the Holocaust.

Look at Trump for one example. He doesn’t bother to read anything or learn anything or ask anyone, he … Read the rest

The NY Times has an explainer on how Jared Kushner got so cozy with the murderous Mohammed bin Salman.

Senior American officials were worried. Since the early months of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, had been having private, informal conversations with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s king.

Given Mr. Kushner’s political inexperience, the private exchanges could make him susceptible to Saudi manipulation, said three former senior American officials. In an effort to tighten practices at the White House, a new chief of staff tried to reimpose longstanding procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders.

That all by … Read the rest

Heartrending.

1. Today I did the annual story on holiday decorations at the Governor's residence. I've done it every year, for years. A very light but very fun story. Every year my reporting partner was Wendi Winters. This year, it was Selene. Wendi was murdered in June. https://t.co/hDlixzieht

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

3. Not in a "ghost" sense, I hope she has moved on to a better world then Capital feature stories : ) But she was there in my mind. I could almost hear her voice echoing through the empty rooms. "How many cookies are you making this year?", her favorite question..

— Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) December 7, 2018

5. And that was it. The tears

Journalist writes piece about the putative “transphobia” of Mumsnet, in which of course “transphobia” is taken to mean not insults and bile aimed at trans people but simply failure to agree that men who identify as women literally are women. (And men who etc, except that gets far less attention. Male entitlement scores another win.)

Anyway, there’s a paragraph that sums up the bizarro-world belief system nicely.

But if, as Roberts and Pedersen assert, the community’s influence is a result of its engaged membership, Mumsnet finds itself at the political whims of a very particular membership base. When it comes to Mumsnet’s reputation for transphobia, it seems that the very demographics to which Pedersen attributes its success may have

Jane Clare Jones offers a list of 30 propositions on ontological totalitarianism. I will share a few by way of appetizer.

2. Human beings have a right to their own perceptions.

10. Resisting coercion is not bullying.

12. Recognition must be freely given if it is to meaningfully function as validation.

Good one. Yes it must. If it’s forced…well it’s not really recognition, is it, it’s just a mouthing of words.

15. Trans people who are visibly gender non-conforming are subject to violence as a result of the policing of patriarchal gender norms.

16. Feminists do not police patriarchal gender norms.

 

21. People refusing to validate your identity may be painful.

22. Something being painful is not conceptually