All entries by this author

Gulagsplaining

Sep 10th, 2018 2:43 pm | By

Well this would explain a lot! The genius (or one of the geniuses) in charge of the @lgbtqgold account undertakes to explain why gulags were such fine fine institutions and Stalin was so tragically misunderstood:

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039140880731521025

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223037328089088

But it is “governed” by a former KGB agent, but don’t let that worry you.

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223043023949824

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223046983311361

Don’t you wish you could go live in one right now?

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223051097923585

People who don’t consent to repeat the formula “trans women are women” must be eradicated through “re-education” in a nice cozy book-filled gulag.

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See this fist?

Sep 10th, 2018 11:13 am | By

The Guardian report was posted before Bolton gave his speech; the Times reports the speech given.

The Trump administration threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it pursued an investigation of American troops in Afghanistan, opening a harsh new attack on an old nemesis of many on the political right.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” President Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said in a speech on Monday in Washington.

“We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States,” Mr. Bolton said. “We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will

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Because we are Perfect

Sep 10th, 2018 10:51 am | By

Oh great, John Bolton is going to trash the ICC. That’s a good look.

John Bolton, the hawkish US national security adviser, will threaten the international criminal court (ICC) with sanctions when he makes an excoriating attack on the institution in a speech in Washington.

According to drafts of his speech, Bolton will push for sanctions over an ICC investigation into alleged American war crimes in Afghanistan. He is also expected to announce on Monday the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington because of its calls for an ICC inquiry into Israel.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate

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Razor blade hoax

Sep 10th, 2018 9:37 am | By

There was a claim circulating that feminists had placed stickers at a Manchester railway station with razor blades behind them. That never did make much sense – wouldn’t they be visible behind a flat piece of paper? Also why would feminists seek to discredit themselves that way? Also what about the possibility that this is just yet more of the pretending that women are the source of violent aggression and men are their powerless victims?

So anyway, the police checked, and sure enough – it was bullshit.

10 Sep 2018 15:43
Sticker claims

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Whistle

Sep 10th, 2018 9:17 am | By

Yes, that’s fine, no problem at all, go right ahead.

https://twitter.com/Knightcartoons/status/1039017329030393856

Updating to add a tweet and a pointed retweet by JK Rowling:

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The money will be reallocated

Sep 9th, 2018 4:15 pm | By

Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker:

Update: Three hours after the publication of this story, CNN reported that Moonves will step down from his position at CBS. A person familiar with the discussions said that Moonves will no longer receive any of his exit compensation, pending the results of the independent investigation into the allegations, and that a portion of the amount he would have received will be donated to organizations focussed on sexual harassment and assault.

Now that’s some powerful journalism.

Members of the board of the CBS Corporation are negotiating with the company’s chairman and C.E.O., Leslie Moonves, about his departure. Sources familiar with the board’s activities said the discussions about Moonves stepping down began several weeks

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Riling them up

Sep 9th, 2018 3:49 pm | By

Fox News needles a former CIA contractor to talk on the air about killing Obama.

Kris Paronto, who worked for the intelligence agency during the 2012 Benghazi attacks that left U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens dead, was speaking to host Pete Hegseth about recent remarks by Obama suggesting that the Republican investigation into the incident was politically motivated.

“It’s disgusting. It just raises the bile inside of me. I had a hard time just watching the speeches,” Paronto told Hegseth, Raw Story reported. “I just wanted to see what he had to say. And when that came across, I just wanted to reach through the screen and just grab him — grab him and choke him.”

“Honestly, the

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No exit compensation

Sep 9th, 2018 3:26 pm | By

Ronan Farrow dropped a new story today.

Three hours later…

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1038887744146169856… Read the rest



The supposed issue

Sep 9th, 2018 10:07 am | By

Zinnia Jones showing the usual empathy for women and girls:

Right up there with Hannah Mouncey in solidarity with girls and women.… Read the rest



It just is

Sep 9th, 2018 9:59 am | By

The genius of Dave Rubin:

https://twitter.com/aiizavva/status/1038430387154894849

The racist ideas of the day are not coming from conservatives and libertarians, they’re really not, and they’re certainly not coming from classical liberals. They’re coming from the progressives, that actually is just true, it just is.

Mmhm. Sam Harris insisting that Charles Murray was and is right that brown people are stupid is not a racist idea of the day, fer sher.… Read the rest



It was you, Donnie

Sep 9th, 2018 9:44 am | By

Trump and his thugs are pretending to think the anonymous “hero” is a security threat.

“We’ll find out if there was criminal activity involved,” vice-president Mike Pence told Fox News Sunday. “I think the president’s concern is that this individual may have responsibilities in the area of national security.”

Don’t be schewpid, of course it’s not. Trump’s concern is Trump.

Pence was echoed by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union as the hunt for the author continued.

“There could be a national security risk at hand,” she warned. “It depends on what else has been divulged by this individual … Anybody who would do this, you don’t know what else they’re saying.”

Please. The … Read the rest



Trump should be shackled

Sep 8th, 2018 5:59 pm | By

Is Trump wrong in the head? Yes, Trump is wrong in the head. Woodward’s book says so, anomynous really anomynous I mean anonymous says so, mental health experts say so.

None of this is a surprise to those of us who, 18 months ago, put together our own public service book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”

My focus as the volume’s editor was on Trump’s dangerousness because of my area of expertise in violence prevention. Approaching violence as a public health issue, I have consulted with governments and international organizations, in addition to 20 years of engaging in the individual assessment and treatment of violent offenders.

All … Read the rest



Oops, that was the carotid artery

Sep 8th, 2018 5:20 pm | By

Just one of those things.

A man has been jailed for six years for killing a woman he stabbed in the throat during a “bizarre and violent” sex game.

Jason Gaskell severed 21-year-old Laura Huteson’s jugular vein and carotid artery with a knife while having sex at his home in Hull on 27 February.

As one does. You know how it is – you get warmed up, everybody’s panting like a dog, and out comes the knife.

“It appears you harboured a desire for, and regularly put into practice, a particularly extreme form of sexual activity in that you enjoyed sadomasochism whereby you held the throats of sexual partners very tightly and regularly used a knife in the midst

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Kavanaugh lied under oath

Sep 8th, 2018 10:41 am | By

At Slate, Lisa Graves reports that Brett Kavanaugh received stolen emails and lied about it under oath.

Much of Washington has spent the week focusing on whether Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. After the revelations of his confirmation hearings, the better question is whether he should be impeached from the federal judiciary.

I do not raise that question lightly, but I am certain it must be raised.

Newly released emails show that while he was working to move through President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in the early 2000s, Kavanaugh received confidential memos, letters, and talking points of Democratic staffers stolen by GOP Senate aide Manuel Miranda. That includes research and talking points Miranda

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Dear Sirs: please fire all the women

Sep 8th, 2018 9:35 am | By
Dear Sirs: please fire all the women

So. Lucy Bannerman in the Times (the one in London):

A transgender lecturer orchestrated a smear campaign against academics across the UK in which universities were described as dangerous and accused of “hate crime” if they refused to accept activists’ views that biological males can be women, it can be revealed.

Natacha Kennedy, a researcher at Goldsmiths University of London who is also understood to work there under the name Mark Hellen, faces accusations of a “ludicrous” assault on academic freedom after she invited thousands of members of a closed Facebook group to draw up and circulate a list shaming academics who disagreed with campaigners’ theories on gender.

In other words this is a trans woman. Isn’t it interesting that … Read the rest



Every woman out there

Sep 7th, 2018 5:19 pm | By

The state of this.

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1036362423370797056

If you didn’t know better, you’d look at the picture and think the “not ok” bit was the huge man playing football on a women’s team…but no, that’s not what Hannah Mouncey means at all. What Hannah Mouncey means is “not ok” is excluding huge men from playing football on women’s teams. It’s not ok to say “No, you can’t endanger women by playing on their teams when you’re built like a god damn tank.”

Risking the women’s broken bones, concussions, smashed faces – that’s perfectly fine, and it’s progressive, and it’s top intersectional.

What a selfish pig, and proud of it. It’s astounding.… Read the rest



That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work

Sep 7th, 2018 3:27 pm | By

Obama gave a talk at the University of Illinois today. The Atlantic has the full transcript.

I’m here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, need to determine just who it is that we are, just what it is that we stand for. And as a fellow citizen, not as an ex-president but as a fellow citizen, I am here to deliver a simple message, and that is that you need to vote because our democracy depends on it.

Now some of you may think I’m exaggerating when I say this November’s elections are more important than any I can remember in my lifetime. I know

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Opining

Sep 7th, 2018 12:02 pm | By

Trump still thinks it’s illegal to criticize him.

President Donald Trump said Friday he wanted Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation into who authored the explosive anonymous opinion article published in The New York Times earlier this week.

“Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was, because I really believe it’s national security,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Yeah no that’s not a reason. That “because” isn’t. What Donald Trump “really believes” ≠ the law.

It’s not clear what national security reasons would prompt a Department of Justice investigation. It is not a crime to leak information that is not classified.

Asked for clarification whether the president was directing Sessions to investigate

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The corrupt bargain Washington Republicans have made

Sep 7th, 2018 11:38 am | By

Michelle Goldberg at the Times notes how Kavanaugh evaded all questions about whether he will protect Trump from law enforcement when he is on the Supreme Court, and notes that unless two Republicans suddenly discover a conscience he’ll soon be on the Court.

He will owe his elevation to Trump, who is in effect an unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign finance crime that helped him achieve his minority victory. There’s every reason to believe that Kavanaugh will shield the president from accountability or restraints on his power. Yet even Republicans who think Trump is a menace are desperate to confirm his judicial pick.

What we have here, in miniature, is the corrupt bargain Washington Republicans have made with a president

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In which I kink-shame the Times

Sep 7th, 2018 11:04 am | By
In which I kink-shame the Times

Just your standard ad on a New York Times story.

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