All entries by this author
Jun 24th, 2018 9:56 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Another showy public display of women-loathing delays another El Al flight out of New York.
Last week, a scheduled El Al flight from New York’s JFK Airport to Israel sat on the runway for more than an hour after four ultra-Orthodox men refused to take their ticketed seats next to women.
It was not the first time this has happened at El Al, which was hit by a court ruling last year barring the airline from asking passengers to move based on gender.
Throw them off the damn plane, says I. No refund, no rescheduling.
El Al flight attendants struggled to resolve the fracas as the four men refused to speak to any of the stewardesses.
Put them off the … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
7 comments
Tags: God hates women
Jun 23rd, 2018 4:15 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Post has details on what went down at The Little Red Hen. Nothing lurid, just what people were thinking and how it played out.
The owner was at home yesterday evening when the chef called to tell her Sanders was there.
“He said the staff is a little concerned. What should we do?” [Stephanie] Wilkinson told The Washington Post. “I said I’d be down to see if it’s true.”
It seemed unlikely to her that President Trump’s press secretary should be dining at a 26-seat restaurant in rural Virginia. But then, it was unlikely that her entire staff would have misidentified Sanders, who had arrived last to a table of eight booked under her husband’s name.
As she
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
19 comments
Jun 23rd, 2018 10:35 am |
By Ophelia Benson
That thing Trump said after his jovial meeting with Kim? “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea”? Apparently it was one of his jokes.
US President Donald Trump has renewed sanctions on North Korea, citing an “extraordinary threat” from its nuclear weapons – just 10 days after saying there was no risk from Pyongyang.
“There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” he tweeted on 13 June, a day after meeting the country’s leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore.
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Democrats say the latest White House language contradicts the president’s earlier boasts about the success of the Singapore summit. In another tweet on 13 June, he said Americans could “sleep well tonight!”.
Democrats say? Come … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
3 comments
Tags: Trump
Jun 23rd, 2018 10:22 am |
By Ophelia Benson
No, that’s not true.
I don’t really think it’s cool for restaurants to tell people to get out because they work for Trump, but her claim that she does her best to treat people respectfully is horseshit. She’s an adult, she can control what comes out of her mouth, and what comes out is not always … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
7 comments
Jun 23rd, 2018 10:10 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Today in disgusting:
President Donald Trump appears to have autographed photos of deceased young people that were featured at a White House event Friday highlighting victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
There were 11 photos total being held up by family members who had lost loved ones, and all of the photos bore Trump’s unmistakably scrawled signature in large-tipped black pen.
Autographing the photos was an unusual decision, in that it appeared to combine the celebrity element of an autograph with the solemn image of a dead loved one.
Typical of Trump though. Classic Trump. Trump all over.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Tags: Trump
Jun 22nd, 2018 4:34 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Ugh, god, this is so stupid and so vicious.
President Donald Trump on Friday put a spotlight on families who lost loved ones killed by undocumented immigrants — calling them victims of “permanent separation” — as he sought to shift the attention away from his administration’s recently halted policy of separating migrant families at the border.
Some undocumented immigrants turn out to be criminals…because some percentage of any large population will turn out to be criminals. Immigrants are in fact less likely to be criminals than non-immigrants.
“You know, you hear the other side. You never hear this side. You don’t know what’s going on. These are the American citizens permanently separated from their loved ones. The
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
6 comments
Tags: Trump
Jun 22nd, 2018 11:52 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Returning to Jesse Singal’s Atlantic piece on children who say they are trans…
The current era of gender-identity awareness has undoubtedly made life easier for many young people who feel constricted by the sometimes-oppressive nature of gender expectations. A rich new language has taken root, granting kids who might have felt alone or excluded the words they need to describe their experiences.
I’m not sure about that – I’m not sure the new language is genuinely rich. Is it rich or is it impoverished to decide that if you don’t like lipstick and high heels then you are a boy? Is it rich to substitute the trans vocabulary for the feminist vocabulary? Is it better to find your True … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
Jun 22nd, 2018 10:44 am |
By Ophelia Benson
National Review:
Maajid Nawaz, the British Muslim reformer who recently recovered a large monetary settlement from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is scheduled to meet with SPLC president Richard Cohen next week to demand an explanation for its decision to label him an “anti-Muslim extremist,” National Review learned Friday in an exclusive interview with Nawaz.
That is, to ask for an explanation. It sounds less pugnacious than that paragraph suggests.
Now, Nawaz wants answers. He reached out to Cohen following the settlement and Cohen replied Thursday night agreeing to the meeting.
“I’m going to fly out to New York in the coming week or so for the specific purpose of meeting with [Cohen] in private for however long
…
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Tags: Maajid Nawaz, SPLC
Jun 22nd, 2018 10:11 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Conduct unbecoming?
The U.S. Marine who marched with neo-Nazis in last summer’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been found guilty in a summary court-martial after he reportedly bragged online about participating in the violence that day.
Lance Cpl. Vasillios Pistolis was convicted Monday of failing to obey an order or regulation and making a false official statement under Articles 92 and 107 in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to the 2nd Marine Logistics Group.
Perhaps the regulation was something to do with beating up civilians.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
1 Comment »
Jun 22nd, 2018 9:50 am |
By Ophelia Benson
It still amazes me to see how people get lost in the maze of Jargon Absolutism – of treating certain sanctified verbal formulas as if they were reality itself. Say it and it becomes true no matter how nonsensical the content.
https://twitter.com/DrAdrianHarrop/status/1010142561380552704
Blar blar identities are valid – the sacred formula is uttered and the molecules are changed. But what does it mean? What does it mean to say an “identity” is “valid”?
Identity can be a prosaic factual matter to do with some basic facts about who one is, as with an ID card to use a service one has paid for or registered for or both. It starts with name and can included date of birth, place … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
10 comments
Tags: Bullshit
Jun 21st, 2018 4:45 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
A skeptical world responds.
https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/1009932615233699841
https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1009917166798417922
I suppose tomorrow she’ll visit more captive children, wearing a jacket that says “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
9 comments
Jun 21st, 2018 1:09 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Aaaaaaaaaand this just in:
Well it’s certainly true there was no hidden message, it’s about as unhidden and overt and explicit as it could be.
I’m gobsmacked. What the hell was she thinking? What were the people around her thinking? What was anyone thinking?
Maybe they’re about to cut all our throats and that’s their mocking goodbye.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
6 comments
Jun 21st, 2018 12:50 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump still being a shit one day after brief attempt to look less like a shit; world unsurprised.
A day after a rare retreat on the issue of separating immigrant children from their parents, President Trump lashed out angrily on Thursday at what he called “extremist, open-border Democrats” and again falsely blamed them for the political crisis that continues to roil his administration.
Mr. Trump, choosing hard-edged remarks at a cabinet meeting hours before the House was scheduled to vote on overhauling immigration laws, begged for Democratic support on the legislation even as he said Democratic lawmakers were causing “tremendous damage and destruction and lives.” And he repeated his false claim that Democrats forced family separations.
“They don’t care about
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Tags: Trump
Jun 21st, 2018 11:01 am |
By Ophelia Benson
There’s another kicker to Trump’s supposed rescinding of the policy to steal immigrants’ children: it’s good for only 20 days.
Though President Trump declared that the executive order he signed Wednesday would “solve” the problem of family separation while parents are prosecuted for illegal border crossing, the order is really only good for 20 days, CBS News’ Paula Reid reports, citing a source familiar with the drafting of the order. The order does not override the 1993 Flores v. Reno Supreme Court case, which says that detained migrant children cannot be held in government detention facilities for more than 20 days.
Essentially, this means that after the 20-day mark, children may still be separated from their parents.
Immigration and
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
3 comments
Jun 21st, 2018 10:32 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Yesterday Peter Baker and Katie Rogers at the Times wrote about Trump’s filthy dehumanizing language.
President Trump has railed against undocumented immigrants in recent days, branding many of them “murderers and thieves” who want to “infest our country.” Not long ago, he referred to them as “animals,” although he insisted he meant only those who join a violent gang.
The president’s unpresidential language has become the standard for some on his team. This week his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, made a mocking noise, “womp womp,” when a liberal strategist raised the case of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome separated from her parents at the border.
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Mr. Trump’s descriptions
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Tags: Trump