All entries by this author
Mar 13th, 2018 10:18 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Good morning Chaos.
Trump fired Tillerson.
As is typical of His Rudeness, he told the world without telling Tillerson.
Mr. Tillerson learned he had been fired on Tuesday morning when a top aide showed him a tweet from Mr. Trump announcing the change, according to a senior State Department official.
Well at least His Rudeness didn’t wait until Rex was in Ulan Bator and then expect him to make his own way home.
Oh wait, yes he did.
But he had gotten an oblique warning of what was coming the previous Friday from the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who called to tell him to cut short a trip to Africa and advised him “you may
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
5 comments
Tags: Trump
Mar 12th, 2018 5:14 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Jacob Tobia’s tweets about how we need to stop talking about women and feminism were a short version of an article he wrote explaining that we need to stop talking about women and feminism. It’s good to get his full article in all its profundity.
This month is Women’s History Month. From Oprah’s speech at the Golden Globes, to the fervor of the #TimesUp movement, to Women’s Marches across the country and around the world, women’s power has been growing and spreading and amplifying like whoa. Which is, obviously, something I am thrilled about.
Obviously. But. We can tell there’s a “but” coming. We’d be able to tell even if we hadn’t read his tweets.
But amid all
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
29 comments
Mar 12th, 2018 4:10 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Bannon is in Europe hoping to make it as horrible as he helped make the US. The guy dreams big.
“All I’m trying to be,” he said, “is the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement.”
“Populist” is code for sexist racist belligerent hateful and far-right.
On Saturday, he is set to headline the annual conference of France’s far-right National Front in the northern city of Lille, where he will be introduced by its leader, Marine Le Pen. People with knowledge of Mr. Bannon’s itinerary suggested that he might meet later in the weekend with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, but Mr. Bannon declined to say whether or not he would, only saying that he admired Mr. Orban as
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
Mar 12th, 2018 3:24 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Well this is appalling. NBC reports:
Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to special counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions.
Kushner and other Trump minions did corrupt things but Qatari officials opted not to tell Mueller because they want to have good relations with the corrupt administration and its corrupt family members and their corrupt minions. Corrupt enough yet?
Lebanese-American businessman George Nader and Republican donor Elliott Broidy, who participated in the meetings, have both been
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Tags: Trump
Mar 12th, 2018 12:27 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Let’s just stop talking about women, mkay? Can we do that now finally at last? It’s so excluding.
Yeah and organizing around anti-racism excludes white people. Organizing to protect immigrants’ rights excludes people who were here all along. Anti-poverty campaigns exclude rich people. Organizing workers excludes bosses. Won’t somebody please think of the bosses?
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
15 comments
Mar 12th, 2018 11:24 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump’s stupid childish greedy “military parade” is planned for November. Newsweek points out that it will cost many dollars.
President Donald Trump’s military parade is set to kick off on Veterans Day, but at a cost that even conservative estimates show could feed every homeless veteran for at least two weeks, a Newsweek analysis found.
…
Using the most conservative estimates available from federal agencies and non-profit organizations, Newsweek found Trump could completely eliminate hunger among homeless veterans, serving them three meals a day, for at least 14 days.
But Trump wants a show. Providing meals to homeless veterans across the country isn’t a show.
In February, Trump told Fox News he wouldn’t hold the parade if the cost
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
1 Comment »
Tags: Trump
Mar 12th, 2018 10:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Breaking news from the Beeb:
A former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia, Theresa May has told MPs.
The prime minister said the government had concluded it was “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury on 4 March.
She’s summoned the Russian ambassador to talk it over.
My first thought was: stupid of them to use an agent with their fingerprints on it. My second thought was: oh wait, no it isn’t, because they’re sending a message. We will get you.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
Mar 11th, 2018 5:50 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Shashi Tharoor points out that the Hollywood Churchill was first the mass murderer Churchill.
During World War II, Churchill declared himself in favor of “terror bombing.” He wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers.” Horrors such as the firebombing of Dresden were the result.
In the fight for Irish independence, Churchill, in his capacity as secretary of state for war and air, was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters, suggesting in 1920 that airplanes should use “machine-gun fire or bombs” to scatter them.
Like what the fascists carried out in Guernica, but decades earlier. The fact that Churchill liked the idea doesn’t mean it happened, and I … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
12 comments
Mar 11th, 2018 5:21 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Steve Mnuchin has no problem with Trump’s calling Maxine Waters “low IQ” or Chuck Todd a “son of a bitch.” It’s just his adorable sense of fun.
On Saturday, the president attacked Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), a veteran African American congresswoman and outspoken Trump critic, saying, she’s a “a very low IQ individual — you ever see her?” On Sunday, his Treasury Secretary dismissed this and other attacks made by Trump at a Pennsylvania event as irrelevant “campaign rally issues.”
“You know I’ve been with the president and at campaigns,” Steve Mnuchin told NBC’s Meet the Press. “He likes to put names on people.”
“The president likes making funny names,” he added.
The president likes making sexist, racist, … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
5 comments
Tags: Trump
Mar 11th, 2018 1:25 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Times reported a few days ago:
Arizona State University has suspended Lawrence M. Krauss, a prominent theoretical physicist, while the university investigates accusations of sexual misconduct over a decade.
“In an effort to avoid further disruption to the normal course of business as the university continues to gather facts about the allegations, Krauss has been placed on paid leave and is prohibited from being on campus for the duration of the review,” the university said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Oh but I’m sure they’re just a bunch of fanatical SJWs out to get Krauss for no other reason than terminal political correctness.
Dr. Krauss, a professor in the university’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, is director
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
1 Comment »
Tags: Lawrence Krauss
Mar 11th, 2018 12:26 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump did one of his campaign rallies last night and was his usual reasonable thoughtful self.
Trump said that allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers — an idea he said he got from Chinese President Xi Jinping — is “a discussion we have to start thinking about. I don’t know if this country’s ready for it.”
“Do you think the drug dealers who kill thousands of people during their lifetime, do you think they care who’s on a blue-ribbon committee?” Trump asked. “The only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness. When you catch a drug dealer, you’ve got to put him away for a long time.”
As if we didn’t put enough people … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
1 Comment »
Tags: Trump
Mar 10th, 2018 5:20 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Lawrence Krauss has resurfaced on Twitter; his fans are rushing to give him support and air hugs.
Jerry Coyne was doubtful at first but looked into it.
I didn’t find the specifics of most allegations fully convincing, yet the fact that there were so many of them that resembled each other meant that they could not be ignored. As I’ve said, the more independent claims there are against a person, and the more they paint a consistent pattern of behavior, the greater the likelihood that the accused is guilty.
After that article appeared, I did some digging on my own, and came
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
23 comments
Mar 10th, 2018 12:07 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Weirdness.
A felon pleaded his case on ‘Fox & Friends.’ Days later, Trump pardoned him.
Some 1.6 million people tune in to “Fox & Friends” every morning, but when Kristian Saucier told the network why he believed he should be pardoned for his national-security-related felony conviction, he clearly had one very specific, very powerful fan of the show in mind: the viewer-in-chief.
“Obviously, there’s two different sets of laws in this country, for the politically elite and for those lower-level individuals, Americans like myself,” he said on the network Sunday. “And I think that’s very upsetting on a basic level for most people. It should be.
“I accepted responsibility. I didn’t go to trial. I pleaded guilty. I said,
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
9 comments
Tags: Trump
Mar 10th, 2018 10:58 am |
By Ophelia Benson
One more.
The Washington Post yesterday:
Arrington, a high school senior, had been accepted to college and planned to become a nurse. She is the 20th person to be gunned down on a U.S. high school campus this year. The episode at Huffman High is the third fatal school shooting this year.
The shooting happened Wednesday as classes let out at the school, exactly three weeks after 17 people were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla. Another school shooting, at
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Mar 10th, 2018 10:42 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Belinda Luscombe interviewed Jordan Peterson for TIME. One thing they talked about was Peterson’s view that Disney’s Frozen is propaganda, as opposed to for instance Sleeping Beauty, which instead is Archetype. Luscombe asks him why he calls Frozen “deeply propagandistic.”
It attempted to write a modern fable that was a counter-narrative to a classic story like, let’s say, Sleeping Beauty — but with no understanding whatsoever of the underlying archetypal dynamics. You could say that Sleeping Beauty was raised out of her unconsciousness via a delivering male. Another way of reading the story is that unconsciousness requires active consciousness as an antidote. And the unconsciousness is symbolized in that particular story by femininity and active consciousness by masculinity. I
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
17 comments
Mar 10th, 2018 10:11 am |
By Ophelia Benson
What could go wrong?
https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/972134578411499522
A few things that could go wrong occur to me.
https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/972134968490160128
Yes, that’s one – children taking serious drugs with no adult participation.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
10 comments
Mar 9th, 2018 6:04 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh, that meeting with Kim that Trump was going to have? Never mind. He got excited and he didn’t mean it and it was all a misunderstanding. Next question?
South Korean official Chung Eui-yong was in the White House yesterday meeting with other officials. Trump decided to see Chung right away; maybe Fox News was in repeats or something. Trump “then asked Mr. Chung to tell him about his meeting with Mr. Kim,” reports the New York Times. “When Mr. Chung said that the North Korean leader had expressed a desire to meet Mr. Trump, the president immediately said he would do it, and directed Mr. Chung to announce it to the White House press corps.”
It sounds
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
1 Comment »
Tags: Trump
Mar 9th, 2018 5:09 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The New Zealand Herald reported on Lawrence Krauss’s absence from the tour there in May.
A celebrity atheist facing a raft of allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women has backed out of a New Zealand tour.
Lawrence Krauss was due to speak on a double-bill with Richard Dawkins at the Science in the Soul tour in May in Auckland and Christchurch, but the promoter this morning announced he would no longer be on the bill.
Instead, Dawkins would appear at the two Science in the Soul shows alone, with a new co-host to be announced, Australia-based Think Inc said.
Then not alone but with a new co-host. Anyway – do we think there’s any chance the new co-host will be … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Tags: Lawrence Krauss