Wizzzdom.
Women are women regardless of sex, just as chairs are umbrellas regardless of structure.
You can be both or a mix of the two…all you have to do is dye your hair on one side. Presto! You are now both woman and man. Or you can get a Mohawk and become neither woman nor man. Isn’t life fascinating?!
Oh ACLU…
Some of our personal favorite Thanksgiving conversation starters:
💬 “My pronouns are…”
💬 “Firing people for being LGBTQ is illegal and Trump asked SCOTUS to change that”
💬 “Who loved Pose season 2?”
💬 “Please pass the pie, and the Equality Act”
I think Chase Strangio meant conversation enders.
The death toll from the measles epidemic in Samoa has reached 33 as of Wednesday and infection rates continue to rise.
Of those who have died, 29 are children under the age of 4 years old.
Despite mass immunisation efforts, the Government of Samoa confirmed 249 more cases had been recorded in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 2686 on Wednesday.
Government of Samoa tweets:
Latest update: 2,686 measles cases have been reported since the outbreak with 249 recorded in the last 24 hours. To date, 33 measles related deaths have been recorded. Since the Mass Vaccination Campaign on 20 Nov 2019, the Ministry has successfully vaccinated 33,085 individuals.
Trump will save us all from the treacherous war on the word…”Thanksgiving”?
Conservative media and some Republicans have for years claimed that Christmas is under attack, turning some people’s decision to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” during the month of December into a culture war touchstone to try to spark outrage on the right. Trump has embraced the “war on Christmas” narrative, and now he’s taking it a step further: he’s claiming liberals are out to get Thanksgiving, too.
At a rally in Florida on Tuesday, the president confoundingly reassured supporters that he wouldn’t let the “radical left” change Thanksgiving’s name. “As we gather for Thanksgiving, you know, some people want to change the name Thanksgiving. They don’t want to use the term Thanksgiving,” Trump said. He later continued: “People have different ideas why it shouldn’t be called Thanksgiving, but everybody in this room, I know, loves the name Thanksgiving. And we’re not changing.”
Personally, I think it should be named Pizzahut, but a much larger faction prefers Route 518.
I suppose what the confused belligerent fool is “thinking” of is the fact that the holiday celebrates the moderate success of a group of people who set up camp without invitation on the coast of what is now called Massachusetts, and that some of us are rude enough to point out that there were already people there and they weren’t consulted.
The president has leaned into culture wars often throughout his tenure, aware that it’s a way to rally his base and sow division. Declaring out of the blue that there’s a movement on the left to change the name of Thanksgiving is another example of that. But the episode also highlights the president’s dismissiveness of issues with some real cultural and social weight. While Thanksgiving’s name isn’t particularly controversial, its history is.
But that’s the problem, you see – it’s political correctness run mad. Why shouldn’t people bounce into other people’s neighborhoods without an invitation? Unless of course they’re from Mexico or points south – then it’s a whole different ball game.
Pass the guacamole.
What did the Trump know and when did he know it? The Times says before he unfroze the aid to Ukraine. Oops.
President Trump had already been briefed on a whistle-blower’s complaint about his dealings with Ukraine when he unfroze military aid for the country in September, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Lawyers from the White House counsel’s office told Mr. Trump in late August about the complaint, explaining that they were trying to determine whether they were legally required to give it to Congress, the people said.
Here’s a detail I didn’t know:
The whistle-blower complaint, which would typically be submitted to lawmakers who have oversight of the intelligence agencies, first came to light as the subject of an administration tug of war. In late August, the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, concluded that the administration needed to send it to Congress.
But the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and his deputy John A. Eisenberg disagreed. They decided that the administration could withhold from Congress the whistle-blower’s accusations because they were protected by executive privilege. The lawyers told Mr. Trump they planned to ask the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to determine whether they had to disclose the complaint to lawmakers.
If the executive branch doesn’t have to turn whistleblower complaints over to Congress then what does the term even mean? What’s the point of making a complaint that will just be thrown in the garbage?
A week later, the Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the administration did not have to hand over the complaint.
No problem; just do whatever you want; there are no rules, no laws, no limits.
There’s a little vignette of life under Trump:
Only days after the president learned of the whistle-blower complaint, he spoke with Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, about the aid holdup. Mr. Johnson sought permission to tell Mr. Zelensky at an upcoming meeting in Ukraine that Mr. Trump had decided to release the security assistance, according to Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Trump replied that he was not ready, Mr. Johnson said. He said he asked later on the call whether the aid was linked to some action that the president wanted the Ukrainians to take.
“Without hesitation, President Trump immediately denied such an arrangement existed,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a letter this month to House Republicans.
Mr. Trump erupted in anger and began cursing, he wrote.
“‘No way,’” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Johnson. “‘I would never do that. Who told you that?’”
Touchy, are we?
More of Today in How Dense is Donald Trump?: he doesn’t understand chronology.
Yesterday, it happened again, when Trump signed the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act, which directs the Treasury to issue a commemorative coin to honor the 100th anniversary of American women getting the right to vote. After signing the measure – which passed both the House and Senate unanimously – the president decided to take a moment to reflect on what he considered important: his own awesomeness.
“I am curious why wasn’t it done a long time ago and also, well, I guess the answer to that is because now I am president and we get things done.
“We get a lot of things done that nobody else got done.”
Well, if Trump is “curious” why other presidents didn’t sign the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act, I can help. In this country, the women’s suffrage movement led to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919, and its ratification in 1920.
No one tried to honor the centennial of this because – and this is important – centennials mark the hundredth anniversary of things. In order to recognize the centennial of something that happened in 1920, we had to wait until around 2020, because that’s how time works.
It’s how dating works, at least. We weren’t allowed to celebrate the centennial ten years ago, or fourteen, or eighty-seven. The Academy is strict about that kind of thing.
Kevin Drum says the world has given up on climate change. He starts with a table from the Financial Times:
Europe is pulling back from clean energy research. India and Brazil barely have any to begin with. The United state is flat at about $50 billion—maybe a tenth of what we should spending. And China, after a decade of research, has decided to double down on coal and slash its clean energy R&D. Only Southeast Asia is still increasing its green energy research, perhaps because they have a more visceral fear of climate change then the rest of us. When you announce that you’re moving your capital from Jakarta to an entirely new island because Jakarta is sinking…
…it drives it home rather.
This is a disaster. Given (1) the consistent global refusal to cut back on energy usage and (2) the fact that building out current technology (mostly wind and solar) will only get us halfway to zero carbon, our only hope lies in better technology. Without that, 2°C is already in the rear-view mirror and even 3°C is all but impossible to achieve. We’re looking instead at a world that will warm by 4°C or even 5°C during the second half of the century. This is not a world you want your grandchildren to live in.
Trump explained his administration’s subtle, carefully considered policy on China and Hong Kong this morning:
After signing an executive order establishing a task force on missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives, Trump was asked by a reporter about the protests in Hong Kong as he continues to negotatiate a potential trade deal with China.
“It’s going very well, but at the same time we want to see it go well in Hong Kong, and I think it will,” Trump said. “I think that President Xi [Jinping] can make that happen and I know him and I know we’d like to make it happen.”
Ahhh good; that’s impressive. I’m relieved to know they’re taking it so seriously and being so thoughtful.
No but seriously. This is total cognitive failure. It’s baby words taken from the tiny basket of baby words, for saying when somebody asks a hard question about a substantive issue. Go well, see it go well, think will go well. Nice Chynah man can make happen, my frend, can make happen. Will go well. Is going well, want to go well, will go well, think will go well. Can make happen, like make happen, will happen make.
He’s drawing on a tiny shrunken vocabulary and just repeating the one ghostly emaciated “idea” over and over and over. “They ask me about Hong Kong. Must say all will be good. Say that. Say that again. Say knowing Xi, big import man, proud be frend, say about him me. Say will good be.”
Why do we not have any system in place for when a president’s brain has mostly evaporated?
Pompeo says we’re totally complying.
Pompeo on Ukraine inquiry: “We will continue to comply …so that appropriate oversight can be conducted.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee:
.@SecPompeo and the @StateDept have turned over zero documents required by a duly authorized congressional subpoena.
Zero.
That’s not compliance. It’s obstruction.
Oh, right, obstruction. We always get those two words mixed up.
Measles is cutting a swathe through DR Congo.
Measles has killed nearly 5,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2019, authorities said, after the disease spread to all the provinces in the country.
Close to a quarter of a million people have been infected this year alone.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says this is the world’s largest and fastest-moving epidemic.
But hey, please let’s hear more from prosperous middle-class white people in California and Surrey who refuse to vaccinate their little Gwyneth and Nigel.
The Congolese government and the WHO launched an emergency vaccination programme in September that aimed to inoculate more than 800,000 children.
But poor infrastructure, attacks on health centres and a lack of access to routine healthcare have all hindered efforts to stop the spread of the disease.
Four million children have been vaccinated, but experts warn that this amounts to less than half of the total in the country – and not enough vaccines are available.
The majority of those infected with measles in the country are infants.
Meanwhile there’s a Facebook page for Stop Mandatory Vaccination Now. It’s very active.
Still going in the wrong direction.
Greenhouse gas emissions have steadily risen for the last decade despite the current and future threat posed by climate change, according to a new United Nations report.
The annual report compares how clean the world’s economies are to how clean they need to be in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change — a disparity known as the “emissions gap.”
However, this year’s report describes more of a chasm than a gap. Global emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gasses have continued to steadily increase over the last decade. In 2018, the report notes that global fossil fuel CO2 emissions from electricity generation and industry grew by a mammoth 2%.
It’s the tragedy of the commons coupled with the tragedy of that’s tomorrow and we’ll just keep doing what’s more comfortable for today.
“There is no sign of [greenhouse gas] emissions peaking in the next few years,” the authors write. Every year that emissions continue to increase, “means that deeper and faster cuts will be required” in order to keep the Earth from warming more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The Earth is already more than 1 degree warmer than it was before industrialization, and that is driving more frequent and severe storms, droughts, heat waves and other extreme weather. According to the 2018 National Climate Assessment, if global emissions fail to fall in the coming decade, it will slow economic growth and cause serious damage to infrastructure and property in the United States.
But that’s then. This is now. We’re not good at taking trouble now for the sake of then.
Lindsey Graham is an icon of Integrity.
I love Joe Biden as a person but we are not going to give a pass to what is obviously a conflict of interest. I believe Hunter Biden’s association on the Burisma board doesn’t pass the smell test. If a Republican was in the same position, they’d certainly be investigated!
Sadly, many have doubts about his sincerity.
Jared and Ivanka raked in $82 million last year while holding White House jobs & security clearances Trump forced through.
The @RNC bulk-bought Donald Trump Jr’s book to make it a best-seller and to hand out to donors.
The Trump “kids” earn their living selling Trump hotels.
Greedy lowlifes Jared and Ivanka made $82 million last year using their WH connections. Neither has ever held a job their Dads didn’t hand them; they contribute nothing, travel on the taxpayers’ dime and take credit for other people’s work. They’re Ken and Barbie with trust funds.
Jared and Ivanka raked in $82 million last year while holding White House jobs & security clearances Trump forced through.
The @RNC bulk-bought Donald Trump Jr’s book to make it a best-seller and to hand out to donors.
The Trump “kids” earn their living selling Trump hotels.
Jared and Ivanka made $82 million last year. Don Jr gets $50K per speech & the RNC bought $94K worth of his ghostwritten trash book. You’re a traitorous Trumpocrite, #LeningradLindsey 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻#ImpeachmentTaskForce
Originally a comment by Claire on God’s instrument.
To: God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
CC; Archangel Michael
Sir,
I am writing to gain some clarity on the proclamations made by your emissaries here on Earth. Previously we had been led to understand that Barack Obama had gained the presidency by nefarious means such as getting more votes etc and was installed against your will. In office we were further informed by Metatron, the Voice of God, also known as Fox News that President Obama committed hideous crimes in office, such as wearing a tan suit, eating fancy mustard, being good at singing and worst of all, improving access to healthcare.
Obviously we understand that President Trump is your Chosen One, as evidenced by his moral and unimpeachable conduct such as conducting affairs with porn stars and sexually assaulting women, lying, cheating, money-laundering and so on. His divine mission to lower taxes on the top 1% and to sell out the US to Your Favored dictators such as Mr Putin of Russia is progressing as planned.
However, we are now given to understand that in contrast to previous statements, Mr Obama was in fact allowed to ascend the presidency, if not explicitly planned by you. We remain confused about whether Mr Obama is in fact Lucifer, the Great Adversary with his hand-maiden, the anti-Christ Hilary Clinton and as such should shunned and excoriated, or whether he in fact was part of the greater plan to get the new Messiah elected to the presidency in order to bring about the End Times.
If you could please respond in the usual means through your prophets here on Earth in the next 10 business days, I will be able to proceed with the Divine Plan of welcoming Russia’s help in the election and ensuring President Obama, Secretary Clinton and her hordes of demons are sent back to Hell or Benghazi whichever is most convenient.
Yours etc.
Secretary for Energy, Rick Perry and Attorney-General Bill Barr
Speaking of women, and why they need to be able to organize and meet as women, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
“Sexual violence against women and girls is rooted in centuries of male domination. Let us not forget that the gender inequalities that fuel rape culture are essentially a question of power imbalances.” — UN Secretary-General António Guterres
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today [and] remains largely unreported due to the impunity, silence, stigma and shame surrounding it.
In general terms, it manifests itself in physical, sexual and psychological forms, encompassing:
- intimate partner violence (battering, psychological abuse, marital rape, femicide);
- sexual violence and harassment (rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, street harassment, stalking, cyber- harassment);
- human trafficking (slavery, sexual exploitation);
- female genital mutilation; and
- child marriage.
To further clarify, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993, defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
That should be sex-based violence, but you get the drift.
Oh good god. The BC NDP Women’s Rights Committe proudly announces its own suicide:
Hugs, tears and cheers as — after many passionate conversations — we have voted to approve a historical name and constitutional change today! We’ll now be known as the Women’s and Gendered Rights Committee. Changing our constitution to welcome in two-spirit, non binary and gender nonconforming folks.
#intersectionalfeminism #biggertents
Yaaaaaay hooray hooray hooray yet another thing women don’t get to have for themselves but have to share with men who call themselves “two-spirit” or non binary or gender nonconforming – which basically means all men, because anyone can simply say “I’m gender nonconforming.” So haha yay women don’t get to organize as women any more, so go home bitches!
There are, as you might expect, many critical comments, which the committee replied to with more infuriating bullshit:
We are proud to continue to do good work supporting women. Our resolutions this year included asks that covered everything from Period Promise to abortion rights and safety to increasing access to legal aid. We have proudly, for years, included space for trans women. Because they are women. And we were proud this weekend to make a few more people feel welcome.
We will continue to make safe space for women. It will continue to be a space free of those who use the him/his pronouns. We are proud to be inclusive of other folks for whom gender has been cause of their discrimination and lack of safety. And we will continue to support those in our community who need it most and advocate on the issues that affect people.
So what are they going to do, confirm all members’ use of pronouns? How would they even go about that? They won’t, will they – it will just be a matter of self-declaration. Anyway even if Joe with the beard and the habit of talking over women does use eccentric pronouns, what’s that got to do with women’s need to organize and meet as women?
Not one god damn thing.
Rick Perry says it’s god’s plan.
Like a lot of evangelical Christians, Energy Secretary Rick Perry believes in a God who gets involved in every aspect of our lives — including the election of Donald Trump as President.
“I’m a big believer that the God of our universe is still very active in the details of the day-to-day lives of government,” Perry told Fox News in remarks aired on Sunday.
“You know, Barack Obama doesn’t get to be the President of the United Sates without being ordained by God. Neither did Donald Trump.”
Perry went on to say that being God’s instrument on Earth doesn’t mean that Trump is a perfect person. Echoing the argument of other white evangelical Christians, the Texas Republican went on to cite several biblical figures, including King David, whose private lives didn’t always align with biblical standards.
Never mind about “private lives,” which is code for extramarital sex. The issue goes way beyond “private life.” Trump is transparently and unavoidably a very bad man in every way – mean, greedy, selfish, callous, a bully, a liar, a thief, corrupt, ruthless, ignorant, willful, reckless – there is nothing good about him. If that’s ordained by god then god is a shit.
Anyway that claim is just a handy way to excuse anything and everything, which basically means we can’t make any moral judgments at all. If this walking shouting textbook of all that is evil can be explained away as God’s Plan then so can anything.
Ekemini Uwan, a public theologian and a co-host of the podcast “Truth’s Table,” told CNN in February that Trump’s election was not exactly an answer to her prayers.
Uwan said she believes that God is supremely in control of the entire universe, from the smallest atoms to American politics.
“We can’t say that it’s not God’s will for Donald Trump to be president, because he is the president,” she said.
But the theologian draws a distinction between God’s sovereignty and God’s approval. That is, what God allows to happen is not the same thing as what God wants to happen.
Cheap. Cheap cheap cheap, and glib, and easy, and worthless. The hell with it.
The latest oops is a mass of documentation that the Trump people tried hard to find a rug big enough to cover everything.
Internal emails show that the White House scrambled to come up with a justification for freezing the money [for military aid for Ukraine] just days after the White House Counsel’s Office was told that an anonymous CIA official had filed a complaint with the agency’s general counsel concerning the president’s July 25 phone call, suggesting people on the inside knew they were fucked.
The Washington Post reports that a confidential White House review of Trump’s decision to put a hold on aid to Ukraine has “turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal.” In early August, for example, email exchanges show acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney asking acting Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought to provide and update on the legal rationale for holding up the aid and how much longer it could be delayed.
Yo Russ, will you please get off your ass and come up with this fig leaf for us before we all fry.
Vanity Fair quoting the Post:
Another skull added to Trump’s belt:
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer was fired Sunday by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who ordered that a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder be allowed to remain in the elite commando corps, the Defense Department said.
Esper asked for Spencer’s resignation after President Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday that Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher would retain the gold Trident insignia signifying his status as a member of the Sea, Air, and Land Teams, or SEALs. Spencer told reporters on Friday that he believed the review process over Gallagher’s status should go forward.
In a letter to Trump, Spencer said he acknowledged his “termination,” saying the president deserved a Navy secretary “who is aligned with his vision.”
“Unfortunately, it has become apparent that in this respect, I no longer share the same understanding with the Commander in Chief who appointed me,” Spencer wrote.
Which is a polite way of saying “I think you’re a sick fuck with no morals and no sense of duty.”
Shortly thereafter, Trump tweeted that he was displeased not only by the way that “Gallagher’s trial was handled by the Navy” but also because “large cost overruns from [the] past administration’s contracting procedures were not addressed to my satisfaction.”
“Therefore, Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer’s services have been terminated by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper,” he wrote.
In other words he used his office and Twitter to do harm to yet another public servant he threw overboard. It’s not appropriate for a president to get on Twitter to say “Here’s what I don’t like about this person I just shitcanned.”
The dispute flared into the open last week after NBC News and other organizations reported that the Navy was convening a review board to consider whether Gallagher should remain in the SEALs after he was convicted of posing with the ISIS fighter’s corpse but acquitted of having killed the young man.
Trump tweeted on Thursday that “the Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin,” saying the case was “handled very badly from the beginning.” Earlier, the president had overturned the Navy’s decision to demote Gallagher, which would have severely affected his retirement pay.
Of course he did. He made sure Gallagher got his higher retirement pay, while he made sure Andrew McCabe lost his. Tells you where his priorities lie.
Let’s see, who’s an easy group to exploit? Oh I know: prisoners! Yeah, let’s exploit them, because we can.
Inmates at several West Virginia prisons are getting free electronic tablets to read books, send emails, and communicate with their families—but there’s a catch.
Any inmates looking to read Moby Dick may find that it will cost them far more than it would have if they’d simply gotten a mass market paperback, because the tablets charge readers by the minute.
Under a 2019 contract between the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (WVDCR) and Global Tel Link (GTL), the company that is providing electronic multimedia tablets to 10 West Virginia prisons, inmates will be charged 3 cents a minute to read books, even though the books all come from Project Gutenberg, a free online library of more than 60,000 texts in the public domain.
Win-win! The content is all free and the company gets to charge for it!
[T]he Appalachian Prison Book Project, a nonprofit that offers free books and education to inmates, says the fee structure is exploitative.
“If you pause to think or reflect, that will cost you,” says Katy Ryan, the group’s founder and educational coordinator. “If you want to reread a book, you will pay the entire cost again. This is about generating revenue for the state and profit for the industry. Tablets under non-predatory terms could be a very good thing inside prisons. GTL does not provide that.”
According to the contract, using the tablets will cost $0.05 per minute (currently discounted to $0.03) to read books, listen to music, or play games; $0.25 per minute for video visitations; $0.25 per written message; and $0.50 to send a photo with a message.
The Prison Policy Initiative estimated in 2017 that wages in West Virginia prisons range between $0.04 and $0.58 an hour.
Seems fair, right?
Although the books on Project Gutenberg are all free, there is little the organization can do to stop GTL and the WVDCR from charging for access to the tablets.
“It’s all very sad,” Greg Newby, CEO of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, wrote in an email to the Appalachian Prison Book Project. “From the trademark license of Project Gutenberg eBooks, I don’t see leverage to do anything about it. I’m glad that prisoners seem to have less expensive access to PG eBooks than to other content, but would greatly prefer if it was all free (and other reforms to the exploitation of prisoners).”
Hey I have an idea, what about trying rehabilitation instead of exploitation?
Ok, I know, crazy idea.
