A Mighty Girl:

“my fabulous mighty girl daughter wants to be a firefighter for halloween. because of this, we have had to endure the following from lovely, well-meaning people:

– oh, she wants to be a firefighter? does she have brothers? (no, shockingly, she has thoughts of her own! all by her girl self!)
– while holding ava: hi, where are your firefighter costumes? how old is he? she’s almost 3. what size is he? she’s a 3. does he need a hat? (aaaaarrrrgggh!)
– a firetruck! so cute! do you put your dolls in it? (do you ask boys this question?)
– she’s going to be a fireman? (if she can say ‘firefighter’ at TWO, i’m sure you can, too…)

dear well-meaning world. gender stereotypes suck. and we need feminism more than ever. thanks much for listening to my rant.

– mommy of a little girl who just wants to be whatever she wants to be.”

Kudos to Kim for supporting her Mighty Girl’s interests wherever they take her and thanks for sharing this fantastic picture!

If you’re looking for an empowering costume for your Mighty Girl, our Halloween Costume Guide features 400 options for all ages, infant through adult, on a variety of themes, including many occupational-themed costumes.

If your Mighty Girl likes to pretend to fight fires, you can also find many related toys, including the Fire Truck Pedal Car pictured here, in our “Pretend Play Occupations” section.

And, if you’d like to introduce more gender diversity into your children’s LEGO collection, the Community Minifigures Set includes 22 figures in a variety of community roles, including both male and female firefighters.

Here’s another atheist in Pakistan who could use help.

Aatif is an atheist living in Pakistan, where blasphemy laws carry the death penalty. It is common for street mobs to assault anyone suspected of being insufficiently Islamic. In the face of this reality, Aatif runs an atheist Facebook page. That is how I met him.

His conservative Muslim family has rejected him. He was forced to move away and then to go into hiding. His abusive father and older male relatives have tried to force him into an Islamic reprogramming institute, beating him when he resists.

Though he has a master’s degree in Computer Science, where he now lives he earns barely enough to rent a room and feed himself; he often cannot even afford over-the-counter medicine to treat his health problems.

The GoFundMe.

Not cool.

The headline: Female molester facing strict release conditions

The story:

A woman convicted of sexually assaulting children will have to reside in a halfway house after completing her sentence due to concerns she is a risk to reoffend.

Jeez, you think, women don’t usually sexually assault children.

According to documents from the Parole Board of Canada dated Sept. 1, Madilyn Harks, who was formerly known as Matthew Ralf Harks, will face a residency condition upon her statutory release.

Oh. So…Madilyn used to be “known as” Matthew.

She will also be required to follow a treatment plan, respect a curfew and follow psychological counselling.

She will be prohibited from having any contact with children under the age of 18 unless supervised by an adult who is aware of her criminal history, and must avoid locations where children may be expected to congregate.

Harks began serving a three-year sentence for sexual assault against a seven-year-old female in April 2007.

She was released in 2010 and began a 10-year long-term supervision order.

At the time of Harks’ offence in 2007, she was on probation following two convictions of sexual assault against two children aged four and five years old.

“You have also admitted to having approximately 60 victims and you estimate having committed 200 offences, with some of those offences being multiple offences against some of your victims,” the parole board stated.

The board noted that in April 2006, Harks was identified in a dangerous offender psychiatric assessment as having an “all encompassing preoccupation with interest in sexually abusing young girls.”

The documents indicate Harks could also be facing charges for three alleged offences that took place recently while she was in custody: assault, unlawful confinement and sexual assault.

Harks is also subject to conditions imposed by the court in March 2014 that prohibit her from attending facilities including daycare centres, school grounds or playgrounds.

She is also banned from using a computer system for the purpose of communicating with a person under the age of 14.

Harks has undergone gender reassignment, and legally changed her name sometime between April 2010 and August 2012.

Oops. Roy Moore has been suspended without pay and ordered to pay costs.

Saying that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore violated judicial ethics when he ordered judges not to respect the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary suspended Moore for the rest of his term in office.

The order also requires the head of Alabama’s highest court to pay the costs of the proceedings against him and stipulates that he will not be paid for the remainder of his six-year term.

Once his term is up his age will disqualify him from running again.

The judgment against Moore was unanimous. But the nine-member court also noted that the decision is based on a review of Moore’s behavior and decisions, not on the justices’ views of the Supreme Court’s June 2015 ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry — contrary to Alabama’s law, adopted in 2016, that had reserved marriage for heterosexual couples only.

Saying that “some members of this court did not personally agree with” the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, the judges wrote, “This court simply does not have the authority to reexamine those issues.”

Because that’s what the “Supreme” in “Supreme Court” means – it’s at the top of the hierarchy, and lower courts don’t get to overturn its rulings.

For Moore, this is the second high-profile dispute that has cut short his term leading the Alabama Supreme Court. In 2003, he was removed from office after refusing a federal court’s order to remove a prominent display of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building. Alabama voters elected him to the office again in 2012.

Too bad, Alabama voters.

Remember that Ari Berman article in the Nation that I blogged about yesterday? About Wisconsin’s obstructionism in voter registration? Well no biggy, it merely prompted a judge to order an investigation, that’s all.

The state of Wisconsin must investigate a report that Division of Motor Vehicles employees gave false information to people who applied for IDs to vote, a federal judge ordered Friday.

Judge James Peterson’s order followed a report this week by The Nation that cast doubt on whether Gov. Scott Walker’s administration is following a judge’s instructions in a court challenge to the state’s voter ID law.

The Nation report featured recordings of exchanges with DMV employees that appear to thwart efforts by a homeless man to obtain an ID to vote in the November election.

Peterson, who is presiding over one of two pending legal challenges to Wisconsin’s voter ID law, ruled in July that the state must promptly provide voter ID credentials, valid in the November election, to people who request them — even if they lack some of the underlying documents needed to obtain an ID.

In his order Friday, Peterson said recent reports by The Nation and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel raise the question of whether the DMV is following his instructions.

“These reports, if true, demonstrate that the state is not in compliance with this court’s injunction order” from July, Peterson wrote.

“Respect cultural differences!” – Like the ones that throw people in jail for “insulting” the local religion or head of state? Let’s not respect those, shall we?

A teenage blogger has been handed a prison sentence after he was found guilty by a Singapore court of “wounding religious feelings”.

Amos Yee, 17, will spend six weeks in jail for deliberately posting videos and comments critical of Christianity and Islam.

Judge Ong Hian Sun told the court that Yee’s actions could “generate social unrest”.

Any actions could generate social unrest. It’s neither possible nor desirable to write the laws in such a way that they rule out all possibility of social unrest. Christianity and Islam themselves could cause social unrest, and they often do.

Also, it seems very far-fetched that one teenager’s videos and comments could cause social unrest. On the one hand the principle is wrong and on the other hand the factual claim seems extremely weak.

Singapore has thrown Yee into jail before for the same footling reason.

Yee was jailed for four weeks in 2015 for criticising Christians, and was accused of insulting Lee Kuan Yew after he posted a video online in which he likened the late Singaporean leader to Jesus Christ.

Such actions are considered a serious crime in a country which takes a zero-tolerance approach towards insults of race and religion.

In other words a country with no respect for freedom of thought and expression.

You know who’s bad for the economy? Billionaires.

Perhaps no group bears more responsibility for the plight of the middle class than billionaires. An IMF study confirms that increasing inequality, especially at the very top of the wealth and income scale, is weakening economic growth.

I wish everybody would stop saying “middle class” when they mean at least middle-and-working, and often just working. I wish “working class” weren’t such a taboo category in mainstream US political discourse. It’s not as if the middle class is in a plight while the working class is just doing fabulously.

Anyway.

“In contrast,” the report found, “an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher … growth.” And higher growth means more jobs.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a world-leading expert on inequality, writes, “Our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth.” But instead of ensuring that lower-income and middle-class people share in economic growth, the opposite has been happening: Even after last week’s improved economic news, most of the economy’s gains are still going to the wealthiest Americans.

There we go – lower-income along with middle. That’s better.

It’s the old Henry Ford eureka moment – if you pay the workers a decent wage, they can buy your product! Awesome! But of course billionaires want everyone else to pay decent wages to support consumer spending, while they pay shit wages to support their houses and yachts and Mercedes SUVs.

The 0.01 percent — the 16,000 wealthiest Americans — have as much wealth as 80 percent of the nation’s population, some 256,000,000 people. Their shared wealth comes to $9 trillion. And at the end of 2015, a mere 536 people in the United States had a collective net worth of $2.6 trillion.

Why?

We now know what we have long suspected, thanks to political science research published at Princeton University: Political decision-making in this country is driven by corporate and ultra-wealthy elites, not by the democratic majority. This oligarchical usurpation of influence has led office holders at all levels to implement policies that kill jobs, depress wages and increase inequality.

These policies include government spending cuts, tax giveaways to the wealthy and corporations, bad trade deals (which Trump says he opposes; the team suggests otherwise) and economically destructive deregulation.

But it’s all cool because a tiny number of people make out like bandits.

Know what also reduces inequality, helps create jobs and raises working people’s wages?Unions. It isn’t immigrants who are weakening the collective bargaining power of the American worker. Billionaires like the Koch Brothers are financing anti-union court cases and flooding our political system with cash to eliminate one of the 99 percent’s most effective tools for economic self-improvement.

Right-wing corporations and billionaires are conducting class warfare on the 99 percent and environmental warfare on the planet. That’s why we need to enact a new, broad agenda: higher taxes on the wealthy, an increased minimum wage, strengthened workers’ rights, sweeping environmental measures and greater government spending for critical needs like infrastructure health and education.

That would be good. I don’t see it happening any time soon, but it would be good.

Tom Flynn writes: This Cartoon Cost a Jordanian Blogger His Life.

On September 25, a gunman shot dead Nahed Hattar, fifty-six, a prominent Christian blogger, as he was about to enter a courthouse in Amman, Jordan, to face charges that a cartoon he had shared online was offensive to Islam. Hattar had been arrested on August 13 after he shared the cartoon on Facebook. The cartoon—ostensibly the work of an anonymous cartoonist known only as “M80”—showed a man in a tent lying in bed between two women while smoking a cigarette, asking Allah to get him some refreshments. Jordanian authorities deemed the cartoon offensive to Islam. Though Hattar apologized and removed the cartoon, by the time of his court date he had received some two hundred death threats.

…

Western media gave modest coverage to Hattar’s death and funeral. But they followed a familiar pattern in refusing to republish the cartoon at the center of the story. Users of social media could locate the image with varying degrees of difficulty, but consumers of mainstream print and broadcast media were, once again, limited in their ability to form a full understanding of the story because the image at its heart had been suppressed.

That’s why I posted it here, of course. But here is here, it’s not the mainstream print and broadcast media.

For that reason, Free Inquiry has done what it did twice before when cartoons with Islamic themes led to violence and death: publish the offending image(s) so that readers and website visitors can see for themselves. This commentary will also appear in Free Inquiry’s December 2016/January 2017 issue, published on or about November 7, 2016.

I have a column in that issue. I’m very happy it’s in that issue, along with the Offending Image. I’m very glad to keep it company.

Also in terrifying news, not related to Trump for a change – India and Pakistan are playing chicken. That’s bad because of the nukes.

Elite troops have launched “surgical strikes” on Pakistan-based terrorists in the contested territory of Kashmir, India said on Thursday, in a major escalation of a deepening crisis between the nuclear-armed rivals.

The Indian army said troops conducted multiple nighttime raids across the line of control (LOC), the ceasefire line agreed in 1972 that divides the Himalayan region, to attack militants preparing to cross into Indian-controlled territory.

That’s bad.

Zahid Hussain, a Pakistani security analyst, described Thursday’s attacks as a “very serious escalation”. “We have seen firing on the line of control before, but this is much more dangerous in the context of the rising tension between the two sides,” he said. “I am not saying that this could lead to a full state confrontation, but this is how things start to get out of control.”

India last announced it had conducted cross-border strikes in June 2015, when it targeted rebel camps in Myanmar in response to an ambush that killed at least 18 Indian soldiers in the north-eastern state of Manipur. Delhi described the raid as unprecedented at the time and signalled similar tactics could be used along its western border with Pakistan.

On Wednesday, in a sign of deepening Pakistani isolation in the region, India and three other countries announced they would boycot the forthcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit, which was scheduled to be held in Islamabad in November.

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has also raised the possibility of Delhi altering or walking away from a major river-sharing agreement that permits Pakistan to draw water from three rivers that flow downstream from India, providing water to 65% of the country’s landmass.

It doesn’t help that religious zealots are in power in both countries.

Newt Gingrich spat some poison on a Fox poison-show yesterday:

I believe, and I’ve said this in my newsletter as you know, and I’ve said it actually with you when we talked around midnight after the debate Monday night. This was the Holt-Clinton vs Trump debate, and you have to see it as tag-team. Holt was on Clinton’s team. This moderator stuff is nonsense, and I predict to you that Anderson Cooper will be ten times worse than Holt because he’s so deeply prejudiced against Trump. I think what you’re going to see is a — and Trump’s just got to prepare for this. Every single debate is going to be a double-team. He’s going to have the moderator who’s a liberal, and he’s going to have Hillary, and they’re both going to be on the same team.

And there are rumors that Hillary was actually given the questions in advance. I don’t know if it’s true but it would not shock me because they all operate in the same circle.

They both knew “the questions” in advance. The topics were announced in advance. It wasn’t an algebra test, it was a debate on broad policy issues. Clinton didn’t “cheat” or steal her neighbor’s answers, she prepared. Trump didn’t prepare because he’s too dim and restless and light-minded.

Also there’s that “there are rumors” bullshit which is just an excuse to plant a lie.

Guest post by Josh Spokes.

Look at this.

Are you under 40? Let me blow your mind. This never happened in the 70s and 80s. Until recently I had never heard of a “gender reveal party” for baby. This is only possible because of the backwards regression into rigid sex roles that has taken over our discourse since my childhood in the late 70s and early 80s.

This is connected to the complete pink/blue divide enforced in toy stores. It’s connected to the fact that almost all children’s clothing is now soaking in disgusting misogyny and stultifying sex-role stereotypes.

There really was a world, very recently, in which we did these things better. Where we recognized the damage that “gendering” every consumer item, especially children’s wares, did to them and to society.

Does this surprise you? Well, OK. Now you know it’s possible to do the world differently. Now you know that what you think is “normal” is really quite specific to the tiny slice of time that you have been a conscious person in the world.

Now you know you can change it.

Ari Berman went to Wisconsin to see how badly that state is doing at fulfilling its duty to enable eligible voters to vote.

Zack Moore, a 34-year-old African-American man, moved from Chicago to Madison last year. He worked at a car wash and then a landscaping job before breaking his leg and becoming unemployed. After staying with his brother, he’s now homeless and sleeping on the streets of Madison.

On September 22, he went to the DMV to get a photo ID for voting, as required by Wisconsin’s strict voter-ID law. He brought his Illinois photo ID, Social Security card, and a pay stub for proof of residence. But he didn’t have a copy of his birth certificate, which had been misplaced by his sister in Illinois, so the DMV wouldn’t give him an ID for voting. “I’m trying to get a Wisconsin ID so I can vote,” Moore told the DMV. “I don’t have my birth certificate, but I got everything else.”

He shouldn’t need his god damn birth certificate. The DMV told him to drive to Illinois to get it – as if everyone just automatically can drive long distances to get a piece of paper, as if poor people have no difficulties owning a car or paying for gas. It’s like the evacuation order before Katrina, that simply told everyone to get out of New Orleans, as if people who don’t own cars didn’t exist.

Or, to put it another way, as if they want to exclude poor people especially non-white poor people…which of course they do.

Nine percent of registered voters in Wisconsin don’t have a valid voter-ID and many are still struggling to get the documents they need to vote in November. It appears that Wisconsin is violating multiple court orders by not promptly giving eligible citizens free IDs or certificates for voting. This is particularly concerning since early voting began this week in cities like Madison and Milwaukee and thousands of Wisconsinites are casting ballots.

In an August ruling, federal district court Judge James Peterson said the [ID Petition Process] was “unconstitutional” and “pretty much a disaster. It disenfranchised about 100 qualified electors—the vast majority of whom were African American or Latino—who should have been given IDs to vote in the April 2016 primary. But the problem is deeper than that: even voters who succeed in the IDPP manage to get an ID only after surmounting severe burdens.”

He ordered, “Wisconsin may adopt a strict voter ID system only if that system has a well-functioning safety net.” He said the state must “promptly issue a credential valid as a voting ID to any person who enters the IDPP or who has a petition pending.”

But when people go to the DMV they are still told no.

Legal experts say they’re extremely troubled by the state’s continued failure to fairly enforce the voter-ID law. “Wisconsin has promised the court that voters would be able to get an ID with whatever documents they have,” says Sean Young of the ACLU. “They’ve completely failed to live up to that promise.”

The state keeps frantically changing its procedures to mollify the courts, leading to even more confusion among voters. Last week the Walker Administration proposed issuing “voting purposes only” IDs that could not be used for anything else, like opening a bank account. “The Division of Motor Vehicles also wants the free IDs – born of voter fraud fears – to be cheapened in quality, with some fraud protections removed,” theMilwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

“The more they change the procedures, the clearer it becomes that this has nothing to do with voter impersonation,” Young says. “The whole process has no meaning anymore. It’s just a pointless obstacle to the right to vote.”

And the result is that people – poor people of color mostly – are being disenfranchised.

From High Country News a story about Gold Butte, Nevada, two years after Cliven Bundy and his pals pulled guns on the feds.

In June 2015, for the first time since federal officers confronted Cliven Bundy and militia members over Bundy’s illegal grazing in 2014, the Bureau of Land Management sent a survey crew to the Gold Butte area near Bunkerville, Nevada. The three surveyors from the Great Basin Institute were there to inventory springs, cattle troughs and seeps. According to contemporary news reports, they encountered Cliven Bundy and his son, Ryan Bundy, who spoke with them briefly and asked what they were doing. Later that night, as the surveyors were getting into their tents, a vehicle lit up the camp with its headlights as it drove by, and shortly afterward, three gunshots rang out nearby. An hour later, they heard three more shots. The surveyors packed up in the dark, left and did not come back. Cliven Bundy told reporters he had not fired the shots, and the BLM kept out of Gold Butte.

Terrorist thieves stealing and occupying our federal land.

Bundy’s cattle are still there, and he still hasn’t paid the more than $1 million he owes in grazing fees and fines. On the other hand he is in jail, so that’s something.

This past June the feds returned to Gold Butte.

The absence of federal workers did not go unnoticed. Friends of Gold Butte published a report in August detailing the damage inflicted on the area in the last two years, as well as documenting some historic bullet-hole damage. Graffiti and bullet holes riddle the petroglyphs and red sandstone, signs have been removed, and the area is marred by off-road tire tracks and trash. Twenty-two miles of illegal irrigation have been trenched through the desert, and a chopped-down Joshua tree was left to rot. The BLM is continuing to assess the situation, and so far staffers can’t say how much the illegal irrigation trenching and vehicle incursions have affected local wildlife populations. “Once this happens, it persists through time,” Moan says of the graffiti and general disregard for the area by visitors.

They vandalize the petroglyphs. Who else delights in damaging other people’s ancient artworks? Oh yes, Islamic State. Nice company you keep, Bundys et al.

H/t Peter Walker

Hey guess what, we’ve passed the carbon tipping point. Permanently.

It’s a banner week for the end of the world, because we’ve officially pushed atmospheric carbon levels past their dreaded 400 parts per million. Permanently.

According to a blog post last Friday from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “it already seems safe to conclude that we won’t be seeing a monthly value below 400 ppm this year—or ever again for the indefinite future.” Their findings are based on weekly observations of carbon dioxide at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, where climate scientists have been measuring CO2 levels since 1958.

What’s so terrifying about this number? For several years now, scientists have been warning us that if atmospheric carbon were allowed to surpass 400 parts per million, it would mark a serious “tipping point” into some unstoppable climate ramifications. In 2012, the Arctic was the first region on Earth to cross this red line. Three years later, for the first time since scientists had begun to record them, carbon levels remained above 400 parts per million for an entire month.

The unstoppable ramifications aren’t very pleasant.

Extinctions, food chain disruption, rising sea levels…

Ocean acidification

Considered a crucial barometer of environmental health, ocean acidity is already wiping out entire marine ecosystems. The planet’s oceans are constantly absorbing excess CO2, causing their pH to decrease, literally acidifying the water. As a result, vast expanses of life-sustaining coral, such as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, are bleaching and dying. While coral polyps could still take hold and regrow into reefs, scientists anticipate that bleaching events will leave long-lasting marks on the face of ocean ecosystems.

Oops.