Interesting. A couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan was saying ooh we need to cut the deficit, need to reduce all this spending on health care.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that congressional Republicans will aim next year to reduce spending on both federal health care and anti-poverty programs, citing the need to reduce America’s deficit.

“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said during an appearance on Ross Kaminsky’s talk radio show. “… Frankly, it’s the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

But a huge tax cut for the rich that is predicted to add a trillion dollars to Our Debt over the next decade…that is somehow not where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.

Ryan’s remarks add to the growing signs that top Republicans aim to cut government spending next year. Republicans are close to passing a tax bill nonpartisan analysts say would increase the deficit by at least $1 trillion over a decade. Trump recently called on Congress to move to cut welfare spending after the tax bill, and Senate Republicans have cited the need to reduce the national deficit while growing the economy.

It’s all rather stark, isn’t it.

Matt Damon is still busy telling us all how to talk about the problem of men preying on women in the workplace. He thinks we should talk more about the men in Hollywood who aren’t sexual predators. He also thinks he knows who they are and that they’re the vast majority.

Damon says not all the men in Hollywood are despicable.

“We’re in this watershed moment, and it’s great, but I think one thing that’s not being talked about is there are a whole s—load of guys — the preponderance of men I’ve worked with — who don’t do this kind of thing and whose lives aren’t going to be affected,” Damon told Business Insider while promoting his new movie, “Downsizing,” opening in theaters Friday.

That’s super-interesting but I have to wonder how he knows. I have to wonder how he thinks he knows. Does he think men tell everyone they harass and assault women?

“If I have to sign a sexual-harassment thing, I don’t care, I’ll sign it,” he said. “I would have signed it before. I don’t do that, and most of the people I know don’t do that.”

Because he would infallibly know it if they did.

Business Insider also asked Damon whether the current climate in Hollywood had made him more conscious of the people he’d work with on future projects. Would he back out of a movie if an actor, director, or producer had been accused of sexual misconduct?

“That always went into my thinking,” Damon said. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to work with somebody who — life’s too short for that. But the question of if somebody had allegations against them, you know, it would be a case-by-case basis. You go, ‘What’s the story here?'”

And then you tell yourself the answer, because you infallibly know which men harass women and which men don’t.

A headline:

27% of California adolescents say they are viewed as gender nonconforming, study finds

Hmm. How good are adolescents at sussing out what other people think of them? Adults aren’t all that good at it, even with experience and learning; I don’t think it’s the kind of thing adolescents are better at.

“The data show that more than one in four California youth express their gender in ways that go against the dominant stereotypes,” said lead author Bianca D.M. Wilson, the Rabbi Barbara Zacky Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute.

But that’s a different claim. The claim in the headline is twice-meta – it’s a claim about 1 )what people say 2)other people think. It’s not a claim about how people express their gender.

Gender nonconforming refers to people whose behaviors and appearance defy the dominant cultural and societal stereotypes of their gender. The health interview survey measured gender expression by asking adolescents how they thought people at school viewed their physical expressions of femininity and masculinity. Youth who reported that people at school saw them as equally masculine and feminine were categorized as “androgynous.” Girls who thought they were seen as mostly or very masculine and boys who thought they were seen as mostly or very feminine were categorized as “highly gender nonconforming.”

There again: they’re confusing levels. Asking adolescents 1)how they thought 2)people at school viewed their physical expressions of femininity and masculinity is twice meta again. It’s not a question about how in fact the adolescents “express their gender.” Doing a thing is one level; how people see it is a second; what people say about what people see is a third. If you mush them all together you get mush.

Anyway. I’m still looking forward to the time when everyone realizes that “the dominant cultural and societal stereotypes of their gender” are surplus baggage and just throws them all out instead of trying to label either conformity to them or rebellion against them.

Twitter has started its “purge.” Among the purged: Trump’s buddy Jayda Fransen, source of the “look out, Moooslims!!” videos he retweeted.

The implementation of Twitter’s new rules was the latest attempt by technology companies to crack down on abuses of their platforms in the aftermath of Charlottesville’s bloody demonstration in August. Though Twitter’s announcement in a morning blog post did not make this connection explicit, companies have been scrambling for months to address allegations that their platforms had become breeding grounds for extremist groups.

Far-right political figures have been criticizing these moves as assaults on their rights to free speech, and some have called Twitter’s new policy part of an effort to “purge” them.

Rights to free speech≠rights to use other people’s free platforms. We can say Twitter or Facebook are using shit criteria for their decisions, but “rights” don’t come into it.

Among those whose accounts went offline Monday were three affiliated with the group Britain First, including its main account and those maintained by its leader, Paul Golding, and his deputy Jayda Fransen. It was her anti-Muslim posts last month that were retweeted by President Trump, a move that earned him sharp rebuke from British Prime Minister Theresa May.

And disgust from much of the planet.

Kozinski has retired.

Alex Kozinski, a high-profile federal court judge in California, is retiring after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, prompting a formal inquiry.

In a statement on Monday, Mr. Kozinski, 67, said his family and friends had urged him to remain and defend himself, but that doing so would make it difficult to do his job well.

Kind of like the way his “jokes” and overtures made it difficult for his female colleagues and underlings to do their jobs well.

Citing a “broad sense of humor and a candid way of speaking to both male and female law clerks alike,” Mr. Kozinski, who served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for 32 years, also offered an apology to his accusers.

“It grieves me to learn that I caused any of my clerks to feel uncomfortable; this was never my intent,” he said. “For this I sincerely apologize.”

Yeah yeah yeah. Lenny Bruce, sexual revolution, freedom, feminists have no sense of humor, women are such a drag; we know. We’ve heard it, many times.

At least 15 women had accused Mr. Kozinski of subjecting them to unwanted sexual comments or physical contact, including kissing, hugging and groping, according to The Washington Post. The allegations spanned decades and included colleagues as well as women who met him at events.

Broad sense of humor! Stupid broads never get the joke.

This is not the first time that Mr. Kozinski has faced accusations of inappropriate behavior.

In 2008, The Los Angeles Times reported that he contributed to a website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos, including a photograph of naked women painted to look like cows.

Broad sense of humor! Stupid cows, they never get the joke.

Mr. Kozinski, a libertarian known for writing colorful opinions, was first appointed to the Ninth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

Colorful! Broad sense of humor! Fun guy!