The other thread is getting too long and scrolly, and I’ve got nothing, so here’s a picture of the Old Girl and New Boy to tide us over until something else comes along:
Dogs make everything better.
Archives for September 2018
Friday Afternoon Open Thread
Something weird is happening in the Judiciary Committee. The vote was delayed, and there are rumors that Flake has flip-flopped:
1:30 has come and gone and still no committee vote. Senators still huddling. Becoming increasingly clear that Flake is wavering.
— Sheryl Gay Stolberg (@SherylNYT) September 28, 2018
I’ll believe it when I see it.
In the meantime, find someone who loves you as much as Badger loves this raggedy-ass tennis ball:
Open thread!
UPDATE: Flake voted yes to move the Kavanaugh nomination out of the committee on the condition that there’s an FBI investigation (within the next seven days) before the floor vote. He’ll be a no if there’s not an investigation. I’ll be darned.
Through a Woman’s Eyes
I wish every man in the entire world would read this. Men, walk in our shoes for just 30 seconds by reading this post. Guys ask why women are so pissed off. Even guys with wives and daughters.
Jackson Katz, a prominent social researcher, illustrates why. He’s done it with hundreds of audiences:
“I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other.
Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they’ve been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, ‘I stay out of prison.’ This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, ‘Nothing. I don’t think about it.’
Then I ask the women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine.
- Hold my keys as a potential weapon.
- Look in the back seat of the car before getting in.
- Carry a cell phone.
- Don’t go jogging at night.
- Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights.
- Be careful not to drink too much.
- Don’t put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured.
- Own a big dog.
- Carry Mace or pepper spray.
- Have an unlisted phone number.
- Have a man’s voice on my answering machine.
- Park in well-lit areas.
- Don’t use parking garages.
- Don’t get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men.
- Vary my route home from work.
- Watch what I wear.
- Don’t use highway rest areas.
- Use a home alarm system.
- Don’t wear headphones when jogging.
- Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime.
- Don’t take a first-floor apartment.
- Go out in groups.
- Own a firearm.
- Meet men on first dates in public places.
- Make sure to have a car or cab fare.
- Don’t make eye contact with men on the street.
- Make assertive eye contact with men on the street.”
― Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help
(The first man to minor in women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, holds a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in cultural studies and education from UCLA.)
For the rest of his life
Every waking moment of the rest of Jeff Flake’s life should be like this one
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 28, 2018
We’ve raised 16K in two days for 40 of the most competitive house seats. Let’s keep it up. (You can pick just one or two to give to limit the number of mailing lists you get on.)
The Vote to Confirm Our Second-Class Citizenship
At 9:30 AM, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on whether to send Kavanaugh’s nomination to the floor. Regardless of how they vote, McConnell can schedule a floor vote. He will because of course he fucking will — subverting the US Constitution and the will of the people is what McConnell does.
After McConnell schedules a vote on Kavanaugh, I’m 95% certain the Republicans in the US Senate will put the belligerent, entitled, rapey prick on the United States Supreme Court for the rest of his fucking life.
Which Republican will vote no? Flake or Sasse? Give me a fucking break. Collins? Not gonna happen. Murkowski? Her colleagues will find a way to bribe her.
Kavanaugh’s ranty, partisan performance yesterday pleased the belligerent, entitled, rapey prick in the White House who nominated him. Lindsey Graham successfully auditioned to replace Jeff Sessions as AG, overcoming the deficit of a cracker-ass accent that grates on Manhattan Mussolini’s ears.
This country doesn’t give a shit about treating women equally under the law, and it never has, due to a combination of malice and ignorance, with the former increasing and the latter receding too slowly.
As I’ve said here before, the reaction to Anita Hill’s testimony among male colleagues at my first real post-college job was an eye-opener for me back when I was a dewy young thing.
“If he was so horrible, why didn’t she just quit?”
“Why was she friendly to him in social settings years later if he sexually harassed her?”
“A little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.”
They didn’t get it. Some still don’t.
I was a cynic even then, but not so much that I expected to be sitting here 27 years later watching an even more revolting spectacle play out among members of my generational cohort.
Oh well. Nothing to do but vote, get others to vote, and get on with our lives, right? That’s just the way it is.
Professor Christine Blasey Ford will go on with her life after her country proves so unworthy of her courage and patriotism, just like Professor Anita Hill did before her.
Maybe, after another 27 years has passed, 80-year-old Justice Kavanaugh will retire or kick the bucket, and my 47-year-old daughter will find the prospect of his being replaced with a misogynist unthinkable.
But you know what? I wouldn’t bet on it.
The Vote to Confirm Our Second-Class CitizenshipPost + Comments (136)
If Facts Mattered
I remain wholly unconvinced that facts actually matter in the Ford/Kavanaugh thing, and that because Kavanaugh is going to overturn Roe, gut unions, gut environmental law, stick it to the gays and minorities and the non-Christians, and basically serve as a party apparatchik for 30 years, the Republicans are going to confirm him no matter what. However, if they did, Brett’s own calendar would sink his ass:
Much of Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony Tuesday focused on calendars he kept in the summer of 1982, where he detailed a few months that consisted mostly of hanging out with friends and sports camps and, Kavanaugh pointed out, few weekends spent in the Washington area as he traveled to the beach and other summer destinations. He insisted that his calendars proved he could not have been present at a gathering like the one described by accuser Christine Blasey Ford—a small group of friends drinking at a house when no parents were home.* Kavanaugh maintained that he recorded all his social engagements and that no entry on his calendar matches the vague outlines of the get-together Ford detailed. But one entry shows that he went “to Timmy’s for skis w/Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.”
Interesting.
Friday Morning Open Thread: Stay Braced
I owe one of you guys thanks for the above image. Quick notes on the (probable) Topic of the Day (assuming Trump doesn’t actually manage to fire Rod Rosenstein — remember that story? Three days ago!)…
The American Bar Association calls for an FBI background check before Senate votes to confirm Judge Kavanaugh: "Each appointment to our nation’s Highest Court (as with all others) is simply too important to rush to a vote." https://t.co/ZdiMt5qDfl pic.twitter.com/NqA58ciWph
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) September 28, 2018
He lied about his involvement in Bush policy decisions and judge nomination campaigns. He most likely lied about the extent of his drinking and other things he could have admitted to. He's not to be trusted.
— John Legend (@johnlegend) September 28, 2018
His politics and hackiness are atrocious but the fact that conservatives don’t even blink for a millisecond at almost incessant perjury is almost the weirdest part of this. Not the worst, but the weirdest. https://t.co/pqJesQHzlS
— Jesse Lee (@JesseCharlesLee) September 28, 2018
… aaaand let’s talk about something more pleasant. From the Washington Post, “Nearly 40,000 people applied to run a cat sanctuary on a Greek island”:
It began in 2010, when a cat gave birth in Joan and Richard Bowell’s garden on the Greek island of Syros. She had two kittens, and one was ill.
The Bowells took them in and gave them names: Pepper was the mother, Tiny and Ninja the babies. The trio joined two cats the couple had brought to Syros when they moved from Denmark, Joan’s native country, and the Bowells viewed it as a mere expansion of their two-person family. They now had not a small number of cats, but not so many that they couldn’t take the animals along when their plan to move to New York, where Richard worked with the United Nations, came to pass.
But this was Greece, where cats posing against white buildings become the subjects of many postcards, but not necessarily the objects of much affection. The Bowells kept finding felines bearing injuries and sicknesses and kittens, and soon the Bowells’ acre of island idyll had become a cat sanctuary they called God’s Little People. The name was not a statement about faith, they say, but about a philosophy — that cats are important as individuals, with a right to be free and to be cared for…
As the feline population roaming their property rose well above 60, the couple said, they realized space prevented the operation from growing much more. They wanted to finally make that move to New York, where Joan Bowell planned to establish another cat sanctuary outside the city. So on Aug. 5, she created a Facebook post soliciting applications for a modestly paid job managing God’s Little People.
The Bowells had posted a similar ad a few years back and gotten a couple handfuls of responses. This time, they hoped for 25, maybe 50.
Within six weeks, they had nearly 40,000…
The story of the job ad went viral, and the Bowells are in talks with filmmakers about a movie. Richard Bowell said he believes the enormous response isn’t about one news report starting a spiral of coverage, or even about the Internet’s infatuation with cats. He says it, too, is about humanity.
“This is bigger than just a job on a Greek island,” he said. “There’s a kind of wish for people to return to some level of humanity at a time when things are degenerating into such inhumanity . . . people want to see a future that can be worked toward.”
Earlier this month, the Bowells had whittled the towers of applications to a handful of finalists. Among those was 62-year-old Californian Jeffyne Telson, whose husband sent her the link to the job ad in August…
More positivity (yes, there are pictures) at the link.