Question of the Day

What is your favorite part of whatever season it is in your part of the world?

It's autumn here, and I love the changing color of the leaves so much. I look forward to it every year.

Plus: Sweater weather!

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Budgetfu@# 2015!

New York Times: Congress and White House Near Deal on Budget.

Congressional leaders and the Obama administration are close to a crucial budget deal that would modestly increase domestic spending over the next two years and raise the federal borrowing limit. The accord would avert a potentially cataclysmic default on the government's debt and dispense with perhaps the most divisive issue in Washington just days before Speaker John A. Boehner is expected to turn over his gavel to Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin.

While congressional aides cautioned that the deal was far from certain, and the Treasury Department declined to comment, officials briefed on the negotiations said the emerging accord would call for cuts in spending on Medicare and Social Security disability benefits.
WHAT.
Rank-and-file House Republicans, in particular, have been resistant to authorizing an increase in the debt limit without some accompanying adjustments to mandatory federal spending programs.
And because tax increases just aren't even considered a possibility anymore, apparently by either party, Congress is looking to offset spending by further decimating the social safety net, a concession Democrats are willing to make to stop the Republicans from holding the entire country hostage again.

I don't even know what to say anymore. We are so fucked.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime



David Bowie: "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)"

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Quote of the Day

image of Hillary Clinton at the Benghazi hearing, with her chin in her hand and a slight smile on her face

"It was a televised witch trial. But the tribunal had before it a woman who would not confess transgression and who defied the flame. ...I keep being surprised by the astonishing degree to which Clinton's opponents continue to underestimate her."Charles M. Blow, on "the spectacular debacle of the Benghazi committee hearing."

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Your Best Photograph

If you're a photographer, even if a very amateur one (like myself), and you've got a photo or photos you'd like to share, here's your thread for that!

It doesn't really have to be your best photograph—just one you like!

Please be sure if your photo contains people other than yourself, that you have the explicit consent of the people in the photos before posting them.

* * *

Here's one I quite like which I took over the summer at a train station near Lake Michigan:

image of a personhole cover in a brick pathway, with grass overgrowing the area

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The Monday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by the color fuschia.

Recommended Reading:

Ragen: [Content Note: Stalking; harassment; fat hatred] When Online Trolls Become In-Person Stalkers

Shane: [CN: Racism] Racism Is…

Libby Anne: [CN: Sexuality policing; rape culture] Your Child's Virginity Is None of Your Business

Hina: [CN: Misogyny; objectification; choice policing] Forearm-Ankle Skin Visibility: The Measure of Muslim Women's Relationships

Kenrya: Hillary Clinton Vows to Turn Down Donations from Private Prison Companies

Carly: Kristen Wiig "Bummed Out" by Ghostbusters Reboot Backlash

Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!

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Daily Dose of Cute

image of Zelda the Black and Tan Mutt and Dudley the Greyhound investigating brightly colored autumn leaves on the ground during our morning walk
Investigating the leaves on their morning constitutional.

As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Earthquake; death] Goddammit: "More than 100 people were reported killed Monday when a powerful earthquake centered in northeast Afghanistan triggered landslides, building collapses, stampedes, and panic from Central Asia to India. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.5 and was centered in the Hindu Kush mountains, 158 miles north-northeast of Kabul. The epicenter was near the Jarm district in the remote northeastern province of Badakhshan, one of Afghanistan's most inaccessible regions, where a massive landslide last May killed hundreds of people. The Pakistani military said 123 people were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and nearly 1,000 injured." The Guardian is providing live updates. Aid relief information will surely become available as the day goes on; please feel welcome and encouraged to share links to relief efforts in comments. If you are hoping to locate someone in the area, Google's dedicated Person Finder is a good resource.

[CN: Arson; racism; terrorism] A seventh church has been damaged by arson in the Ferguson area: "'Holy God...if we ever needed a wake-up call to believe that racism is alive in St. Louis—if this is not it, I don't know what it could be,. the Rev. Mike Kinman, an Episcopal priest at St. Louis' Christ Church Cathedral, told the Post." (Previously.)

This fucking guy: "Marco Rubio is a U.S. senator. And he just can't stand it anymore. 'I don't know that 'hate' is the right word,' Rubio said in an interview. 'I'm frustrated.' This year, as Rubio runs for president, he has cast the Senate—the very place that cemented him as a national politician—as a place he's given up on, after less than one term. It's too slow. Too rule-bound. So Rubio, 44, has decided not to run for his seat again. It's the White House or bust. 'That's why I’m missing votes. Because I am leaving the Senate. I am not running for reelection,' Rubio said in the last Republican debate, after Donald Trump had mocked him for his unusual number of absences during Senate votes." Um, okay. Except you're still meant to be representing the people who elected you, dipshit. And also? If you think the Senate is slow and frustrating, you might want to talk to President Obama about whether the presidency is a high-octane thrillfest when it comes to enacting an agenda which depends on Congress for passage. Do any of the Republicans running for president understand how the government actually works?!

[CN: Privilege] GOOD GRIEF Donald Trump's rags to riches story: "'It has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me. I started off in Brooklyn. My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars,' Trump remarked. 'I came into Manhattan, and I had to pay him back, and I had to pay him back with interest. But I came into Manhattan and I started buying properties, and I did great.'" He pulled himself up by his gold-plated bootstraps! What have YOU ever done?!

Welp! "In April, Dan Price, CEO of the credit card payment processor Gravity Payments, announced that he will eventually raise minimum pay for all employees to at least $70,000 a year. The move sparked not just a firestorm of media attention, but also a lawsuit from Price's brother and co-founder Lucas, claiming that the pay raise violated his rights as a minority shareholder. But six months later, the financial results are starting to come in: Price told Inc. Magazine that revenue is now growing at double the rate before the raises began and profits have also doubled since then."

I love this with one million hearts: "Every afternoon, the students riding on bus 7 in Arlington, Washington, receive warm waves from an elderly woman as they pass by her home... Known as 'the grandma in the window,' she is a daily staple for this group of kids, as well as for the bus driver, Carol Mitzelfeldt. So, when one morning in September, the window was empty, the students on the bus were concerned and wanted to make sure their 'grandma' was OK. ...Mitzelfeldt learned from the elderly woman's husband, Dave, that her name is Louise Edlen, she'd had a stroke a few days prior and was being cared for at a local rehabilitation center. ...The students then posed for a photo of themselves waving out the windows of the bus, just as Edlen sees them each afternoon. Mitzelfeldt had the picture mounted on a large foam board, signed it on behalf of bus 7, and delivered it to Edlen at the care center. Though she struggled to speak because of the stroke, Edlen was able to tell Mitzelfeldt that she loved the children and they mean a lot to her. Fortunately, last Tuesday, Edlen returned home. And fanfare awaited her—Mitzelfeldt and a large group of students put together colorful signs welcoming their 'grandma in the window' back home, cheering from the windows and honking horns." ♥♥♥

YESSSSSSSSSS! "A spokesperson for David Bowie has confirmed that his new album will be released in January 2016. Entitled Blackstar, the album will also feature a single of the same name." I AM SO EXCITED!!!

In case you were wondering why Adele uses a flip phone in her new video, now you know!

[CN: Racism; misogyny; homophobia] Oh for fuck's sake just SHUT UP, Roger Moore: "I have heard people talk about how there should be a lady Bond or a gay Bond. But they wouldn't be Bond for the simple reason that wasn't what Ian Fleming wrote... It is not about being homophobic or, for that matter, racist—it is simply about being true to the character." (Previously.)

!!!!!!!!!!!!! "Mega-shark teeth wash ashore in North Carolina: Recent storms and high tides have unearthed a prehistoric marvel on the coast of North Carolina. Fossilized shark teeth, some as big as an adult hand, have been plucked from the sand by beachgoers in North Topsail Beach and Surf City, North Carolina... The teeth are immense and immensely old: Researchers say the teeth once belonged to a Megalodon, the largest shark ever to live. Megalodon went extinct some 2.6 million years ago."

[CN: Moving gifs at link] And finally! Baby deer rescue and rehabilitation! Adorbz! And what a terrific success. Yay!

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Bernie Sanders, What Are You Even Doing?

[Content Note: Misogyny; video may autoplay at third link.]

During the first Democratic presidential debate, Senator Bernie Sanders got defensive when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged his record on gun rights, and implied that she was shouting: "As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton, that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence that we are seeing."

This was a terrible answer for a couple of reasons—not only because the proverbial rural hunting guns are also used to kill and threaten, especially by domestic abusers, and the dichotomy often drawn between guns used by rural hunters and guns used by urban criminals is a false (and implicitly racist) one, but also because Sanders was engaging in some good old-fashioned tone policing and dogwhistling about women's shrillness.

On Saturday, Clinton pushed back on Sanders' categorization of her "shouting," saying: "I've been told to stop shouting about gun violence. Well, I'm not shouting. It's just when women talk, some people think we're shouting."

Boom.

One might expect that Sanders would have learned something, anything, from the general criticism of his failure to be sensitive to marginalized populations' individual and intersectional concerns since the beginning of his campaign, or from the specific criticism of his "shouting" comment during the debate, but one would be wrong!

Sanders on Sunday laughed at her suggestion that his remarks were about gender.

"All that I can say is I am very proud of my record on women's issues. I certainly do not have a problem with women speaking out—and I think what the secretary is doing there is taking words and misapplying them," Sanders told [CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper].
Wow. So, treating as laughable the suggestion that the language he used has a misogynist connotation, even if it wasn't intended that way, citing his record on women's issues (I bet some of his best friends are women!), and accusing Hillary Clinton of misunderstanding and looking for things to get mad about. ONE MORE SQUARE AND I'LL HAVE BINGO.

See, here's the thing: I am willing (barely) to take it in good faith that Sanders didn't intend to accuse Clinton of shouting, but was instead, as he further claims, referring to the general tone of the gun debate in the US. But who cares. The reality is that, by all appearances, he was accusing Clinton of shouting, and that necessarily carries with it a context repeatedly and ubiquitously used to discredit outspoken women.

Irrespective of Sanders' intent, he needs to acknowledge that and apologize and promise (meaningfully) to be more sensitive to the language he uses to address a female candidate, instead of laughing it off and doubling down by accusing Clinton of being an oversensitive hysteric.

I get the feeling that Sanders is exasperated that Clinton is "playing the woman card," without the most infinitesimal awareness that sometimes we women have to put that card on the table specifically because the men around us haven't bothered to secure for themselves the most basic education on the sorts of marginalizing language and diminishing tropes used against women.

[Related Reading from the '08 election, for fuck's sake: Clinton the Woman vs. Clinton the Person; Clinton, Criticism, and Misogyny.]

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This Fu@#king Guy

[Content Note: War on agency; video may autoplay at link.]

image of Dr. Ben Carson speaking at a campaign event, gesticulating with his hands, to which I've added text reading: 'I took that 'First Do No Harm' thing as kind of a loose suggestion.'

If I've said it once, I've said it three hundred and eighty-seven times: My favorite part of every Republican presidential primary is listening to a bunch of cis dudes pontificate about abortion rights.

Dr. Ben Carson, y'all:
Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson said he would "love" to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, making abortion illegal nationwide, with almost no exemptions.

"I'm a reasonable person and if people can come up with a reasonable explanation of why they would like to kill a baby, I'll listen," Carson said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Nothing says "reasonable" like miscategorizing abortion as "killing a baby."

*thisface*

His eminent reasonableness did not stop there, naturally:
While the Republican candidate said he opposes abortions for unwanted pregnancies and in cases of rape and incest, the retired neurosurgeon told moderator Chuck Todd he might be open to allowing abortions to preserve the life and health of the mother.

"That's an extraordinarily rare situation," Carson said. "But if in that very rare situation it occurred, I believe there's room to discuss that."
First of all, it is not "extraordinarily rare" for a pregnancy to have serious complications. Secondly, even if it were, only in a country where fetuses are valued more highly than the people who carry them would it be considered remotely acceptable to suggest that a lifesaving medical procedure should be banned, because death from a lack of access to that procedure is rare, anyway.

It's bad enough when the usual Republican d-bags talk absolute shite about abortion, but Ben Carson is a doctor, and what he says about abortion carries the extra (presumed) authority of his medical expertise.

He should know better. By which I mean: A doctor of all people should know that criminalizing legal abortion, or so severely reducing access that it might as well be illegal, will result in more people dying from pregnancy, or attempts to terminate it, not fewer.

(He knows. He just doesn't care.)

(Asshole.)

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Freefalling, Now He's Freefalling...

[Content Note: Privilege; bigotry. Video may autoplay at link.]

Jeb Bush's campaign is imploding. The cash has dried up, and Jeb! can no longer contain his annoyance that gold toilet aficionado Donald Trump is the ringmaster of the grotesque shitshow that is the Republican primary:

The former Florida governor and younger brother of President George W. Bush seemed frustrated with the political stand-offs that have come to characterize the American government, and the mud slinging of the current election season.

"If this election is about how we're going to fight to get nothing done, then… I don't want any part of it," Bush reportedly said. "I don't want to be elected president to sit around and see gridlock just become so dominant that people literally are in decline in their lives."

He then took a swing at his GOP rival, Donald Trump.

"I've got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them," he said. "That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that."
"Okay!" said the Republican base.

Naturally, this is being widely framed as Bush losing his cool that Trump is taking potshots at him, but of course it's not just that Trump is taking potshots at him, but taking them from the pole position. Bush is pissed that he's losing, certainly, but I wager he's even more pissed that he's losing to Donald Trump.

Pissed about losing to Trump for a bunch of different reasons, not least of which is that Trump's popularity with the Republican base, specifically because he's running a nakedly racist and overtly misogynist campaign, smashes to smithereens the protective veneer in which blueblood elites like Bush encase themselves to maintain a ludicrous denial about how despicable their base really is.

Bush, like many national politicians in the GOP who act in service to corporations, is primarily interested in social conservatism only insofar as it is useful as wedge issues. They aren't true believers; they don't care about kissing boys and they want their "mothers, wives, and daughters" to have access to abortion and equal pay; and they know damn well that Corporate America doesn't really want meaningful immigration reform that would stop them from exploiting undocumented workers.

To them, it's all just talk to get the base in the boonies to the voting booths.

And they fastidiously maintain an illusion that it doesn't really mean anything to the hoi polloi, either. At least not so much that they're actually hateful shitlords who actively want people they view as Other to be harmed.

Whoooooooooooooooops.

They maintain the illusion that their party might be something other than what it is by lying to themselves and ignoring all evidence to the contrary; and they maintain it by being so insulated from ordinary USians on a daily basis, sometimes for literally decades, that they aren't forced to face the grim reality of how ignorant and cruel their base truly is.

Which is why you see John McCain acting surprised when people start shouting about how President Obama is a Muslim terrorist at his campaign rallies, or why you see Chris Christie acting surprised when people call him a traitor for being pleasant to President Obama for three whole seconds, and why Jeb! is so shocked that Donald Trump is leading, not in spite of his bigotry but because of it.

Over and over, members of the Republican elite express shock at the true nature of their party, as if they didn't cultivate it to be precisely so, and Jeb Bush's mystified temper tantrums about Donald Trump are just the latest iteration in this same tired tale.

But Bush has no one but himself to blame. He's played as major a role in nurturing this hideous dynamic as any of the other clowns in his party running for the presidency, and the evidence of the seething resentment and hateful scapegoating they've wrought is there, as plain as day, all over the country.

It's no one's fault but his own if he has chosen to ignore it, because it was too ugly at which to gaze.

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Open Thread

image of a sparrow sitting on a branch

Hosted by a sparrow.

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The Virtual Pub Is Open

image of a pub Photoshopped to be named 'The Shakesville Arms'
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]

TFIF, Shakers!

Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime



Tina Turner: "Simply the Best"

This week's TMNS has been brought to you by ladies with alliterative names.

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The Friday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by soda pop.

Recommended Reading:

Katie: [Content Note: Misogyny; harassment; anti-choice terrorism] 'Gendertrolling' and Violence Against Abortion Providers: Cut from the Same Cloth

Desiree: [CN: Misogynoir; appropriation] You Want the Power But Not the Pain: Some Notes for White Women Who Love Cookie

Kenrya: This Policy Gives Native Women Equal Access to Emergency Contraception

Andy: Governor Andrew Cuomo to Use Executive Action to Protect Transgender New Yorkers from Discrimination

Fannie: [CN: Harassment] Abuse as the Web's Greatest Challenge

Latoya: [CN: Racism] When Your Transracially Adopted Child Needs Help

THV: [CN: Moving gifs at link] Feels Like a Good Day to Celebrate Love

Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!

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An Observation

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

I will never stopped being amazed that, in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and fifteen, there are still adult human men who refuse to talk to me if my husband is present.

Won't answer my questions directly.

Won't look at me when they're speaking.

Won't even acknowledge my existence.

And, if these same adult human men happen to have both our contact information, even if they have been informed I am the primary contact for whatever service they are providing to us, they will absolutely refuse to call me, or text me, or email me. Not when they can call or text or email Iain.

And then they act like it's a fucking mystery when I'm a less than a perfectly, deferentially polite shrinking violet (read: bitch) when they are obliged, to their utter horror, to speak with me directly.

Once again, lads: If you treat women like shit, don't be surprised when you get in return only as good as you've given.

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Couldn't Happen to a More Deserving Candidate

image of Jeb Bush standing at a podium in front of US flags, his arms spread wide, to which I've added text reading: 'Why does nobody like me?'

Jeb Bush, former Florida Governor and one of the least two objectionable Bush brothers, has utterly failed to catch fire as a Republican candidate for president. It's a real mystery, given that his father was a terrible one-term president and his brother was an even more terrible two-term president and he is also terrible, which seems like a perfect conservative resume.

But the Republican cash-holders have not been SHOWING HIM THE MONEY, so now he "is slashing pay across the board for his struggling campaign as he attempts to regain traction just 100 days before the party's first nominating contest."
The campaign is removing some senior staff from the payroll, parting ways with some consultants, and downsizing its Miami headquarters to save more than $1 million per month and cut payroll by 40 percent this week, according to Bush campaign officials who requested anonymity to speak about internal changes. Senior leadership positions remain unchanged.

The campaign is also cutting back 45 percent of its budget, except for dollars earmarked for TV advertising and spending for voter contacts, such as phone calls and mailers. Some senior-level staff and consultants will continue to work with the campaign on a volunteer basis, while other junior-level consultants, primarily in finance but including other areas, will be let go, the officials said.

...Bush's advisers, under pressure from their donors and from falling and stagnant poll numbers, have been discussing ways to retool the campaign in recent days, and came to the conclusion that a course correction was essential.
Hey, I will save Jeb Bush a buttload of advisor cash and offer A PERFECT course correction for free: DROP OUT OF THE RACE.

Don't let anyone tell you I never did anything nice for Republicans.

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Daily Dose of Cute

image of Olivia the White Farm Cat sleeping on the arm of the couch, with her back toes all splayed out, mid-stretch
Olivia, caught mid toe-stretch!

As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Extreme weather; video may autoplay at link] "Hurricane Patricia became the strongest storm ever measured on the planet early Friday, with experts warning it could trigger 40-foot waves along Mexico's coast and 'life-threatening' flash flooding. More than 7 million residents were told to prepare for the 'worst-case scenario' as Patricia was expected to race ashore on Mexico's Pacific coast between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET Friday. The tourist magnets of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo were directly in the Category 5 storm's projected path. Packing 200 mph winds, the U.S. National Hurricane Center described Patricia as the 'strongest hurricane on record' in the Atlantic and eastern North Pacific Basins." Holy shit.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] President Obama gave a firm defense of Black Lives Matter yesterday, and specifically pushed back against the "All Lives Matter" crapola: "'I think everybody understands all lives matter,' Obama said during a panel discussion at the White House. 'I think the reason that the organizers use the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' was not because they were suggesting nobody else's lives mattered. Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that is happening in the African American community that's not happening in other communities. And that is a legitimate issue that we've got to address.' Urging skeptics to take allegations of unfair policing seriously, the president said: 'The African American community is not just making this up.'" BOOM.

Former Rhode Island Governor and presidential hopeful Lincoln Chafee has dropped out of the Democratic primary. "After much thought, I have decided to end my campaign for the president today." Okay.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ben Carson has taken the lead in Iowa over gold toilet aficionado Donald Trump in the Republican race: "A new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows the retired neurosurgeon is backed by 28 percent of likely Republican caucus participants, up 10 percentage points since late August. Trump is supported by 19 percent, down 4 points." Welp!

[CN: Misogyny; violent rhetoric] Catherine Porter details what the differences for women will (hopefully!) be between incoming Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and his garbage predecessor Stephen Harper: "The first thing Justin Trudeau plans to do is name his cabinet—half of whom will be women. Can you believe it? I can't either. Trudeau has promised to draft the country's first national action plan on violence against women, call an inquiry into our missing and murdered aboriginal sisters and, within 100 days, get started on a national framework for child care. Child care. Remember that? That was the first thing the Conservative government destroyed when they came to power nine long, cold years ago. It was Harper's first cluster bomb in the War on Women. ...Who knows what other damage will surface, once Trudeau begins to consult with feminists? Most have been shut out of Ottawa for a decade. The Harper government didn't care what they thought about anything."

[CN: Rape culture] Get the Gothardites: "Five women have sued the Institute in Basic Life Principles, once a leader in the Christian homeschooling movement, charging that the organization and its board of directors enabled and covered up sexual abuse and harassment of interns, employees, and other participants in its programs. Each of the plaintiffs—Gretchen Wilkinson, Charis Barker, Rachel Frost, Rachel Lees, and a Jane Doe—seeks $50,000 in damages, alleging that the organization and its board acted negligently, with willful and wanton disregard for them, and engaged in a civil conspiracy to conceal the wrongdoing. The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a long-simmering scandal that has engulfed the ministry once admired by conservative Christian parents for teaching them how to raise obedient, devout and chaste children since the 1960s. The ministry has found dedicated followers in politics, including Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), who sought to replace Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) as House Speaker, and in entertainment." *cough*Duggars*cough*

[CN: Transphobia; misgendering] Well, yeah: Opponents of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance Protections for LGBT people "are clueless about transgender men." They are clueless about transgender women, too, just in a different way. "On Tuesday, ThinkProgress reached out via email to the leaders and outspoken advocates trying to defeat HERO with that simple question: 'Which locker room do you believe transgender men should use?' ...[N]ot a single opponent of Houston's LGBT nondiscrimination protections could provide any answer about the implications of not allowing transgender men to use the men's room." Despite, of course, their incessant yammering about how they don't want men (by which they mean trans women) using women's bathrooms.

[CN: Homophobia] Whoooooooooops your retrofuck beliefs! "During a major summit of the Roman Catholic hierarchy that will end this weekend, a senior conservative bishop took the floor inside the Vatican's assembly hall and promptly charged his liberal peers with doing the devil's work. The three-week gathering, known as a synod, has erupted into a theological slugfest over Pope Francis's vision of a more-inclusive church, and it has displayed the most bitter and public infighting since the heady days of Catholic reform in the 1960s." The thing that makes this particularly hilarious is how "Pope Francis' vision of a more-inclusive church" is really nothing more than not talking about how they hate teh gayz so much.

Whoa: "One woman in Scotland can accurately smell Parkinson's disease on a person's skin, and researchers have begun exploring the implications of her ability. ...Edinburgh University decided to test [Joy Milne]'s talents by providing her with t-shirts from six people with Parkinson's and six people without. Scientists were impressed when she accurately determined 11 out of 12 cases, even though she smelled Parkinson's on one of the t-shirts from a person without the disease. That twelfth person contacted the scientists months later to say he had been diagnosed, making Milne's record 12 for 12." If scientists can pinpoint the reason that Milne, who has an extraordinary olfactory talent, can smell Parkinson's, it might lead them to better understanding the disease, which would be amazing.

[CN: Video autoplays at link] Adele's new single. BRB LISTENING TO THIS ONE MILLION TIMES.

Wowwwww: "Moments from the Golden Eagle Festival in Mongolia." Care of photographer Ch.Batzaya.

And finally! THE BEST video of two orphan rhino calves playing at the Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation in South Africa. TOO CUTE!!!

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Please Support Shakesville

teaspoon icon This is, for those who have requested it, your bi-monthly reminder to donate to Shakesville and an important fundraiser to keep Shakesville going.

If you value the content and/or community in this space, please consider setting up a subscription or making a one-time contribution.

If you have appreciated being able to tune into Shakesville for coverage of the presidential primaries, for getting distilled news about politics or other topics, for a safe and image-free space to discuss rape culture and/or acts of public violence, for pop culture deconstruction, for recipes, for the Fat Fashion threads, or for whatever else you appreciate at Shakesville, whether it's the moderation, the community in Open Threads, Film Corner, video transcripts, the blogarounds, or anything else, please remember that Shakesville is run exclusively on donations.

I cannot afford to do this full-time for free, but, even if I could, fundraising is also one of the most feminist acts I do here. I ask to be paid for my work because progressive feminist advocacy has value; because women's work has value.

I would certainly be grateful for your support, if you are able to chip in. The donation link is in the sidebar to the right. Or click here.

Thank you to each of you who donates or has donated, whether monthly or as a one-off. I am deeply appreciative. This community couldn't exist without that support, truly. Thank you.

My thanks as well to everyone who contributes to the space in other ways, whether as a contributor, a moderator, a guest writer, a transcriber, and/or as someone who takes the time to send me a note of support and encouragement. (Or a cool drawing!) This community couldn't exist without you, either.

Please note that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. There is a big enough readership that no one needs to donate if it would be a hardship, and no one should ever feel bad about that. ♥

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