[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Since this is apparently not evident to a number of Bernie Sanders supporters, let me go ahead and just say it plainly: When your misogynist garbage attacks on Hillary Clinton are removed from comments here, that is not an invitation to email them to me.
If you can't talk about Hillary Clinton without engaging in misogyny, I don't give a fuck what you have to say.
Here, there, anywhere.
Please see also: One and Two.
For the Record
Whoooooooooops!
"Fox News accidentally reports Donald Trump as the winner in New Hampshire."
Donald Trump won the New Hampshire primary Tuesday — according to a premature Fox News report.I don't know what the big deal is. It's as accurate as anything else they report.
Citing every precinct reporting, Fox News' website accidentally published election results declaring Trump the winner with 28 percent support and 14 delegates.
"During routine testing in preparation for the New Hampshire primary a malfunction occurred which briefly showed errant data on our website," Fox News Chief Digital Officer Jeff Misenti said in a statement. "This error has been rectified. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused."
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Flint water crisis.]
"As I've said for some time, to try to capture in words the tragedy of what occurred in Flint, it's almost beyond description."—Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, as investigators said today that the "state of Michigan's inquiry into the Flint water crisis will consider any potential criminal conduct, including involuntary manslaughter."
I honestly don't know what meaningful justice would look like in this situation, short of building a time machine and going back in time and preventing this unfathomable fuckery from being committed against the people of Flint in the first place.
Discussion Thread: Life Hacks
We haven't had a Life Hacks thread in a long time, so here's a thread to share all the little tips and tricks you've got for making life easier.
I'll share an old favorite of mine: If you ever get a food stain on a shirt that's oil-based and won't come out, treat it with some dish soap before running it through the wash. Even if it's already been washed and dried, using dish soap, which is formulated to break up oil and grease, will almost always do the trick!
Being a lady with a prominent boob rack and a penchant for clutziness, I cannot tell you how many times this has saved my shirts, lol.
Daily Dose of Cute
"What? I fit perfectly here!"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Misogyny] Here are some cool headlines about Hillary Clinton today, from the BBC and the LA Times:
"Female trouble." Like, you know, having your period. It's also pretty cool how Clinton's "armored persona" is her "weak spot," unlike Bernie Sanders who hasn't been subjected to four decades of Can't Fucking Win misogyny and thus gets to be Mr. Cool Cat.
[CN: Misogynist slur] Meanwhile, we've got the Republican frontrunner using a misogynist slur against one of his male competitors: "Donald Trump faux-admonished and then repeated a woman who called Ted Cruz a 'pussy' at a rally [in New Hampshire] on Monday night. Trump was criticizing Cruz for, in his view, failing to offer unequivocal support for waterboarding in the debate on Saturday night. Trump then interrupted what he was saying to point out what a woman in the crowd had shouted. 'She just said a terrible thing,' Trump said. 'You know what she said? Shout it out because I don't want to—OK, you're not allowed to say, and I never expect to hear that from you again. She said—I never expect to hear that from you again!—she said he's a pussy. That's terrible. Terrible,' Trump said, throwing up his hands. ...A few people near BuzzFeed News at the event started chanting, 'Pussy! Pussy!' after Trump said this."
Oh, President Obama, how I will miss you: "In a wide-ranging conversation on Super Bowl Sunday, President Obama opened up to 'CBS This Morning' co-host Gayle King in the Oval Office to discuss his final months on the job. He reflected on memorable visitors, shared charms that he rotates in his pockets, discussed how the presidency changed him, and what stresses him out when it comes to the future. ...But the president is also known to love babies. 'I love getting on the ground with babies in the Oval Office. And they're unrestrained so they will run around. They will take out all the apples out of the bowl and set them in various places and then put them back and, they're out of control,' Mr. Obama said."
[CN: Anti-choice terrorism] The bravest people: "The Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs where a shooter killed three people in November will reopen February 15. The accused shooter, Robert Lewis Dear Jr., said he 'picked Planned Parenthood because it's murdering little babies,' an apparent reference to a series of attack videos released last year by an anti-choice front group known as the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). Dear awaits trial on 179 charges, including first-degree murder. 'We are in awe of our healing and resilient colleagues in Colorado Springs,' Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in a statement. 'They are eager to get back to the mission they so deeply care about and the people they so compassionately care for. We welcome our team and our community back into the space with open arms and full hearts.'"
[CN: Prosecutorial misconduct; racism] Good: "A Texas legal disciplinary board upheld a decision to disbar a prosecutor who oversaw a case that sent an innocent man to death row. The board on Monday affirmed an earlier decision that found Charles Sebesta extracted false confessions and withheld testimony to convict Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years in prison before he was exonerated. The Texas supreme court-appointed board of disciplinary appeals said Sebesta's behavior in the case was 'egregious.' ...There was no physical evidence linking Graves to the murders. The prosecutor's case instead relied on a string of prosecutorial misdeeds. Sebesta presented false testimony in the case and withheld information from the defense."
[CN: Transgender healthcare; carcerality] "Nearly one year after the Department of Justice confirmed that denying hormone therapy for transgender people in prison is cruel and unusual punishment, Texas just loosened its strict guidelines for who could receive the treatment. Texas' Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) policy now allows prisoners to receive hormone therapy behind bars, even though they weren't undergoing therapy prior to their incarceration. Until last week, TDCJ only provided the treatment plan for inmates who went through hormone therapy before they were locked up. Now, any prisoner who is diagnosed with gender dysphoria—'clinically significant distress or impairment that is associated with the marked incongruence between one's experienced or expressed gender and one's assigned gender'—can qualify for the treatment." Getting a diagnosis, however, could still be a significant barrier to accessing care.
[CN: Illness] Shit: "Scientists confirm second, more intense form of Lyme disease: 'At this time there is no evidence that B. mayonii is present outside of the Upper Midwest,' Dr. Jeannine Petersen, a researcher at the CDC, told CBS News. 'However, people who live in areas where black-legged ticks are common should continue to take precautions.'"
[CN: Misogynoir] On The Daily Show, Jessica Williams shut down all the Beyoncé haters. "Race was brought in because Beyoncé was brought in and, brace yourself, you might want to sit down for this, but Beyoncé is…black! And as a black person, you walk around every day constantly reminded that you are black. [Beyoncé is black] and this song is her message." BOOM.
[CN: Video autoplays at link] And finally! An Italian Greyhound tries peanut butter for the first time. LOL!
Sure, But What About the Important People Who Matter?
[Content Note: Misogyny; war; drones; rape in war zones.]
In the Washington Post, Greg Sargent takes on the question of [CN: video autoplays] that video of Senator Elizabeth Warren asserting that Hillary Clinton's voting history on bankruptcy bills proves that she is a corporate shill who has been influenced by donations.
It somewhat mirrors what I wrote in comments the other day about that very video:
I have an enormous amount of respect for Senator Elizabeth Warren and the work she does. Truly. Just last weekend, I recommended Iain watch "Maxed Out," and my primary argument for watching it is because Warren is awesome in it.The difference between Sargent's piece and my commentary is that he doesn't seem particularly interested in highlighting that categorizing Clinton as a "shill" is dependent on ignoring her own words about why she voted the way she did, nor particularly interested in underlining that this line of attack is only effective when it conceals Clinton's perspective and relies on decades of shadowy rumor and misogynist double-standards.
But, for reasons I don't totally understand, Warren is substituting her own explanation for Clinton's turnaround on the bankruptcy bill, despite the fact that Clinton has publicly explained it.
The two bankruptcy bills Warren references were not the same. And do you know why they weren't the same? Because of Hillary Clinton -- who negotiated protections for women and children who depend on alimony and child support payments.
Here is Hillary Clinton, in her own words:
Mrs. Clinton said that the bill was pending when she arrived in the Senate in 2001 and wanted some changes to protect alimony and child support payments.That bill, by the way, did not pass. And when another bankruptcy bill came up in 2005, and was eventually passed, Clinton was not present in the Senate on the day of the vote, because Bill Clinton was in the hospital with heart problems, but she opposed it and said she would have voted against it.
"So I negotiated those changes and then the people who had been handling the bill said, 'Well if we take your changes you have to support it.' That's the way the Senate works," Mrs. Clinton said. "And so I said 'It's really important to me that we don't hurt women and children, so I will support it even though there are other things I don't like in it.'"
Clinton being passionate enough about the bankruptcy bill that she convinced her husband's entire administration, as Warren credits her with doing, to oppose it, and then completely doing a 180 just because of campaign donations doesn't pass the smell test. Because if campaign donations were a major consideration, they would have been a consideration back when the bill came up during Bill Clinton's administration, too.
It does, however, pass the smell test that a freshman senator whose entire career has centered women and children would make a compromise in order to protect them, because she fears the bill will pass anyway without those protections.
Of course, if one is primed already to believe that Hillary Clinton is a liar and an opportunist who will stop at nothing to get what she wants and is beholden to corporations, then I don't guess these facts will convince them.
Which goes back to the point I made earlier in the thread: A lot of these smears only work because they exist in the context of decades of garbage designed to cast Clinton as a monster.
It's a lot less exciting for people who hate her to hear that the special interests to whom she's actually beholden are women and children.
Instead, he pivots to suggesting "Both Clinton and Sanders make good arguments." And, in the sense that Sanders argues that half-measures aren't enough, and Clinton argues that incrementalism is the only way to get shit done in a dysfunctional Congress, they both make compelling arguments on behalf of their distinct approaches.
But in the sense that Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren, or anyone else, would ignore context that suggests the opposite in order to claim this "proves" that Clinton is a corporate shill who's compromised by corporate donations, no, they are not making good arguments. They are making mendacious arguments that trade on narratives created about Hillary Clinton by the rightwing.
And what bothers me the most about this is something that consistently bothers me about much of the policy-related criticism of Hillary Clinton: It fundamentally ignores that Clinton makes decisions on behalf of women and children.
(For the record: No, I am not arguing that Clinton has always made choices that have been universally good for women and/or children.)
When Clinton was Secretary of State, there were a number of pieces accusing her of lacking a unifying vision, and following her tenure, there were a number of pieces suggesting she didn't have a "big idea" that justified a run for the presidency, despite the fact that anyone who bothered to connect the dots would see a pretty clear picture of a person who advocacates for women and children.
Similarly, reducing her foreign policy decisions to her single, regrettable vote on Iraq necessitates ignoring that spent her tenure as Secretary of State doggedly advocating on behalf of women and children who are victimized by rape as a weapon of war; speaking about violence against women as a security issue; and repeatedly talking about how women are key to peacekeeping.
The thing is, there are legitimate criticisms to be made about Clinton's support for President Obama's drone program, for example, which harms women and children. And reducing her foreign policy to one vote, for which she's apologized, actually serves to distract from criticisms of contemporary policy.
But is also conceals the things she's done right on behalf of women and children in war zones and destabilized nations, and her highlighting of how oppression of women foments the instability from which armed conflicts emerge, in order to prevent them—an observation unique among the current field of presidential candidates.
It's incredibly important specialized foreign policy work. Of course, she's done it on behalf of women and children, so it's pretty easy for lots of Very Important People Who Care About Serious Issues to ignore, because who gives a fuck about women and kids.
When one really deep-dives into the policy criticisms of Clinton, a pattern emerges of what work and what motivations are concealed in order to make those criticisms. (Despite the fact it is eminently possible to criticize Clinton for policies that harm women and children on one hand, while also recognizing her work on behalf of women and children on the other, as I have done here.) It doesn't take anything away from valid criticisms to acknowledge her successes. But concealing them functions quite niftily to underwrite the narrative of the HILLARYMONSTER.
And in the process, it once again suggests that women and children aren't people who matter.
I believe that they are.
New Hampshire Primary Day!
Today is the New Hampshire Primary, which is the first primary in the 2016 presidential primary season that started with a caucus!
On the Democratic side, I would be surprised if Bernie Sanders didn't win, since he's from the neighboring state of Vermont. But even if Hillary Clinton does win, somehow she'll still lose! Don't worry about that!
On the Republican side, Trump has a strong lead in the polls, and it's a tight race for second between Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich (!). I suspect Trump will underperform the polls again, but he'd have to underperform them by a lot in order to lose.
I don't anticipate New Hampshire will significantly shake things up for either party, but the results should thin the herd a little more on the Republican side. If Jeb Bush comes in a distant fifth, expect him to finally admit it's never gonna happen and suspend his campaign.
Anyway! Let's see what ya got, New Hampshire voters!
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker jeanology: "Where is your favorite place to experience nature?"
My favorite place is wherever I am, because every new environment gives me different things to see. I am a particular fan of birds, and I love love love watching the birds, everywhere I go, and seeing the differences (and similarities) in bird populations in each place I visit.
Photo of the Day
Oh my heart. Posted by Chicago's Brookfield Zoo on their Facebook page in honor of Friends' Day last week.
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by chocolate.
Recommended Reading:
Stacey: [Content Note: Rape culture; sexual violence] When Your Friend Is on the Stand at the Ghomeshi Trial
Tiommi: National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
Shane: [CN: White supremacy; tokenism] Diversity Is Dead, and Whiteness Killed It
Katie: [CN: Heteronormativity] On Queering Valentine's Day
John Paul: [CN: Racism; anti-immigrant sentiment] Dreaming of a Latino President But Not the Nightmare of Ted Cruz
Nerdy Wonka: Welcome to the American Family
Andrew: [CN: Moving gif at link] Do Not Watch This Slo-Mo Video of a Dude Sticking His Tongue in a Mouse Trap
THV: Tom Hardy on the Cover of The Review (You're welcome.)
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
The Best Candidate for Women
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
One thing you will never hear me say about Hillary Clinton is that she is the best candidate for women.
That is a thing some people accuse me of saying, when I argue that a female president would be a challenge to the male supremacy of the establishment, or when I argue that uninterrogated misogyny underwrites a lot of reflexive opposition to Clinton's candidacy.
There are people, both women and men, who say that. Who say that Hillary Clinton is the best candidate for women.
But I am not one of them.
This is partly because I don't believe any president of a capitalist, colonialist state who has at zir command a military capable of displacing, injuring, and killing legions of people can be universally good for women. (Or any marginalized population.) That assessment is certainly not limited to Clinton.
And it's partly because Clinton has supported and/or currently supports some policies that aren't universally good for women. That have harmed women. That is also a statement which can be made about any person who has ever run for president.
But it's mostly because I don't view women as a monolith. In addition to there being some women with privileges that other women don't have, women don't have a universal set of interests.
And I don't have any inclination to tell other women what their interests should be, or how they should assess who best represents them.
There is no single candidate who is "the best candidate for women."
There is only the best candidate for any individual woman. And that is the candidate she chooses.
Fat Fashion
This is your semi-regular thread in which fat women can share pix, make recommendations for clothes they love, ask questions of other fat women about where to locate certain plus-size items, share info about sales, talk about what jeans cut at what retailer best fits their body shapes, discuss how to accessorize neutral colored suits, share stories of going bare-armed for the first time, brag about a cool fashion moment, whatever.
* * *
Two threads ago, I mentioned having purchased a couple of t-shirts from ModCloth during their big 70% off sale. Here I am sporting one of the new tees I snagged, along with my oft-pictured burgundy moto jacket:
Honestly, I think ModCloth's t-shirts are overpriced for their quality at regular cost, so I'm really glad when I can get them at a discounted price.
Anyway! As always, all subjects related to fat fashion are on topic, but if you want a topic for discussion: T-shirts! Do you love them? Can you leave them?
Have at it in comments! Please remember to make fat women of all sizes, especially women who find themselves regularly sizing out of standard plus-size lines, welcome in this conversation, and pass no judgment on fat women who want to and/or feel obliged, for any reason, to conform to beauty standards. And please make sure if you're soliciting advice, you make it clear you're seeking suggestions—and please be considerate not to offer unsolicited advice. Sometimes people just need to complain and want solidarity, not solutions.
Daily Dose of Cute
Cat and dogs! Living together!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Video autoplays at link; misogynoir] In case you haven't yet seen Beyoncé's extraordinary new video for her single "Formation," here it is, if you can view video. The lyrics are here, and, in the video, they are set against a backdrop of images of black oppression in the US over centuries. One of many thoughts I had as I watched the video was recalling Whitney Houston, whose blackness was treated as something to be concealed and who was packaged as the "prom queen of soul" to make her palatable to white audiences, telling Rolling Stone in an interview in the '90s: "I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down-and-dirty. I can get raunchy." Beyoncé is communicating a lot of things in this video, and one of them is the explicit rejection of the expectation that black female artists wrench their blackness from their personhood.
Twitter "is planning to introduce an algorithmic timeline as soon as next week, BuzzFeed News has learned. The timeline will reorder tweets based on what Twitter's algorithm thinks people most want to see, a departure from the current feed's reverse chronological order. It is unclear whether Twitter will force users to use the algorithmic feed, or it will merely be an option." I've never seen a company so determined to destroy its own product. (Imagine if Twitter put half as much energy into meaningfully addressing harassment on its platform as it did into destroying its platform.) The thing is: Presumably, the algorithm is based on user interactions. And one of the best things about Twitter is the ability it gives privileged people to listen to and learn from marginalized people by following conversations without inserting ourselves. An algorithm dependent on interaction will fundamentally change how many of us use Twitter, in one of the best ways it can be used. Also? I don't just want to see things I "want" to see. I also want to see things I need to see.
[CN: War; death; torture] Fucking hell: "Detainees held by the Syrian government are dying on a massive scale amounting to a state policy of extermination of the civilian population, a crime against humanity, United Nations investigators have said. The UN commission of inquiry called on the security council to impose sanctions against Syrian officials in the civilian and military hierarchy responsible for or complicit in deaths, torture, and disappearances in custody, but stopped short of naming individuals. In their report released on Monday, the independent experts said they had also documented mass killings and torture of prisoners by two jihadi groups, al-Nusra Front and Islamic State, constituting war crimes."
[CN: Climate change; drought] "A new study finds that the semi-arid U.S. Southwest has begun to enter the 'drier climate state' that had been long-predicted from climate models. These findings match ones from September documenting an expansion of the entire world's dry and semi-arid climate regions in recent decades because of human-caused climate change. The new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) concludes that 'The weather patterns that typically bring moisture to the southwestern United States are becoming more rare, an indication that the region is sliding into the drier climate state predicted by global models.'"
[CN: Drought; death] Meanwhile, an ongoing drought in Somalia has left more than 50,000 children on the brink of death. "A stark warning issued by the UN's humanitarian office, Ocha, said the malnutrition situation is 'alarming.' It added that nearly one million Somalis, one in 12 of the population, 'struggle... to meet their food needs.' The drought in Somalia has been partly caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon which has affected east and southern Africa." Which has been exacerbated by climate change.
President Obama will reportedly "ask the US Congress for $1.8bn (£1.25bn) in emergency funding to combat the Zika virus. The virus, which is transmitted primarily through mosquitoes, has spread rapidly through the Americas. ...The money will go to mosquito control efforts and vaccine research programmes among other initiatives."
Today, the BBC "will air a documentary about the life of Misty Copeland, the first Black principal ballerina in the American Ballet Theater. ...These past few years Copeland has become the role model that young Black ballerinas have deserved."
[CN: Video autoplays at link] If you would like to watch UCLA gymnast Sophina DeJesus' 9.925 floor routine, here it is! And it is terrific!
[CN: Disablist language] James Cordon does some Carpool Karaoke with Elton John!
And finally! A man in India "is so dedicated to animals that he's spent the last 10 years saving up enough money to buy an ambulance, which he will use to save stray animals in need of urgent medical care. He's no veterinarian, but Balu has learned what he needs to handle a life or death situation, and now he and his wife have already saved the lives of a number of ill and injured dogs." Blub.
The Super Bowl Thread
Here is a thread to talk about the Super Bowl, if you want to talk about the Super Bowl!
I did not watch the Super Bowl, because I loathe American football with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns. Instead, I chatted with a friend in Brazil and then Iain and I did our annual "have the world to ourselves" adventuring on Super Bowl Sunday.
I did get home just in time to watch the halftime show, though, so I could witness Beyoncé slaying the world. Which, of course, she did.
Coldplay perhaps a little less so.
Anyway!
Talk about the game, the advertisements (none of which I've watched), the halftime show, Lady Gaga's anthem, what you did instead of paying attention to the Super Bowl, whatever!
