Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker DesertRose: "If you have pets, when you come up with names for your pets, what's your process?"
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by cake.
Recommended Reading:
Jenn: [Content Note: Racism] New Poll Shows That Trump Has Alienated Two-Thirds of Asian American Voters
Keith: Obama Nominates First Muslim-American Federal Judge
Kenyetta: [CN: Fat hatred; coercion; moving GIF at link] Chubby Not Chastity: Guess What? I'm Fat and Want Plan B
Ragen: [CN: Fat hatred] Tim Gunn's Plus Size Mistake
Khairani: [CN: Disablism] Understanding Disability: Like Me, You Are Different; Like You, I Am Equal
Feminist Aspie: [CN: Disablism; child abuse; murder] Ableism Kills. Again.
Monica: [CN: Homophobia] 12-Year-Old Mexican Child Attempts to Stop an Anti-Gay Protest
Germain: You May Never See a Better Video Than Mad Max: Fury Road Without Special Effects
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
I Mean
I'm hardly the first person to say this, but the expectation of "disclosing" pneumonia, or any temporary illness, before it matters, is odd.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 12, 2016
And that is not a partisan opinion. If Trump gets an ingrown toenail, I don't need to know, unless/until it gets infected and he can't walk.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 12, 2016
Daily Dose of Cute
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 are a couple of links of interest from the news today:
ICYMI: Shareblue has launched #DemandFairDebates. Because holy Maude do we need fair debates.
If you haven't seen it yet, this video [autoplays at link] about a woman named Janelle, with whom Hillary Clinton became friends, after Janelle, in the midst of chemo, attended one of her campaign events, is so moving. Grab the tissues!
[Content Note: Racism; voter suppression] "North Carolina Republicans Are Apparently Hell-Bent on Suppressing the Black Vote." Read everything Imani Gandy writes.
[CN: Classism; racism; water contamination] "Pittsburgh water: expensive, rust-colored, corrosive, and high in lead."
[CN: Carcerality] "The true cost of mass incarceration exceeds $1 trillion." The true financial cost, that is. "According to researchers Carrie Pettus-Davis and Michael McLaughlin, the incarcerated population misses out on $70.5 billion in lost wages. While previous studies show that former prisoners less likely to be hired, and make significantly less money than their colleagues when they do secure jobs, Pettus-Davis and McLaughlin concluded that reduced wages add up to $230 billion in lost earnings. Families who have loved ones in prison also shoulder the financial load. The amount of time it takes people to visit their family members, instead of working, results in $1 billion of lost revenue, researchers found."
[CN: Sexual violence] "Toby Willis, father of 12 children with a show on TLC, arrested for child rape." TLC's really batting 1000.
"The planetary collision that formed the Moon may have been way more violent than we thought."
[CN: Moving GIFs at link] Awwwwwwww: "This Baby Pigeon and Bunny Tore up a Small Wall So They Could Be Together."
What have you been reading?
Whooooooooooops!
[Content Note: Bigotry.]
I've got a new piece at Shareblue about unearthed audio of Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in which she essentially agrees with Hillary Clinton that some portion of Trump supporters are a basket of deplorables:
One of the interesting aspects of Donald Trump getting the Republican nomination despite not being the favorite of the GOP establishment is that he's had trouble finding people to work with and for him from that establishment.There's more at the link, including audio of the interview, for anyone who'd like to have a listen for themselves!
So he's ended up with a running mate who endorsed Ted Cruz and a campaign manager whose past criticisms keep coming back to haunt him.
First, there was video of Kellyanne Conway having said her new boss "built a lot of his businesses on the backs of the little guy" and that people "suffered" as a result.
And now there's audio of Conway from this past February essentially conceding Hillary Clinton's assertion that a segment of Trump' supporters have objectionable views.
...At the 26th minute, Conway says Trump's "supporters, by the way, have been downright nasty to everyone else" and that "some of his supporters are way over their skeeze and have been downright nasty."
Quote of the Day
"Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of using languages and in the way of communications between dolphins and people."—Dr. Vyacheslav Ryabov, lead researcher on a study which has discovered "that dolphins alter the volume and frequency of pulsed clicks to form individual 'words' which they string together into sentences in much the same way that humans speak."
This is so immensely fascinating, and I highly recommend reading the whole article!
[Video Description: Video of dolphins underwater, talking to each other with clicks and squeaks.]
ELECTION UPDATE!!!
1. Hillary Clinton said that half of Donald Trump's supporters are a basket of deplorables. Everyone was SO OUTRAGED! Especially the media! OMG YOU GUYS DID YOU EVEN HEAR WHAT HILLARY SAID ABOUT THE ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORTERS OF A MAN WHO IS A PROUDLY AGGRESSIVE BIGOT?! SHE'S THE WORST! Hillary was obliged to issue a statement, which basically said SORRY NOT SORRY, and that made everyone REAL MAD, too! Especially white male reporters who have literally never been called any one of the millions of names or gotten any of the violent threats that I have, like every other public Clinton supporter from a marginalized population! THEY ARE SO MAD THAT SHE IS DEFENDING HER OWN SUPPORTERS WHO ARE RELENTLESSLY HARASSED BY HER OPPONENT'S SUPPORTERS! She is such a jerk!
2. Donald Trump is so offended that anyone would say something SO MEAN about his cool supporters, who spent the day hurling misogynist and antisemitic (?) epithets at me for talking about women's health and lived experiences yesterday AS BUT ONE EXAMPLE OF THEIR COOLNESS. Also his running mate Mike Pence is SUPER OFFENDED that Clinton would say their supporters are sexists, racists, homophobes, and xenophobes, which is SO WEIRD because it seems like Pence should be happy she's advertising the very things he has tried to legislate in Indiana FOR YEARS.
3. Our national media is garbage.
4. Tim Kaine continues to be very delightful and also makes good and serious points about how Donald Trump is a terrible candidate. I hope he's never sent or received any emails or started a foundation that has saved millions of lives or coughed or sat on a stool or felt faint from a combination of heat and pneumonia. Although it probably doesn't matter, because he's a dude.
5. Mike Pence continues to be the absolute fucking worst.
56 more days of this shit.
That about sums it up! Discuss.
Breaking: Hillary Clinton Is a Human Being
[Content Note: Auditing; dehumanization; misogyny; disablism.]
Hillary Clinton was outside for an hour and a half on a warm and humid day in New York yesterday, wearing appropriate professional attire—a high-collared blouse, with slacks and a blazer. The event, a 9/11 memorial, was certainly an emotional one for her, as she was New York's junior senator on the day the attack happened. She has worked very hard on behalf of survivors and first responders, and the families of those lost, many of whom she has come to know personally.
She got overheated. She swooned. She was helped into a van, which transported her to her daughter Chelsea's nearby apartment, where she was able to cool off and rehydrate and whatever else she needed to do to feel better.
And then she felt better. She emerged a short time later with a smile, waving to the gathered crowd and posing for a photo with a little girl.
Later, the campaign issued a note from her longtime physician, who disclosed that Clinton is being treated for pneumonia. Which includes being on a course of antibiotics. Which can increase the risk of dehydration and overheating.
So that's the story. Clinton is a human being who got physically overwhelmed in circumstances many people would, cooled off, and now feels better.
But the media rules for Clinton are different. So naturally, this completely normal incident was treated as though it's evidence Something Is Amiss. Especially since Donald Trump has been promulgating fringe conspiracy theories about her health for a month.
The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, whose casual misogyny toward Clinton should never be forgotten, immediately came out of the gate with a piece definitively headlined: "Hillary Clinton's health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign."
Really? Has it? On what basis? That a woman who has been crisscrossing the country for 18 months on an unfathomably relentless schedule of campaigning felt faint one morning while recovering from pneumonia?
CNN has been looping footage of Hillary Clinton being helped into a van, her knees buckling, as though we're looking at something sinister. What I see is someone who looks overcome by the heat.
I've had extreme heat sensitivity my whole life, and that's exactly what it looks like when I start to feel faint from getting overheated and dehydrated. It doesn't look sinister; it looks familiar.
And of the dozens of times in my life I've experienced such a thing, I've been wearing summer clothes, not several layers topped by a blazer (with, possibly, a bulletproof vest underneath). I've never had pneumonia at the time. I've also never been under the pressure of national media suggesting unfoundedly that I have health issues, which could have influenced me to push the envelope on what my body can take, in order to try to avoid horrible accusations of ill health, just because I'm a human being with limits.
I'm not suggesting that definitely happened—I don't know Clinton. I just have the ability and willingness to extend basic empathy to other people. It's not difficult for me to imagine how the constant, unfair policing of her supposed "health issues" could result in her pushing herself even harder.
This is not a news story. And the corporate media's attempt to turn it into one is gross. It is deeply cynical, and, worse yet, it is dehumanizing—because in every report is necessarily embedded the expectation that Clinton somehow be superhuman. That she can't just succumb momentarily to the heat combined with illness, like lots of other people could, but there must be something else, something nefarious, at play.
I am angry watching this happen. I am angry at seeing the media holding Clinton to different standards, yet again. I am angry that they are further breathing credibility into Trump's conspiracy theorizing.
I am angry that most members of the media reporting on this are so eager to report it's indicative of a larger health issue that they can't even be bothered to express basic concern for a fellow human being.
I am angry at the implication that, even if Clinton did have some sort of chronic health issue, that would axiomatically mean she is unfit for the presidency, as though we have never had a president with a disability, or as if people with disabilities can't serve as president.
And I am angry at the idea that Hillary Clinton, of all people, would continue to run for the presidency if she had a health issue that would prevent her from effectively filling the requirements of the job.
This election is the worst in about a million different ways, but the absolute shitshow that the corporate media has become, in their shameless quest to defeat her, is right at the top of the list.
Enough. Enough.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Shaker Gourmet
Whatcha been cooking up in your kitchen lately, Shakers?
Share your favorite recipes, solicit good recipes, share recipes you've recently tried, want to try, are trying to perfect, whatever! Whether they're your own creation, or something you found elsewhere, share away.
Also welcome: Recipes you've seen recently that you'd love to try, but haven't yet!
In the News
Here are a couple of links of interest from the news today:
Damn. When Jennifer Rubin starts excoriating people for not being fair to Hillary Clinton, you know it's gotten bad: "Hillary Clinton is another Colin Powell victim."
This is so fucked up: "Wells Fargo & Co. will pay $185 million to resolve claims that bank employees opened deposit and credit-card accounts without customers' approval to satisfy sales goals and earn financial rewards, U.S. regulators said. ...Thousands of employees at Wells Fargo were involved in opening accounts and moving funds that resulted in customers getting charged fees for services they didn't seek, according to the regulators." And, presumably, this affected all of those customers' credit ratings, too.
Wow: "The Wisconsin Office of the Attorney General has agreed to pay the state's abortion providers a $1.6 million lawsuit settlement to cover legal fees they amassed while fighting an unconstitutional 2013 admitting privileges law passed by the state's GOP-held legislature. The U.S. District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin ruled Thursday that the state must pay the money to Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Affiliated Medical Services, also known as Milwaukee Women's Medical Services." GOOD. Of course, the taxpayers shouldn't be responsible for footing the bill for the state's war on agency.
Tim Kaine blasted Mike Pence for parroting Donald Trump's garbage about how Vladimir Putin has been a better leader than President Obama: "What about invading other countries is leadership? What about running your economy into the ground is leadership? What about persecuting LGBT Russians is leadership? What about setting up journalists and imprisoning them and even killing them is leadership? There is a difference between dictatorship and leadership. And If you didn't understand that you wouldn't get out of a fifth grade civics exam." BOOM.
Squirrels are adorable, and this one is NO EXCEPTION!
What have you been reading?
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
You're Welcome (and I'm Sorry)
Hey, do you need a compendium of Terrible Trumpery? A handy compilation of the lowlights of Donald Trump's campaign so far? An easy reference when you can't be bothered to actually explain why you'd never vote for Trump in eleventy biebillion years?
Well, here you go!
That took me so long to write. I hope you hate it!
The Veep Contest
[Content Note: Bigotry.]
I've got a new piece up at Shareblue about the two men who are proverbially "one heartbeat away" from the presidency—Tim Kaine and Mike Pence.
When Hillary Clinton first selected Tim Kaine as her running mate, I noted that Kaine is actually a nice guy, while Mike Pence just pretends to be one: "I don't personally know either of these men. All I have by which to assess them is their records. I hear that both of them are nice, but only one of their records looks like one that seems to represent a legislator who cares about marginalized people. People like me."There is much more at the link.
I was reminded of this distinction once again when I saw Pence on Meet the Press saying Donald Trump, if elected, would suspend the Syrian refugee program because it "puts safety and security of the American people second to the agenda of the UN or to liberals in this country."
It's an issue on which Trump's running mate isn't merely parroting the policy of the ticket-topper. Pence is a true believer on closing the doors to Syrian refugees, currently locked in a court battle over the settlement of refugees in his home state of Indiana.
...It couldn't be further from the approach taken by Tim Kaine, who, in his first speech after being selected by Clinton, asked how many people in his Miami audience were naturalized citizens. As hands were raised, Kaine told them: "Thank you for choosing us."
In five words, Kaine managed to convey the most fundamental difference between himself and Pence: One is a man who will defy a court order to keep refugees of war out of his state. The other is a man who will invite immigrants to identify themselves, just so he can thank them for making this country their home.
ELECTION UPDATE!!!
1. Hillary Clinton "may be held to a different standard by the voters, but not by the press," according to Chris Cillizza. I guess he would know, since he clearly established himself as an expert on the different standards to which Clinton is held when he suggested she should be drinking "Mad Bitch" beer. I definitely can't wait to hear more on this subject from him! DO TELL ME MORE, SIR. Tell me all the ways the press doesn't hold Clinton to a different standard, and while you are talking I will be reading aloud this thing I wrote, perched on a soapbox at the corners of Misogyny Lane and Mansplaining Boulevard. SEE YOU THERE!
2. Donald Trump loves guzzling "Mad Bitch" beer at his favorite local watering hole, The Low Bar. He loves the Low Bar SO MUCH. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came! SCOOT OVER, CLAVIN! TRUMP IS HERE! At the Low Bar, Trump can totally violate the protocols of an intelligence briefing, to incredulity and condemnation from actual members of the intelligence community, and NO ONE WILL EVEN CARE! It's all good fun at the Low Bar.
3. Our national media is garbage.
4. Tim Kaine continues to be very delightful and also makes good and serious points about how Donald Trump is a terrible candidate. I hope he's never sent or received any emails or started a foundation that has saved millions of lives or coughed or sat on a stool. Although it probably doesn't matter, because he's a dude.
5. Mike Pence continues to be the absolute fucking worst.
59 more days of this shit.
That about sums it up! Discuss.
