More Bad News for Flynn (and Trump)

Adam Goldman, Matt Apuzzo, and Michael S. Schmidt at the New York Times: F.B.I. Interviewed Flynn in Trump's First Days in Office, Officials Say. (Emphasis mine.)

F.B.I. agents interviewed Michael T. Flynn when he was national security adviser in the first days of the Trump administration about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, current and former officials said on Tuesday.

The interview raises the stakes of what so far has been a political scandal that cost Mr. Flynn his job. If he was not entirely honest with the F.B.I., it could expose Mr. Flynn to a felony charge. President Trump asked for Mr. Flynn's resignation on Monday night.

While it is not clear what he said in his F.B.I. interview, Mr. Flynn maintained publicly for more than a week that his conversations with the ambassador were innocuous and did not involve Russian sanctions, something now known to be false.

Shortly after the F.B.I. interview, on Jan. 26, the acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, told the White House that Mr. Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail because of inconsistencies between what he had said publicly and what intelligence officials knew to be true.

Sally Yates, as you may recall, was fired soon thereafter.

Presumably, Flynn was under oath when he spoke to the FBI; if he lied to them, he could face perjury charges. And Flynn doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who goes down without taking people down with him.

That makes him dangerous—and it certainly makes the White House nervous, which is dangerous, because this lot clearly don't make good decisions under the best of circumstances.

[H/T to Aphra_Behn for the NYT article.]

* * *

Earlier today, I wrote about how angry I am (and will always be, forever and ever amen) about how Hillary Clinton's preparedness and competence were treated with contempt during the campaign.

Given this latest news about Flynn, I also want to call back how, during the campaign, Donald Trump criticized U.S. military generals over and over, and constantly shouted about how he would have the BEST generals.

Trump was going to have the BEST generals, remember? Now a general is the first casualty of his cabinet, for gross incompetence (at best).

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 14, 2017

And then, there is this—General Michael Flynn's appearance at the Republican National Convention:

FLYNN: We do not need a reckless president who believes she is above the law! [The crowd cheers and applauds; they chant "Lock her up! Lock her up!"] Lock her up! That's right. Yeah, that's right—lock her up! I'm gonna tell ya what—it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. [The crowd continues to chant, as Flynn nods approvingly.] Yeah, I use—I use hashtag Never Hillary. That's what I use.

I have called on Hillary Clinton— I have called on Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race, because she—she—put our nation's security at extremely high risk with her careless use of a private email server. [Audience cheers and chants.] Lock her up! Lock her up! You guys are good. Damn right. Exactly right. There's nothing wrong with that.

And you know why? And you know why? You know why we're saying that? We're saying that because if I, a guy who knows this business, if I did a tenth—a tenth!—of what she did, I would be in jail today.

So, so: Crooked Hillary Clinton, leave this race now. [Audience cheers and chants.] She needs to go.

Well, sir: Hillary Clinton did not do anything criminal. At all. I daresay that you have done well more than "a tenth" of what Clinton did.

This is the campaign they ran against her. It was always a campaign of projection by the crookedest, most reckless vandals who have ever petitioned to lead this nation.

Which should be abundantly clear by this point, if it weren't already.

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You're Goddamn Right I'm a Snowflake

[Content Note: Harassment; privilege.]

You may have heard, possibly because you have been on the receiving end of it, that Trump supporters refer to progressives as snowflakes.

If "cuck" is the insult of choice for the alt-right to lump together and dismiss establishment conservatives, "snowflake" has become the go-to for enemies on the left. There is not a single political point a liberal can make on the Internet for which "You triggered, snowflake?" cannot be the comeback. It's purpose is dismissing liberalism as something effeminate, and also infantile, an outgrowth of the lessons you were taught in kindergarten. "Sharing is caring"? Communism. "Feelings are good"? Facts over feelings. "Everyone is special and unique"? Shut up, snowflake.

Snowflake is basically the new "Social Justice Warrior" (or SJW), which we were also supposed to consider an insult, despite the fact that it was an "insult" many of us wore proudly.

I have been called a snowflake countless times on Twitter and in my inbox, by the most pathetic projectionists who are aggrieved at my mere existence, but accuse me without a trace of irony of being intolerant and oversensitive.

There is, perhaps, nothing more perfectly indicative of the grim intersection of their aggressive arrogance, comprehensive rejection of self-reflection, and pitiable lack of imagination than wielding "snowflake" as a pejorative.

Snowflakes are fucking beautiful, each one a unique creation that melds fragility with the ferocity of survival on a planet that generally does not support its existence.

As snowflakes move through the environment, encountering different temperatures and pressures, their complex and individual shapes emerge. And once they fall to the ground, accumulating with other snowflakes, they undergo a metamorphosis and coalesce into a snowpack, which itself becomes stronger—and more resistant to being moved—than any individual snowflake.

This does not sound like an insult. This sounds like a pretty solid description of a vibrant and diverse resistance.

At protests, there are increasingly signs carried by "snowflakes" which contain some variation on: "Damn right we're snowflakes, and winter is coming."

Fucking right it is.

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Projection. Always Projection.

[Content Note: Bigotry.]

I've got a new piece at BNR about Donald Trump's penchant for projection:

Someone once said that if you ever want to know what conservatives are doing, just listen to what they're accusing progressives of doing. This is projection — and Donald Trump is a master of it.

As I've written many times before, once you realize everything Trump says is projection, it all makes so much more sense. What he says about other people – particularly when he is accusing them of something – is a confession about himself.

Trump overtly talks and talks and talks about himself – and when he talks about other people, he's still talking about himself. It's just that he's projecting his own flaws and failures onto them.

Head on over to read the whole thing.

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No, Donald Trump, the Election Is Not Rigged

GOOD GRIEF THE PRESIDENT ACTUALLY HAD TO SAY THIS YESTERDAY.

Obama pushes back on Trump's comments: "Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean?" https://t.co/z9v1h6howF

— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 4, 2016

Of course the elections will not be rigged! What does that mean?! The federal government doesn't run the election process. States and cities and communities all across the country—they're the ones who set up the voting systems and the voting booths, and, if Mr. Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is being propagated across the country, including in places like Texas, where typically it's not Democrats who are in charge of voting booths, that's ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense. And I don't think anybody would take that seriously.

President Obama added that, naturally, the federal government takes seriously "our responsibilities to monitor and preserve the integrity of the voting process," and responds when there are indications that voting machines are vulnerable to hacking, or when jurisdictions are disenfranchising voters. But that's the extent of the federal government's involvement in elections. Which Donald Trump doesn't appear to know. Like everything else about how government works.

President Obama also added: "I think all of us at some point in our life have played sports, or maybe just played in a schoolyard or a sand box, and sometimes folks, if they lose, they start complaining they got cheated. But I have never heard of someone complaining of cheating before the score is tallied. My suggestion would be, you know, go out there and try to win the election." OH SNAP!

Snarky POTUS is my favorite POTUS.

Meanwhile, as LOLGOP reminds us at Electablog, "Republicans were trying to steal this election and the courts stopped them" with, as Ari Berman details, "six major decisions against GOP-backed voting restrictions in five different states" in the last ten days.

Like I keep saying: Once you realize everything Donald Trump says is projection, it all makes so much more sense! It's his party that was trying to rig the election, by disenfranchising people who disproportionately vote for Democrats. And the GOP's shitty shenanigans were, thankfully, denied.

But of course all Trump can do to try to explain why he's currently losing and will definitely lose on Election Day, by possibly historic margins, is promulgate some conspiracy bullshit about rigged elections.

Because he can't imagine any other reason he could be losing. Not when he's got cheering crowds everywhere he goes! The polls must be rigged! The election will be rigged! How else could he be losing when he's got TREMENDOUS CROWDS?

For someone who's weirdly obsessed with Bernie Sanders, you'd think he'd have noticed that large crowds don't necessarily translate into electoral victory.

Then again, he thinks it was "rigged" against Bernie, too. And also: Trump doesn't seem big on learning lessons, even the most obvious ones.

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Welp

[Content Note: Disablist language.]

Once you understand that basically everything he disgorges from his trash-mouth is projection, it all starts to make a lot more sense.

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You First

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

A long while ago now, I changed the bio on my Twitter profile to, simply: "I am the very model of a modern major misandrist." Naturally, this is not because I am a misandrist, but because I am routinely called one by misogynist dudes.

Some time later, I changed by profile pic to an image of me sipping from a mug labeled "Male Tears." I can't even recall now which disgorgement of misogynist dude aggrievement prompted me to take and post the picture—possibly another chapter in the epic uproar over how an all-female Ghostbusters was going to retroactively ruin their childhoods.

Every so often, a new MRA-type discovers my bio and/or profile pic and a new round of dipshits, of the sort that necessitated my sardonic attempts to deal with their incessant harassment in the first place, piles into my TL to shout at me about how I am a man-hating monster.

That happened again today, which is perfectly timely, given that I just posted this piece in the blogaround yesterday.

Here's the deal: I will stop referring to myself as a misandrist when misogynist men stop calling me one in response to my advocating on behalf of my own humanity. And I will stop making jokes about male tears when men stop routinely making women cry with their vile misogyny.

That's a promise.

Ball's in your court, dudes.

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Meanwhile, in Minneapolis...

[Content Note: Police brutality; racism; violence.]

A day after masked gunmen opened fire on protesters rallying for justice after the police killing of Jamar Clark, more information is coming out about how police responded to that shooting, which happened right outside a police precinct:

"This is what you guys wanted," police told protesters after five demonstrators were shot and injured by masked men at a continuing protest in Minneapolis on Monday night, witnesses told the Guardian.

Protesters trying to tend to the wounded were also maced.

...Having shot five people, the attackers escaped in what looked like a black Toyota SUV, according to Nimo Omar, who was also at the protest.

After the shots, everything was "very chaotic," Omar said. Several people, including Sumaya Moallin and Oluchi Omeoga, ran back to the precinct to ask the police for help.

Moallin said they needed a squad car and an ambulance. "He looked at me and he said: 'Call 911,'" she told the Guardian. "I said: 'I thought you were 911.' Then he looked at me directly and said: 'This is what you guys wanted.'"

"Six [officers] were outside [the precinct building]," she continued. "They all just shuffled back into the door. They were not making eye contact ... I pleaded a good amount of time."

She said she felt "like I had the wind knocked out of me. We're here to protest against what they're doing wrong; we don't not want cops, we just want them to serve and protect. I fell to the ground and started crying."

...A "chaotic" 15 or 20 minutes passed, [Rachel Bean] said, with the crowd's anger at the police's refusal to offer aid growing. "I felt powerless," Omeoga said. "But the whole reason me and Jie [Wronski-Riley] were chasing around was to de-escalate." Another witness, Moallin, said that it was more like 10 minutes.

Then the police arrived at the scene in force, in full riot gear. Bean was still tending to Martin's brother's stomach wound when they released mace into people's faces, she told the Guardian. "I said, 'I called the EMS, you don't have to mace everyone,'" she said. "The officer said 'fuck you' or 'shut the fuck up' or something like that."

She said that attitude was representative of the behavior of other officers she interacted with after the attack. "The idea that you would mace a group of people that just had bullets fired at them – that's the opposite of responsible."

Rage. Seethe. Boil.

The sort of thinking that imagines protesters desire to be shot by anti-black gunmen is not just despicable; it's projection. It's the sort of thinking that comes from people who want to pretend that they're under siege, in order to justify their wanton murder of people over whom they have power, and then hold up as heroic martyrs a couple of fucking assholes who shot themselves.

I don't even know how these cops can spend a moment wondering why the fuck they're being protested, when they mace people trying to provide medical assistance to comrades who have been shot.

That shit right there is why you're being protested. Because you are aggressively hostile to black existence and survival.

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The Thought Police

[Content Note: Emotional auditing; projection.]

Over the past month or so, I've read so many retreads of familiar handwringing about "thought police" and "political correctness" and how what amounts to asking people to be kinder is having a "chilling" effect on freedom of expression.

This garbage is cyclical. It's grim predictions about how trigger warnings will ruin the world for three months, and then it's grim predictions about how affirmative action will ruin the world for three months, and then it's the thought police, and then it's something else, and then it's back to trigger warnings again, as though the same debate, such as it was, didn't just happen the year previous.

So we're in a "thought police" moment. Or, if you prefer, a "political correctness gone wild" moment.

And so, as a person who expects more, and thus is accused of being the thought police, let me just say once again: I am not the thought police.

Setting a higher standard and encouraging someone to reach for it, urging them not to settle into the well-tread grooves of their socialization but instead interrogate the vast and varied prejudices and myths with which they've been indoctrinated, isn't thought policing.

Asking someone to consider that maybe, just maybe, it isn't marginalized people who are too sensitive, but privileged people who are simply not sensitive enough, isn't thought policing.

Challenging someone to think about things in a way in which they may have never thought about them before isn't thought policing.

The entire rest of the world, with its privileging of men and straight people and cisgender people and thin (but not too thin!) and tall (but not too tall!) and able and healthy white bodies and religious people and people who have sex and people who can and want to be parents and the wealthy and the educated, and all the ways in which the rest of the world facilitates and upholds that privilege, and all the ways in which the rest of the world marginalizes and demeans and treats as less than all the people who deviate from those privileged "norms," and all the ways the rest of the world indoctrinates you into that system of privilege, and socializes you to believe it's the natural and right and immutable state of the world, and all the shills for the kyriarchy who fill the ether with self-reinforcing rubbish on a constant loop so you swim in a sea so thick with the detritus of Othering that you don't even notice it on a conscious level anymore, and all the bullies who manifest to kick you back in line if you do, if you have the temerity to question the message, and all the other bits and bobs of the brainwashing to which we are all subjected since the day we're born as part of scheme, nearly incomprehensible in scope, to ensure that challengers to these traditions are never made, and, if they're born, are squashed with the weight of mountainous tidal waves of blowback in the other direction…? The purveyors of that shit are the goddamn thought police.

And you know what one of the biggest lies they tell you is?

That it's the other way around.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

"In fact, this President intends to get as many American children into the funnel of the sexual revolution as possible and make sure there's no possible escape—none whatsoever. He intends to close off every avenue from parents committed to biblical morality. We cannot stand by and allow the President to force his radical sexual agenda on our children."—Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, in a fundraising letter to his fans, caterwauling the usual despicable nonsense in response to President Obama's stated opposition to "conversion" or "reparative" or "ex-gay" therapy for queer kids.

Mocking the dipshits of the Family Research Council is low-hanging fruit, I know, but I'm not posting this to mock Perkins for being a ridiculous shitlord whose retofuck beliefs are so antiquated they whiff of dinosaur scat and so rotten they belong at the bottom of a filthy dumpster even rats refuse to patronize.

I'm posting this to make two serious points:

1. The idea that legalized same-sex marriage was the end-all be-all of gay rights is dangerously naive and wrong. Here's a perfect example: There are still kids across this country who need the state to intervene on their behalf just so they can be allowed to be queer without being subjected to "therapies" that are nothing more than rank abuse.

2. This is also a perfect example of conservative projection: Perkins accuses President Obama (and, by extension, anyone who advocates against these heinous "therapies") of "forc[ing] his radical sexual agenda" on children and trying to "make sure there's no possible escape—none whatsoever" from the "sexual revolution."

But who is it, exactly, who is trying to force a radical sexual agenda on children and provide them no escape whatsoever from their rigid definitions of sexuality? It is really the guy who says stop subjecting queer kids to abusive mistreatment under the auspices of "curing" them, or is it the guy who says stop queer kids from existing?

That is, of course, rhetorical.

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Transphobia in Texas

[Content Note: Transphobia.]

Last month, I wrote about a transphobic bill introduced in the Florida state legislature that seeks to prohibit trans* people from using public bathrooms corresponding to their gender. Similar legislation has passed in the Kentucky state senate.

And now the Texas state legislature is following suit and doubling quadrupling down, with four pieces of transphobic legislation introduced in the past few weeks.

HB 1747 "amends the definition of 'disorderly conduct' to make it a crime for transgender Texans who have not been fortunate enough to correct their official gender markers to use public gender-segregated space appropriate to their gender identity or expression."

HB 1748 "creates two new offenses: making it a state jail felony for most business owners if they repeatedly allow a person who has at least one 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for women, or a person with no 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for men; and making it a Class 'A' misdemeanor for a person with at least one 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for women or a person without a 'Y' chromosome to enter a space designated for men."

HB 2802 is an update of HB 1748, which expands this chromosome requirement to educational spaces.

And HB 2801 "declares that schools must 'adopt a policy providing that only persons of the same biological sex may be present at the same time in any bathroom, locker room, or shower facility.'"

Introduced yesterday by Republican Texas Rep. Gilbert Peña, HB 2801 "does not define how a student's 'biological sex' would be determined or verified." But it does nonetheless encourage other students to hunt and report on their fellow students they believe or know to be transgender:

The bill does, however, make the school liable to any cisgender (nontrans) student who "encounters a person not of the student's biological sex" in a bathroom, locker room, or shower. Every student who successfully proves the school violated this would-be law "shall be awarded … exemplary damages in the amount of $2,000." That sum does not include the "actual damages," which the bill notes includes "damages for mental anguish even if an injury other than mental anguish is not shown."

In other words, the bill sets up a standard where cisgender students can not only complain about sharing facilities with a student they believe to be transgender, but if they can prove that student was in the "wrong" restroom, will also be awarded $2,000, in addition to whatever amount a judge deems is sufficient compensation for the "mental anguish" presumably caused by sharing space with a trans person.

Emphasis mine.

As I have pointed out before, and will keep pointing out until these bigoted fuckos stop targeting trans* people and endorsing state-sactioned terrorism against them, this is projection. It is not cisgender people who need to be kept safe from transgender people; it is transgender people who need to be kept safe from cisgender people.

Case in point: This fucking legislation.

All of these hateful stains purport to be concerned about preventing violence, with zero regard for the fact that trans* people are at much greater risk for violence because they are trans*. It's a damnable, indefensible lie that this sort of legislation will protect anyone; it only makes trans* people less safe.

[H/T to Eastsidekate and Marti Abernathy.]

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This Fu@#ing Guy

[Content Note: Trans* hatred; gender policing; bathroom panic; rape culture.]

Another Republican lawmaker has introduced yet another shitty transphobic bill, based on bullshit narratives about trans* predators:

Florida state Rep. Frank Artiles is not worried a bill he introduced last week will create problems for transgender people, he told BuzzFeed News, because using the restroom is a choice.

The Miami Republican's bill would restrict single-sex public facilities — including restrooms in restaurants, theaters, workplaces, and schools — to people of the corresponding "biological sex, either male or female, at birth." Violators would be guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.

Asked if such a rule would create problems for transgender women required to use the men's room, Artiles told BuzzFeed News, "People are not forced to go the restroom. They choose to go to the restroom."

For someone who purports to be an expert on biology, he sure is confused about the human waste disposal system.

Naturally, Artiles has given this a lot of thought, and thus has super-smart (super-terrible) things to say about people's "plumbing" how "anatomy is going to dictate where they go to the bathroom." Because genitals define gender, and intersex people don't exist. And he gets an A+ for being able to regurgitate nasty stereotypes about trans* women being sexual predators:

Artiles countered his wish is "not to attack transgender people or make their lives difficult." However, he said several times, the bill was a direct response to local laws in Florida that ban discrimination against transgender people. Specifically, he said, a law passed in December in Miami-Dade County, which encompasses Artiles' district, "gives the cover of law for people who use this as a loophole for voyeurism and other criminal activity. While I understand the good intention, it is overly broad."

"You have sexual predators — you have people who are going to use these local ordinances as cover," said Artiles. "I want uniformity across the board, and not laws subjective to the way people feel."

The bathroom panic meme is comprehensive garbage. I cannot state that more emphatically. It is hateful, mendacious trash.

And, like every other conservative legislator peddling this reprehensible codswallop, Artiles does not have a legislative record that indicates he has any meaningful interest in sexual assault prevention, but suddenly cares deeply about it when it comes to justifying discrimination against trans* people. He can't provide a single example of a sexual predator exploiting inclusive bathroom ordinances, but he's sure this is a much bigger problem than, say, cis men raping women. Including trans* women.

Like, for example, trans* women who are forced to use men's bathrooms. Artiles purports to be concerned about preventing violence, but he is eminently willing to send trans* people into situations where they are at greater risk for violence.

Every single one of Artiles' attempts to rationalize this bill is pathetic. He claims to "want uniformity" in who is using which bathroom, but naturally "people who identify as women use the women's restroom and people who identity as men use the men's restroom" isn't sufficient "uniformity" to satisfy him.

"While I understand there are transgender people who want to use bathrooms however they want to feel, that is irrelevant to me," Artiles explained.

While I understand that there are cis people who want to legislate which bathrooms trans* people can safely and legally use because of how they feel about trans* people, that is irrelevant to me.

"I have read the blogs that say I am against transgender people, but I am not at all," Artiles said. Asked if he believes a transgender woman is a woman, Artiles said, "I am not going to get into that. I have not spent much time thinking about that."

If there is a more perfect quote illustrating the arrogance of privilege, I haven't seen it.

This cis man has written legislation banning women from women's bathrooms, but hasn't spent much time thinking about that fact.

Which is to say nothing of the fact that it doesn't fucking matter if Artiles "believes a transgender woman is a woman." Cis people auditing trans* people's gender, and believing they have the right to deny trans* people authority on their own selves, is what underwrites this sort of bigoted legislation in the first place.

Rage. Seethe. Boil.

I am a cis woman, and a survivor of sexual violence. I am exactly the type of person that Artiles and all his contemptible colleagues invoke as needing protection from trans* predators. AND I WANT THEM TO STOP. I don't need their protection. They do not have my permission to pretend that they're "saving" me by endangering trans* people.

Do not use me as your justification for transphobic hatred.

I am not in danger from sharing a bathroom with trans* women. But trans* women could very well be in danger from not being allowed to share a bathroom with me.

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Rapists Lie

[Content Note: Rape culture.]

You know how I keep banging on about how rapists are also liars? Yeah, well: "Rapists use social media to cover their tracks, police warned."

Rapists are increasingly exploiting social media to cover their tracks and mislead investigators, a joint conference by police and prosecutors on rape was told on Wednesday .

At the police and the Crown Prosecution Service’s first joint initiative on rape, prosecutors said they had established an emerging pattern of behaviour where rapists constructed "false narratives" after the crime. One technique described involved rapists contacting victims the next day, sometimes by text or social media, thanking them for a sexual encounter. Defendants can try to rely on such messages should there be a trial.

Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, told the event of the potential for social media to be used to "set up the scene" and warned that false messages could be used to set up a defence.

Note that this, too, is evidence of the projection that underwrites narratives used to discredit survivors: We are all familiar with the trope of the woman who "changes her mind" or "feels guilty" after a consensual sexual encounter so (inexplicably) decides to accuse a man of rape.

The reality is that it is rapists who will try anything they can to rewrite what really happened.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Racism; projection.]

"This is a part of the war on whites that's being launched by the Democratic Party. And the way in which they're launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else. It's part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012, where he divides us all on race, on sex, greed, envy, class warfare, all those kinds of things. Well that's not true."—Republican Congressman from Alabama Mo Brooks, on conservative Laura Ingraham's radio show, earlier today.

Ha ha okay player.

I don't even know what to say. Just insert gales of mirthless, contemptuous laughter here, peppered throughout with snarling profanity.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

Michael Sam, the first out gay NFL player, received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award last night at the ESPYs and gave a terrific acceptance speech: "The way I see it, my responsibility at this moment in history is to stand up for everybody out there who wants nothing more than to be themselves openly." [Please note there are references to self-harm in his address.]

[Content Note: Human rights violation] A major demonstration is scheduled for tomorrow in downtown Detroit to protest the water shutoffs, which the UN has declared a human rights violation: "Protesters will assemble at Cobo Hall at 12:30 p.m. before marching to Hart Plaza for a rally. During the rally, registered nurses plan to call for a 'public health emergency' as the city continues to shut off water to delinquent residents. ...About 15,000 of the roughly 17,000 active residential accounts have been shut off."

[CN: Environmental hazard] "In relative obscurity, a nuclear waste dump takes shape beside Great Lakes." Um. "With surprisingly little press coverage or public debate, a Canadian nuclear-plant operator is moving forward with plans to build an underground vault for radioactive waste within a mile of the Great Lakes—specifically Lake Huron, near the Ontario tourist community of Kincardine. Ontario Power Generation does not propose to store spent fuel in the repository. But everything below that highest grade of waste—from discarded reactor-core parts, at the hotter end of the scale, to ash from incinerated cleaning materials at the other, all of it accumulating aboveground since the 1960s—would be buried in what appears to be the first deep-storage dump for nonmilitary nuke waste in North America." NO THANK YOU. There has to be a better place for this than immediately beside the largest surface freshwater system on the planet.

[CN: Appropriation] Who needs evolution in public high schools when you can teach Koch Bros. ideology instead? "Billionaire activists Charles and David Koch have financed and participated in the making of programs designed to steer high-school students in Georgia, Kansas, and Missouri toward embracing conservative business principles... [T]he program was conceived in 1989 as a way to lead participants toward becoming 'liberty-advancing agents' while still in high school, before they could learn 'harmful' progressive concepts after enrolling in college." Again, if you want to know what conservatives are doing, just look at what they're accusing progressives of doing. Indoctrinating children? Check!

[CN: Fat bias; body shaming; sexual policing] Samm Newman is a fat teenage girl who posted a pic of herself in her underwear to Instagram. Instagram removed the photo. When she contacted Instagram to point out similar images of thin women had not been removed, Instagram deactivated her account. Newman made noise about it, and Instagram was shamed into apologizing, as if this is the first time this has happened. Fuck Instagram.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) "updated its pregnancy discrimination guidelines this week for the first time in over 30 years. The new...guidelines make it clear that an employer cannot discriminate against a worker based on pregnancy, childbirth or any related medical condition. They also disallow discrimination against someone based on whether or not they have been pregnant in the past, or want to get pregnant in the future." Good.

A giant hole, 262 feet in diameter, has opened up in Siberia, and no one can figure out why. I'm just going to go ahead and propose a theory that a ghost sasquatch dug its way from Siberia to Indiana. SCIENCE.

[CN: Self-harm; fire] This is a terribly sad story about a minister and social justice advocate who immolated himself in the hopes of inspiring change as a final act. But his radical action barely made the news, and his family has been left in grief. I don't know what else to say but this: I'll remember you, Rev. Charles Moore. I will remember your passion for social justice, and I will remember that the resistance of this world to change drove you to a place many people can't or won't understand. Rest in peace.

[CN: Fire; video may begin playing automatically at link] And finally! An adorable dog named Ace saved the life of his 13-year-old deaf guardian who was asleep when a fire broke out in the home. Ace licked Nick's face until he woke up and was able to escape. In other good news: A firefighter was able to rescue the family cat from the blaze. Yay!

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It Continues to Be a Real Mystery Why Republicans Aren't Connecting with a Majority of Female Voters

[Content Note: War on agency; dehumanization.]

The Missouri state legislature is considering a bill that would force pregnant people to wait three days before being allowed to get an abortion. The sponsor of the proposed legislation, Republican state representative Chuck Gatschenberger, explained his rationale for introducing the bill thus:

Even when I buy a new vehicle — this is my experience — I don't go right in there and say, I want to buy that vehicle, and, you know, leave with it. I have to look at it, get information about it, maybe drive it, check prices. There's lots of things I do going into a decision — whether that's a car, whether that's a house, whether that's any major decision that I make in my life. Even carpeting. You know, I was just considering getting carpeting in my house. That process probably took a month… I wanted to be as informed as possible, and that's what this bill is, having them get as much information as possible.

Leaving aside the fact that "Studies have found nearly 90 percent of women are 'highly confident' about their choice to end a pregnancy before ever approaching a doctor, and mandatory waiting periods don't do anything to sway them," making Gatschenberger's stated reason for introducing legislation to impede access to abortion is demonstrable bullshit, this is incredibly dehumanizing rhetoric. Pregnant people aren't making decorating or purchasing decisions.

Anti-choicers constantly accuse abortion-seeking people of treating their decision frivolously, but, like so many any things, it's just so much conservative projection. They simultaneously want abortion to mean everything when they're comparing it to murder, and to mean nothing when they're creating barriers to access.

And never, ever, do they acknowledge that people who get abortions have different reactions to them. Sometimes it's a big decision; sometimes it's not. Neither one is the wrong or right way to feel about it.

Even if this weren't unjustifiable, dehumanizing, reductionist claptrap, who gives a fuck if Rep. Gatschenberger needs lots of time to make major decisions in his life. Not everyone has the same needs.

I am intractably resistant to the idea that any legislation should ever be drawn on the assumption that everyone has the same needs as its architect, but never does that seem more objectionable when it's abortion legislation written by a person who will never need an abortion.

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What a Neat Event

[Content Note: War on agency; anti-choice rhetoric; hostility to consent; descriptions of a perineum tear.]

Yesterday, I mentioned some typically terrific comments Republican Mike Huckabee made at an anti-choice fundraiser sponsored by Susan B. Anthony List. Via the AP, some of the other Republican attendees also had great things to say:

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said those who support abortion rights favor a "culture of death" and engage in "savagery."

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who is a favorite of the tea party, reminded the crowd of activists that supporters of abortion rights chanted "Hail, Satan" to silence their enemies during a heated protest at the Texas Capitol. ...He was referencing protests in Austin, Texas, last year over an abortion bill. While anti-abortion activists were giving speeches and singing "Amazing Grace," others tried to drown them out with chants.

..."Whether it's politically expedient or not is of no consequence to me," Huckabee said. "If we get this issue wrong, we will get all the other issues wrong."

Ha ha Huckabee, you are definitely getting all the other issues wrong.

During a separate appearance, Sen. Deb Fischer, a first-term Republican from Nebraska, told the activists: "Abortion is not a women's issue. It is not a men's issue. It is not a health care issue. It is a violence issue."

Well, Fischer is right about that, although not for the reasons she imagines.

As I've said before (and will almost certainly have occasion to say many times again, until everyone is yawning about what a goddamn broken record I am), if anyone not seeking cover under the auspices of a "difference of opinion on abortion" suggested that I should be forced to submit my body against my will to nine months of potential discomfort and pain, followed by an act that might include the skin and muscle between my vagina and anus being torn open, I don't think we'd mince words about whether they were using violent rhetoric.

And yet all these anti-choice dipshits talk about is the supposed "violence" done to a fetus during an abortion. There is no discussion of the actual violence of forced pregnancy and birth.

The anti-choice position is inherently violent. Their assertion that the pro-choice position is violence is nothing but sheer projection.

And it is precisely this sort of hyperbolic rhetoric—"culture of death," "savagery," "save babies"—that underwrites a decades-long campaign of intimidation, harassment, and violence directed at abortion providers and abortion seekers, which is the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaign in the US, its co-ordination and orchestration done right out in the open, where no one in the media or politics will call it what it is.

Elected Republicans are not ignorant of the existence of anti-choice terrorism. They are not ignorant of the how their inflammatory language encourages violent anti-choice activism. And they continue to engage in it, anyway, because they don't give a fuck about violence done to women (and others) seeking abortions, nor to the doctors who perform them.

In case it weren't already evident that fetuses are valued more highly than the people who carry them, here is further proof. Anti-choicers are more concerned with the rhetoric of "saving babies" than they are about actual people's safety, about actual people's lives.

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Michele Bachmann Continues to Be the Worst

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

This is one of the most remarkable bits of conservative projection I've seen in awhile, which is really saying something:

[Republican Representative from Minnesota Michele Bachmann] told talk show host Lars Larson in an interview at CPAC that the gay community distorted the Arizona bill by making it about gay rights — even though the bill's sponsor himself said it was about same-sex marriage.

"There's nothing about gays in there, but the gay community decided to make this their measure," Bachmann said. "And the thing that I think is getting a little tiresome is the gay community have so bullied the American people and they have so intimidated politicians that politicians fear them and they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere. Well, not with the Constitution you don't."

She added that gay people and "activist judges" are trying to take away her freedom: "If you want take away my religious liberties, you can advocate for that but you do it through the constitutional process and you don't intimidate and no politician should give away my religious liberties or yours."

Everything about this is obviously amazing—the gay community as the "bullies" who are trying to take away other people's freedoms; marriage equality framed as taking away other people's religious liberties—but my favorite (ahem) part, as always, is the casual othering in this ubiquitous rhetorical flourish: "The gay community have so bullied the American people." As if "gay people" and "American people" are mutually exclusive groups.

Only in the bizarro world of conservative projection is seeking equality "bullying," while telling an entire marginalized population they're not even legit citizens of their own country is Traditional Values.

These fucking people.

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That Sound You Hear Is My Mirthless Laughter Reverberating Throughout the Multiverse

[Content Note: Misogyny; war on agency.]

Are you shitting me? You are shitting me:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) said Thursday that Republicans need to take a more combative attitude toward winning the votes of women, by emphasizing that women aren't weaklings in need of help from the government.

"I think it's time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a 'war on women,'" Huckabee said during a speech at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in Washington. "The fact is the Republicans don't have a war on women, they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender."

Huckabee said Democrats rely on women believing they are weaker than men and in need of government handouts, including the contraception mandate in Obamacare.

Huckabee said Democrats tell women "they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, Mr. Huckabee, please do tell how you're going to empower me to be something other than the victim of my gender. (!!!) (Also: !!!) (Also: Please do not confuse my being a "victim of my gender" with my being "marginalized by misogynist heapshits because of my gender.") (Also: FUCK OFF.) By denying my agency? By usurping my bodily autonomy? By expressing contempt for my right to consent? By policing my sexuality? By instituting policies that treat me like I'm a fucking stupid piece of shit who can't understand there's A BAYBEE INSIDE ME unless I look at it on an ultrasound I don't want or need?

Tell me more about your war for women. It sounds TERRIFIC.

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The Anti-Choice Position Is Inherently Violent

[Content Note: War on agency; sexual violence; description of a perineum tear.]

This is a perfect example of why I say, over and over, that the anti-choice position is inherently violent:

"When a woman is raped, that's a horrible injustice against her," Live Action president Lila Rose told [CNN Crossfire] co-host Sally Kohn. "The rapist should be held to the fullest extent of the law, liable for that, culpable for that. The woman needs healing and the support of her community. But an abortion doesn't unrape a woman. An abortion just adds more violence on top of that first she endured."

...Kohn said, "You are saying, in effect, that the rapist should have more rights than the woman."

"Absolutely not," Rose insisted. "The rapist isn't allowed to kill anybody."

This is Lila Rose's shtick, and she's been peddling this despicable filth for years.

Because Rose frames her argument as "not getting an abortion," she elides the realities of pregnancy. As I've said before (and will almost certainly have occasion to say many times again, until everyone is yawning about what a goddamn broken record I am), if anyone not seeking cover under the auspices of a "difference of opinion on abortion" suggested that I should be forced to submit my body against my will to nine months of potential discomfort and pain, followed by an act that might include the skin and muscle between my vagina and anus being torn open, I don't think we'd mince words about whether they were using violent rhetoric.

And yet all Rose and her cohorts talk about is the supposed "violence" done to a fetus during an abortion. There is no discussion of the actual violence of forced pregnancy and birth.

Rose casually asserts that "abortion doesn't unrape a woman," which is correct. It does not. But what also does not "unrape" a pregnant person is further hostility to hir consent.

I'm (still) hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of someone who seeks to legislate control of my body without my consent than I should be of the man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.

The anti-choice position is inherently violent. Their assertion that the pro-choice position is violence is nothing but sheer projection.

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Nope.

[Content Note: Christian Supremacy; choice policing; war on agency.]

Richard W. Garnett, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, the latest organization to file suit over the federal mandate to provide healthcare coverage that includes birth control, has penned an op-ed for the LA Times entitled "The righteousness in Hobby Lobby's cause," and subtitled "Business people shouldn't be required to check their faith at the door."

Like millions of religious believers and groups, these challengers reject the idea that religious faith and religious freedom are simply about what we believe and how we pray, and not also about how we live, act and work. At the heart of these two cases is the straightforward argument that federal law does not require us to "check our faith at the door" when we pursue vocations in business and commerce.

There should be no question about the sincerity of the religious beliefs at issue.

I don't doubt the sincerity of their beliefs. I do, however, question the integrity of the assertion that they are being "required to check their faith at the door." What they are being asked to do is to respect that not every one of their employees might share that faith. And what they are really objecting to is the fact that they're no longer allowed to ask their employees to check their faith at the door, as the cost of their employment.

No one is telling employers they have to use birth control. No one is coercing employers to pay for birth control, either. They are being asked to pay for insurance policies that, among other healthcare provisions, will cover contraception for employees who want it. That's it.

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