Holy Toledo

by 11:05 am. It has 428 Comments.

This is just…well, watch for yourselves if you didn’t see it live:

Trump uttered the words “white supremacy” under duress in the speech, snorting, eyes darting around like a hostage forced to read a sentence denouncing his comrades for a propaganda video. That’s what the media will almost certainly focus on, that Trump acknowledged that “white supremacy” is bad.

Most won’t bother to put it in context, i.e., to point out that the acknowledgement of the obvious was made necessary because one of Trump’s deranged followers murdered innocent men, women and children after parroting Trump’s own xenophobic demagoguery as his motive. Here’s a hot take from the non-Fox News media:

The fucking fuck? No, he did not “set a different tone,” you feckless fail muppets! Trump read an error-laden compilation of shitty platitudes designed to deflect blame from himself and shield gun owners and manufacturers from any consequences. And he did it poorly. Any pundit uttering or implying a “pivot” should be kicked in the junk repeatedly (metaphorically).

Meanwhile, back in Toledo:

Fellow citizens, we either kick the Republicans out of power at every level, or their insanity will engulf this country completely. We’re more than half way there right now. It really is as simple as that.





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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Good Take / Really, Really Bad Take

by 2:59 am. It has 24 Comments.

***********
Surely not even the most hardcore Talibangelicals could defend a serial child trafficker, you would would think.

Not so!, says Erick ‘Studying to Be A Pastor’ Erickson…

Hey, when you look at it right, *anything* can be an opportunity…


This is a Great Line and Also True

by 1:33 pm. It has 97 Comments.

I love this:

I don’t know if the GOP will recover from the wave of activism from women they have unleashed. I know we still have a lot of work with older white women, but I gotta tell you, all the women I know are MOTIVATED AS FUCK to beat Trump and Republicans from now until forever.

Anecdotally, I have signed up to be a County Captain for the WVCantWait campaign to elect Stephen Smith. Governor. I have spent the last week getting acquainted with the other volunteers across the state, reading and interacting on the FB page, reading the literature, etc. At any rate, EVERY SINGLE VOLUNTEER I have interacted with is a woman. And they are all motivated and ready to kick ass, and committed and passionate and helpful. I know that it is probably inevitable that I will be a county captain for six months before I am replaced by a woman who would do a better job than me. It’s kind of awesome, actually- women and teachers are going to drag this god damned state and country into the future and I wouldn’t want to get in their way.





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Test the Damn Coatdress!!!!!!

by 9:24 pm. It has 68 Comments.

Earlier today, New York Magazine reported that longtime Elle advice columnist, E. Jean Carroll, was raped by the President 25 years ago in the ladies changing room at Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York.

The article is gripping, angering, and frustrating to read. And I’m a guy whose never been sexually assaulted – and yes, that happens to guys sometimes. I cannot imagine how hard it was to read for those, women or men, who have been sexually assaulted and/or raped.

I want to focus on something, however, that I’ve not yet seen addressed: that the coatdress that Ms. Carroll wore when she alleges the President raped her has been hanging on her closet door ever since. (emphasis mine)

The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening.

TEST THE DAMN COATDRESS!!!!!!!!!!

If someone had accused President Obama or President Clinton or a prominent Democratic elected or appointed official, hell if someone had accused Secretary Clinton, of sexually assaulting and/or raping them, and had also reported they had the clothing they wore that day and it has been unworn and unwashed ever since, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, David Bossie, Karl Rove – okay, Rove would hire someone as he can’t waddle that fast, Matt Schlapp – possibly same problem as Rove, Rudy Giuliani, Jacob Wohl, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Chuck “Rage Furby” Johnson, whichever Breitbrat is on duty this weekend, and 1/2 a dozen other people affiliated with the  Republican Party, the conservative movement, the alt-right, the Trump campaign or other supporting organization like his SuperPAC, Leonard Leo, Don McGahn on behalf of his real boss Mitch McConnell, and Matt Gaetz in an attempt to get Gym Jordan and Mark Meadows to stop wedgying him in the cloak room and giving him swirlies in the House locker room, would all be converging on the accusers home to GET THE DAMN COATDRESS AND TEST IT FOR THE DNA OF THE PERSON ACCUSED OF COMMITTING THE SEXUAL ASSAULT AND/OR RAPE!!!!!!

This isn’t chutes and ladders. It isn’t tic tac toe. There are no Marquess of Queensbury Rules. No one cares about good ring generalship, there’s no four knock down rule, you’re not going to be saved by the bell. What is needed here is effective aggression!

Get the coatdress. Have it tested for DNA. That is the only way you’re ever going to see any accountability here. Because as riveting as Carroll’s article is, it will not bring accountability. It will simply disappear into the 24/7/365 information panopticon that the President and his supporters have created. By tomorrow or Sunday it will be gone, surpassed by something to do with Iran. Or tariffs with China. Or that his golf game got rained out.

Test the damn coatdress!!!

Open thread!





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You Ladies are Just Being Hysterical

by 5:29 pm. It has 109 Comments.

This is a righteous piece by Rebecca Traister:

I have been thinking, like so many people this week, about rage. Who I’m mad at, what that anger’s good for, how what makes me maddest is the way the madness has long gone unrespected, even by those who have relied on it for their gains.

For as long as I have been a cogent adult, and actually before that, I have watched people devote their lives, their furious energies, to fighting against the steady, merciless, punitive erosion of reproductive rights. And I have watched as politicians — not just on the right, but members of my own party — and the writers and pundits who cover them, treat reproductive rights and justice advocates as if they were fantasists enacting dystopian fiction.

This week, the most aggressive abortion bans since Roe v. Wade swept through states, explicitly designed to challenge and ultimately reverse Roe at the Supreme Court level. With them has come the dawning of a broad realization — a clear, bright, detailed vision of what’s at stake, and what’s ahead. (If not, yet, full comprehension of the harm that has already been done).

You can not compromise one inch with fanatics. The moment you buy into their framework of things (“ABORTION IS EVIL”) and start saying things like it should be “safe, legal, and rare,” you are losing the battle. The only acceptable answer is “I support it and fuck you for telling people what to do with their own fucking body.”





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