MEAT IS HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY. TASTY, DELICIOUS HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY: Eating meat perpetuates ‘hegemonic masculinity,’ prof says.
Oddly, I think she seems to mean that as a bad thing.
Archive for 2017
December 4, 2017
I’ve never quite understood why anti-Trump conservatives would be so slighting about Gorsuch. He will presumably be a bulwark of the Constitution long after Trump has departed the White House three or seven years from now and is tweeting as a private citizen again. Bushies used to count George W. Bush’s two Supreme Court nominees as a central part of his domestic legacy, understandably (and Bush completely blew one of his nominations before getting it right). Trump is half-way there, with lots of time on the clock.
Also, it’s simply not true that all we have to show from the Trump administration is Gorsuch. The legislative agenda has been limited by the fact that Republicans have only 52 votes in the Senate. This is what pushed the GOP toward doing two big health and tax bills through reconciliation. When the health-care bill failed (Trump contributed to this failure, but there were lots of other factors, too), it seemed they could get nothing this year. Now, it appears very likely that they will get the tax bill, which includes a rifle-shot elimination of the individual mandate. And the administration has been steadily reversing the executive aggrandizements of the Obama administration.
Trump has governed so far as more of a Republican and conservative than I expected.
Once you get acclimated to the tweeting, most of the rest has been a pleasant surprise.
FIRST ATTORNEY GENERAL FOUND IN CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS: Eric Holder gets laughed off the Twitter stage during lecture about ‘integrity and honesty.’ But hey, he also handled the Marc Rich pardon.
YOU DON’T SAY: North Korea likely getting help with nukes, rockets from China or Russia.
Don’t leave out Iran.
WEIRD, WHY WOULD THEY FEEL THAT WAY? Poll: Majority of Trump supporters say media is ‘enemy of American people.’ The numbers aren’t so great among people who don’t like Trump, either. But I think Trump is more a symptom than a cause of these sentiments.
JOURNOLISM: CNN’s Self-Congratulation Orgy After Trump’s Latest Attack Only Illustrates His Point.
Since the inauguration, CNN has largely given up any pretense of objectivity about the Trump presidency. Its panels of commentators heard throughout a typical day rarely contain even a token Trump supporter to balance liberal critics and conservatives who also despise the president. Most news stories about Trump come in as an outrage a day featuring whatever outrageous tweet or utterance (on Monday it was his ill-timed reference to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahantas” during a ceremony honoring Native American World War Two vets).
But early on the network’s reporters and on-air personalities decided that they were not prepared to treat anything the president did or said as defensible or even a matter of opinion. Most CNN discussions of Trump consist of reporters, guest commentators, and hosts agreeing with each other about the awful nature of whatever he has done or said. They frame most stories about Trump and his administration as an outrage about which decent people cannot agree to disagree.
Were this limited to the network’s opinionated hosts, especially those in prime time like Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, who compete with the even more liberal personalities on MSNBC as well as the conservative talkers on Fox, it might be considered defensible in this hyper-partisan age. But the same spirit extends into the work of its on-air reporters, who might otherwise be expected to give us, as the graphic behind Blitzer on Monday proclaimed, “facts first.”
Provided they fit the narrative, of course.
SOYLENT TAX IS PEOPLE! Or, CNBC discovers, solves pressing world crises:
● Shot: World may not have enough food by 2050: Report.
—Headline, CNBC, October 15th, 2014.
● Chaser: Economist Larry Summers predicts 10,000 will die per year due to tax reform.
—Headline, CNBC, today.
IN THE MAIL: From Eric Flint and Charles E. Gannon, 1636: The Vatican Sanction (Ring of Fire) .
ROGER SIMON: Trump’s Right — the FBI Is in Tatters.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Charlottesville report tells us what happens when the police fail to do their job.
DRILL, BABY, DRILL: GOP Senate Opens ANWR to Oil Drilling.
CHANGE: The US May Add THAAD Missile Systems On The West Coast.
Two congressmen told Reuters the Pentagon was looking into new locations to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, systems. THAADs would likely be the most efficient in shooting down incoming ballistic missiles similar to the one North Korea tested in late November.
Those THAAD deployments won’t happen right away, though.
The Missile Defense Agency, a unit within the Department of Defense, told Reuters it had no orders to place new THAAD systems on the West Coast. Additionally, the outlet notes no funding for the system was included in the 2018 defense budget plan.
Congress needs to act as though time is of the essence — because it is. It’s already past time to employ Austin Bay’s “return of serve” option for neutralizing North Korea, and Pyongyang appears to be gearing up much faster and more seriously than we are.
AND RIGHTLY SO: Ban on speech ‘about a person’ that negligently causes ‘significant mental suffering, anxiety or alarm’ struck down.
Illinois “stalking” and “cyber-stalking” statutes criminalize (among other things),
“knowingly engag[ing] in [2 more or acts] directed at a specific person,”
including “communicat[ing] to or about” a person,
when the communicator “knows or should know that this course of conduct would cause a reasonable person to”
“suffer emotional distress,” defined as “significant mental suffering, anxiety or alarm.”The statute expressly excludes, among other things, “an exercise of the right to free speech or assembly that is otherwise lawful.”
This morning, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down these provisions (which it referred to as “subsection (a)”), in People v. Releford. (I should note that my students Brandon Amash, Sarah Burns and Emily Michael, and I — with the invaluable help of pro bono local counsel Steven W. Becker — filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Cato Institute and the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project supporting this result.)
Read the whole thing.
BYRON YORK: In Trump-Russia probe, was it all about the Logan Act?
There’s too much meat here to give you a proper excerpt, so instead I’ll just urge you to Read the Whole Thing™.
OH SURE, I GET THEM CONFUSED ALL THE TIME MYSELF: Washington Post Faults Trump for Not Equating NFL Protests to Rosa Parks.
Curiously, I’ve never read about Parks wearing items of clothing that equated policemen to pigs.
THIS IS WHAT IS KNOWN AS A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE:
The Palestinians have been offered a generous peace on more than one occasion, but as Abba Eban noted in 1973, have also never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Nothing has changed since then, except perhaps for a President willing to act accordingly.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Chancellor faces no-confidence vote over sanctuary campus.
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, Updated Hourly.
Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Charlottesville report tells us what happens when the police fail to do their job.
PUNDITS: TRUMP’S TWEETS ARE UNIQUELY IMMATURE AND UNWORTHY OF THE GREAT UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
James Comey posts weird collage of FBI agent rear ends in apparent response to Donald Trump.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Flynn, RUSSIA, Comey, Holder, Nunes, The FBI and Much, Much More.
THE SJW PLAYBOOK ON DISPLAY (VIDEO): “Now that you understand this playbook, watch New Brighton, Minnesota mayor Val Johnson follow this script.”
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL “FASTER, PLEASE”: Honda Claims Its Electric Cars Will Charge in 15 Minutes by 2022.
The key to Honda’s plan is the battery itself. Honda currently sources batteries for plug-in hybrids from Panasonic and is looking for a partner to collaborate with on its new, quick charging battery. Honda is also working with the unique challenges of electrified cars by engineering lighter bodies that are able to go farther on a single battery charge to reduce the range anxiety that’s been plaguing EV drivers since their introduction. The goal for 2022 is for a Honda EV to go 150 miles on a 15-minute charge.
15 minutes charges is great, but the 150-mile range is still too short for most anyone outside of urban centers.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Life expectancy has dropped because of antibiotic resistance, says ONS.