21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: How Does Submissive Sex Work in the Age of #MeToo?

Like all of us in the throes of #MeToo, I have been taking rigorous inventory of my sexual history, rolling back the tape on past highs and lows: the disturbing teenage experiences no longer chalked up to miscommunication, those times I gave in because it was easier, some unwanted advance successfully fended off.

And then there are the memories of being brusquely, and without permission, pushed up against a wall — and loving it. In fact, those were the steamiest moments I could recall. I wondered if I would ever experience such an unscripted embrace again — and then immediately worried: Did my secret desires make me a traitor to #MeToo and what it stands for? . . .

“After being exposed to so many accounts of different women’s sexual abuse or harassment, I was hyper-aware and hyper-sensitive about it,” said Jessica Tallarico, 30, of Toronto, a newly engaged friend of mine. “So on one occasion, playing around affectionately in bed, my fiancé got the tiniest bit rough and I had such an adverse reaction to what would normally be playful. Adverse as in, I became defensive, flooded with a bit of fear.

“This felt so strange to me because it happened with my partner who I love and trust immensely, and he did nothing wrong or really that out of the ordinary.”

Making women feel fearful and defensive toward men who have done nothing wrong isn’t a side effect of the movement. It’s a goal.

GOOD QUESTION: How are Marches, More Gun Laws, and Dissing the NRA Going to Keep Our Kids Safe?

They’re about posturing and feeling good, not about accomplishing anything useful.

WINNING: Oil rose on Tuesday, after Libya said loadings of crude at a key port had been suspended, offseting an earlier dent to the price caused by evidence of the inexorable growth in U.S. oil output.

Supply disruptions are temporary, but the benefits of fracking go on and on.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, HILLARY HIT NEW LOW IN UNREALITY: Came over the weekend during an on-stage interview in India. The Indian audience apparently loved it, but it is clear she has things completely “backwards” (pun fully intended).

A PUBLIC EDUCATION: Parkland shooter always in trouble, never expelled. Could school system have done more?

On Twitter, John Hayward asks, “Could it have done less?”

I don’t see how.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Could Immigration #Resistance Send Federal Troops To California? Starring Gov. Jerry Brown in the role of Gov. Orval Faubus.

MAXIMUM PRESSURE: How Team Trump got North Korea to the negotiating table.

Donald Trump’s October 24, 1999 Meet the Press interview with Tim Russert is a historically illuminating flash forward to the most surprising, promising and history-altering opportunity since the Soviet Union collapsed: “denuclearizing” North Korea without the could-be belligerents waging a hideously destructive war that scars East Asia and seeds a global economic depression.

Read the whole thing.

SECDEF MATTIS: Putin’s Missile Threats Do ‘Not Change My Strategic Calculation.’

BRITAIN AND U.S. DEMAND ANSWERS FROM RUSSIA ABOUT THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF A FORMER SPY:

May demanded to know why a Russian-made nerve agent was used in the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter earlier this month. Skripal, 66, and daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, were found slumped on a bench following the attack and remain in critical condition, officials said.

Earlier, May said it was “highly likely” Moscow was responsible for the March 4 attack in Salisbury, Wiltshire, because the poison was part of a group of military-grade nerve agents — known as Novichok — developed by Russia.

“Either this was a direct action by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others,” she said.

The more we learn the uglier it gets.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: James Clapper avoids charges for ‘clearly erroneous’ surveillance testimony. By “clearly erroneous” they mean he lied to Congress about spying on Americans.

MAYBE THIS HELPS EXPLAIN HOW ROTHERHAM HAPPENED: Patricia Hewitt called for age of consent to be lowered to ten; Former Labour cabinet minister apologises for links to paedophile group in 1970s and admits she ‘got it wrong.’ “The document published in the former Labour cabinet minister’s name also called for incest to be legalised.”

HOLLY SCHEER: Hillary Clinton Apparently Still Has No Clue Why She Lost.

Clinton compared herself to the mother of the country, trying to enforce something wholesome that the children aren’t fond of. She said, “She ran the presidential campaign like a mother who was telling the kids to eat spinach because it was good for health while the other guy was asking them to go eat fast food and have ice-cream,” India Today reported. Clinton may not have realized it, but this also sheds a lot of light on how she sees the average American. She views them as short sighted, more interested in junk than substance, and in her words, they’re “backwards.”

Clinton reduced huge populations that voted for and against her to caricatures, by describing them as: “optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign ‘Make America Great Again’ was looking backwards. You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs, you don’t want it, you know, see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are. Whatever your problem is, I’m going to solve it.”

She traveled overseas to talk poorly about Americans, instead of building up the people that she campaigned to represent. Rural America is dealing with a host of serious issues, including poverty, joblessness, an opioid epidemic, a staggering suicide rate, and she doesn’t touch on any of these problems or offer possibly solutions.

When Trump speaks openly of “shithole” countries, he’s talking about Third World countries which could accurately be described that way. When Clinton implies that there are shithole countries, she’s referring to the vast interior of America.

MICHAEL DORAN: The Real Collusion Story. “In a textbook example of denial and projection, Trump foes in and out of government wove a sinister yarn meant to take him down.”

PRESIDENT FOR (A LONG) LIFE: Based upon his father’s lifespan Xi Jinping will be President of China until 2043.

COLLUSION: Swarthmore students removed by cops for blockading Trump Hotel. “One of the students subsequently wrote an email boasting of the experience, which was then forwarded to the entire Class of 2020 by a Swarthmore administrator.”

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Could Immigration #Resistance Send Federal Troops To California? Starring Gov. Jerry Brown in the role of Gov. Orval Faubus.

CHANGE: Rex Tillerson Out, To Be Replaced By Mike Pompeo.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Election Day, RUSSIA, Guns and Much, Much More. “There is a special election today in Pennsylvania between a sleepy Republican candidate and a moderate Democrat that appears far more conservative that the progressive nutters fighting to take back the House in other races around the country. We are told that these are ‘litmus tests’ for the #resistance but it will only be a litmus test if the Democrat wins. If the Republican wins, the race will be forgotten.”

Heh.

FREE SPEECH: Banned In Britain. Britain’s political class doesn’t want Britons too aware of what it’s doing, or thinking about the implications thereof.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: To eat in Venezuela, children work and beg on the streets – to feed their families.

Miguel González, a 10-year old indigenous boy, walks barefoot through the crowded corridors of Maracaibo’s flea market in northwestern Venezuela. He holds a little plastic bag filled with a few pounds of beef skin while a nauseating smell of kept-in-the-open fish, meat and cheese fills the air below a rusty metallic ceiling.

“Please, give me some bones,” he asks, both hands extended to a woman selling meat, who refuses to hand him the leftovers and demands that he leave the premises.

Hunger triggers Miguel’s daily trips to beg for any food or money he can carry home to Carrasquero, a poor town located in the indigenous Wayuu district next to the Colombian border.

“I ask and ask until someone gives me something to prepare a soup at least. We have no food at all at home,” the child tells a reporter. His clothes are torn. His face, hair and feet are stained.

Even an inept and corrupt military junta is preferable to energetic socialists.

NIGHT ENGAGEMENT: A Marine M1A1 Abrams tank engages targets at night. It’s on the tank range participating in semi-annual tank crew qualifications.

HOW TRUMP’S MAXIMUM PRESSURE STRATEGY GOT NORTH KOREA TO THE NEGOTIATING TABLE Read the whole thing.

NO COLLUSION: Byron York sums up the House Intel report.