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Showing posts from December, 2017

Someone get the CDC a thesaurus!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-gets-list-of-forbidden-words-fetus-transgender-diversity/2017/12/15/f503837a-e1cf-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html?utm_term=.9280df07ab70 I feel like this may be one of those stories that is quietly walked back in a week or so. Government bureaucracies are nothing if not committed to absolutely staying the same, and they can get around a word ban with little change in intent. Trump is hilariously committed to breaking brains of the liberal pundit class and his half-wit base loves it. It’s really all he has, as he hasn’t been able to get much else done. (Please don’t remind me of the tax bill that is all but certain to become law.)

Identity entrepreneurs

http://www.philly.com/philly/living/sex_love_dating/relationships-sex-dating-polydelphia-20171214.html?mobi=true  The thing that sticks out to me when I read this wasn’t that a small percentage of people choose to have more than one “partner” (I normally hate describing human relationships in such a businessy way, but in this this case it works). I understand if you aren’t monogamous yet need to get married for financial purposes, that’s something we need to change as a society, but as things are today I get that. I understand being open about that with your “partners.” That’s actually commendable compared to the opposite. But people lose me when they start conjuring up specific identities to describe what essentially is a person having multiple lovers. Yeah, having more than one “partner” isn’t exactly socially acceptable everywhere, but it’s also been happening since time immemorial.  Typically identities are created by a slow and complex process that ultimately reflects material

More “collusion”

What’s going on in Washington right now looks a bit like the run up to Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in Brazil. Trump’s goons are getting busted for sleaze that everyone does the same way Rousseff’s “corruption” was basically how the Brazilian political system works. (The Brazilians didn’t need a Russia panic, but that’s our own special quirk.) At the same time as the Flynn craziness (Flynn was also improperly lobbying for, or could we say “colluding” with, Israel in case you didn’t hear), the Senate is to vote on a tax bill they haven’t really finished writing let alone read and debated. Pardon the conspiratorial tone, but it really seems like Trump’s purpose is to sign this massive money grab, then piss off back to reality tv. I get the feeling there’s a layer of the elite who are sick of being laughed at across the world, but really don’t want to pay taxes and would love to blame the future mess this tax bill causes on an impeached Trump.

Colluding!

Meeting with a foreign government becomes “collusion” if the United States doesn’t have much, if any, control over that government. That’s also how we determine who is an ally. When push come to shove, will they do what we say? If the answer is most likely no, then any contact, especially seemingly friendly contact during a presidential campaign, is suspect. People will even say treasonous. It doesn’t matter the details of the meeting. This is how liberal nationalism is expressed. It’s obviously less inflammatory than the “nuke ‘em” rhetoric, but still pretty goddamned dangerous.