Preschool assistance is SO important. You now have to make under $630 a month to qualify for help, can you imagine making $650 a month with CHILDREN and being told you’re too rich? The old bar was at $2000, it’s been absolutely gutted:
That’s because Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration has frozen admissions to the state’s Child Care Assistance Program and enacted new eligibility guidelines that will put the program out of reach for 90 percent of families who previously would have qualified.
Yes, I’ve been writing a lot about this topic. It’s important. Screwing up this program could have a negative ripple effect for months and years to come.
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I really do hope you read the first of Ella’s Bisto Legs Diaries about her boyfriend’s nasty blood cancer and share it all over social media, because I’m hoping a wolf-like super-agent will swoop in and snatch her up and make her very famous and out of our league and also find a perfect bone marrow match for Tall Man.
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A family very dear to one of our Toasties has lost their small son in an accident, and are trying to pay for the (truly ridiculous by any standards, Jessica Mitford had it right) cost of a funeral. Please help if you can. I give something to literally every cause I signal boost here, by the way, because otherwise I feel like a hypocrite for telling other people to help. The family would also love your prayers and thoughts.
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Bid adieu to Matt and Jaya, who depart with all our thanks and love! Your Mallory shall return to you on Monday, filled with rich new purpose and life, and probably a lot of In N Out.
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Mexicans have doubts about El Chapo’s escape! IMAGINE THAT:
A few samples:
The tunnel is just a ruse to deflect public attention, and Mr. Guzmán, a reputed billionaire with the resources to bribe whomever he liked, simply walked out the front door of the prison.
He didn’t actually escape because he was never in prison in the first place.
The man in prison was not Mr. Guzmán but a look-alike, who either did or did not escape, either through the tunnel or through some other means.
The government had a pact with Mr. Guzmán to let him out of prison, but it reneged, so he took matters into his own hands.
The government had a pact with Mr. Guzmán to let him out of prison, and it stuck to the bargain by letting him escape.
Mr. Guzmán was allowed to escape because the government dispatched him to negotiate a deal with the heads of other drug-trafficking organizations.
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This summer’s gathering began with eulogies: Jim Sedell, a Forest Service researcher who died in 2012, was one of the first researchers to visit the mountain after the eruption, and the first to sample its lakes. John Edwards, a University of Washington ecologist, who also died in 2012, had observed that spiders were ballooning into the blast zone on streams of silk, often from more than thirty miles away. (He somewhat whimsically calculated that they were arriving on the pumice plain at a rate of eight-tenths of a spider per square metre per day). Addressing the gathering, Charlie Crisafulli, a Forest Service ecologist who has studied small mammals, birds, insects, amphibians, and plants on the mountain since the eruption, remarked that he had been twenty-two when he arrived at Mt. St. Helens, and would soon turn fifty-eight. He reminded his colleagues that his office had recently purchased heavy-duty fence posts to mark research plots, and that his crew members were available to record the G.P.S. locations of study sites. “We want to make sure that we transfer this work to a new generation,” he said.
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A new old-timey strongman (I love himmmm):
Upstairs, in his apartment, he used to have boxes filled with playing cards. He trains with those, too, ripping through a new pack like it’s a sheet of paper. Afterwards, he gathers up the pieces, wraps them tight with a rubber band, and then tears through them again. It’s a cost-cutting maneuver. When your training requires that you destroy your equipment, things can get expensive.
When the boxes started piling up, and Schoeck was running out of space, he called a hoarding service. He said goodbye to the cards, but not the steel. Not yet.
“I’m overwhelmed with scrap metal,” he says. “I think it may become a bit of a problem.”
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A delightful sprinking of deleted comments today! All from men.
Okay:
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Your help is always treasured:
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Your help is always treasured:
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Nice try, broseph:
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Okay ladies let’s all be honest with each other about our value to the ~mens~. Here’s exactly what you’re worth to me, bro:
The movie was okay, but made great by that one scene.
That and Dax Shepard’s dancing.
“But you didn’t ask for an analysis, so….” I am still going to give you one because you don’t know what you’re talking about anyway.
Ah, mansplaining.
Men – what will they think of next???
don’t worry – they will tell you!
OFC Mexicans have doubts about the validity of Guzman’s imprisonment. Look at how Chicagoans react to a handful of dubious appointments and a few off-the-books interrogation sites. Multiply those incidents by around 100, add a bunch of surprise mass graves, and you’ve got Mexican politics.
Who else read this bizarro world article on the groups “monitoring” Jade Helm? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/are-rog… It is like reading a dispatch from The Weird Internet, but in real life.
I’ve just started it, and I’m getting a vibe from it that it’s like a Coen Bros. movie where you don’t know if it’s going to go Raising Arizona/O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Barton Fink/No Country For Old Men.
Thanks, I am endlessly fascinated by the “Big American Crazy,” and this guy is a prime example. Personal crisis sends him on a cross-country mission to defeat the New World Order? Check. Hires a psychic to help him find the shadow government? Check. Explains his public calls for racial violence by saying that he was just really upset after his dog died? Holy moly.
“I’m sure they’re out there somewhere,” he said, “doing something.”
*smash cut to the X-Files opening credits*
I read something on my Twitter feed about Jade Helm nuts latching onto Diablo 3, a game that has a ‘Jade Helm’ as gear. They were convinced it all tied together (devil worshipping game making you seek out a Jade Helm, coincidence? I THINK NOT).
It is highly amusing to think of these people gaming away for ‘research’ on something they ostensibly hate.
That is just so insane I am so into it.
totally OT but I posted pictures of my yard in yesterday’s Roundup, if anyone is still interested.
A++ yarding.
Thank you!
I love it! My yard is also huge, shady, and wooded and wild–and carpeted by violets in May. Woodland gardens are definitely at their prime in April and May. I’m adding pockets of lamium and sweet woodruff as ground cover. I have 2 black walnut trees that don’t play well with others, and am trying different ‘walnut tolerant’ plants around them.
Oof, walnut tolerants are hard! Good luck!
be careful with the sweet woodruff. I like it, and it’s definitely easy to grow, but it can take over like CRAZY. (My mother eventually wanted to take a flamethrower to the stuff).
My fav in that sort of “easy to grow in shade woodland plants” category is myrtle. Although violets may be my second favorite.
Our entire backyard is edged in myrtle. I love it, but it’s actually gotten so thick that it killed off the massive rose garden that was planted in our backyard in the 1960s. We only know it was there because MrChouffe has found and transplanted a few spindly little rose plants, which are doing very well now that they’re out of the myrtle bed. Best of both worlds.
I have loads of myrtle, too. Thanks for the woodruff warning–I will keep an eye on it. I also want to try making May wine from the blossoms!
Isn’t “female mixed race lesbian” redundant, dear sir? Just sayin’
Man told me today that ALL women are lesbians, we just pretend to like men if it suits us. Because we are inscrutable witches, I guess.
Or alternatively, straight women are pretending to be lesbians to get men to like them, right? Oh, women!
ALL women are lesbians? Sounds like a cis-het man who just isn’t getting any. Not because of his own attitudes, or anything. Nope. Rather, because ALL women are lesbians. Yup, that must be the problem.
Oy!
Every woman is a lesbian at heart! Including Reggie’s mum.
Friends, the people in my office are talking about the Republican “debates”, and I am aggravated. Most people here are Democrats, a party which I find acceptable more or less of the time, but there is also a kind of parochial, working person’s “nur nur nur my TAX DOLLARS” attitude about everything that drives me nuts. I definitely understand it, obviously, but I also hate it and am working hard to not just leap into conversations like some kind of annoying communist.
Anyway. Does anyone have opinions about the debate? Mine is that the moderators’ marching orders were pretty specifically to try to marginalize Trump, in order to neutralize his threat of a third-party run. I’m skeptical that they achieved this goal.
Mine is that I knew if I watched it I would just work myself up into a fury, so instead I just watched my twitter timeline instead, which was much more entertaining frankly.
Also I find it hilarious that Trump somehow got the number one spot. Wow.
I feel like there wasn’t really any question that Trump was going to come out ahead here; it’s not like these debates are really serious policy discussions or anything — they’re designed to reward boisterous, public posturing, and that is what Trump’s entire campaign is built on.
It does make me pretty happy to think of how mad Chris Christie and Ted Cruz must be getting so thoroughly outclassed in that department.
My main reaction to the debates was yelling “ALRIGHT WHO LET THE LIBERAL ON THE STAGE” every time Kasich spoke. I mean he’s clearly far from liberal but every time he spoke he was talking about crime rehabilitation over retribution because it was compassionate and cheaper, expanding Medicaid because it was compassionate, etc. I’m pretty sure the man was supposed to take left turn at Albuquerque but he didn’t so instead of being the Blue Dog at the Dem debate he was the flaming liberal at the Republican debate.
Also, when they asked the God question at the end of the debate he had a beautifully constructed answer that spoke of “miracles” but didn’t actually mention God and didn’t answer the question.
OH YEAH. And he thinks being gay is wrong but he thinks the law is settled, and it’s not his place to force his morals on others, and yeah he went to a gay wedding recently so what it was a friend and he loves the friend.
If Kasich represented majority Republican politics, I’d be a much less cynical person.
Kasich clearly was under the misapprehension that there was room for a “compassionate conservative” in this race.
And a compassionate conservative that isn’t even a euphemism for religious! Poor man was lied to.
NooooooooooooooooNoooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!
Noooooooooooooooo!!!
His glamour has bewitched you!! Break eye contact!! I live here, he’s worse than Scott Walker. On phone, so only going to say, multiple heartbeat bills, illegally appointing non doctor to board of health, defending mental health services, giving state money to turkish-owned religious charter schools with a 6% graduation rate.
Read plunderbund.com. he is evil.
Yeah, I work for an organization that has tangled with Kasich in the past, and I was watching it like “holy shit, did he hire all these other guys to make him look like a normal human by comparison? What a feat!”
My dad lives in Ohio and his statement was “he’s a horrible person who’s destroyed Ohio.” I’ll admit I know very little about him. His comments were just fascinatingly different from so much coming out of the GOP and the debates.
But don’t worry, I’d never vote for him anyway!
My blood pressure dropped noticeably whenever Kasich spoke. He’s not ideal, but of the candidates, he seems to be the least destructive (at least as relevant to policies that concern me).
Exactly, it felt more like a bad beauty pageant than a political discussion. I watched just enough of it to see a few outrageous trump moments, but just about everything else was word salad.
The one thing I’m thankful for is that we got to see just how much of a pasty dweeb Scott Walker looks like on stage. If his endless supply of terrible ideas isn’t enough to doom his campaign, maybe this face will do him in. https://vine.co/v/ewhOmJVeqhJ
That vine and the vine of gif of Rick Santorum jerking off at the kids’ table debate pretty much made yesterday worthwhile.
You would think, given his current word-association problem, Rick would want to be extremely careful not to do things that could be mistaken for something sexual when taken out of context (like how all politicians seem to get the “don’t make broad, sweeping gestures with your arm because a badly-timed photo can make you look like Hitler” lesson). And yet…
I have NEVER seen a photo of Scott Walker where he doesn’t look like that. The campus paper did an April Fools’ issue with a side-by-side comparison of Walker’s many expressions and a goldfish.
Mine is that I’d rather watch anime than a bunch of bigoted old men, so I did. Dattebayo.
I thought the same thing, so I wasn’t planning on watching it anyway, but apparently my body was SO AGAINST IT I managed to get a migraine about half an hour before it started. I went to bed. No regrets.
The best part was the Straight Outta Compton commercial after the Black Lives Matter question, that’s all I got.
I was pretty impressed at Megyn Kelly calling Trump out for being such a sexist pig. Definitely did not expect that.
I don’t know, I feel like Megyn Kelly has done that kind of stuff before. I’d have been more impressed if the actual GOP audience had backed her up.
I mean, she is a Fox News reporter so she does suck, but I like that she sticks to her guns in calling men out that way.
The bar is set so low that on those rare, rare occasions when Megyn Kelly talks sense it’s a Christmas Miracle.
A Christmas Miracle from White Santa.
And then to prove he isn’t a sexist pig, Trump went on to call Kelly a bimbo and harassed her on Twitter for daring to call him out. http://www.themarysue.com/donald-trump-megyn-kell…
I …… sort of … liked?? Megyn Kelly? Especially on the Trump misogyny question? And she sort of seemed to maybe understand a bit better than the others that it was really absurd? Like, the “God” tease?
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still get that she is still employed by Fox News. but…. i hated her less than i expected to?
I don’t know, I think that Kelly was at least partly a set-up. She’s done that stuff before (I don’t know if you remember when she went after Huckabee a couple months back, basically saying “ladies are gonna bone how we bone, sucker!”); and if the overall plan at this debate was to delegitimize Trump, it makes sense that she’d be given the green light to go after him.
(It’s possible that she genuinely cares about the issue, but it’s possible that she cares about any number of issues, or doesn’t care about them, as the need arises; she’s both a Fox News Anchor and a former lawyer, so who knows if she even has any actual principles.)
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(Current lawyer and loyal Toastie)
well hey, I’m not saying it’s impossible for any lawyer to have principles. Just the ones that work for Fox News.
Hmm, Sally Kohn isn’t at Fox News any more, and doesn’t seem to have practiced much if at all after getting her J.D., so . . . I guess.
There’s no such thing as a former lawyer, either. Once they pull us in, they have us paying bar dues FOREVER.
True, dat.
I know a lot of very conservative women who are all about “female empowerment” or something, but don’t give a single shit for women’s bodily autonomy, trans women’s rights, or the lives of women of color, so I take her entire existence with a large grain of salt.
Hello, this is unrelated, but I just finished reading Mr Stitch, which I bought immediately after finishing The Translated Man, and I wanted to say they are both really wonderful books. Thank you for linking to them in Toast comments several weeks ago because I’m delighted to have found and enjoyed them!
Oh, well! You are welcome, I am very glad you enjoyed them!
I got this new one that I am trying to get an agent for and sell to a publisher the regular way, but when it comes out, DON’T WORRY you will definitely hear about it here!
My friends and I mostly got really, really wasted because of how straight up incredulous we were about the clown show. And I mean, how can you not when…
Trump kicks the whole thing off by threatening to run third party. Carson wants to bring back waterboarding. Everyone keeps bringing up Iran Contra and Regan when talking about Iran (WHY???). Huckabee said the military is for “killing people and breaking things”. Moderators asked questions like “Sooo Gov Walker, Wisconsin sucks now, please respond”. Christie and Paul yell at each other over hugging Obama. The clearly coached post-debate focus group attempting to take down Trump. Etc…
These are people that are running for leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces. Thank god it’s going to be a particularly hard EV battle to get Republicans to 270.
Normally I think Will Saletan is just this side of boring trash but this article was good if only for the comment that if you took all of these positions and had them coming from one person, you’d have a Democrat. So the only reasonable things they said are non-majority GOP positions, hmmmm.
I’m really interested in how this debate played out among non-liberals, to be honest; my entire twitter timeline, obviously, is in the “this is all ludicrous bullshit camp”, but of course WE are. A real serious question would be about how the people who are expected to swallow it feel about it, but also I can’t really bring myself to read Republican commentators on anything, they aggravate my apoplexy.
My opinions are as follows
a) the only thing that anyone in that debate could have said to get me to vote for them is “I am leaving the Republican Party and will be running on the Socialist ticket”
b) nothing meaningful or substantive ever actually gets said in primary debates, and having this was mostly just an attempt for ratings and attention, and the fact that people watched it means we have brought the interminable election cycle on ourselves
I agree about the election cycle, and also about what it would take for any of these dudes to win my vote, but also, I’m trying to think if there’s a better way this could be handled. Because in the abstract, it’s a good thing for there to be widespread interest in running for office! That certainly sounds like a healthier democratic model than just having a couple obvious candidates from day 1. But in practice (and in a non-parliamentary system) (and in an era when we’re not willing to just let the convention delegates fight it out), what do you do when you have this many people fighting for a nomination? Making them debate is evidently a practice in producing meaningless sound bites, so what would be better?
I didn’t watch it, but I did enjoy all the Mad Max jokes that crossed my twitter feed:
My opinion about the debate is that my sister had an emotional breakdown last night and all her friends were too busy watching the damn Republican debate to talk to her, so today I am short of sleep and may have accidentally yelled about how angry I am about people being too busy watching that clown show to help out a friend in the middle of my very Republican office. Ooops.
Well, my opinion is that your sister’s friends are bad.
Did anyone else see Eat24’s free tacos promotion last night? I thought it was one of the most delightful things on the Internet in awhile. http://blog.eat24hours.com/eat24-free-taco-every-… #HolaDonald!
Also, basically everything that came out of Trump’s mouth was (as usual) terrifying and convinced me he’s the reincarnation of some medieval despot and THIS MAN WANTS TO RUN OUR COUNTRY.
&Sharing this article just for the title alone and because I can’t on Facebook because extended family. : / http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/tr…
I got my bone marrow testing kit in the post yesterday! My cheeks are now squeeky clean and I have DNA samples in my bag ready to go in the post on the way home from work today 😀 It was literally the easiest thing, if you haven’t registered do it!
That was super fast, when did you register? I just did it this morning and am waiting with bated breath, although I suspect that they will reject me for medical reasons 🙁
Maybe 2-3 weeks ago? it was when the links were posted to Link Roundup one day. I live in London though, which is where the UK organisation are based, so that might be why it was so quick. The letter does say it can take up to 3 months for them to process your sample and send you your donor card
Mine came fast, too–I signed up I think a day or two after the links were posted in the Link Roundup and my cheek swab kit came last week, and I’m in the US.
Cool, I’ll cross my fingers then!
I’m in the US and I got my testing kit within 2 weeks of registering.
I registered at the end of Feb, got the kit a week or so later, returned it right away, and got the confirmation from them that I was processed & in their database at the end of April – just under 2 months start to finish.
A pal of mine got the news last month that she’s a match for some little boy on another continent – she’s been on the registry for over 8 years. She’s prepping for her donation next week!!
How great for your friend! I’ve been on the registry for a couple years and view the possibility of being matched with a mixture of horror (I have a huge fear of needles and medical procedures in general) and excitement (how awesome would it be to help save someone’s life in that way?).
Hooray! I just got mine in the mail this morning, and will be using my Daily Walk to the Mailbox shortly 😀
I am jealous of this cheek swab thing. I tried to sign up in Australia but apparently they require you to give a full blood donation to get on the registry. I’m on some drugs that ban me from donating blood for the time being, so I’m also banned from signing up for the registry. Boooooooo.
Hopefully I’ll be finished with these drugs by the end of the year and can sign up then. But still. Boooooo.
It might be worth calling the appointment line about. We actually take some donors whose blood we can’t use because they need to be bled for other reasons, and I am super unsure if this is potentially one of those. /not official or affiliated in any way, totes, obvs, for real
Did any Canadian Toasties watch the Maclean’s leaders’ debate last night? I did not, but I did read several articles afterward (and associated Twitter feeds), and I am very pleased that Elizabeth May is getting some dang respect out of it (except from Ezra Levant, who is scum even in the pit of hell from which he sprang and should be ignored).
The Prime Minster is claiming that he won…
I notice Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau are too, although not in so splendidly hilarious a fashion.
Also, invisible things at the debate.
Good god, that smile is the smile of the man barely containing the eldritch demons that pilot his meat-suit.
He’s a slitheen. End of story. It explains everything.
I did!
I liked Mulcair, but I was kind of already primed to like Mulcair. I’m unlikely to ever vote Green, but I do very much like seeing May in the debates. She’s able to call up facts and numbers about a wide number of things on a moment’s notice, and she’s not at all hesitant to use that ability to go after the other leaders. I don’t know whether that’s due to massive amounts of prep for the debates or massive amounts of ongoing prep for sitting in the House; I suspect the latter. Trudeau spoke fairly well but I thought he was pretty boring. Except when he tried to be clever answering the Quebec question (“my number is nine”), then I was more annoyed than bored. Harper was Harper.
Mostly, I was left with a desire to know what the situation with wages is. There were claims that wages in Canada are rising, falling, and flatlining, and I’d just like to know which of those things is true.
I like to see May included too. I’m as NDP-partisan as they come, but May really brings it in debate and I think it’s important that she be there. Call me a rosy social democrat, but I want people voting Green because they’re aligned with their policies & positions, and not just out of a desire to register their sense of aggrievedness.
*puts on wishing rose-coloured glasses* I really want to see an NDP win with a Green opposition. I am orange and always will be but the Greens are not that far off my spectrum. Think of what this country could be!
Oh, how I wish it could be true. I’ll be wishing/working/voting for it!!!
I was just boldly observing to my husband that if she was the leader of any other party, she’d be prime minister by now.
Did Elizabeth May ever clear up her/her party’s stance on abortion? I never looked into it much because I’ve always been in nominally NDP ridings, and vote to support them, but from what I remember her statements on abortion weren’t solidly pro-choice. I am very welcome to be proven wrong, though.
It didn’t come up. I don’t think Macleans was going to try to open up that can of worms, but also they mostly only asked about “big-picture” (read: male-coded) stuff like The Economy and National Defense.
Didn’t come up yesterday, and I couldn’t find anything about it when I looked at their site on my phone yesterday, but it turns out that there’s good news in their full platform:
Green Party MPs will:
Oppose any possible government move to diminish the right of a woman to a safe, legal abortion. We fully support a woman’s right to choose. We will also expand programs in reproductive rights and education to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and expand supports for low-income mothers;
Thanks for inspiring me to look this up; I’m pretty sure this is an improvement over their past platforms. I still don’t know that I’m ever likely to vote for them, and I don’t know what May’s personal stance is, but it’s good to know that the party’s made progress.
Yeah, it’s always been my biggest sticking point with Green politics. I’d be curious to see if it comes up in this election cycle. I don’t feel like May is the most eloquent public speaker, and I think she gets her ideas pretty muddled on this topic, which lends to the lack of clarity in her message.
Here’s a quote from May from 2011:
“If a woman is in a situation where she’d like to keep her child and needs support, we also want to be there to support that choice and also to ensure that as much as possible we, in our society, provide—not just for women, but for male partners—responsibility, birth-control information in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies,” May said of the policy. “So, it’s a mixed and nuanced position, but there’s absolutely no wiggle room on maintaining the right of women in this country to safe and legal abortions.”
She expands in this article. She’s trying to be a little more complex about it than I think the media was ready for, and maybe this is one she should have kept simple? And there are certainly no excuses for some of the things she said to those nuns. But Elizabeth May, much as I love her, has a small history of speaking first and thinking later. At least she’s good about sincere apologies, and changing how she acts afterwards.
I don’t know the people and situations, but I feel like ‘misspeaks, apologises, acknowledges wrongness, changes actions’ is actually a pretty good attribute! In fact, if that is the case I would WANT those people to make MORE gaffes. Better than a shiny slick person who never makes mistakes and thus is never confronted with the people affected by their actions.
Watched, drank, live-blogged. Elizabeth May was great. She and Justin Trudeau were both regularly calling Harper out on his blatant lies. Trudeau kind of seemed like he was trying to talk in quotable zingers, which might be good strategy in the age of most people follow the debate on Twitter, but because of that it didn’t feel like he ever actually made any solid arguments. Mulcair looked a bit nervous, was fairly quiet and staying out of the drama but I thought did well when he did actually speak (other than a couple of weird tangents he and Trudeau got into about Quebec/pipelines/idk what else). Harper was Harper.
The absolute weirdest thing about Illinois Gov.Rauner is that his wife GETS IT. She is president of prevention oriented, evidence-based organization The Ounce that is based entirely on early intervention for babies and young children. I cannot imagine what their pillow talk is like.
I assume it’s the same sort of cognitive dissonance that makes David Koch a serious patron of the arts.
Remember when Rick Perry’s wife, a nurse, said that giving pre-teens the HPV vaccine was just common sense, and then they David Miscavige-d her into retracting her extremely correct statement?
I grew up with parents who fought like cats and dogs, but on big stuff like politics and religion, they were basically aligned. I argue with my SO about things from time to time (her baseball fandom is wrong), but again, we agree on the really big, immovable things; I can’t imagine dating or marrying someone who had such radically divergent opinions. I mean, more power to Carville and Matalin and whoever else can make it work, but…how? Like, Planned Parenthood comes up around the dinner table – do you have a fight? I dunno. It’s always confused me.
I don’t know how they do it. It would be very difficult for me to respect someone that I felt was so, so wrong on such important issues, and how can you be with someone that you don’t respect?
Maybe they are from the section of the population who clearly doesn’t think respect is a thing necessary in a relationship? I can’t imagine it myself but I know plenty of people who are of the opinion that men/women (as applicable) are deeply flawed and basically guaranteed to be wrong and silly and so you just overlook it and keep on trucking. It’s how my emotionally unstable mother managed to find another partner! He doesn’t EXPECT her to be reasonable, in fact if she DIDN’T emotionally abuse him he’d probably be shocked.
Sigh. My mom voted for him because of her ads.
There is a lovely cartoon about trans* issues in Malaysia on Slate this morning, if anyone is interested: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/08/07/tra…
Thank you for that link!
Toasts will definitely enjoy this, the origin of the suffragette (and now Womens Equality Party, although also Wimbledon.) colours! http://maharam.com/stories/rawsthorn_suffragette-…
Very interesting! Relatedly, I’m very excited to see the movie that is coming out (Suffragette; here’s the trailer for those who haven’t seen it yet : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HdQ0iVrl2Y). I’ll keep an eye on the colors in the costuming now.
That looks pretty good, but I just can’t do historical political movies. I always find them so manipulative and deliberately tear-jerking.
I really need to keep the things a read, because I read somewhere that one of the reasons Churchill (or someone like that) opposed votes for women was that he feared women would be more inclined to vote Conservative, and it was proved right, when women started voting, the Tories won majorities.
I love this! I got to write a massive article for, of all things, the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits, about the Suffragettes and it was the Most Fun to research and write. The editor of the magazine (who is wonderful) even gave it the title, “Speaking Up in Public While Female” which will forever make me happy. (I think of everything I’ve done in my professional life, this article is what I’m most proud of.)
Beforehand I knew a lot about the US women’s suffrage movement, but beyond knowing that Alice Paul worked with the suffragettes for a time, I had no real knowledge of just how brutal the fight for suffrage in the UK was. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to work with the Pankhursts.
I wish I knew more about women’s modern history, the few years of school I did didn’t focus on women’s history at all (WW2 is more important for 15 year olds apparently),, and it wasn’t an option for me at college, so all of my knowledge about the suffragette movement is what I’ve cleaned from pop culture and the occasional article.
My mum did tell me bits here and there, like the Kings horse incident, and how they force-fed the women and things, but yeah, I always feel like there’s a massive hole in my knowledge.
I got next to nothing in school until I went to college, and the, it was only because I went to one with a great ethnic and gender studies program. It was only a minor, and their “department office” was a glorified closet, but I’m so glad it was an option. I think it’s important to know exactly how crazy the fight for women’s suffrage was. I think in America we know Susan B. Anthony and a few marches, but we also had women being beaten and suffragists being force-fed in prisons. It was not a quick and easy fight.
I definitely suggest (if you have the time/bandwidth) checking out some books on the suffragettes. Most of the books I used for my article were academic, but the history is so interesting even if you aren’t a historian it will probably keep you entranced. I mean, these ladies would literally blow shit up. I’m definitely not a fan of the suffragette movement’s methods (I would definitely not been of their rank, had I been there), and they probably did hurt the cause more than they helped it, but man are the fun to read about!
(And I second your desire for such a fabulous dress.)
Its on the list. One day I’ll be cultured and read womens history and economics books. not this day though, this day I’m reading books by Alan Cumming (heh Cumming.)
I know that the Suffragette movement was a break off from the wider Suffrage movement, they’ve become more recognizable, but they were a small splinter group that wanted to use violence, where the wider women vote movement was opposed to violent methods.
I also wonder how ‘common’ most of the women leading the movement were, from what I understand most of them were high society ladies who had been educated (therefor were rich) and had the time to devote to the cause, where many working and middle-class women would probably have been busy working or caring for families
I also really want an fabulous purple, green and white dress now.
Here’s a story for you: I lived at the University of Sydney’s Women’s College during my first three years of undergrad, and they have posters about women’s suffrage up in the foyer of one of their buildings. They also have beautiful gardens that were planted in 1894-ish when the College was established.
These facts never really struck me as connected until one day in third year when I realised that … the College has suffragette-themed gardens! They have jacarandas (purple flowers), gardenias, wisteria climbing all over the oldest building, and purple and white azalea borders. Alas, I have no photos to show you.
Toasties, I read this article yesterday and I got flames on the side of my face :http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/russell-moore-christian-freaks/400265/
I am happy that someone is talking about how being a ‘good’ Christian in America has basically become conflated with being a compliant white suburbanite, but then Moore talked about sexuality and I was like, this is not a paradigm shift, this is same shit, different day that evangelicals always seem to pull when they’re trying to appear like they’re being defiant of their own culture. THEN the author said, ‘well maybe mainliners and progressives will want to follow suit and embrace weirdness like the evangelicals’, and I was like, why don’t you TALK to a mainliner or a progressive about how they’re already different and embracing weirdness instead of acting like the media and evangelicals themselves by thinking the conservative Protestant expression of Christianity is the One True Expression of Christianity.
This is not the first time Emma Green has struck me as a lazy religion reporter.
Rant over. Carry on.
Moore is making an argument for embracing Christian strangeness. “Our message will be seen as increasingly freakish to American culture,” he writes. “Let’s embrace the freakishness, knowing that such freakishness is the power of God unto salvation.”
This is so not new it’s barely even interesting. I’ve never been an evangelical Christian, but I was raised in a mainline church that had an evangelical wing I would encounter at youth retreats, and all this just sounds like the same old Jesus Freak stuff they had us singing about in the 90s (and it wasn’t new then either). Evangelicalism performs a weird balancing act between the allure of being an outcast for God, and the moral security of feeling sure that the American majority agrees with your values. To interview someone about this tension, to hear him say absolutely nothing new, and to still pitch the article as being about a major new turning point in American Christianity, seems to me like just buying into his marketing schtick.
THIS THIS THIS THIS. Thank you.
I agree. As an outsider, I find it striking how much Evangelicals enjoy imagining themselves to be victims and martyrs. (Seriously, Moore whines that Evangelicals are oppressed because mainstream society is beginning to grudgingly accept that LGBT people maybe have the right to exist, and also because divorce is a thing.) This “embrace the freakishness” rhetoric really is just the newest iteration of that old impulse. Even worse, it is also a call to Evangelicals to ratchet up their persecution of real, actual oppressed groups.
For sure! It’s pretty despicable to claim you want to fight LGBT teen homelessness while still preaching that homosexuality is a mortal sin. That belief is what causes the oppression in the first place.
Today I passed a “church” advertising itself as part of the “Christian Resistance”. This is in Northeast Ohio. We are doomed.
Bruce Rauner really really REALLY hates children. Especially disabled children. I don’t understand why he isn’t being followed by a jeering mob every time he leaves the house.
But I don’t want to say goodbye to Matt and Jaya! I want more of them without having to visit different web sites *pouts*
Yes, I would like Mallory back AND Matt and Jaya to be around all the time. Excellent combo.
Can we at least keep having vegetable male entertainers as the link roundup featured images?
seconded!
And more favorite comments of the week!
I would just like to say that I will miss Jaya and Matt – I have thoroughly enjoyed this mini-takeover because it has been a DELIGHT. You two are marvelous. <3 <3 <3
Thanks, Jaya and Matt, it’s been great!
Everybody, a Tumblr has just drawn my attention to this Gerome, which I feel many Toasties would find useful in their day-to-day lives:
http://platypusinplaid.tumblr.com/post/1259736144…
Women In Western Art History Who Inspired The Ring
That’s awesome.
Let me spot you, bro:
Ugh, thank you. This isn’t some advanced vocab here! Surely they’ve heard of whaling on someone before.
Maybe they learned their words pre-1780, and haven’t paid attention since?
Boom, dictionary-ed
Ugh, my biggest pet peeve of 2015 is when someone mansplains something that 30 seconds of Googling will show is clearly wrong. How overconfident do you have to be to type a comment without spending one minute checking to see if you are correct first? Some people are so insanely confident they will base their entire careers on a premise that 30 seconds of Googling will show is wrong: “Men need more sex than women” so decriminalise UK sex trade, academic says”. That level of confidence BLOWS MY MIND.
God it must be nice to believe in your own opinion that strongly. Look it up? Nope! Facts? Nope!
The only good thing about Bruce Rauner is that he’s looking more like a one-termer every day. Then again, I don’t have a lot of faith in my fellow Illinoisans, since they elected him in the first place.
Only Cook and Peoria counties didn’t go for him! Even Madison County did, wtf East St. Louisians!!
Illinois politics has been so crooked for so long a lot of people just don’t bother voting. Guess what percent of registered Chicago voters actually bothered to vote in our last mayoral election? TWENTY-THREE PERCENT. Emmanuel won “51%-49%”, which means ONLY 12 PERCENT OF CHICAGOANS VOTED FOR HIM AND HE WON. It’s disgraceful and embarrassing. Get it together, Illinois.
I am a Chicagoan so I vote early and often, BUT WHO THE HELL VOTED FOR THAT MAN?
* I am aware that non-Chicagoans did. But I don’t know any of them.
(And I voted in the last mayoral election, too, of course. CHUY!)
Late to this but have you all seen Abbi & Illana on Lip Sync Battle yet? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjzEF5kUZypUftfH…
Illinois! Only getting attention when bad stuff happens, which in fairness is a lot and is really bad.
No, Jaya and Matt, stay forever!
Toasties! I wanted to tell you about a tenacious group of people in Abbotsford, BC who’ve been in BC Supreme Court yesterday fighting a law that makes it illegal for homeless people to sleep outdoors. There’s a severe lack of housing & shelter facilities in Abbotsford; people who’ve been taking shelter outdoors have repeatedly been targeted by the city & local police. They’ve had their belongings disposed of, their tents destroyed by city workers, they’re harassed & assaulted by the police, and at one point city staff spread chicken manure on the grounds of their encampment to prevent them from returning. They sought legal counsel, and arguments wrapped up yesterday. The local radio didn’t clip the interview with their lawyer, DJ Larkin, but if you skip ahead to about 2:33:00 in this (http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/British+Columbia/The+Early+Edition/ID/2673182803/) you can hear her explain why they took the case to court.
I am a Chicagoan so I vote early and often, BUT WHO THE HELL VOTED FOR THAT MAN?
* I am aware that non-Chicagoans did. But I don't know any of them.
(And I voted in the last mayoral election, too, of course. CHUY!)
But it's IMPORTANT that you know that I know more about your situation than I do and that by condescending to read your lady words I am not in fact allowing any new or valuable information into my brain.
That's awesome.