Please Don't Gender My Dinner! Tabs, Thurs., May 2, 2024
Morning news roundup!
More bad tabs today, imagine that!
Pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, wearing black shirts and white masks, over several hours???
Over several hours, counterdemonstrators threw objects, including wood and a metal barrier, at the camp and those inside, with fights repeatedly breaking out. Some tried to force their way into the camp, and the pro-Palestinian side used pepper spray to defend themselves.
And where exactly were the fucking LAPD? This would seem to be the “last resort” they speak of when it is *incumbent* on them to bring police in. I guess the LAPD learned its response protocols from the good officers of Uvalde. (LA Times) Or the student journalists from UCLA themselves, who were publishing at 3 in the morning. (Daily Bruin) Gavin Newsom would also like to know what the actual fuck, Los Angeles. (CNN) And Mayor Karen Bass, did nobody alert you in the night? This is not the kind of micromanaging competence I love about you.
— or —
I’ve been worried about Chicago since before October 7. Robert Kuttner looks back at the Chicago DNC ‘68 and says Joe Biden better pull a fucking inside straight. (The American Prospect)
The Bedouins are under attack from Israel and Hamas and Iran. (Unpopular Front)
Jezebel has quite a point about Trump’s recent interview blithely okaying states “monitoring pregnancies”:
Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu imposed a total abortion ban from 1966 to 1989, enforced by compulsory gynecological exams and pregnancy tests. Justice Clarence Thomas’ sugar daddy Harlan Crow has a statute of Ceausescu in his garden of dictators. (Crow also allegedly has a Nazi memorabilia collection, including two paintings by Adolf Hitler and a signed copy of “Mein Kampf.”) Romania’s law, Decree 770, banned birth control as well, and Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe that he believed the justices should overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, the case that established the right to use contraception.
Cool cool! (Jezebel)
Trump’s TIME mag interview and the road through Splitsville. (Ellis and Steve at Wonkette’s THE SPLIT)
The DOJ Civil Rights division’s Kristen Clarke says she had an arrest expunged in the midst of a multiyear period when she was the victim of domestic violence. Guess who thinks who should resign? (CNN)
Everybody cheer for Alan Kelly, the old man who got acquitted of shooting and killing an illegal immigrant who ran across his land, everything is wonderful! (MSNBC)
Via The Bulwark (paywall), the wealth of Americans under 40 is *historically high*. (Center for American Progress) Meanwhile, 61 percent of Americans under 45 think they are eating an economic shit sandwich with broken glass in it. (CNN) So I don’t know what to fucking tell you.
Yes, mom. (Dawn System) I want to be a superager please Jesus. (I’m not optimistic!) (Journal of Neuroscience)
Food and Wine editor wants you to stop gendering her dinner please. (I do love Girl Dinner though, it is basically “charcuterie” or “snack” from what I gather.) (Food and Wine)
SNACKS: Our partner Martie has hella cheap good snacks on overstock and YOU are keeping them out of the landfill. If you purchase through our link, we get a honkin’ commission. This was an ad!
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This has been an unpleasant edition of tabs, let’s have some Lemon Jelly.
Yer hed gif source, with physics! https://open.substack.com/pub/martiniambassador/p/the-mysteries-of-momentum-transfer
>> The DOJ Civil Rights division’s Kristen Clarke says she had an arrest expunged in the midst of a multiyear period when she was the victim of domestic violence. Guess who thinks who should resign? <<
I don't know the niceties of the senate confirmation questionnaire, but I suspect that Clarke is absolutely correct that expunged arrests are not arrests for the purpose of that form. I do know that expunged convictions are not required to be reported as convictions in many circumstances.
In any case, in the past a confirmation candidate has been allowed to file an amended disclosure form. This has been done many times, sometimes multiple times for the same person as more and more info comes out. The most recent one I remember was a Republican nominee, but this is so routine that even when the omission is glaring and incriminating, filing an amendment to the disclosure form usually covers things just fine.
But she's Black, a woman, and a Dem, so of course Mike Lee of Utah is going to scream about it.
How many members of Biden's administration and campaign have been convicted of crimes, Lee? How many?
That number is zero.
Again, I doubt there is a case here at all, and even if there's a technical case to be made where the form was clear about disclosing expunged arrests or whatever, you're never gonna get a jury to say she committed perjury if it was her understanding that she did not have to disclose an expunged arrest.
So go ahead. Refer it to prosecutors, see what happens. But I was the victim of domestic violence. I worked in a shelter protecting victims of domestic violence. And I founded a nonprofit to address unaddressed aspects of domestic violence. The long and short of it you have no fucking clue, Mike Lee, of what we've endured. Your pencil neck delusions of righteousness flagging down a CSPAN camera do not rank in the top 10 or even the top 10 to the power of 10.
Not only are you the evil one here, Lee, not only are you trying desperately to make yourself an accessory after the fact with your ranting, hoping to discredit a smart, strong woman and allow her abuse and her abuser to control the narrative of who she is and the trust she deserves, but you are also going to fail -- as Evan would say, tripping over your own dick and eating it like a fruit rollup.
Your competence and righteousness here are no better than the average Utah state school board member attacking and harming a high school student by falsely accusing them of being trans.
You're bad at this, Lee. And you're also just bad.