Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

ismnotwasm

ismnotwasm's Journal
ismnotwasm's Journal
September 23, 2018

Moore doesn't make me uncomfortable. He annoys me

He tends to feed conspiracy theories. The way our government is set up is around two parties, the only real question is which two parties. It is possible for instance, for Democratic Socialists to become one of the major parties instead of Democrats. That doesn’t mean the Democratic Party would cease to exist, any more than The DS party is going to. That’s one thing.

I have a problem with the term “corporate” when it’s now a huge meme that people use. When memes were put forth about Hillary Clinton and her large donations coming from, oh, I don’t know Bank of something, and people would point out “”hey, it’s illegal for Bank of something to donate that amount to political campaigns, these represent donations from individuals, the reply would be “Hillary is corrupt and this meme proves it” So annoying at the time and so fucking damaging. This was in part what brought us Trump. But there are many parts to the Trump story.

Bernie was indeed pushing hard for the individual campaign donations, refusing PAC money, (as did President Obama, who started this trend started refusing a lot of PAC money in 2008, but he rarely gets credit) but Bernie also lost, and he lost legitimately, no matter what the Micheal Moore’s of the world have to say. That’s not to say that others haven’t picked up where he left off. Booker and Harris and Gillibrand, for instance, are now declining corporate PAC money. If nothing else President Obama and Bernie Sanders put their finger on a pulse of rising discontent.

So what does this mean? Are we going to quit throwing pageantry parties? Are we going to pare down the governments frivolous bullshit after the gilded turd of Trumps presidency? Don’t know. All I DO know is my reproductive rights are being threatened, hell— the reproductive rights of my three year old granddaughter are being threatened, as a woman it is still implied that I’m a slut If I get sexually assaulted, LGBLT rights are being threatened, the United States kidnapped children and caused irreparable harm, and continues to defend this, our environment will become more poisoned, job wages are stagnant, hate crimes are on the rise, racism is now openly bragged about and I cannot look toward the Republican Party for the lest vestige of love for human kind. This is sheer horror, epic horror, and every toxic bullshit comment against Democrats and especially Hillary Clinton have their part as well.

“Legit” criticism—sure. I have a Rep I adore. I didn’t expect this, but I do She’s signed the “M4A” legislation which I disagree with, although I agree with Medicaid expansion and insurance reform
With a hearty public option. None of which we are going to get by the looks of thing now. PLENTY of people disagree with me here, and I understand completely.

(FWIW I take a bit of exception to using “white privilege” discussed among whites as a negative, as whites ARE the ones who need to be discussing this among themselves.)

June 27, 2018

Record number of LGBT candidates running for governor

Rep. Jared Polis (D) on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination to be the next governor of Colorado, outlasting three other prominent Democrats with the help of millions of dollars he gave his own campaign.
In the process, Polis becomes the third member of the LGBT community to win a gubernatorial nomination this year -- the first time in American history more than one open LGBT person has won a nomination in any given year.

Polis faces a close race in a state that gave Hillary Clinton its electoral votes by just a five-percent margin in 2008. Democrats have won three gubernatorial elections in a row, though Republicans captured a U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Cory Gardner (R) in the 2014 midterm elections.

Polis will face Walker Stapleton, the first-term state Treasurer who won the Republican nomination on Tuesday. Stapleton, the second cousin of President George W. Bush, outlasted several other Republicans including Doug Robinson, an investment banker who is also Mitt Romney's nephew.


But his nomination is historic nonetheless, in a year in which more gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender candidates than ever before are running for office.


http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/394314-record-number-of-lgbt-candidates-running-for-governor?amp&__twitter_impression=true
June 26, 2018

There Is No Biological Difference Between Male And Female Brains

Pop neuroscience has long been fascinated with uncovering secret biological differences between male and female brains. Just last year, the Google engineer James Damore caused an uproar after publishing a manifesto detailing the various ways women were biologically different from men.

But according to Lise Eliot, a professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School and the author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain, anyone who goes searching for innate differences between the sexes won’t find them.

“People say men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but the brain is a unisex organ. We have the exact same structures,” she said onstage Monday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.“There is absolutely no difference between male and female brains.”

Eliot said neuroscientists have yet to find a single circuit that’s wired differently between men and women, and that differences between sexes are best explained by nurture, not nature.


https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/563702/?__twitter_impression=true
June 16, 2018

And they said rape culture wasn't real

I’m posting this, mostly, for myself, as this forum all but died. Remembering all The battles about rape, sexual harassment, rape culture, language, patriarchy at DU. The belittling, the minimizing, the disingenuous arguments, the bullshit. Every once in a while at DU, I’ll even see a bitter soul take a pot shot at “benevolent sexism” because nice guys or something. I got my first hide out of this group reposting a blogger who said instead of all women having to walk around in a state of fear of rape, it was just as logical for all men to be treated as walking around in a state of pre-rape. I still read Dworkin.

Interesting though, how the old van guard of second wave feminists, some of them, lost their way at as the results of their battles bore fruit in succeeding generations of women, reaping the benefits of Feminism. And Feminism itself found its newest rebirth at the crossroads of intersectionality. Interesting, and in retrospect completely logical, how the the most powerful feminist voices now are African American women, as well as other women of color. Trans women are also emerging as a powerful voice for women’s rights.

And here we are at another crossroads. As bigoted white men, and bigoted, complacent, white women voted for Trump, it broke something in people of goodwill and compassion and progressive thought. I think what broke was the desire to go along to get along when one has a privileged life. IF one understands what privilege is and what it isn’t. There’s still far to much pushback in the age of Trump. It comes from feeling that enough dollars saves one from bigotry


Weinstein and Cosby shows us that beauty, talent and wealth is not enough to protect women. The sheer horror of Trump shows us that seeing thing such as the unutterable pain at the southern border will affect us in such a way we can no longer ignore it. Or at least I can’t. I hurt every day, and every day I am angry. I welcome this. It doesn’t “damage” me. I am no passive soul searching for zen and comfort.

94% of Black women who voted voted for Hillary Clinton. There has been a number of attempts to minimize that remarkable statistic, the lastest being to simply ignore it. What did black women know that white women didn’t? If you ask them, they will tell you. It’s not for me to say. Me? I listened to their voices whenever I could. Still do. Often, I do it in silence, because white women, so many of us were so stunningly wrong in our political choices, there are very few I want to hear from. There are, of course, a few I do. As there are very few white men I want to hear from right now. (Plain, simple reporting aside)

Practically this means I watch no TV pundits at all, get my news on-line after I vet facts, from sources with proven diversity that isn’t tokenism. I pay little attention to memes unless they make me laugh. There is still tons of bullshit. Mostly from the right, who have appeared to have lost their damn minds for real, but the left is not immune from bullshit. Some of it I even like, as I lost any desire to “play fair” As someone recently said this isn’t middle school.

Because people have died, are dying, will die. And they will suffer before they do. I’m a nurse. I see a lot of suffering, enough death. When it’s preventable, that’s when I get angry as well.

When sexual harassment happens, it’s easy ― and not wrong ― to blame individual perpetrators, i.e., the “bad men.” And over the past couple of years, lots of men have been fired, demoted, arrested and publicly shamed for various acts of sexual misconduct.

But a major study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine outlines a more comprehensive way of looking at sexual harassment within organizations and identifies the strongest predictor of such behavior. Surprisingly, it has little to do with individual perpetrators.


The study finds that the strongest, most potent predictor of sexual harassment is essentially the culture of the company ― what the researchers call “organizational climate.”

If employees believe that their organization takes harassment seriously, then harassment is less likely to happen, according to the 311-page report released Tuesday. That faith in fair treatment acts as a deterrent against bad actors and encourages workers to speak up about harassment ― key to keeping bad behavior at bay.


https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b23f8c3e4b0f9178a9cd6f5?ncid=APPLENEWS00001
June 8, 2018

Yup

The whole continuing sage of “they’re both the same bullshit” sounds like damage control from a failed “revolution” some members of which should have very guilty consciences instead of doubling down. A movement that was mostly for white people anyway.

Democrats have had their own come to Jesus moments after Trump, many of them...but they’ve done that despite Bernie Sanders, not because of him, his “movement” or whatever political party he chooses to align himself with.

Bernie...He’s a popular guy with a lot of people. Sure. But not nearly enough people and certainly not with the diversity we need. The Democratic Party does have that. The Democratic Party platform does have that. Elected Democrats are working their asses off to fight what’s happening right here, right now in real time. Thank God for Democrats I say. Thank God for the Democratic Party.

May 29, 2018

Ivanka Trump Just Rubbing Her Non-Interned Baby In Refugees' Jailed Faces

On Sunday, Ivanka Trump spent the entire day being dragged for an oblivious tweet (at best it was oblivious; the alternative is she did that shit on purpose) of her and her child spending a lovely Sunday morning making kissyfaces while her father literally snatches babies from the arms of immigrant mothers at the border. People were not amused and let her know it many many times.

Not sure if Ivanka even noticed the outcry about border separations of parents from their children, and whether if she did she would care. (She wouldn’t.) She doesn’t like to be reminded of poor people, like the ones in her sweatshops. And since Ivanka’s poverty wages to her workers in countries like Indonesia separate families because parents literally cannot afford to live with their children, it is simply a case of “like father, like daughter.”
retty sure me and Evan owned her.

If you thought that was the end of things and that maybe Ivanka would go away and leave us alone, too bad for you. Now she wants to sell Chinese people a baby blanket and a coffin! Two things you never ever want to see in the same sentence. Ok, so, she’s not really trying to sell baby coffins, or maybe she is, but not exclusively baby coffins. Coffins come in all sizes, and what better business is there for a Trump than selling boxes to put dead bodies in? That’s right. It just fits.

This is the 13th trademark China has approved for her company, Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, in three months, and yes, it is suspect as hell. Many are wondering if this is related to Trump deciding to give a helping hand to Chinese smartphone maker ZTE (it is), or if it’s just regular ass corruption (it is). In the Trump world “corruption” and “business” mean the same exact thing. Ivanka can now sell all kinds of stuff to the Chinese that they probably don’t need, and China can keep its relationship with Trump from turning out like Qatar. Pretty sure China doesn’t want to have to pump half a billion dollars into Ivanka Trump’s brand to get back in “good graces” with Trump.





Read more at https://wonkette.com/634533/ivanka-trump-just-rubbing-her-non-interned-baby-in-refugees-jailed-faces#fJzlQgwGosOPzMvO.99
May 4, 2018

The Time For 'Incel' Explainers Was Years Ago

Last week, one of these men reportedly drove a rented van into a crowd of pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 people and injuring more than a dozen others. The accused mass murderer, 25-year-old Alek Minassian, left behind a miniature manifesto of sorts in the form of a Facebook post.

His missive declared the start of the “incel rebellion” and praised Isla Vista spree killer Elliot Rodger. Rodger murdered six people in 2014 in what he called his “day of retribution” against the “spoiled, heartless, wicked bitches” who wouldn’t date him.

Media outlets have obligingly offered up detailed explainers of the internet’s strange subculture of “involuntary celibates” and their violent hatred of the women who want nothing to do with them. As someone who has been writing about the male supremacist movement on my blog We Hunted the Mammoth for nearly eight years ― and as someone who wrote one of these explainers myself ― I think most of these “incel 101” pieces have been useful and accurate.

The real question is: Why are they still necessary? Since the flurry of the 2016 election and its aftermath, we’ve had over two years’ worth of field guides to the poisonous online wastelands in which nationalism, fascism and bigotry fester. Why are we only now shining the light on the role patriarchy plays in the petri dish?

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ae8d130e4b06748dc8d2b95?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004
May 2, 2018

How Non-Black People Can Talk About Kanye While Staying in their Lane

Well worth the read—for those still engaged in learning about racial discussions, and if you haven’t followed that hashtag you are missing out. I’m dying.

As the entirety of the internet seems to be discussing Kanye West’s most recent asshattery and all of black twitter seems to be heartily enjoying #IfSlaveryWasAChoice shenanegans, you, a concerned non-black person may be wondering…how do I join in this discussion?

Maybe you were a big fan of Kanye’s music and now you feel personally let down by how hard he’s trying to be the absolute worst.

Maybe you are a decent human who recognizes that Trump and his administration are hateful trashmonsters working diligently to make marginalized populations (and like, half of the global population) more unsafe and you are concerned to see a high profile music idol sing his praises to the delight of countless racist trolls.

Maybe you have read a book or two in your life or have a shred of empathy or are not completely drowning in anti-blackness - or due to being a human being walking around in the world you able to guess that 99.9% of humans do not like being dragged across the world in chains, bought and sold, tortured their entire lives, forced to work for free, starved, raped, and murdered - and have realized that black people were most likely not slaves by choice.

https://medium.com/IjeomaOluo/how-non-black-people-can-talk-about-kanye-while-staying-in-their-lane-cb34b05fc84e

Profile Information

Gender: Do not display
Member since: Mon Aug 23, 2004, 10:18 PM
Number of posts: 41,974

About ismnotwasm

Whiteness is a scourge on humanity. Voting for Obama that one time is not a get out of being a racist card
Latest Discussions»ismnotwasm's Journal