Jon Stewart slipped unnoticed into the White House in the midst of the October 2011 budget fight, summoned to an Oval Office coffee with President Barack Obama that he jokingly told his escort felt like being called into the principal’s office.
In February 2014, Obama again requested Stewart make the trip from Manhattan to the White House, this time for a mid-morning visit hours before the president would go before television cameras to warn Russia that “there will be costs” if it made any further military intervention in Ukraine.
To engage privately with the president in his inner sanctum at two sensitive moments — previously unreported meetings that are listed in the White House visitor logs and confirmed to POLITICO by three former Obama aides — speaks volumes about Stewart and his reach, which goes well beyond the million or so viewers who tune into The Daily Show on most weeknights.
All attributed motivations are approximate. All races are unconfirmed. All crimes are alleged. All oppression is interconnected.
June 17, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills in order to feel powerful. He kills nine black parishioners because black people are all the same to him and he needs to do what he needs to do to remind the world that he is dominant.
June 17, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority tries to kill in order to feel powerful. He crashes in the midst of trying to run someone over with his car because “go back to the country you came from” and don’t tell him not to use the business’ phone because he is dominant.
June 21, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority stabs in order to feel powerful. He stabs three musicians because ew gay and “skinny jeans” and he will show them what happens to fags because he is dominant.
June 26, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills in order to feel powerful. He shoots a Muslim man in the head at a four-way stop because “go back to Islam” – or maybe a traffic dispute – because it was his turn to go, damn it, because he is dominant.
July 1, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills in order to feel powerful. He kills a lion because it’s one of the most majestic creatures he can think of and being able to kill and behead it affirms that he is dominant.
July 10, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority threatens murder in order to feel powerful. He retaliates against a black woman because she refuses to perform subservience and “I will light you up” if that’s what it takes to show you people that I am dominant.
July 11, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills in order to feel powerful. He opens fire on two Native American men he believes are homeless because he’s “tired of watching them” and it is not acceptable that he is uncomfortable or inconvenienced because he is dominant.
July 18, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority attempts murder in order to feel powerful. He shoots a person in the face because he believes he is an undocumented immigrant – “a fucking Mexican” – because this is his country and, therefore, he is dominant.
July 18, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills serially in order to feel powerful. He pulls a gun and strangles a woman with the intent to torture because he assumes she is nothing to anybody and murdering prostitutes makes him feel dominant.
July 19, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills in order to feel powerful. He, a police officer, shoots a man in the face because he might be getting away after a traffic violation; black lives don’t matter because he is dominant.
July 22, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills in order to feel powerful. He murders his wife and her two children because she is giving him “relationship problems” and she doesn’t have the right to do that because he is dominant.
July 23, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills in order to feel powerful. He kills women because they keep doing and saying things that he does not approve of and he doesn’t have to take it anymore because he is dominant.
August 3, 2015:
White American males with weapons who believe in their own superiority stockpile weapons in order to feel powerful. They amass guns and ammunition and make homemade bombs because the the government insists on existing and they refuse to respect any entity above themselves because they are dominant.
August 6, 2015:
White American male with weapons who believes in his own superiority makes bombs in order to feel powerful. He builds explosive devices filled with BBs and nails because he sympathizes with the KKK, the Nazis, and what the Confederate Army was really defending but luckily he only blows off his own leg and I wonder now how he feels about being dominant.
August 7, 2015:
White American male with a weapon who believes in his own superiority kills in order to feel powerful. He shoots a man four times within seconds of apprehending him because I am a cop and you are not allowed to do that and his only consequence is to get fired for “bad judgement” because he is dominant.
“Say you’re doing it. Be explicit about doing it. Go to the mat for other women. Insist that your own work matters and that art by women matters and work by women matters. And I mean all women: trans and queer and working-class and poor women, women of color, indigenous women, the women who sew your clothes and the women who make your iPhones, the women who are invisible to the dominant culture, women of all genders and bodies and lives and experiences. Love is not the only radical act, but it’s a good start. Look for the women raising hell: those are the women whose solidarity you want to earn.”
- Author Sarah McCarry on the best ways to support women (via kdhart)
Contrary to popular belief, a new survey shows that 86 percent of voters don't think politicians should be able to deny a woman insurance coverage for an abortion because she is poor.
Or someone says something in the same mumbling inaudible tone of voice after you've asked them twice to speak a little louder... OK, that one might just be me.
Sandra Bland’s alleged suicide by hanging in a Waller County, Texas, jail cell on July 13 sparked suspicion of foul play from her family members and advocates Bland was 28 years old.
Kindra Chapman died under similar circumstances. The 18-year-old’s death by asphyxiation in a Homewood, Alabama, jail cell was ruled a suicide Monday by a Jefferson County coroner — a conclusion with which Chapman’s family agrees, despite some outside suspicion.
Joyce Curnell, 50, was found dead in a North Charleston, South Carolina, jail cell on July 22. She was arrested for an outstanding bench warrant for shoplifting, and was seen at a local hospital the day before her death.
Ralkina Jones died Sunday by yet undetermined means at a Cleveland Heights, Ohio, jail. Police said she’d looked “lethargic” in her cell beforehand and was being shuttled back and forth from a local hospital the night she died. Jones was 37.
Raynetta Turner, a 43-year-old mother of eight, was found dead in a jail cell Monday in Mount Vernon, New York. Turner, who had been arrested for shoplifting at a food and restaurant supplier, also had multiple medical problems and was taken to a local hospital shortly after her arrest.
A local Teamsters Union announced Tuesday that over 140 warehouse and shipping workers contracted with Google Express are seeking their representation.
The delivery services, which Ars tested in 2013, is now run by Adecco, a human resources and temporary worker company. According to Local Union 853, Google Express workers are only limited to two-year contracts, regardless of their job performance.
"With the conditions that these people have, they have nothing to lose," Rome Aloise, Local 853’s principal officer, told Ars.
Welcome back to Editorially Speaking. Last week we told you about some books coming from Fran Wilde and Adrian Tchaikovsky. Consulting Editor Jonathan Strahan has acquired three new novellas for us by Gwyneth Jones, Walter Jon Williams, and Kij Johnson. Strahan is a World Fantasy and Locus Award winner and multiple Hugo Award nominated editor and podcaster.
From Jonathan Strahan:
“I’m delighted to be working with three of my favourite writers—Walter, Gwyneth and Kij—to bring some widely different but really exciting stories to Tor.com! I love Walter’s space opera, Gwyneth’s hard SF is some of the best the field has seen, and Kij’s re-imagining of Lovecraft is extraordinary. I think readers are in for a real treat.”
Gwyneth Jones and Proof of Concept
A science fiction tale from one of our favorite writers!
On a desperately overcrowded future Earth, crippled by climate change, the most unlikely hope is better than none. Governments turn to Big Science to provide them with the dreams that will keep the masses compliant. The Needle is one such dream, an installation where the most abstruse theoretical science is being tested: science that might make human travel to a habitable exoplanet distantly feasible. A little closer to reality, Long Duration Mission teams are in permanent rehearsal for the next big push in solar-system space exploration. When the Needle ‘s director offers her underground installation (temporarily offline for equipment tests) to the LDM people as a training base, Kir Heilesen is thrilled to be invited to join the team. Even though she knows it’s only because her brain is host to a qAI called Altair.
Altair knows something he can’t tell. Kir, like all humans, is programmed to ignore future dangers. It’s frustrating. Between the artificial blocks in his mind, and the blocks evolution has built into his host, how is he going to convince her the sky is falling?
This one’s a long way out—you’re going to have to wait until early 2017 before you read this one, but don’t worry, we’ll remind you.
Walter Jon Williams and Impersonations
Nebula Award winning author Walter Jon Williams returns to the sweeping space opera adventure of his Praxis universe with an exciting new adventure featuring the hero of Dread Empire’s Fall!
Having offended her superiors by winning a battle without permission, Caroline Sula has been posted planet Earth, a dismal backwater where careers go to die. But Sula has always been fascinated by Earth history, and she plans to award herself a long, happy vacation amid the ancient monuments of humanity’s home world.
Sula may be a fan of Earth’s history, but there are aspects of her own history she doesn’t want known—and exposure is threatened when an old acquaintance turns up unexpectedly. There’s a mysterious warship in Earth’s dockyard. Plus someone seems to be forging evidence that would send her to prison. And then someone tries to kill her.
If she’s going to survive, Sula has no choice but to make some history of her own…
You’ll get to read Impersonations some time in 2016.
Kij Johnson’s The Dream-Quest of Velitt Boe
Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winner Kij Johnson joins Tor.com with a major new novella that gives us an exciting modern interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.” Johnson wrote Tor.com’s first award-winning story, “Ponies,” as well as our perennial favorite “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles,” so we’re thrilled to have her on board with a novella.
Vellitt Boe is the professor of mathematics at Ulthar Women’s College. When one of her most gifted students elopes with a dreamer from the waking world, Vellitt must retrieve her, which sends her on a quest across the Dream-lands and into her own mysterious past.
Look out for this next summer!
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Astrid just…she delights me. She’s in this position that she never asked for, and she performs it with grace and skill and so much composure, and she’s just the best.
Killing at the hands of an illegal alien spurs furious debate about closing borders and deporting the undocumented. It is the year before a presidential election and candidates denounce undocumented immigrants as the conveyors of Mexican violence into our country.
When Robert J. Sampson, Harvard sociologist and criminologist, wrote about this news, he was not writing about the death of young Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015, but about murders in New Jersey in 2007. And he wrote to say that his research and that of others showed that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to commit murder and “that immigration — even if illegal — is associated with lower crime rates….” He had previously made similar claims in The New York Times and had gotten vituperation in response.
Popular skepticism toward Sampson might be expected given the media coverage of sensational crimes like the one on Pier 14 and of Mexico’s drug wars. But behind the headlines, the daily reality on the streets of the U.S. seems to be that immigrants bring less crime. Indeed, scholars like Sampson have suggested that the surge of Latino immigration, documented and not, may partly explain the great drop in violent crime in American cities since the 1980s.
Now, two presidential cycles since the Sampson article, we have new studies and more technically sophisticated ones on the topic. What do they say about the effects of immigration on crime and violence?
Immigration does not increase crime
The research I reviewed – several recent articles (see bibliography here) – is pretty consistent: Immigrants and concentrations of immigrants are associated with lower rates of crime and homicide. To be more cautious: at minimum, there is no connection between immigration and higher rates of crime.
Studies of individuals show that, as two experts summarize, “immigrants are less, not more, crime prone than their native-born counterparts.” Second- and third-generation immigrants start to look more like many-generation Americans in criminality (much as they do in other ways, such as diet and health behaviors). One study suggests that for adolescents the “protective” effect against criminality of being an immigrant may wear off after four years. But newcomers are notably less likely to commit crime than otherwise similar American-born youth.
Neighborhoods with many immigrants are not higher in crime
Many new studies compare neighborhoods, cities, or counties to assess the relationship between local concentrations of immigrants (or of Latinos) and rates of crime or violence. The general conclusion is that the higher these concentrations in a community, the lower the rates. A couple of studies find that the connection depends on the local context. In more impoverished neighborhoods or in cities with historically larger numbers of immigrants or with immigrant political power, additional immigration seems to push crime down yet more.
Complex statistical work suggests that this correlation reflects a causal connection: more immigrants arrive and violent crime fades. Why would that be so?
Sampson and others suggest that Latino immigrants have stronger families and community institutions, such as churches, than do the native-born. These provide more social control over youth. Researchers also propose that immigration has helped economically revitalize many U.S. cities and driven down crime that way, too.
Whatever the explanation, the general pattern is the reverse of the heated rhetoric: Overall, immigration goes with less criminal violence.
Just how many anti-christs do these people think there are?
The Drudge Report on Wednesday pondered whether Pope Francis, who has recently fallen out of favor with some conservatives, is actually the "antichrist," noting that the pope's "stand on homosexuality, Islam, capitalism, and the New World Order" fuel chatter.
Because controlling women's bodies is WAY more important than protecting them, or preventing abortions.
Wheaton College has taken its battle over Obamacare's birth control mandate from the courtroom to its campus.
The evangelical college in Illinois told its students last week that it would be ending the health insurance plans it had been offering them due to its case against Obama administration, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The school terminated its plan not due to the fact that it was being forced to pay for contraceptive coverage -- it is not -- but that it is in a legal battle over whether it should even have to notify the government that it is seeking a religious exemption to providing contraceptive coverage. The current policy for religious non-profits gives them an exemption, at which point the government directs insurers to provide birth control coverage through a separate policy not paid for by the non-profit.
Wheaton contends that even the act of notifying the government of its religious opposition to birth control coverage makes it complicit in providing birth control. A federal appeals court has rejected Wheaton's contention, so rather than comply with the requirement that it notify the feds, Wheaton is ending all health coverage for students.
..of setting up Deep Ones as rapists, out to steal our women and do horrible things to them. (For example, in the Cthulhutech RPG, there are literal ‘breeding camps’, which what even the hell.) There are a couple reasons why this is awful, even beyond the obvious.
1st: Because Lovecraft was a horrible bigot, the deep ones are stand ins for various minority groups. Making them monstrous rapists in modern day pastiches plays into this same vein of bigotry, with the implication of non-white men lusting after white women to carry them off. Which frankly is the kinda shit that needs to go away yesterday.
2nd: It ignores that the horror Lovecraft felt as a horrible bigot was that people were -willing- to hook up with Deep ones. The dude felt existential dread over the possibility of white people having consensual relationships with POC, as represented by fish-people from beneath the waves.
In summary, Lovecraft pastiches need more consensual loving human/fishperson romances.
“The Greenlighter” is a parody of a Marvel movie by Above Average about a studio executive who uses her powers to greenlight a female superhero movie. Oddly enough, her only powers are basic reasoning and the ability to sign a contract to greenlight a movie. As The Greenlighter says, “That was uh, really easy. Everyone was making it seem like it was hard.”
We’ve bought a new house. And our new next door neighbours (two delightful gentlemen) will not stop being nice.
- bought us a seagull proof refuse bag (yes, they are actual things)
- loaned us garden tools when we didn’t have any
- invited us around for Friday night drinks so we could meet the other people on the lane
- one of them brought me a bunch of sweetpea flowers that he’d picked from his garden
- and tomorrow he’s coming to cut our hedge for us with his electric hedge trimmer thing idk, and all I have to do is hold the ladder.
Basically, I am UNSETTLED and am now having to enter into an arms race of niceness and I am already so behind oh god.
Long story short - I just baked a lemon drizzle cake, and it looks great but I can’t even eat it because MR AND MR NICE MUST RECEIVE AN OFFERING.
ABSOLUTE CRISIS I GAVE THEM THE LEMON DRIZZLE AND THEN THEY INVITED ME IN TO HAVE A SLICE AND A COFFEE WITH THEM AND GAVE ME A TOUR OF THEIR HOUSE AND LET ME HOLD THEIR PUPPY. AND THEN THEY CAME AROUND TO HELP ME BAG UP THE HEDGE CLIPPINGS. THESE MEN ARE NICENESS PROS AND I CANNOT WIN.
HELPWE HAD AN HOUR LONG POWER CUT ON THE STREET AND IN THAT TIME THE OTHER MR NICE CAME AROUND WITH MATCHES AND CANDLES ‘JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN’T HAVE ANY’. IT WAS BARELY DARK.
BASTARDS - I’M GOING TO HAVE TO HOST A DINNER PARTY AREN’T I?
#WomenBetrayed is trending, so I thought I’d post this in response.
Fun Fact #10: The Republicans in Congress who are trying to defund Planned Parenthood know all of this. They don’t care, because they hate poor people, people of color, and know that they can hurt those people while they pander to their Tea Party base.
“When I first saw [Cohen make the comments] I said, ‘Wow.’ You know it is something I disagree with. But that’s the way it is. He’s speaking for himself. He’s not speaking for me obviously,” Trump said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.
Spousal rape has been against the law in all 50 states since the early 1990s.
Cohen apologized earlier Tuesday for his remarks, which were a response to a reporter’s question about a 1989 allegation against Trump that was later retracted.
“In my moment of shock and anger, I made an inarticulate comment — which I do not believe — and which I apologize for entirely,” he said.
“You have to understand Michael was extremely angry,” Trump said, echoing his special counsel’s apology. “Who knows what he said. … But assuming he said it, yeah, I disagree with that.”
Organizers of Free Pride Glasgow, a Scottish gay pride parade, have “banned” drag queens from the event, citing concerns that men dressing up like women is offensive to trans women. The LGBTQ community is afire about this, citing the long tradition of drag performances in gay communities and the role drag queens have played in the Gay Liberation movement. “hello, ever heard of THE STONEWALL RIOTS?!!!” tweeted one of the stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
The organizers of Free Pride Glasgow are standing their ground, stating that they will only allow noncisgender men — men those who do not identify as men — trans women to perform in drag. A facebook comment suggested, and rightly so, that this could get really problematic really fast in practice, asking: “How are you going to moderate who is a trans and who is a cis drag act?”
Well, that’s a can of worms.
I don’t know how this conversation is going to play out and, to be honest, I’m nervous to jump in. But I gotta say that I, for one, really hope we keep talking about this. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to worry about how drag queen performances might make trans women feel. Drag performers generally do an exaggerated performance of femininity and I think it’s okay to ask whether and when this counts as mocking femininity and the people that perform it: trans women, yes, and ciswomen, too.
Sexism matters here and anyone can be sexist, even drag queens. When drag queens trot out some of the worst stereotypes about women, for example –performing characters that are vain, bitchy, selfish, and always PMSing — I see girlface. I see men mocking femininity, not embracing their feminine sides and busting the fiction of masculinity. So, I don’t blame trans women one bit if this makes them uncomfortable; it sure makes me uncomfortable and I’m in a much safer position than they.
So, I don’t know where this conversation is going to go, but I do think we need to have it. It needs to be, though, not about whether drag queens should be banned, but what drag should look like going forward. It should be about both what drag queens bring to the movement — their value in the past and the role they can play now — but also whether and how their performances contribute to a devaluation of femininity that hurts all women, cis, trans, and other.
Claiming police have “utilized union resources to defend brutality and anti-Blackness,” United Auto Workers Local 2865’s Black Interests Coordinating Committee (BICC), penned a letter calling on the AFL-CIO to end its affiliation with IUPA.
In its letter, the UAW affiliate states:
We, UAW Local 2865, call on the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to end their affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations. It is our position that this organization is inimical to both the interests of labor broadly, and Black workers in particular. Historically and contemporarily, police unions serve the interests of police forces as an arm of the state, and not the interests of police as laborers. Instead, their “unionization” allows police to masquerade as members of the working-class and obfuscates their role in enforcing racism, capitalism, colonialism, and the oppression of the working-class. We ask that the AFL-CIO recognize this history and take steps to serve the interests of its Black workers and community members.
The letter goes on to state that “police unions fail to meet the criteria of a union or a valid part of the labor movement.”
While it is true that police are workers, and thus hypothetically subject to the same kinds of exploitation as other laborers, they are also the militarized, coercive arm of the state….The police force exists solely to uphold the status quo.
Policing in the U.S. has always served the needs of colonialism, racism, and capitalism by protecting the property of those who would steal land and exploit the labor of others. Neither the property of indigenous people nor the products of the labor of both workers and slaves has ever come under protection of the institution of the police. It has only ever been the property of the powerful that the police protect. Maintaining this system of relations is the so called “order” that police have sworn to defend.
“If labor is to ever truly exert its power and challenge the corporate rule of the U.S.,” the UAW affiliate writes, “we will need to break the illusion that the police are part of the family of unions that make up organized labor.
Super Opinionated.
A science fiction tale from one of our favorite writers!
Nebula Award winning author Walter Jon Williams returns to the sweeping space opera adventure of his Praxis universe with an exciting new adventure featuring the hero of Dread Empire’s Fall!
Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winner Kij Johnson joins Tor.com with a major new novella that gives us an exciting modern interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.” Johnson wrote Tor.com’s first award-winning story, “Ponies,” as well as our perennial favorite “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles,” so we’re thrilled to have her on board with a novella.
Killing at the hands of an illegal alien spurs furious debate about closing borders and deporting the undocumented. It is the year before a presidential election and candidates denounce undocumented immigrants as the conveyors of Mexican violence into our country.
