What Hillary Learned About Running While Female — The Cut

But in failing to present an upbeat take on her disagreement with Sanders, Clinton had sounded like a scold, the disciplinarian, the mean mommy, the pragmatic downer — all versions of a feminized role that she and many, many women have long found it incredibly difficult to escape.

Recall the days following the 2008 Iowa caucus, when the media took advantage of Clinton’s defeat to let loose with their resentment and animosity toward her. That was when conservative Marc Rudov told Fox News that Clinton lost because “When Barack Obama speaks, men hear ‘Take off for the future!’ When Hillary Clinton speaks, men hear ‘Take out the garbage!’” It was in the days after Iowa that Clinton infamously got asked about how voters believed her to be “the most experienced and the most electable” candidate but “are hesitating on the likability issue.” In late January, columnist Mike Barnicle told a laughing all-male panel on Morning Joe that Clinton’s challenge was that she looks “like everyone’s first wife standing outside of probate court.”

That hurts, and it falls into a very old, very well-worn gendered pattern, in which women — understanding that making promises they cannot back up will not get them taken seriously and that they must prove themselves extra-competent in order to be understood as basically competent — become the nose-to-the-grindstone wonks, easily compared to know-it-all bores like Tracy Flick and Hermione Granger. They’re the wet blankets, the ones all too acquainted with the limitations imposed by the world, and all too eager to explain their various ideas for working around them. Men, and especially white men, whose claims to public or political power are more easily understood, are permitted a slightly looser approach.

There’s been some talk about how a female candidate could never be as scruffy as Bernie Sanders, as uncombed and unkempt. A woman could never be as grumpy as Bernie, as left-leaning as Bernie, as uncooperative with party machinery as Bernie. And that stuff is true enough. But the bigger truth is that what Bernie does, to great acclaim, that Hillary Clinton could never do is make big promises of institutional overthrow, tug on our imaginative heartstrings by laying out a future that might not be grounded in reality, and urge a revolution.

Here is a truth about America: No one likes a woman who yells loudly about revolution.

And no, it’s not just this woman. This is a paradigm; it’s why Mom is the disciplinarian and Dad is the fun guy, why women remain the brains and organizational workhorses behind social movements while men get to be the gut-ripping orators, why so many women still manage campaigns and so many men are still candidates.

What Hillary Learned About Running While Female — The Cut

Yes, to every fucking word of this.

Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders are authentically wrong

Here is a stark reality for both Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders voters: Should your candidate win the presidency, he will disappoint you. Both candidates have whipped up voter passions by offering ideologically comforting — and strikingly similar — narratives promising political revolution. Both would fail to achieve such a momentous national transformation because popular opinion and the country’s system of checks and balances would get in the way. (See the Obama presidency.)

See the Obama presidency. Yeah, no shit. <Mumble, Mumble> Naïve freaking dopey ‘Bama supporters.

But another reason is that they have the “credibility” that comes from spending years angering “establishment” politicians — that is, people who have been sullied by having to govern in the real world of constraints and tradeoffs. Years of screaming from the fringes, refusing to deviate from a simplistic message as others ran the country, have given both men a massive political asset in 2016 — “authenticity” — and that quality alone is attracting people, particularly those who suspect that elite corruption or conspiracy is responsible for the country’s problems.

Sanders’s program recognize that it is not just politically impossible — it proposes a massive economic transition based on excessively optimistic budgetary assumptions. Cruz’s plan to carpet bomb Syria, meanwhile, does not even require close inspection to conclude it is shallow. These are among the indications that they would not bring good instincts to the real, harder decision-making that comes with the Oval Office — even if you agree with moving in the general direction one of them wants to go.

Authentically believing that the whole country secretly agrees with your agenda and will join you on the barricades is not a virtue, it is a fantasy. Sincerely proposing poorly thought-out policy does not change the fact that it is poorly thought-out policy.

Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders are authentically wrong – The Washington Post

A-fucking-men, WaPo, a-fucking-men.

We know it is people partial to authoritarianism that like Trump. I’m so curious about the psychological traits that makes people such suckers for impossible pie-in-the-sky ill-advised bullshit….

Neuroscientist And Former Addict Explains What We Get Wrong About Addiction

I know what scientists are looking at when they say addiction is a disease. I don’t dispute the findings, but I dispute the interpretation of them. They see addiction as a chronic brain disease — that’s how they define it in very explicit terms. My training is in emotional and personality development. I see addiction as a developmental process.

What I emphasize is that the disease label makes it worse. You have experts saying, “You have a chronic brain disease and you need to get it treated. Why don’t you come here and spend $100,000 and we’ll help you treat it?” There’s a very strong motivation from the family, if not the individual, to go through this process, and then the treatments offered in these places are very seldom evidence-based, and the success rates are low. 

Neuroscientist And Former Addict Explains What We Get Wrong About Addiction

hmmmm

Cut Clinton some slack 

Why the disparate treatment? Some see sexism, which is difficult to prove. But there does seem to be a long-running game in which Clinton can never quite meet the expectations set for her, even if her actual achievements are considerable. She raised a ton of money — but Sanders raised almost as much! She won the Iowa caucuses — but she didn’t win by enough!

Voters, particularly young ones, are easily wooed by talk of free college and free health care. They can be intemperate (as demonstrated by the supporters at the Sanders rally in Des Moines on Monday night who booed Clinton when she appeared on television and chanted “She’s a liar!”) and can fall for unrealistic promises. But Clinton, to her credit, is not pretending to be something other than herself this time.

Source: Cut Clinton some slack – The Washington Post

hmmmm

Wonder Woman’s Chris Pine Talks about the Importance of Female Heroes | Heroic Girls

Wonder Woman’s Chris Pine Talks about the Importance of Female Heroes | Heroic Girls

That’s nice he’s so supportive but I think he’s way off the mark.

Just by virtue of being a woman does not make a superhero more compassion. It makes her have ovaries. Compassion is not gender specific and the faster we let trite bullshit-isms like this die, the faster we can achieve a semblance of egality.

Babies have no choice: Violence spills into young minds

President Barack Obama wants schools to have more mental health professionals and resource officers in order to better prevent violence. He also wants to provide training to teachers to recognize when young people need help and know how to refer those students to the right mental health services. 

Babies have no choice: Violence spills into young minds — Shed light on violence — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine

hmmmm

The case for marijuana legalization just got stronger 

New federal data continue to undercut opponents’ claims that marijuana legalization will lead to more teen drug use.

The case for marijuana legalization just got stronger – The Washington Post

And the misleading headline of the day award goes to….

This article is about trends in teen marijuana use, not a case for legalization.

Goddamn bad headlines are so fucking annoying!

This Impeccably Designed $20,000 House Could Soon Be Yours

Rural Studio started making the 20K house in 2005, keeping in mind the assumption that $20,000 was the total cost of housing someone living on Social Security could afford to pay in monthly mortgage installments. Since then, students have built 12 houses for their rural neighbors, with each design building off the knowledge and real-world experience of the last.

This Impeccably Designed $20,000 House Could Soon Be Yours

cool!

After Texas stopped funding Planned Parenthood, low-income women had more unplanned for and potentially unwanted babies

The state of Texas’ sustained campaign against  Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics affiliated with abortion providers appears to have led to an increase in births among low-income women who lost access to affordable and effective birth control, a new study says.

After Texas stopped funding Planned Parenthood, low-income women had more babies – LA Times

Grrrrrrrr

In the Safe Spaces on UC Campus, No Jews Allowed

In the Safe Spaces on Campus, No Jews Allowed – The Tower

Disclaimer: To me,  Zionist = Bigot.  There is no way you can dissuade me from that position unless you produce a Zionist who places the same value on Palestinian life and Israeli Jewish life. So already I’m not going to have a lot of sympathy for anyone who self-identifies as a Zionist.
That said, I don’t have much sympathy for any of the students in this story or the group at their so-called safe space. They all sound like self-involved little assholes.