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Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: September 5, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , |Leave a comment

Cat Lady, Mary James Ketch

Good Afternoon!!

Two days ago, Gloria Steinem died at age 92. How can we quantify the massive legacy this brilliant woman left us? For those of us women who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, she was a gigantic figure. She helped to change our lives forever. Today those massive changes are threatened by truly evil forces. So I want to pause and take note of her life’s work.

Katharine Q. Seelye at The New York Times (gift link): Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92.

Gloria Steinem, the feminist crusader who galvanized the modern women’s movement, helping millions of women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at home, at work and in society at large, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92….

Calling herself “an entrepreneur of social change,” Ms. Steinem helped usher in sweeping cultural transformations across virtually every facet of American life, from the boardroom to the courtroom to the bedroom.

For more than half a century, she personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.

She was an unlikely revolutionary. Growing up a transient in the Midwest, she was 10 when her parents divorced and she was left to mother her mentally anguished mother — a formative experience that reverberated throughout her life. She had scant formal education until sixth grade; her big dream, as a budding tap dancer, was to become a Rockette.

But she read voraciously, graduated from college with honors and believed fiercely that women should be able to live whatever life they chose.

Her own feminist awakening didn’t come until her mid-30s, when, as a journalist in 1969, she attended a “speak out” of women discussing their illegal abortions. Charismatic, articulate, media savvy, deeply empathetic and a workaholic, she evolved into a political and cultural force.

She led protests and consciousness-raising sessions, wrote essays and delivered speeches, delved into political organizing, helped establish rape crisis centers and shelters for battered women, founded numerous groups that promoted women and had the Midas touch when it came to raising money for their causes.

And she and a cadre of feminists had the audacity to start a publication that flew in the face of traditional women’s magazines, examining topics like abortion, domestic violence and equal pay for equal work. The first glossy national periodical to be created, owned and run entirely by women, Ms. magazine, founded in 1971, sought to capture and channel a rising sense of female empowerment and eradicate the sexist assumptions that permeated the culture.

The magazine served as the movement’s manifesto, an incubator for social transformation and a blueprint for action. As such, it helped embolden women as they fought blatant discrimination and harassment in the workplace and unspoken oppression, and sometimes outright abuse, at home.

“When we started, there was not even a term for sexual harassment,” Ms. Steinem often said. “It was just called life.”

Decades after the movement dissipated and progressive women faced renewed setbacks, Ms. Steinem continued to push for their rights and equality. Indefatigable, she wrote essays and lectured into her 90s, and the news media never stopped seeking her opinion. She was the author of nearly a dozen major nonfiction books; her latest, “An Unexpected Life,” is scheduled for publication in late September.

Use the gift link to read the rest. You can also read an excerpt from Steinem’s memoir at The Atlantic (gift link): ‘Everything We Do Matters.’ Gloria Steinem on what older people can teach America.

One more tribute to Steinem by Nina Burleigh at American Freakshow: SIC TRANSIT GLORIA: Ms. Steinem Forever.

To preteen girls of my 1970s junior high, there was no other way to be. Hiphuggers, short skirts, aviators, long swingy hair. A lot of sass. And for many of us, the first post “Women’s Lib” generation, the expectation of an adventure-filled, self-reliant future with marriage and motherhood as options not imminent requirements.

To her peers in the adult public square at the time, she had threaded the needle of sexy and smart in a way that made male detractors look like idiots. The record of their blustering scorn and contumely and the open ridicule heaped on her, and the women she led, is part of history.

Feminazi. Furry Legged fanatic. C-word. B-word. And the perennial favorite: Man-hater.

They couldn’t take it. Her wit and panache drew out their scorn the way certain salves drain boils. The casual insolence and open diminishment toward her and her peers was part of the cultural wallpaper of the era. Among the men engaged in it, the psychological temperature ranged from lightly snide to psychotic.

Reporting on the creation of Ms. Magazine, ABC news anchor Harry Reasoner said on national television, “I give it six months before they run out of things to say.”

By the 1980s, the Viagran Centurions of the media had mobilized. The shock jocks – Limbaugh, Imus Stern – can’t you take a joke? – and their spiritual grandsons the fight club rape propagandist Tate bros and their herd of manosphere sheep. The disappointed entitled, the preternaturally insecure, the incels, and their insidious cousins, the fascist tiki-torch carrying “You Will Not Replace Us” troops.

Gay Talese, revered chronicler of the famously misogyinistic Italian Mafia, sharing a taxi with Steinem and another great 20th Century phallocrat the author Saul Bellow – once famously said: “You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl.”

To her face.

Can’t you take a joke?

Charles Manson, weighing in from prison in a 1970 interview uttered a phrase that decades later is close to an actual slogan dripped from the mouths of men from JD Vance to the Tate brothers: “Gloria Steinem and all those girls’ libbers, they’re taking the manliness out of the man. They want to be the men, but they don’t want to carry the weight.”

Replacement was always the underlying fear.

Millions of men now share the views of a psychotic mass murdering cult leader.: Taking the manliness out of the man.

Steinem saw this coming back in 1972: “Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” In later speeches she would add to that: “But too few men are becoming the women they wanted to marry.”

She could name the core issues like no one else. Cut to the chase. “Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That’s their natural and first weapon.”

And: “She will need her sisterhood.”

Where is that sisterhood half a century later?

Read the rest at the link.

And now we’ve lost another feminist icon.

Greg Evans at Deadline: Robin Morgan Dies: Former Ms. Magazine Editor, Women’s Media Center Co-Founder With Jane Fonda & Gloria Steinem Was 85.

Robin Morgan, a former editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine who co-founded the Women’s Media Center with Ms. co-founder Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, died today, September 5, just several days after the passing of her friend and colleague Steinem. Morgan was 85.

Her death was announced by her son Blake Morgan and Julie Burton, president and CEO of the Women’s Media Center. A cause of death was not disclosed, but her son noted that she died peacefully in her sleep. Robin Morgan was in her second decade of living with Parkinson’s Disease.

Girl with a cat (2020) by Olga Gordienok

In a statement, Fonda said, “Robin Morgan was an artist, a poet, an activist, and in my eyes, a living legend — a woman whose anthology series, Sisterhood is Powerful, Sisterhood is Global, and Sisterhood is Forever provided the evidence needed to launch a feminist revolution, and it was part of my feminist education that led to the movie, 9 To 5.”

“I have learned so much from Robin over the years,” Fonda added. “I love her and all that she has brought to the world, the women’s movement, and to me on the most personal levels. I already miss her and my heart is broken.”

The editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine from 1989 to 1994, Morgan, over the last decade, hosted, wrote, and produced the award-winning WMC podcast Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan. The podcast recently produced its 500th episode.

Morgan, Fonda and Steinem co-founded the Women’s Media Center 21 years ago with a mission to give voice to and strengthen democracy for women in media and beyond. “Our job is to make women visible and powerful in the media,” Morgan once told Fox 5 Good Day New York. “And we do that through lots of programs — through training women in media skills, through SheSource, which is the go-to place for experts, through many programs and our radio program [now podcast], Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan.”

And now, sadly, back to the reality of Trump world.

Yesterday, during one of his oval office bull

sessions with the media, Trump revealed his true feelings toward the men and women he has sent to fight and die in his Iran war.

Sarah Ewall-Wice at The Daily Beast: Trump Makes Jaw-Dropping Insult to the Dead of His Own War.

President Donald Trump has dismissed his war in Iran, in which 18 U.S. service members have been killed, as “small potatoes for us.”

The president, 80, was taking questions in the Oval Office on Friday when he was asked how he would describe the conflict with Iran.

The question came after Vice President JD Vance insisted on Thursday it wasn’t a war despite the U.S. carrying out new strikes this week.

“Can you explain to the American people, if this is not a war, what exactly is it?” ABC News’ Rachel Scott asked Trump.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, a lot of people don’t call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it’s, it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” Trump said. “We did Venezuela, and we did this.”

But the president did not stop there. He went on to compare war casualties to back up his claim that the conflict in Iran was “small potatoes.”

“In Venezuela, we lost nobody, and this, we lost 18 people,” Trump said. “In Vietnam you lost 100,000 people, and in other conflicts, you lost tens of thousands of people.”

Trump, who himself received five military draft deferments during the Vietnam War, went on to say that he would call the conflict with Iran “intermittent strikes” and agreed with Vance that it was not a war.

“We’re not fighting right now. There’s no fighting,” Trump rambled.

Trump obviously couldn’t care less about the men and women who have died and been injured in his war. And actually, there is fighting.

The Washington Post (gift link): U.S. military says it hit 3 Iranian tankers after Navy ships targeted.

The U.S. military said Saturday it hit three Iranian oil tankers, including one near Kharg Island, the country’s main oil terminal, after Iran launched missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, said in a statement that its strikes disabled an oil carrier off the coast of Kharg Island and another off Jask, and it destroyed a third one in the Gulf of Oman.

Blaise, Saint-Louis (1956 – 1995) Haitian artist

“Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, Centcom commander, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.”

Iranian state media earlier in the day reported that an oil tanker was hit by U.S. missiles near Kharg Island.

Iran’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kharg Island, about 15 miles from the Iranian mainland in the Persian Gulf, is the centerpiece of Iran’s oil-based economy, with about 90 percent of the country’s oil exports moving through there.

Since the U.S. and Israel launched the first airstrikes against Iran six months ago, President Donald Trump has been mired in an unpopular war with no end in sight.

No end in sight. And it’s a war.

Meanwhile, back home in the Pentagon, Paranoid Whiskey Pete is hunting for leakers.

Jonathan Swan, Adam Entous, Maggie Haberman, and Eric Schmitt at the New York Times (gift link): In Major Leak Hunt, Pentagon Gives Polygraph Tests to Joint Staff Members.

U.S. government investigators have taken the extraordinary step of subjecting roughly 50 members of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff to polygraph tests over leaks to journalists, including about how the Iran war has created a shortage of crucial munitions, according to officials briefed on the move.

The investigators asked military officers and civilian employees on the Joint Staff if they disclosed classified information to members of the press, and about whether they provided information about diminished U.S. munitions stocks.

The polygraph tests were conducted in August after a flurry of news reports detailed diminished stocks of crucial munitions, including of long-range missiles and Patriot interceptors. The show of force appeared aimed at not just ferreting out anyone who may have shared information, but intimidating others who might do so in the future, according to people with knowledge of the effort.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 officers and officials work for the Joint Staff, which coordinates operations, policy and war plans with combatant commanders around the world….

The scope of the investigation is without parallel. Mass polygraph tests have never been administered to the top ranks of the U.S. military in modern history.

Woman with cat, Tracy Porter

“I’ve never seen polygraphs employed this broadly or at this seniority level,” said Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, a retired top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2000 to 2002. “In my experience, it’s unprecedented.”

The move comes as multiple news organizations have revealed details about how the war with Iran has drained munition stockpiles and reported on concerns inside the administration about the strategic direction of the conflict.

President Trump has pressured administration officials to aggressively hunt for those leaking information. But the president has gone further than merely trying to stop the flow of unauthorized information; he has labeled “treasonous” the media coverage that is critical of the U.S. handling of the war in Iran and the shortages of munitions.

The leaks have intensified an atmosphere of deep distrust and paranoia inside the Pentagon, one that current and former officials say has been fostered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Surrounded by a tight inner circle of loyalists, Mr. Hegseth has pushed out or blocked the promotions of at least 80 generals, admirals and other officials during his tenure. Since early last year, the Pentagon has been conducting a number of leak investigations in response to news coverage about his leadership, even as he faced criticism for sharing sensitive details about strikes in Yemen in a Signal group last year.

The only thing Trump really seems to really care about is building his ballroom and putting his name on everything he can think of. The latest announcement from the administration is that they are going break ground for Trump’s “triumphal” Nazi arch.

Rachel Treisman at NPR: Trump’s arch may break ground without final approval. Veterans are trying to stop it.

The Trump administration plans to break ground on its proposed 250-foot arch near Washington, D.C.’s National Mall in the coming days, without key approvals and despite an ongoing lawsuit.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote on social media Thursday that “we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck.”

But the arch is still awaiting final approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, as well as federally mandated reviews regarding aviation safety and historic preservation.

Historic preservation experts have long criticized the Trump administration for seeming to rush the arch approval process, including by moving to weaken protections for historic sites altogether. This latest development raises concerns that the White House seeks to sidestep the process, which it denies.

Cecilia Beaux, Man with the cat

“Work will begin that does not require approval, but rather helps in the process,” the White House told NPR in a statement on Friday. “We will of course continue on our path of seeking final approval from all applicable entities.”

The White House, Department of the Interior and National Park Service did not respond to NPR’s questions about the timeline and extent of the excavations or the addition of the word “military” to the structure’s title.

President Trump told journalists last year that the arch is for “me.” But since then, the administration has said the arch is intended to honor the nation’s 250th anniversary.

“This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum posted this week, alongside renderings of the white-and-gold structure, topped with three large gilded statues.

The administration told the judge something different.

Emily Badger at The New York Times (gift link): Is Work Starting for Trump’s Arch? It Depends Who’s Asking.

The Trump administration told a federal judge that it was not preparing to start construction on the president’s planned triumphal arch in Washington, a day after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that excavation work for the project would begin within the next two weeks.

The work the government plans to do, the Department of Justice said in a court filing on Friday, consists of archaeological excavation of the site necessary for the required historic review of the project. And it stated, despite President Trump’s frequent promotion of the project, that no final decision had been made to begin building the arch, which would stand near Arlington National Cemetery.

That starkly different message follows a pattern across other cases in which the administration has made one pronouncement in public and another in court.

Responding to the conflicting messages, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the administration late Friday night to give her at least 48 hours’ notice if it proceeds with anything other than the limited archaeological work. And she reminded the administration that it is under an existing order to give the court 14 days notice before beginning construction on the arch.

The flurry of filings on Friday followed Mr. Burgum’s surprise announcement that excavation work for the arch would begin, even before it receives final approvals.

The Language of Care, by Kateryna Kolesnykova

“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch,” Mr. Burgum wrote on social media.

The Department of Justice put things differently, after a group of veterans suing to block the arch sought a temporary restraining order on Friday. “This activity is not construction, or demolition in preparation for construction, of an arch,” the department said.

Judge Chutkan appeared to tread a middle path, allowing the limited work the government said in court it was pursuing, while warning it against going any further at this point.

My guess is that Trump will go ahead with the construction regardless of what the judge says. Remember, he has immunity for anything he does as president.

One more from Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: Trump Admits Real Reason He’s Building Monuments to Himself.

President Donald Trump has made a stunning admission while revealing why he’s obsessed with remodeling Washington.

Trump, 80, has candidly told New York magazine that he is building monuments for himself and slapping his name everywhere because he knows that nobody else will do so when he is gone.

Reporter Ben Terris shared with Trump an attack line from Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, who says that Trump’s obsession with vanity projects stems from knowing he is the only person willing to memorialize him.

“That’s true,” Trump responded. “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.”

That is just pathetic.

That’s it for me today. Have a great long weekend, Sky Dancers!

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