In which the doctor backs himself into a corner, to the amusement of onlookers.

seriously, I really think we need to start having a conversation about banning ciswomen from the women’s bathroom. legitimate concerns etc… 💁🏼‍♂️ https://t.co/VsX346A1rX

— Adrian A Harrop 🏳️‍🌈🩺 (@AdrianHarrop) June 23, 2020

That is an excellent idea. So this space would *solely* be for females, not transwomen?

— Daytime Pub Smell #ReplyDeboosted (@DaytimePubSmell) June 23, 2020

So, to clarify, transwomen could *not* use this new space?

— Daytime Pub Smell #ReplyDeboosted (@DaytimePubSmell) June 23, 2020

So all 'ciswomen' need to do to successfully achieve segregation from both men and transwomen is keep up the assaults?

— Daytime Pub Smell #ReplyDeboosted (@DaytimePubSmell) June 23, 2020

… Read the rest

How the contagion happens:

Six months into the coronavirus crisis, there’s a growing consensus about a central question: How do people become infected?

It’s not common to contract Covid-19 from a contaminated surface, scientists say. And fleeting encounters with people outdoors are unlikely to spread the coronavirus.

(All the same I do wish people would move away when they can. It does annoy me when they stick to the middle of the sidewalk when it would be so easy to just veer to the side.)

Instead, the major culprit is close-up, person-to-person interactions for extended periods. Crowded events, poorly ventilated areas and places where people are talking loudly—or singing, in one famous case—maximize the risk.

These emerging findings

Something I always wonder about this guy.

The day I refuse to affirm my commitment to protecting the most vulnerable in society is the day I'll have outlived my use as a campaigner.

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) June 22, 2020

He’s not a random young woke “activist” on Twitter, he’s an adult QC, yet he echoes the childish woke rhetoric as if there were nothing childish about it. It sounds bizarre coming from establishment figures like QCs.

Specifically, what makes him think that men who say they are women are “the most vulnerable in society”? That claim entails thinking that men are vulnerable to women; how did he get there? What sense does that make? Why does he believe … Read the rest

Trump’s people think it’s time to change the plan, but Trump doesn’t wanna.

In what amounts to a relaunch of a relaunch, Trump now travels to Arizona, a battleground state, to embrace his most comfortable signature issue with an event marking the 200th mile of his wall on the US-Mexico border (most of the construction has in fact replaced existing barriers).

The president will then speak at a “Students for Trump” event in Phoenix. Despite soaring cases of coronavirus in Arizona, his campaign team will be hoping for an enthusiastic turnout to get back on track.

In other words despite the fact that cases are swiftly rising in Arizona, Trump is eager to put more people at risk of … Read the rest

Trump wants to see cruel and unusual punishment for people who make political gestures he dislikes.

Trump referred to the protesters who tried to tear down the Andrew Jackson statue near the White House as “vandals” and “hoodlums” who don’t love America.

“We are looking at long term jail sentences for these vandals and these hoodlums and these anarchists and agitators,” the president told reporters shortly before leaving for Arizona.

He wants people in prison for years for a minor property crime.

“Call them whatever you want. Some people don’t like that language, but that’s what they are. They’re bad people. They don’t love our country. And they’re not taking down our monuments. I just want to make that clear.”

More rally!

Even as more of his campaign staffers test positive for coronavirus, Trump is still scheduled to hold a campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona, tomorrow.

The president will speak at a “Students for Trump” event at the Dream City Church in Phoenix, despite Arizona seeing a rise in its number of coronavirus cases.

In a video, two of the church’s leaders said they have installed cutting-edge technology that “kills 99.9% of Covid within 10 minutes.”

Oh yes? What “technology” is that exactly? Why isn’t it being installed everywhere?

These two fellas explain it. It’s ionization. Or ionizidation. The one guy isn’t quite sure. Anyway it cleans out all the particulates and the virus can’t live in that. They said … Read the rest

White House press secretary has no problem with Trump’s racism.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked if Trump regrets using the racist phrase “kung flu” to describe coronavirus during his Saturday rally. McEnany replied that the president “never regrets putting the onus back on China” for the coronavirus pandemic.

But that wasn’t the question. The question was whether he regrets using the racist phrase “kung flu” to describe the coronavirus. Lying Fox News sleaze changed the subject.

Another reporter noted that, earlier this year, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway described the phrase “kung flu” as offensive and wrong.

Asked repeatedly whether the White House disagrees with Conway’s characterization, McEnany ignored the question and then called on someone

People in Lebanon can no longer pay their Ethiopian “maids” who are really their slaves…so they take them to the Ethiopian embassy and leave them there.

Lebanon’s economy is collapsing with the country’s currency losing 70% of its value in the past six months.

Now many of the country’s middle class claim they can no longer afford to pay their domestic maids.

More than 100 Ethiopian migrant workers have been dumped outside their embassy in the capital in recent days.

There’s a video at the link. It’s worth watching.… Read the rest

A rather sad account of transgender life:

Am I a woman? I used to believe I was. I used to have stars in my eyes. My role model was the Bond girl (and self-described “Transsexual Supermodel”) Caroline Cossey. She was gorgeous and glamorous. If she could do it, couldn’t I? Me, a socially awkward boy who struggled to find brotherhood in the company of boys, who more easily made friends with girls. Why not?

I have a lot of sympathy for that struggling to find brotherhood in the company of boys. I had friends who were boys who struggled that way. It wasn’t that they “felt like girls,” as far as I remember, so much as it … Read the rest

This one however is brilliant.

Your campaign was so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. pic.twitter.com/cfAAkGLttH

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 22, 2020

… Read the rest

Trump’s niece really doesn’t like him.

“I think he’s freaking out,” said Michael D’Antonio, author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success. “He will treat her savagely.”

On Sunday, Axios reported that Trump insists Mary Trump is “not allowed” to write her book, because doing so would violate a non-disclosure agreement she signed.

Trump told Axios: “She’s not allowed to write a book. When we settled with her and her brother, who I do have a good relationship with – she’s got a brother, Fred, who I do have a good relationship with, but when we settled, she has a total … signed a nondisclosure.”

It’s interesting how he extorts NDAs from people. I guess he … Read the rest

So now Don is furious at Brad and so are Jared and Princess, but Brad is furious at the news media and the news media are…reporting the news.

The Tulsa fire department said 6,200 people attended. The Trump campaign claimed 12,000. The arena holds 19,000.

Who ya gonna believe, the fire department or the Trump campaign? Hahaha just kidding.

Trump’s demeanour on returning to Washington was widely scrutinised. He was initially quiet on Twitter on Sunday but the president was reported to be “furious” at the “underwhelming” event, which followed a week of controversy about whether it should even be held. According to NBC, Trump was “particularly angry that before he even left DC, aides made public that six

Oh that’s gotta hurt.

Four authors represented by JK Rowling’s literary agency have resigned after accusing the company of declining to issue a public statement of support for transgender rights.

Ouch. Four! Resigned! Will the agency even survive?

Fox Fisher, Drew Davies and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir said they could no longer work with the Blair Partnership, the London-based agency that represents all aspects of the Harry Potter author’s work, because they were not convinced the company “supports our rights at all avenues”. One other author is understood to have also quit the agency but wishes to remain anonymous.

Who?

In a joint statement, Fisher, Davies and Jónsdóttir said that following Rowling’s recent intervention on transgender rights, they had

Life in the USofA:

Right-wing extremists are turning cars into weapons, with reports of at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since protests against police violence erupted nationwide in late May.

At least 18 are categorized as deliberate attacks; another two dozen are unclear as to motivation or are still under investigation, according to a count released Friday by Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago’s Chicago Project on Security and Threats. Weil has tracked vehicle-ramming attacks, or VRAs, since protests began.

The 20 people facing prosecution in the rammings include a state leader of the Virginia Ku Klux Klan, as well as a California man who was charged with attempted murder after antagonizing protesters and

Remember that awful, sloppy, book-length post by Laurie Penny last week?

Inexplicably, the original commissioner didn't want her "giant" essay, so she was begging for another, paid, home. As duff, unreadable, woke diatribes against JKR have been run by every rag going, it must be a tad embarrassing not to have found one willing to take this nonsense. pic.twitter.com/fxqx874wbi

— forwomen.scot (@ForwomenScot) June 21, 2020

Lies. All lies. Laurie didn’t have a commission at all, but desperately wanted it on a platform that wasn’t her own blog. It’s continued bullying and harassment of a socialist feminist who has given millions away to important causes. Unlike Laurie who just promotes her own ego.

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) June 21, 2020

… Read the rest

Oh. Well ok then.

"What you heard from the president was frustration," says @DHS_Wolf of Pres Trump's rally comment last night that he told aides to "slow the testing down" for Coronavirus. On @FaceTheNation, Wolf says Trump is frustrated by press focus on increasing numbers of Coronavirus cases.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) June 21, 2020

Yes well you can see how that would be frustrating, having the press focus on a highly contagious virus that has killed 122,000 Americans in the past four months when it could be focusing on the awesomeness of

Wait a minute. He’s frustrated because the press is focusing on a lethal disease that is burning through the population when it should be focusing on … Read the rest

This is quite a good campaign video…until the end.

This is art. pic.twitter.com/ZPJxHu20TV

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 21, 2020

What’s at the end?

Har har. Let’s shit on women. Har har.… Read the rest

Careful, the thought police are watching.

These students would have fit right in Mao's China. pic.twitter.com/qvXGSj2tfH

— Asteroid (@AlessandraAster) June 21, 2020

… Read the rest

The bit where he says we have to test for the virus less, so that we won’t know how bad it is.

"Here's the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you're gonna find more people, you're gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, 'slow the testing down please!'" — Trump pic.twitter.com/m5MOV9je70

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 21, 2020

The crowd cheers this murderous claim.

2.19 minutes on his Adventure Going Down the Ramp – and he’s only begun.

"The stage was higher than this one … I'm weather leather-bottom shoes … it was like an ice-skating rink" — Trump whines at length about the media pointing out the obvious and noting that he had

Richard Wolffe at the Guardian observes the humiliation.

…nothing truly comes close to the embarrassment of his so-called comeback rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday.

It was so toe-curlingly cringeworthy, such a crushing humiliation. There are 80s pop bands who have enjoyed greater comebacks than Donald Trump.

Ok the smaller than expected crowd was humiliating but at least the rally itself was good, right? Trump on top form? Feeding off the energy of the [smaller than expected] crowd?

Trump told the crowd at great length why he couldn’t possibly walk down a ramp unaided. He even re-enacted his walk down the deadly incline. He also treated them to a long excuse about why he couldn’t hold a glass