Originally a comment by iknklast on “Militant secularists” again.

What values exactly, is there some secularist tome I can refer to

Barr probably knows, but assumes his audience doesn’t, or that they agree with him, that the only value they are really concerned about is the value of freedom to make up your own mind about god. The freedom to send your children to school without being converted to a believe they find unacceptable.

Barr believes that what secularists want is like what Christians want – to send their children to school to have their beliefs reinforced, and to convert all the other little kids to their beliefs. Some secularists probably want this, but on the whole, we want … Read the rest

I hate quoting National Review…

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said earlier this week that she would only nominate a Secretary of Education who was pre-screened by a “young transgender person” in order to ensure that her pick would be “committed to creating a welcoming environment, a safe environment, and a full educational curriculum for everyone.”

Wellllll…except for women of course. But that’s ok, women are such a tiny minority compared to transgender persons.

Speaking Sunday at a townhall in Iowa, Warren responded to a question about how to address a lack of LGBTQ history and sexual education in public schools.

That’s a bad question in the first place. L and G are not the same as T, and … Read the rest

Of course he has.

US President Donald Trump has lifted restrictions on the deployment of anti-personnel landmines by American forces.

Trump never met a form of violence (against other people of course) he didn’t like. So landmines linger on for decades after the war or insurgency or invasion is over, killing and maiming generations of children, farmers, and other people rash enough to walk in places where there are unexploded mines buried out of sight, so what? It won’t be Donald Trump they blow up so who cares?

The decision reverses a 2014 Obama administration ban on the use of such weapons, which applied everywhere in the world except for in the defence of South Korea.

Of course … Read the rest

This is a very bad and stupid piece of writing.

Earlier this month, the Seattle Public Library decided that it will allow a group of trans-exclusionary “radical feminists” (TERFs) to hold an event centered on rejecting the rights and identities of transgender people.

The first sentence, and already so bad. It wasn’t earlier this month, for a start, but more to the point, the library did not decide it will allow a group of trans-exclusionary “radical feminists” to hold an event centered on rejecting the rights and identities of transgender people. The library accepted a booking from a feminist group to discuss and defend the rights of women in the context of ever-broader demands from men who … Read the rest

Bet you haven’t seen anything this wack before!

I don’t think it’s wrong, sinful, for a girl baby to have a sleeper on.

BUT.

Of course there’s a but.

It’s not sinful if she’s just, like, a month.

But hey once she knows those things are PANTS –

That’s whOle other kettle of fish, my friend. Whole other.

Men wrap each leg. Women DO NOT. Are we clear? This is a rule straight from God, so don’t be getting it wrong, or you know what will happen.… Read the rest

If Ivanka Trump invited me to a feminist event she was hosting at the White House would I feel flattered and hop right along? Hell no. I’m not the only one.

The Washington Post is now reporting that eight anti-trafficking organizations have decided not to attend an Ivanka-planned White House event on Friday ostensibly dedicated to combatting human trafficking, citing the administration’s inhumane policies. The event is centered around a new federal law that designates trafficking as a felony offense.

“We have such a chasm between rhetoric and reality. I don’t think any of us have the desire to be a part of a photo op,” said Martina Vandenberg of the Human Trafficking Legal Center, one of the organizations

China is making gigantic efforts to fight the Coronavirus. Laurie Garrett says the US won’t be able to match China’s efforts should the need arise.

For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is – not just for the public but for the government itself, which

Barr says the militant atheists are gonna eat your religious freedom.

Attorney General William Barr warned New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan of “an organized, militant secular effort” to suppress religion in “the marketplace of ideas” in an interview Wednesday.

“The problem today is not that religious people are trying to impose their views on non-religious people,” Barr told Dolan on his SiriusXM radio show Conversation with Cardinal Dolan. “It’s the opposite — it’s that militant secularists are trying to impose their values on religious people, and they’re not accommodating the freedom of religion of people of faith.”

“Freedom” is another one of those words that get deployed as silencers when in fact it matters what kind of freedom … Read the rest

The projection defense:

It is Donald Trump’s habitual practice to accuse political opponents of misconduct he excels at, from self-dealing to the use of nasty language to telling lies.

At the impeachment trial Trump’s legal team has invented a twist on the projection tactic, taking the charges against the president and seeking to turn them back on the impeachment managers, using the precise language of the prosecution.

No you’re the corrupt lying cheating sacks of shit!

Thus Trump’s lawyers have accused the House of Representatives of abusing its power by pursuing impeachment and of obstructing justice by running the impeachment process in a way the White House objects to.

Which is just stupid, but no doubt it will work … Read the rest

From last week: Trump and his goons changed the definition of domestic violence so that there will be less of it to do anything about.

The Trump administration quietly changed the definition of both domestic violence and sexual assault back in April but the move has only just surfaced.

The change could have significant repercussions for millions of victims of gender-based violence.

That is, victims of violence against women. The “gender” in question is female.

The Trump Justice Department’s definition only considers physical harm that constitutes a felony or misdemeanour to be domestic violence – meaning other forms of domestic violence such as psychological abuse, coercive control and manipulation no longer fall under the department’s definition. 

Lisa Page, anyone? DoJ … Read the rest

Khadija Khan writes:

A recent independent review into child grooming and abuse in Manchester in the mid-2000s has revealed horrific details of how the victims were denied protection, and turned away by British police officers and social workers. The victims had been deliberately hooked on drugs, groomed, and sexually abused for years by grooming gangs predominantly comprised of Pakistani men, while the authorities involved looked the other way. These revelations of institutionalized criminal negligence were soon followed by denials, accusations, regrets, and excuses.

Apparently, the neglect of the sexual exploitation of women and girls at least partly arose to avoid creating racial tensions in the area. Some still believe that discussion of paedophile gangs of Asian men grooming

Kathleen Stock explains the power and influence of Stonewall in many UK institutions:

The main protagonist in this war on free speech in the UK is Stonewall, a campaigning charity that was founded to promote the rights of the same-sex attracted, but which in recent years has switched its focus to an unconditional defence of (what it views as) transgender equality. Its website declares that “Trans women are women and trans men are men”, and—somewhat surprisingly to many gay people, given the charity’s original mission—that “of course” a lesbian can have “a trans woman as a lesbian partner” or “a gay man be with a trans man”.

And by “can” they mean “had better not refuse to.”

A central

Argument creep: don’t do it.

Jings. This is a standard bubble marginal comment for me: "Well, if it could be argued, then argue it. Give your reasons for thinking that this claim is true. It could be argued that the moon is made of green cheese." FFS. https://t.co/Qt4LpjalNk

—1) (@runthinkwrite) January 29, 2020

So: "It could be argued that the moon is made of green cheese … " through "If we accept that the moon is made of green cheese…" to "We should deal with the moon's being made of green cheese as follows…

Philosophy students! Don't do this!

—2) (@runthinkwrite) January 29, 2020

Also everyone else! Don’t do this!

1. (Jon Pike [↩]
2. (Jon

I missed this one back in October:

“…surrounded by enemies and spies catching and perverting every word that falls from my lips or flows from my pen, and inventing where facts fail them.” -Thomas Jefferson’s reflections on Washington, D.C. in a letter to his daughter Martha.
Some things never change, dad!

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) October 31, 2019

Ironically, or aptly, what Jefferson was complaining of there was not an invention.

It's interesting Ivanka picked this example because the thing Jefferson's enemies were accusing him of — fathering a child with a slave — was absolutely something he did. 6 times as a matter of fact. Jefferson was bemoaning being called out for something he actually did. https://t.co/ZnvjPLrkjY

— Rachel

Metro UK reports:

A transgender police community support officer was left feeling ‘upset and embarrassed’ after a teen yelled out:’ Is it a boy or is it a girl?’

Declan Armstrong, 19, saw PSCO Connor Freel when he was on duty in Mold, North Wales on October 16 last year.

When the officer looked over at him, he repeated the comment ‘very loudly’, Rhian Jackson, prosecuting, said.

Ms Jackson said: ‘Due to his transgender, when Connor heard Declan say what he said, it left him feeling upset and embarrassed.’

Armstrong was given a curfew requirement and ordered to pay £590 at Mold Magistrates’ Court today after he was found guilty of making the comments to PCSO Connor Freel following

Another man who “identifies as” a woman says this is all fine and poses no harm to women.

Will Gender Self Declaration Undermine Women's Rights and Lead to an Increase in Harm? out now in the Modern Law Review (11/1/20) I believe it is the first peer-reviewed article to address these issues. It argues the answer is No. https://t.co/bZfyI9Kgb4

— Alex Sharpe (@AlexSharpe64) January 28, 2020

Alex Sharpe is “a social and legal theorist, legal historian and gender, sexuality and law scholar and activist”; source Garden Court Chambers. Sharpe is also a trans woman.

The article is pay-walled, and very expensively so – $42 for a single article! – but we can read the abstract.

This article considers

Trump’s buddy Eddie Gallagher has publicly outed the SEALS who reported him.

Former Navy SEAL and accused war criminal Eddie Gallagher put service members in jeopardy with a new video attack launched from his social media accounts on Monday. Gallagher’s video revealed sensitive information about the Navy SEALS who testified against him in his war crimes trial, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

In the three-minute-long video posted to his Facebook and Instagram pages, Gallagher identified his accusers by posting their names, photographs, duty status, and the units they serve in — which experts said jeopardizes those Navy SEALS’ safety.

The identities of SEALS are always kept secret, from everyone, by everyone. It’s a rule.

“As a matter of