I have to return to this absurdity, because there’s just so much absurdity in it.

pic.twitter.com/L3sxMC9fXm

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2020

It’s the fact that he tweeted it that’s so grotesque – that it’s right there for all to see.

You know, a normal person wouldn’t see it as flattering in the first place. A normal person wouldn’t see a clip with her head perched awkwardly on someone else’s body as a compliment. It’s not a compliment, is it. It’s a statement that Trump’s body is not all that glorious, along with a statement that his general self-presentation is not all that great. The alternative body is relaxed, comfortable, cool – not herky-jerky and flailing like Trump’s … Read the rest

This one is soooooooooooooo pathEtic…………………..

pic.twitter.com/L3sxMC9fXm

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2020

… Read the rest

Maya Forstater notes how confused about human rights some core human rights organizations are:

Stonewall was set up to defend the rights of gay and lesbian (and later bisexual) people. Its charitable objects are to promote human rights as set out in the Human Rights Act, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These are the laws which protect everyone’s rights. But in 2015 it adopted the “trans rights” cause and since then has been enthusiastic about ignoring and undermining women’s rights.

Stonewall has called for ‘gender identity’ to replace ‘gender reassignment’ (the idea of transition) as a protected characteristic in equality law and to “remove exemptions, such as access to single-sex spaces”.

Late Friday night – oh hey Nancy by the way I’ve gotten rid of another one of those pesky General Inspector losers who kept getting in my way.

President Donald Trump has removed State Department Inspector General Steve Linick and replaced him with an ally of Vice President Mike Pence — the latest in a series of moves against independent government watchdogs in recent months.

Ah yes, one of those “independent” government watchdogs who are allies of the badmaddogs.

Trump informed Congress of his intent to oust Linick, a Justice Department veteran appointed to the role in 2013 by then President Barack Obama, in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday night.

As one does. Not during … Read the rest

Trump is getting more and more tantrummy about the CDC.

As the coronavirus pandemic stretches past its ninth week, tensions are rising between the White House and the nation’s leading public health agency. In interviews with CNN, senior administration officials in Washington, as well as top officials at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta describe a growing sense of mistrust and animosity between the White House and CDC over how quickly the US should reopen and how the government tracks data on the virus.

Similarly, if Trump Tower had a fire raging on the tenth floor, Trump would be expressing mistrust and animosity toward the NYC fire department.

Except no he wouldn’t, of course, at least … Read the rest

Brilliantly done.

What is left?
Is it left wing to say that white male billionaire is a member of the most oppressed group in the world but a working class mother has 'cis privilege'? pic.twitter.com/vTTptLTXs9

— Asteroid (@AlessandraAster) May 16, 2020

Is it left wing to say that making fun of Muslim women is Islamophobic but forcing them to share toilets with males against their religion is not? pic.twitter.com/RxTwqCxP8B

— Asteroid (@AlessandraAster) May 16, 2020

Is it left wing to argue that cooking a Mexican dish is cultural appropriation but demanding to be treated as a woman when you are a male is not? pic.twitter.com/ommtsdPCcL

— Asteroid (@AlessandraAster) May 16, 2020

Is it left wing to say breast ironing for

Also today:

The Trump administration really thinks the American public will be impressed by the claim that their (nonexistent) pandemic response plan is in a binder (!), as opposed to Obama's wimpy one which is just sheets of paper stapled together. Beyond parody. pic.twitter.com/GvYvdx0SL5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2020

I’m reminded of Trump’s “we have nicer apartments than they do.”

"The president said the Pentagon is developing a 'super duper missile' … what was the president describing?" — this exchange is basically an SNL skit pic.twitter.com/QmREiE2RDy

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2020

Trump offers some remarkably callous comments about the US coronavirus death toll, which currently sits at 86,607: "It's a very, very small percentage. I say

Reuters reports:

Lying in rows of cots in a small hotel on the outskirts of Kiev, 51 babies born to surrogate mothers are stranded in Ukraine as the coronavirus lockdown is preventing parents from the United States, Europe and elsewhere from collecting them.

In other words the disgusting practice of renting human incubators (who just happen to be women, and not trans women at that) has resulted in 51 babies with no parents in the midst of a pandemic.

Interesting that exploiters of women choose Ukraine as their human incubator supplier. That couldn’t be because Ukraine is so desperate and vulnerable could it?

Ukraine imposed a ban on foreigners entering in March, and most parents have only seen their

Them that’s got shall get…

When Congress set aside $30 billion for education institutions facing ruin because of the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns, it’s pretty clear this is not what they had in mind. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is reportedly throwing millions of federal dollars that were intended mainly for public schools and colleges at private and religious schools, according to a report from The New York Times. About $350 million of funding has reportedly been allocated to small colleges, many of which are private or religious, regardless of need. For example, the Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential in Wisconsin, which has a completely normal website that denies claims that it’s a cult, has reportedly

I saw this a couple of days ago but couldn’t find the video clip so waited to post it. It’s sickening.

A black delivery driver in Oklahoma City had just delivered an appliance to a customer in a gated community when — as he was exiting — two white men blocked him in with a vehicle and interrogated him about why he was there. Why won’t white peoples leave us alone? pic.twitter.com/42vohZtZjm

— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) May 15, 2020

Nice of them not to shoot him though.

Updating to add a fuller clip

pic.twitter.com/gKqOvU2uRv

— HENSON EDITS (@james1701a) May 15, 2020

and to note that these fuckers did this days after the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in a situation EXACTLY … Read the rest

How to more cases than anybody in the world pic.twitter.com/VA9bPJiQ6i

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) May 15, 2020

… Read the rest

Everywhere, around the world:

As the death toll rises, Trump’s claims to global leadership have became more far-fetched. He told Republicans last week that he had had a round of phone calls with Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and other unnamed world leaders and insisted “so many of them, almost all of them, I would say all of them” believe the US is leading the way.

None of the leaders he mentioned has said anything to suggest that was true. At each milestone of the crisis, European leaders have been taken aback by Trump’s lack of consultation with them – when he suspended travel to the US from Europe on 12 March without warning Brussels, for example. A week later,

If the numbers are bad, here’s what you do: lie about the numbers.

Top Trump officials, huddled in the White House, itself the subject of a coronavirus outbreak, have according to reports begun questioning the number of deaths – and the president is among the skeptics.

He has a lot of practice being a “skeptic” about numbers. When he’s selling a thing, the value goes way up. When he’s reporting that thing to the tax people, the value goes way down. It’s magic.

One common claim is that hospitals receive more money from Medicare if they are treating a patient with the coronavirus compared with other illnesses, and so are inflating their numbers. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota state senator

More from le jardin des roses:

TRUMP: "I want to make one thing clear. It's very important. Vaccine or no vaccine, we're back." pic.twitter.com/k4CTpyLOy3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2020

“We’ll fight through it,” he says repeatedly, in his dopy clogged voice. Send me in, coach! We coulda beena contenda. Fight fight fight!

Trump is still out here claiming that the coronavirus will go away on its own pic.twitter.com/8bbFtQJBH6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2020

“Wheya hadda problem come in, iddl go away, it may flare up, it may not flare up, wll hafta see wut happens but if it does flare up wir gunna pudout the fire, and we’ll pudit out quickly and efficiently, we’ve learned a … Read the rest

Trump is in the Rose Garden right now, taking his idiocy out for an airing.

Trump claims “if we didn’t do any [coronavirus] testing, we would have very few cases.” That's not how reality works. https://t.co/7Xv70M5XuW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2020

He can mean “we wouldn’t have the stats” – which would suit him just fine. He’d love it if we had no clue how bad the pandemic is.

Of course he may also think that not having the stats is the same thing as not having the cases.

This is how reality works if you’re stuck in Plato’s allegorical cave and everything you see and everything you experience and everything that exists are all just shadows, shadows,

The Lancet has an editorial on Trump and the CDC:

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation’s public health, has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus. The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC’s Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC’s COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”. This is an unhelpful

Hold the phone – women can get periods!

Who knew?

'Trans guys can experience periods and non-binary people can as well' #WednesdayWisdom

➡️ Watch more: https://t.co/99lCfYYRDS pic.twitter.com/8UGMBZ86sB

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) May 13, 2020

Yes, we know, because “trans guys” are women, and “non-binary people” are people and some people are women.

Maybe this whole thing is just a movement of people who long to be teachers but don’t want the grind of teaching second grade, so they make shit up in order to “teach” us it.… Read the rest

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Trump decided to try to demonstrate that he’s smarter than Anthony Fauci.

[I]t’s becoming clearer and clearer that reopening the country is Trump’s only plan for reviving the economy. The new stimulus package is, as Trump accurately declared, dead on arrival. The Federal Reserve is low on options. The White House has now essentially bet everything that states loosening restrictions will spur growth in time for November’s election. Fauci’s words of caution are an obstacle at a moment when the economic outlook is grim.

Has anyone bothered to tell Trump that rolling out the red carpet for a pandemic and waiting for the applause as tens of … Read the rest

The busy busy president who is working so hard found time to do a long interview with Fox News this morning, in which he told an exciting story about Obama something something something.

With such bad news on the human and economic fronts, perhaps it’s not surprising that Trump seemed to be most excited about pushing his new “Obamagate” conspiracy theory about his predecessor, Barack Obama. While Trump himself hasn’t been able to explain what exactly “Obamagate” is, the general idea is that Obama was part of a conspiracy to use an FBI counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia to undermine his presidency before it even began.

…

“If I were a Democrat instead of a

Rick Bright is testifying before the House today.

The tone of Dr Bright’s testimony during this hearing is one of urgency.

Just now he warned that “The window is closing to address this pandemic because we still do not have a standardized coordinated plan to take our nation through this response.”

…

Bright, during this hearing, said that his increasingly urgent warnings about the coronavirus spread caused a “commotion” and he was pushed out of meetings as a result.

"We're in deep shit" — Bright talks about a moment from this winter when he realized the US government was unprepared for the coronavirus pic.twitter.com/gT5hCPXmZ6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2020

… Read the rest