The US is a disgrace.

Early voting opened Monday in Georgia for the 2020 general election — but the first day was marred by technical issues and lines that in some locations stretched more than five hours long, particularly in the Atlanta metro area.

FIVE HOURS. Can you imagine?

But that’s not even the worst.

Now at 11hrs in line but we are next! A long journey but wouldn’t be anywhere else! Please vote everyone! pic.twitter.com/ifRcbK1XRm

— Johnta Austin (@johntalsr) October 12, 2020

Back to NPR:

Voters arriving in the morning at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, the home of the NBA’s Hawks — and the state’s largest early voting site, with 300 voting machines — encountered technical issues,

ACB is a big fan of forced pregnancy.

Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court nominee, signed off on an advertisement in 2006 that called for the overturning of Roe v Wade, and called the landmark abortion rights decision “barbaric” and a “raw exercise of judicial power”.

The two-page ad, published by the St Joseph County Right to Life group, an extreme anti-choice organization in South Bend, Indiana, is the most striking evidence to have emerged to date of Barrett’s personal opposition to Roe v Wade.

And thus to women’s right to decide whether to be pregnant or not.

The first page of the ad, which is signed by Barrett and her husband, Jesse, states that life begins at “fertilization”.

The NAACP has thoughts on Amy Coney Barrett.

We have reviewed Amy Coney Barrett’s record on civil rights, including her writings as a law professor and her three years as an appellate court judge. On issue after issue, we have found her to be stunningly hostile to civil rights. Her aggressive view of when past decisions should be overruled, combined with her reactionary positions on what rights the Constitution protects, will jeopardize our hard-fought wins in the Court. Her scholarship questions even foundational principles such as whether the Fourteenth Amendment was properly adopted and whether Brown v. Board of Education remains viable authority. Her repeated endorsement of discrimination in the workplace—including the stunning conclusions that separate can be equal

Trump’s America:

The wife of Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor alleges she was insulted with a racial slur while grocery shopping this week.

Alleges it but also documents it, so…

Gisele Barreto Fetterman, who is married to Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, told CNN the incident happened Sunday evening. In a two-second video Fetterman posted on her Twitter account, a White woman is seen lowering her mask and saying, “You’re a nigger” through Fetterman’s open car window and then walking away. Fetterman was born in Brazil.

*TRIGGER WARNING* I love love love this country but we are so deeply divided. I ran to the local grocery store and was met by and verbally assaulted by this woman who repeatedly told me

No no no.

No no no. The point isn’t that all women have a cervix, it’s that only women have a cervix. If a woman doesn’t have a cervix then she’ll know warnings and information about the cervix aren’t relevant to her; problem solved. It’s silly and confusing to talk about people with a cervix not because all women have one but because only women have one.

It’s both ridiculous and insulting to detach the word “women” from the word “cervix” simply because of all this childish pretending and role playing.

And we don’t need any Joes explaining it to us.… Read the rest

This cannot be true. The Guardian:

Diners have rushed to pay up to £360 per head to eat a meal on a stationary plane, in the latest sign of public appetite to recreate the onboard experience without travelling.

Who would do that???

Being on a plane is an absolute nightmare. The only thing that makes it just barely endurable is wanting to go where the plane is moving you*. Doing it for the sake of doing it is inconceivable.

*Actually, also the view if there is any.

Singapore Airlines launched a waiting list after tickets rapidly sold out for two weekends of sittings onboard two stationary A380 superjumbos, with meals at seats and the chance to watch a movie,

Rosie Duffield MP is taking heat again.

Rosie Duffield got a standing ovation in the House of Commons last year when she revealed her experiences of domestic abuse in a speech that left many of her colleagues in tears. The Labour MP for Canterbury has been attacked by left-wingers for speaking out against antisemitism and vilified by right-wingers for campaigning against Brexit.

Now she is on the front line in the culture war accused of being “transphobic” after she liked a tweet suggesting that “individuals with a cervix” should be described as “women”.

Tweet-liking crime – it’s an epidemic!

The vitriol poured on her has left her “completely terrified”, she says. She has in the past suffered intimidation at

More COVID spreading, because it’s just that urgent to re-enslave women.

Senator Mike Lee — who tested positive for COVID-19 the same day as President Donald Trump — said Monday that he is cured and personally attended the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

…

Some Democrats questioned whether proceeding was safe. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said, “Who has been tested? Who has been tested? Who is a danger? What contact tracing has been done on infected and exposed senators and staff? Nothing. The whole thing, just like Trump, is an irresponsible botch.”

But totally worth it to get a cultist religious fanatic on the Supreme Court so that she can make a majority to force … Read the rest

Mail-order puberty blockers…what could go wrong?

A UK chemist has been flogging puberty blockers for children online, courtesy of a company set up by disgraced gender doctor, Helen Webberley.

Puberty blockers and sex hormones can be dispatched via a “quick, discreet delivery” once they pay for prescriptions from a private clinic abroad https://t.co/hzPfVG9aE8

— The Times (@thetimes) October 6, 2020

The Times has discovered that an online pharmacy, Clear Chemist, has been selling hormone treatments to ‘trans children’ on the internet and that this medication is being prescribed by GenderGP, the clinic originally founded by Helen Webberley.

In 2017 Helen Webberley was suspended by the General Medical Council, pending an investigation into her conduct. She and her husband,

Save Women’s Sports posted an item yesterday:

The Save Women’s Sports flag was raised this morning over Nashua City Hall, where it will be flying through Friday! Thank you to Beth Scaer for your dedication to our movement! Ask your city if they offer this option and we can send a flag your way!

But it got taken down today. A Nashua group page patted itself on the back for silencing women.

Yesterday morning, a flag was raised over Nashua City Hall in support of a transphobic organization, with the expectation that it would continue to fly until Friday. As word spread through the community, the response was clear – this isn’t what Nashua stands for. Many folks

First, the wildly dishonest ad:

Next, Fauci’s emphatic disavowal of the ad’s use of something he said months ago.

Dr. Anthony Fauci did not consent to being featured in a new advertisement from the Trump campaign touting President Donald Trump‘s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert told CNN his words were taken out of context.

“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials,” Fauci said in a statement provided

Blegh.

Also – it’s Rowling like rolling, not Rowling like howling. Rowl as in bowl, not as in cowl. English is completely wack and pronounces words randomly, whatever the spelling.

H/t Pliny… Read the rest

James Barry on Ireland and women and the new woke erasure of women:

Enough now, Irish Twitter libfems. (Irish rant coming up). JUST because you made some noise for Repeal, and gained a few followers, does NOT make you the gatekeeper for “Irish feminism.” You’re NOT the person who forevermore gets to say “this is what Irish women are, or want.” 

It wasn’t just the young and woke who caused Repeal to happen.

Ireland was awful for a young woman in the 50s & 60s & 70s & 80s- and even 90s. ALL the women who lived through those terrible times, had a voice in the Repeal the 8th Referendum. The “repeal” doesn’t belong to any one group. 

…

“Misleading” is a polite way of putting it.

Twitter on Sunday added a warning label to a tweet from President Donald Trump, who tested positive for the coronavirus and said he is no longer contagious. 

Trump tweeted on Sunday that he received a “total and complete sign off from White House Doctors yesterday.”

“That means I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it,” the president added. “Very nice to know!!!”

So he’s admitting that he didn’t “know” that before and thus knew he was being reckless with other people’s lives. Surprise surprise.

The tweet contains “misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19,” the Twitter label says. It remains accessible because “Twitter has determined that it may be

How can they do that?

Jon Karl opens This Week by saying the White House blocked Fauci and all federal government medical experts from appearing on the show pic.twitter.com/KOhsgPW2Qh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 11, 2020

I don’t understand how they have the authority to do that. Fauci is not an employee of Trump’s, and anyway employers don’t generally have the power to control what employees do in their own time, do they? I don’t understand what this “blocked” means.

Axios elaborates:

The White House refused to allow Anthony Fauci or any of the medical experts on the coronavirus task force to appear on ABC’s “This Week,” host Jon Karl said Sunday.

But why is it a matter of … Read the rest

Good catch.

If the BBC really thought transwomen were women, they would have put the age of Grace McKenzie, not just Sharron Davies (57).https://t.co/TORzLnmjoF

— Crone in a Million (@CroneInAMillion) October 11, 2020

How the BBC words it:

Speaking to BBC Sport in August, Grace McKenzie, a trans woman who plays for Golden Gate Women’s rugby club in San Francisco, said she was worried “that other sporting federations will look at World Rugby and begin to second-guess the existing science that supports trans women’s inclusion in sport, and begin to make policies based out of a place of fear instead of a place of logic and reason”.

“I want to be able to participate fully with my

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on Like shards of glass stuck in your brain.

I have just read the Croatian writer Daša Drndić’s extraordinary novel-cum-documentary, ‘Trieste’, which is about the destruction of the Italian Jews. A number of Jewish families gave their children to the Catholic Church for safe-keeping. After the defeat of Naziism & the Fascists, the Catholic Church refused to return the children to their families. Monsignor Angelo Roncall, papal nuncio to France and future Pope John XXIII was required to ensure that the Church retained supervision and guardianship over Jewish children who were baptised. Jewish children who had been baptised were on no account to be handed over to Jewish agencies with responsibility for the … Read the rest

Hoo-boy.

One idea Trump considered while still at Walter Reed was wearing a Superman T-shirt under his dress shirt as he left the hospital.@maggieNYT https://t.co/msKt8t66Hy pic.twitter.com/xOyUOkb7oh

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 10, 2020

In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer.

Very adult, very sensible, very even keel, very normal … Read the rest

Cancel everything. Better safe than sorry. Broadway World tells us:

Richmond Triangle Players has released the following statement announcing the cancellation of its production of “The Second Coming of Joan of Arc”, original scheduled to run in-person and streaming through October 10, 2020.

“After weeks of rehearsals and steady preparation to open our production of The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, we discovered a great number of views and opinions expressed by and endorsed on the playwright’s personal Facebook page that, after intense investigation and research, we believe to be transphobic.”

So it takes “intense investigation and research” to decide that the playwright’s opinions are transphobic? And even then it’s only their belief? And for that they … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on Shame and fear of damnation.

It has taken decades of therapy and hard work to overcome the intense feelings of shame and fear of damnation that she said marked her childhood.

This. So much this. I have been out of Christianity for over 40 years, and I still deal with this nearly every day. It is like shards of glass stuck in your brain. No matter how much you know on an intellectual level that these are fallacious beliefs, that you are not a bad person, you still respond to certain things in the way you have been trained to respond. I have been trying to root out those shards of glass in … Read the rest