Speaking of monuments to the Confederacy and Just Asking Questions about why we should remove them and who is going around defending slavery anyway, let’s take a quick look at Florida and its education standards.

Florida’s public schools will now teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills, part of new African American history standards approved Wednesday that were blasted by a state teachers’ union as a “step backward.”

The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the

The Times on the Confederate statue and the pause in its removal:

Hours after workers began removing a towering Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, a federal judge issued an order temporarily halting the effort to dismantle one of the country’s most prominent monuments to the Confederacy on public land.

Emphasis mine, for the benefit of people who pretend to be puzzled about why the monument should be removed.

The memorial has been criticized for its sanitized depiction of slavery, and the plan to remove it from the country’s most famous cemetery is part of a militarywide effort to take down Confederate symbols from bases, ships and other facilities. Dozens of Republican lawmakers have opposed removing the

UK Schools can now say nope.

Schools will be able to overrule parents who want their children to change their gender identity if they feel it goes too far under new guidance.

The long-awaited guidance states that schools must take a “cautious approach” that complies with their legal duties.

It explicitly states that some forms of social transitioning — under which children change their pronouns, names and uniform — “will not be compatible with a school’s statutory responsibilities”.

Responsibilities like providing single-sex toilets and changing rooms, and not letting boys compete against girls in contact sports. (Should be any sports, but it’s a start.)

No duty on schools
Ministers had wanted to ban social transitioning but were unable to

Erm…sound familiar?

Boycott EVERY business owned by Jews. Make a list of every Jewish owned business in your city. Inflict financial pain on them as they have burnt, mutilated, and blown apart little children in Gaza. Stop this madness. https://t.co/VBf49UXpPg

— Rick Wiles (@realRickWiles) December 12, 2023

Yes, of course it sounds familiar. It sounds like Hitler.

Also, he doesn’t even mean “Jews,” he means Israel, or to be more precise Netanyahu’s government.

He’s a man who thinks very highly of himself and his virtue.

Rick Wiles: Disciple of Jesus, TruNews host, Final Day author, Baptist elder, Bible teacher, businessman, global Ambassador for Peace. Unable to swallow BS.

Very very very global ambassador for peace.… Read the rest

By now it’s as familiar as “Once upon a time.”

A Tory deputy chairwoman has had a “hate incident” recorded against her after she described a trans woman as a “man in a wig”.

Rachel Maclean, the MP for Redditch, was accused of transphobia after she shared a post on X, formerly Twitter, about Melissa Poulton, who is standing for the Green Party against Maclean at the next general election.

The post said that Poulton was “a man who wears a wig and calls himself a ‘proud lesbian’” and Maclean added: “‘While the Greens don’t know what a woman is, my Worcestershire neighbours the people of Bromsgrove certainly do.”

It’s also relevant that Maclean is in fact a woman, while … Read the rest

Piggy Giuliani is simply going right on libeling those two women even after the verdict.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the two Georgia election workers who won a nearly $150 million verdict against Rudy Giuliani for defamation on Friday, have sued him again, asking a federal judge to permanently prohibit him from lying about them.

The lawsuit comes as Giuliani has continued to make false statements about their work as absentee ballot counters in the 2020 election.

“Defendant Giuliani continues to spread the very same lies for which he has already been held liable,” the new lawsuit said. “Defendant Giuliani’s statements, coupled with his refusal to agree to refrain from continuing to make such statements, make clear that he

Stop stop don’t you dare remove that Confederate monument.

Hours after workers began removing a towering Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, a federal judge issued an order temporarily halting the effort to dismantle one of the country’s most prominent monuments to the Confederacy on public land.

Because why shouldn’t we have a monument to race-based enslavement? It’s such an inspiring part of our history.

The memorial has been criticized for its sanitized depiction of slavery, and the plan to remove it from the country’s most famous cemetery is part of a militarywide effort to take down Confederate symbols from bases, ships and other facilities. Dozens of Republican lawmakers have opposed removing the memorial.

This is where that … Read the rest

It’s not working any more. There are many replies and most of them ask the obvious and necessary question that has been neglected too long: what rights??? What rights exactly are you talking about? What rights don’t you have? What rights specific to trans people do you have in mind? Spell. them. out.

So you’re attacking trans people then. Because the only movement that exists is the one to prevent people like Helen from removing the rights trans people currently have. https://t.co/iU2Q95Sstp

— Thomas Willett (@ThomasWillett9) December 18, 2023

What rights? What rights is Helen trying to remove? What rights???… Read the rest

The DEI everything…

Eloquent and heartbreaking. From Harvard Law Professor Mark Ramseyer's email to a Harvard list (with permission). I came for my PhD in '99, he came as a prof in '98. We were each publicly attacked for our views in '21.
"Harvard is a vastly less tolerant place than it was when I…

— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) December 18, 2023

“Harvard is a vastly less tolerant place than it was when I arrived in 1998.  The intolerance is a function of an increasingly large fraction of our colleagues. And we – the rest of us on the Harvard faculty – let it happen. The cancelling, the punishments, the DEI bureaucracy, the DEI statements, the endless list that we … Read the rest

Still? Still?? When were we ever???

Love Actually at 20: Are we still in love with the controversial Christmas classic?

Who was ever in love with that grating cloying maddening piece of crap?

Richard Curtis’s 2003 festive drama remains a Christmas classic, albeit a controversial one.

The interlinked romantic tales of middle-class characters professing their love at Christmas gets an annual grilling from critics, viewers and even some of those involved in the film, who point out the unrealistic portrayals of love, questionable character decisions and outdated jokes.

“Unrealistic” is putting it extremely mildly. “Insane” would be more like it. The Prime Minister asks for a cup of tea and is instantly pole-axed by the young woman who brings it … Read the rest

That Times op-ed isn’t faring enormously well on twit.

Of course the @nytimes, the newspaper that wrote Hitler like this, would give a platform to propagandists like Schmitz. pic.twitter.com/a1ayFpx8bA

—1) 🌻 (@espiegler) December 18, 2023

1. (Let X=X [↩]

It turns out the key thing about Trump is his pragmatism. Who knew?

But both sides consistently misread Mr. Trump’s success. He isn’t edging ahead of Mr. Biden in swing states because Americans are eager to submit to authoritarianism, and he isn’t attracting the backing of significant numbers of Black and Hispanic voters because they support white supremacy. His success is not a sign that America is prepared to embrace the ideas of the extreme right. Mr. Trump enjoys enduring support because he is perceived by many voters — often with good reason — as a pragmatic if unpredictable kind of moderate.

Well. Even if it’s true that many voters see Trump as a pragmatic moderate – and that’s … Read the rest

It’s odd how this is framed. The Guardian tells us:

Teachers in England will not be made to automatically “out” pupils who come to them with questions over gender identity, despite a push from Conservative rightwingers for a blanket approach, government guidance due to be published this week will say.

Schools will be expected to inform parents if children tell staff that they want to take any steps towards transitioning, but they will not have to flag conversations if children are just asking general questions, or in the event of safeguarding issues.

The decision to keep some protections in place so that children are not automatically outed is likely to frustrate some on the Tory right who have been

What is the point?

Prison officers are being asked to consider the needs of “pregnant people” and “breastfeeding people” in official guidance from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). 

The MoJ equality analysis policy framework, a publicly available document, gives guidance to prison officers to ensure facilities are compliant with equality legislation.

You can’t make pregnancy and breastfeeding “equal” in the sense of both sexes being equipped to carry them out. Men can’t get pregnant or breastfeed. I hope that clears that up.

Published on April 20 2023, the guidance asks officers to consider: “How are pregnant or breastfeeding people catered for when working/visiting a prison?” 

How is it “equality” to erase women?… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The bindweed.

AJ Eckert, DO, is Connecticut’s first out nonbinary trans doctor….

Please, make up your fucking mind: choose one or the other and stick with it. You can’t be both.

No, Helen. That’s not why you’re transphobic. Asserting two sexes is just incorrect. You’re transphobic because you claim that individuals cannot ever change biological sex

It’s one thing to have activists believing the impossible, but here we have a doctor. But in order to fool others convincingly, you need to fool yourself first. Looks like it took.

This is a doctor who, from this quote alone, quite literally does not know what she’s doing. If she can prove … Read the rest

Hey kids, welcome to another episode of Naming by Idiots.

Yass yass yass! “Lesbian” does not at all mean “woman attracted to women”; that is a complete misunderstanding. I don’t know where people come up with these ideas.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by VanitysFiend on The bindweed.

I hope one day when the bottom has fallen out of the trans movement we can have a proper belly laugh at all the people who should’ve known better but still somehow fell for it and subsequently pissed away their reputations as a result, but right now this just feels sad. Sad that the website where I first learned about Lupron and its use in crank medicine as a treatment for autism is now promoting an ideology that uses that exact same drug to stall the natural development path for adolescent humans because it thinks it’ll help children change sex.

There’s a dark beauty to this level of stupidity that just … Read the rest

Now we’re onto the “poisoning the blood” phase.

Donald Trump is facing a backlash for repeating a remark at a political rally on Saturday where he said undocumented immigrants to the United States are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Of course he said that. It’s how he thinks. He says it because His People love it, but also because he loves it himself. He loves talking filth of that kind. If Hitler were still around Trump would be his best friend.

In November he was widely condemned for calling his opponents “vermin”, language that echoed that used historically by dictators and authoritarians.

Well duh. He is an authoritarian, and he would be a dictator if he could. It’s … Read the rest

What it is to be a Maga person:

The purpose of [Ruby] Freeman’s courtroom testimony was simple: to describe in detail how Giuliani’s lies had profoundly damaged her life. And make no mistake, Giuliani lied. He admitted that his statements were false back in July, and in August the court entered a default judgment against him, holding him liable for those falsehoods.

The only question left for the jury was the amount of the damages. And Friday, the jury gave its answer: Giuliani now owes Freeman and Moss $148 million to compensate them for his cruel and obvious lies.

The verdict is against Giuliani alone. But make no mistake, MAGA was on trial in the courtroom — its methods,

Science-Based Medicine has a venomous book-length post by AJ Eckert attacking Helen Joyce.

Who is AJ Eckert besides a contributor at SBM?

AJ Eckert, DO, is Connecticut’s first out nonbinary trans doctor and serves as the Medical Director of our Gender & Life-Affirming Medicine (GLAM) Program. Dr. Eckert has over 17 years’ experience in LGBTQ health care, with 9 years as a provider of primary care and gender-affirming services.

After Dr. Eckert completed their education at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine and residency at NEOMEN/Maine Dartmouth Family Medicine Program, they specialized in LGBTQ health. Dr. Eckert is board certified in family medicine.

Outside of their clinical work with patients, Dr. Eckert is active in education and advocacy. He is