Peak chutzpa.
They keep doing this cheat – this “men are to women as white people are to people of color” cheat. No, liars, it’s the other way around. Women do not hold the whip over men; it’s the other way around.
No, Rob, you are not Rosa Parks, and you are not a woman either.
Yet more of Trump abusing his power:
Trump on Friday [last week] asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive his dismissed 2022 lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton and others of conspiring to tie his 2016 campaign to Russia.
His lawsuit was dismissed because it was bullshit.
The 2022 complaint named defendants including Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential race, as well as former FBI Director James Comey, the Democratic National Committee, and former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal and the sanctions in November 2025.
…
U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks dismissed the suit in September 2022 and in January 2023 imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions on Trump and his then-attorney Alina Habba, describing the complaint as a “two-hundred-page political manifesto,” Al Jazeera reported.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court, including Andrew Brasher, a Trump appointee, unanimously upheld both rulings, finding that “many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments were indeed frivolous.”
Because that’s all Trump has. His head is empty; all he has is vanity and rage and spite.
Just the other day we were being told (aka shouted at) that John Cleese had become a terrible reactionary who should be shunned and denounced.
If I want to be with someone, I let them know. I don’t like to pretend. As a lesbian, that’s not always been easy. I’m old enough to remember Clause 28, old enough to remember men telling me they didn’t want me in the same changing room as their wives because I wasn’t a real woman. I knew people who’d spent fifty years in the closet but I didn’t want to live half a life.
Back then there was a lot of fear and hostility, especially in the working-class community I came from, in Kirkcaldy, Fife, but my parents were extraordinary. There was no big discussion or anything like that, just the understanding that they wanted me to be happy. In many ways they were the ones who gave me that template. Sure, they had disagreements, but it was obvious that they had each found the person they were meant to be with.
Life is a lot simpler for gay couples than it was fifty years ago — Scotland is one of the best places in Europe for civil partnerships — but there are still mountains to climb. I think the persecution of trans women has been appalling. Trans does not damage lesbianism. Womanhood is a big tent; it goes all the way from Kim Kardashian to me and everything in between. First, we bring people in, then we sort out the problems.
Well, of course womanhood is a big tent, because women are half of humanity. The tent is massive, but that doesn’t mean it includes men. If Big Tent Womanhood includes men then it’s no longer Big Tent Womanhood. Men are the opposite of women, and vice versa, so men can’t be included in womanhood; it’s a logical impossibility.
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce at Miscellany Room 15.
Last weekend my wife and I were sitting outside at our favourite local cafe. A woman sat down at the next table. On her jacket were a number of embroidered patches. One was “NO MEANS NO.” Another said “PROTECT TRANS LIVES.” Oblivious, unironic, culture civil-war in a single jacket.
Trans lives are no way in danger, but wearing this patch is supposed to make us believe they are. They’re not an endangered species, but slogans like this are just a part of the “NO DEBATE!” gambit, which is designed to protect the ideology as much as, if not more than, trans people themselves. We have more than enough instances where questions and criticism of genderism are taken as “denying trans people’s right to exist”. This patch is basically more of the same, thought-terminating transperbole. (Pointing out the relative safety of the trans demographic would make me a transphobic bigot plotting trans genocide, exactly the sort of person against whom this this baby blue, pink, and white patch is supposed to act as a shield and talisman.)
I’d spotted the “NO MEANS NO” patch first, but somehow suspected the other one (or something like it) would be there too. Trans “rights” (at least those espoused by and for TiMs) depend almost entirely upon the violation of women’s boundaries, the deliberate flouting of “No means no.” I thought she was lucky that her jacket didn’t spontaneously combust from the cognitive dissonance to which it had been subjected.
As a coda, just before we left, while my wife was using the bathroom, the first woman was joined at her table by a second. Soon after, a TiM who was a mutual friend of the two women showed up, and Ms. Jacket (after shrieking in delighted shock at Mr. Tim’s dyed blonde hair) asked me if “she” could have the empty seat my wife was no longer using. I said sure, as we were leaving soon. Mr. Tim was taller than I am, had an unremarkable, though distinctly male voice, and sported five o’clock shadow. He wore leggings that left no doubt as to the nature of his “material reality.” I wondered if this guy was part of the impetus behind the “PROTECT TRANS LIVES” badge. I wondered if he had ever broken the spirit of the other badge by entering women’s spaces under the cover of the central lie of transactivism, that men can be women? I wondered, if push came to shove, whose side Ms. Jacket would take if a woman were to object to her male friend’s use of a woman’s restroom or changing space? Sadly, I think I already know the answer. I suspect she would protect her friend’s “trans life” by letting him violate a woman’s “No.”
What’s wrong with this menu of assertions?
First, the “deserve to be visible” item.
No they don’t. That’s just silly. Nobody “deserves” to be visible.
Perhaps the intended meaning is that trans people shouldn’t be kept out of sight as if they were the Alien, but then that’s a much more limited and hence plausible claim. It’s not clever to overreach this way on human rights issues. You just sound like a crank instead of a thoughtful observer.
Then, the second column, where all the ways we have to flatter trans people are listed. They don’t work. There are too many of them, and most of them demand too much. Sure, other things being equal, everyone deserves to be safe. All the others are extras, which depend on circumstances and facts and inconvenient criteria like that. Most of them depend on other people being massively generous with our time and attention and emotional labor, and it’s just not at all clear why we all owe that to trans people in particular. We all deserve nice things unless we don’t, and trans people don’t have some magic extra layer of deserving. Nobody is required to cherish them or celebrate them or understand them or uplift them.
All this baby talk is so cringeworthy. Feminists didn’t come bouncing up demanding love and cuddles and 24/7 attention. We demanded equal rights and an end to contempt. The basics.
Nothing at all corrupt about this, oh hell no.
President Donald Trump collected $333 million in private donations to pay for his ballroom project, with the largest donations coming from tech companies and two billionaires, according to a new report.
Apple and Nvidia each gave $25 million, according to a list obtained by The Washington Post.
So did Trump friend Miriam Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate, along with billionaire EchoStar cofounder Charlie Ergen and his donor-advised fund, the report said.
The list includes 67 donations above $10,000 and 57 above $100,000 recorded as of late September; additional records indicate at least $77 million came from donors who requested anonymity,” according to The Post.
And they gave all this cash because they think the White House really needs a new oversized vulgar dance parlor?
Nvidia requested its $25 million donation be kept anonymous, according to The Washington Post. The company made the donation in October 2025, about three months after it reached a deal with the Trump administration to sell its microchips to China. Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo told The Post in response to its findings, “as an American company, our support for the United States is paramount, and independent of any business interests,” adding, “we were proud to be able to make a donation to a nonpartisan trust that serves all Americans and have said so publicly since the donation was made.”
Say what? How on earth does a trashy oversized new ballroom serve all Americans?
Many of the companies and individuals on the list have business with the Trump administration. The crypto industry—which Trump has personally profited from and has loosened regulations on during his second term—and its investors gave $18 million, including more than $5 million from Gemini crypto exchange cofounders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. Isabela Herrera, the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutinii, a Venezuelan-Italian banker indicted on bribery charges, agreed to donate $2.5 million a month after her father’s charges were reduced to a misdemeanor in a plea agreement.
There you go, that’s definitely serving all Americans. Thanks Donzo.
Elon Musk on Wednesday called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “go” after Kyiv raised doubts over US support for his country against the Russian invasion.
I call on Musk to go.
Ukraine accused the United States this week of helping Russia by failing to warn it of incoming missile strikes and hobbling Kyiv’s military response through changes to Musk’s satellite system which it uses for communications.
“And so the slaughter continues,” Musk wrote on X. “Time for Zelensky to go.”
Time for you to go, you Quisling piece of shit.
The row comes after Zelensky replied in the affirmative when asked if he felt “betrayed” after US President Donald Trump announced a diesel-supply deal with heavily sanctioned Moscow.
Trump, facing key midterm elections next month in which fuel prices are a major issue, has blamed Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries for the squeeze on supplies and increase in prices at the pump.
A senior official in Kyiv confirmed that the United States had in recent days threatened to stop providing intelligence about Russian missile launches that Ukraine uses to thwart attacks.
Evil demons, all of them.
Jeez, it only took them a year and a half. Lightning speed.
NHS bosses will finally tell hospitals they must stop letting trans women onto female wards 18 months after a landmark court ruling.
Under new guidance to be published later today, staff will be required to accommodate patients according to their biological sex.
Why only now? Why did it take so long?
Separate new guidelines, also to be published today, will make clear that staff must use single sex changing rooms and toilets that align with their biological sex.
Female nurses have previously told of their unease at being forced to undress in front of transgender colleagues.
In front of male colleagues. The issue is the maleness, not the transness.
Mind you, it could be that both are issues. The “trans” part is a sign of at least credulity, and at worst seriously disordered thinking. I wouldn’t much like to work around a colleague who was either that self-centered or that fatuous.
NHS England will write to NHS trusts and integrated care boards to inform them of the new guidelines and require chief executives and boards to take action.
The changes follow the Supreme Court’s ruling in April 2025 that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex, and subsequent guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
They “follow” the ruling from very very far away.
Former health secretary Wes Streeting had promised to publish revised NHS guidelines by summer 2025 but it has been a year and a half since the court ruling.
He said at the time: ‘I do think biological same–sex spaces are really important, particularly for women and for women’s safety, but we also need to make sure that we’re providing dignity and care and compassion and respect for trans people.’
It’s not even really “respect” for trans people to humor their delusions or their games of let’s pretend. More to the point, it violates dignity and care and respect for everyone else.
The whole thing is like a parody of previous campaigns for equality and respect. Women, people of color, workers really have long been exploited, ignored, treated with contempt. People who claim to be the other sex, not so much.
Responding to the Supreme Court ruling, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: ‘We are proud to be one of the UK’s leading providers of gender affirming services.
‘As such, our unwavering commitment and support for trans+ and non-binary service users and staff remains the same.
‘We will continue to respect and uphold our service users’ right to self-identify
Stop right there, in the middle of the sentence. There is no such thing as a right to self-identify. The reason is obvious, or rather the reasons are obvious. Bank accounts, for instance. Job titles. Access. Criminal records. Parentage. We can take people at face value for some purposes but not all purposes. It’s childish to pretend otherwise. Sex is very much on the no side of those purposes. No. We need to know whether you’re female or male; we don’t have to play your silly game along with you.
All very suitable for the Trump administration, where truth is as scarce as truffles in Antarctica.
The White House is defending its new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, as she faces scrutiny over her legal credentials.
President Donald Trump described Zacharia as an attorney when announcing her appointment last week and she has referred to herself as a lawyer.
But when she was asked on Tuesday by a reporter in which state she had passed the bar exam required to be an attorney in the US, she said standing alongside the president: “When I moved to China.”
Excellent answer, except that When I moved to China is not a state – it’s not even a city or a town or a village or a couple of houses on a dirt road.
Also – minor point – China doesn’t do US bar exams.
She does not appear to be registered to the bar in any state where she has lived. White House communications director Steven Cheung said Zacharia is “uniquely qualified and whip smart to help inform the American people”.
Well, she’s uniquely qualified in the sense that she’s apparently not qualified at all. That’s an odd way of putting it, but maybe Cheung likes to do his communications directing with a touch of whimsy.
Sir sir sir sir that’s not true sir, none of that happened sir, you made it all up sir. There aren’t Republican voting places and Democratic voting places; the ballot is supposed to be secret. Remember that? The secret ballot? It’s kind of a big deal. If the ballot’s not secret then elections can be distorted, aka stolen. Did you know that? Probably not. You don’t know much.
The press secretary is supposed to spin the news, not be the news.
On that most essential qualification, the new lead White House spokeswoman, Katie Zacharia, is struggling.
She has presented herself as a lawyer but does not meet the requirements in her home state to use that title.
But she went to law school! What more do you want?!
Zacharia has a law degree from the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, but there’s no evidence she ever passed a bar exam. She does claim to have obtained a credential in China, but it’s not at all clear what credential she’s talking about.
The technical term is bullshit credential.
Press secretaries don’t have to be lawyers but they do have to tell the truth, or did until very recently.
The issue is that Zacharia has presented herself repeatedly on TV, including on CNN, as a lawyer, something the independent journalist Judd Legum first documented. Trump used the term “attorney” to describe her when he announced she would be his press secretary.
A review by CNN’s K-File found at least six instances when she referred to herself as either a lawyer or a corporate lawyer in her own words and multiple other instances in which she posted or reposted to social media using the term attorney or “legal strategist.”
Washington, DC, is filled to the brim with people who have law degrees but do not practice law. And it does not appear that Zacharia inappropriately tried to represent anyone in a court.
But all of this does suggest the vetting operation at the White House is, to be charitable, not very thorough.
Which is charitablese for nonexistent.
There are requirements for college and law school, or their equivalents; for “good moral character”; passing an ethics exam; and passing the bar exam in California.
Zacharia, as a result, should not be considered a lawyer in California, the state where she has lived and worked.
A separate section of California law makes it a misdemeanor to pretend to be a lawyer.
If only there were a federal law that makes it a felony to pretend to be qualified to be president. If only if only if only.
Wellll she’s a lawyer the same way Trump is a president.
When President Donald Trump announced Katie Zacharia would be his new White House press secretary, he called her “an attorney.”
Now, Zacharia, a conservative commentator who made her debut in the White House briefing room on Tuesday, is facing scrutiny over her credentials and how she has represented herself over the course of her career.
Journalist Judd Legum, who writes the Popular Information newsletter, wrote on Tuesday that Zacharia has long touted her credentials as a lawyer during appearances on national news outlets. Legum added that Zacharia was identified as a lawyer during at least 18 appearances on Fox News Channel since March 2025.
Ah well if Fox News says so…
While Zacharia graduated with a law degree from Pepperdine University, Legum wrote that he found no evidence she has ever passed a bar exam in any state or Washington, D.C. Aspiring lawyers must normally pass a state’s bar exam before they can be licensed to practice law in that state. However, the criteria for admission to the bar are set by each state, according to the American Bar Association.
On Tuesday, when a journalist asked which state Zacharia had passed the bar exam in, she replied: “When I moved to China.” That has raised further questions about whether it is possible for her to have done so, and the legal work she has undertaken since.
It has also raised the question about whether that’s any kind of answer to the question. “When I moved to ___” does not answer the question “which state did you pass the bar exam in”. It’s a where question, not a when question. In addition, China is not a state, it’s a country – a separate country, on the other side of the planet. Also moving to somewhere is not passing the bar exam. The two are different. Always be aware of differences; they matter.
So Musk is helping Putin smash Ukraine?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy‘s office confirmed on Wednesday that the country’s military has been cut off from full access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system as it seeks to defend itself against a now nearly five-year Russian invasion.
“Tonight SpaceX introduced a speed limit for the Starlink terminals in motion,” said Presidential Adviser Sergiy Beskrestnov. “Our defence forces were not warned about this restriction, which led to the disruption of a number of missions. Obviously, this action cannot be a coincidence and is linked to the current political situation,” he added.
What situation is that?
That political situation refers to US President Donald Trump‘s recent decision to extend Russian President Vladimir Putin a lifeline by lifting sanctions, buying Russian oil and berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — saying he needs to stop attacking Russian oil infrastructure and that he should be replaced because “he won’t make a deal” with Russia.
Another plunge into the abyss.
Another rape crisis centre, another insult to women.
In July 2025 I resolved a 4 year legal case against the Brighton rape crisis centre Survivors’ Network for their failure to provide women with a single-sex peer support group. You can read the background to the case here.
You can read our joint statement following the resolution here.
On 27 March of this year, almost eight months after publication of the Joint Statement, Katy Bourne OBE, of The Sussex Police & Crime Commissioner announced there would be:
“A women-only* support group for survivors of sexual violence – provided by Survivors Network – available from April 26”, “women only” meaning “those assigned female at birth, who still identify as a woman”.
Survivors’ Network states on its website that the group (the Maple Group):
- Is part of a pilot commissioned by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex, initially running for a year;
- Will take place on Mondays, 14:00 – 16:00 at an accessible venue in the centre of Brighton; and
- Is for biological women survivors who still identify as women.
It’s that Monty Python skit about the important document available to everyone that’s in a locked box in a closet in a basement in Outer Mongolia – not the exact wording but you get the drift of the joke, and here it is in real life, not a joke but an astounding insult. Ok, bitches, you get your god damn “women only” service, for two hours a week. Can’t make it at that time? Tough shit.
It’s just astounding.
It just didn’t work out for them.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece until she was effectively fired on live television on Tuesday when the new White House press secretary said that President Trump had asked for her resignation, was at one point engaged to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. The couple owned a $9.7 million home in Florida, appeared at Trump rallies together and sent each other adoring posts on Instagram.
A very clumsy first sentence, but you get the drift. The usual Trump family grift of handing out important government jobs to random people they happen to know from the golf club or the poker game or jail.
Today, the junior Mr. Trump is married to a Florida socialite and model. And Ms. Guilfoyle, who was nominated as ambassador to Greece by the president soon after her engagement to his son was broken off two years ago, is out of a job after a series of damning reports in The Wall Street Journal, including that she asked a Republican donor to pay off $100,000 on her American Express credit card just before her Senate confirmation hearing in July 2025.
So? A hundred k? Big deal. The donor should have complied and thanked her for her attention to this matter.
The rise and fall of Ms. Guilfoyle, 57, was not a surprise at the White House, where many saw her as a flamboyant party girl with questionable judgment.
A party girl? At age 57?
Anyway. She’s out.
Dang, this takes some nerve. We’re the cult??? We’re the ones using language in a novel fashion? We’re the ones trying to isolate “members” from the “outside world”?
No, dude, trans dogmatists are the cult who use language in a deranged fashion and try to isolate members from people who know that men are not women.
Also, whoever Wayne is, he’s a bozo. “Cookie” is a strictly US word; UK terfs don’t use it at all, let alone blither about tiptop cookie pie.
The BBC is sharpening its knives.
BBC Factual and BBC Scotland announce J.K. Rowling (w/t), a two-part documentary series from Rogan Scotland (Becoming Frida Kahlo; The Secret of Me; Becoming Victoria Wood) for BBC Two, BBC Scotland and iPlayer, which traces Rowling’s dramatic rise, cultural influence and contested legacy, using her life as a lens through which to explore three decades of profound social, political and technological change.
[Wtf is w/t? Working title? Why do they include it in an article? Why do they expect the general public to be familiar with journalism/media jargon?]
No doubt the “contested legacy” bit will be presented very fairly and reasonably.
Kidding! I never can resist a joke.
Episode two follows Rowling as she steps out from behind her creation and becomes an increasingly powerful political voice. Amid the rise of social media and intensifying culture wars, her interventions on Scottish independence, feminism, free speech and gender identity place her at the centre of increasingly bitter online exchanges. Admired by supporters as a fearless defender of women’s rights and condemned by critics who call her an opponent of trans equality, she finds herself divided from some of the actors and fans who once championed her work.
Yo, Beeb, what does “trans equality” mean?
You sneaky shits know damn well she’s not opposed to equality or rights for anyone. There’s no such thing as “equality” that means pretending to be other people and forcing everyone to endorse and flatter the pretending. JKR does not, repeat not, oppose equality or rights for trans people. You know that.
James Rogan, Executive Producer, said: “J.K. Rowling has achieved extraordinary literary success, with her influence spanning a generation of fans, crossing into cinema and the online world. Rogan Scotland explores her unique story from her early days as a writer to the present moment and how her unflinching personal beliefs have sparked a fraught and divisive dialogue that continues to this day.”
It’s fraught and divisive only because people and organizations like the Beeb have been forcing it on us for the past decade and more despite the fact that it rests on an enormous and insulting lie.
Meanwhile Trump has just done a scorched earth move on a DC public park that he wants to turn into a golf course. He violated a judge’s order in doing so.
The superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, a unit of the National Park Service, was ordered to testify under oath in U.S. District Court in D.C. on Monday after a federal judge ordered a stop to all tree cutting at East Potomac Golf Course until at least Tuesday morning, days after the NPS began a new round of tree removals at the historic golf course.
U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes ordered NMMP Superintendent Kevin Griess to testify about the removal of 430 trees Saturday, including who ordered the removal and when he received the order.
430 trees. In a public park. Because pigman wants yet another golf course.
“I am thoroughly unamused right now. I do not know how I could have made it any plainer that I did not want what was to happen to happen. I have given the government every single benefit of the doubt, that it would not do precisely what it has done,” Judge Reyes said at the start of the hearing Monday morning. “Every single time, I have given the government the benefit of the doubt, and every single time I made absolutely clear that I wanted notice.”
She shared that the administration only gave the court and the plaintiffs 12 hours notice of the tree cutting on Friday, while the federal government’s legal defense, the U.S. Department of Justice, learned of the tree cutting on Thursday, Oct. 8.
“The amount of benefit of the doubt that I have given the government, no one could have thought or overlooked the fact that the plaintiffs should have gotten notice immediately,” Reyes said, adding that she’s “furious” that government went against its promises to the court.
The tree removals come as Trump has moved to turn the course into a world-class golf venue as part of his grand vision for D.C.
We don’t want his god damn grand vision for DC or anything else. His grand visions are the vulgar trashy gold-plated visions of a man like donaldtrump.
NPR underlines the fact that the Justice Department is ok with all this.
Federal agents searched the Washington, D.C. home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Monday morning.
The Department of Justice said in a statement to NPR that agents with Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant.”
The warrant was approved by the DOJ and is part of an “ongoing federal investigation.” Federal authorities did not give further details on the reason for the probe.
All very well but this is not normal. Separation of powers type of thing. The executive branch is not supposed to harass the legislative branch. This looks more like harassment (to put it mildly) as opposed to genuine law enforcement.
Jackie Rogers, a spokesperson for the congresswoman, called the search a “raid” and an “outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies.”
Sharon Jackson, 79, lives across the street from the congresswoman and said federal agents woke her up around 4:30 a.m. Monday morning.
“I got awakened by boom, boom, boom,” Jackson said. “They were out here with a great big truck.”
See what I mean? Why the hell turn up at 4:30 in the morning? How is that anything but harassment?
The search took place ahead of next month’s midterm elections, in which Omar is seeking reelection.
Vice President Vance has previously alleged Omar committed immigration fraud — something she denies.
Even if she did, how is it necessary to raid her house at 4:30 a.m.?