Wait a minute let me stop you right there.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Fox & Friends: "I think it is sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian rather than the truths that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had … the crowd, they didn't mind." pic.twitter.com/Kq7OlNv5P5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 28, 2024

Fox bro: “…the mainstream media picked up on the comic’s comments, which were offensive, been denounced by the campaign n everybody else, what went on with that?” Sleazybarbie, talking like a weary mommy adjudicating a squabble between toddlers: “Look, it was a comedian who made a joke in poor taste.” Well ok then. … Read the rest

AP headline:

Trump’s Madison Square Garden event features crude and racist insults

Crude, racist, and sexist.

With just over a week before Election Day, speakers at the rally Sunday night labeled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” called Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris “the devil,” and said the woman vying to become the first woman and Black woman president had begun her career as a prostitute.

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Tony Hinchcliffe, a stand-up comic whose set also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people, all key constituencies

Training medical staff to ignore physical realities:

Women are ‘transphobic’ if they do not want to share a bathroom with a transgender colleague, NHS staff have been told.

As always, the issue is male colleagues, not “transgender” colleagues.

Women’s rights campaigners wrote to NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard to criticise the ‘partisan and ideological’ training and demand that it be amended earlier this month.

Last night, after being contacted by the Mail, the NHS admitted that it has since withdrawn the training module and that it will be replaced ‘in the next few weeks’. 

…

The training manual, which included five ‘case studies’, required staff to answer ten multiple-choice questions to test whether they are discriminatory.

In one section

A friend writes:

Let’s talk about the vice president.

There are memes and arguments going around that Kamala Harris has performed badly (or not at all) as our vice president. The White House and the Democrats have not done much to educate the public about her role and accomplishments.

And that’s probably true of most vice presidents. The only memory I have of Mike Pence is his action to prevent a coup when Donald Trump wanted to stay in power after losing an election. And my recollection of Joe Biden in the Obama administration is almost entirely limited to humor about his friendship with the president.

The Constitution requires only two things of the vice president. They must take on … Read the rest

It’s not a belief though.

Wes Streeting said “something has gone wrong in our society” as he met NHS nurses fighting to keep biological males out of a women’s changing room in their hospital.

The health secretary confirmed his belief that sex is biological, according to the “Darlington Five” nurses, who handed in a 48,000-name petition at No 10. It called for party leaders to “stand up for women” to ensure they had access to single-sex changing rooms and lavatories.

It’s not a belief. Knowing that men are not women [because their “biological sex” is male] is not a belief. Not knowing that men are not women can be a belief (as opposed to just a mistake and/or lack … Read the rest

The Scottish Greens will redouble efforts to improve trans healthcare in Scotland, working on practical ways to protect and expand access to gender affirming care. #SGPconf https://t.co/ZFriXxLLf7 pic.twitter.com/oGuoyapork

— Scottish Greens (@scottishgreens) October 27, 2024

You know…it occurs to me to wonder what’s “green” about this.

What’s the goal? All kinds of high-tech fiddling with people’s bodies, using lots of resources, for a goal that’s both impossible and the antithesis of letting nature take its course. For what? For a silly fairy tale, for a game of let’s pretend. How is it green to cheer that on when the reasons for it are so flimsy?

It’s a bad fit.… Read the rest

The stink gets even worse.

The multi-billionaire owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, continued facing criticism throughout the weekend because executives from his aerospace company met with Donald Trump on the same day the newspaper prevented its editorial team from publishing an endorsement of his opponent in the US presidential election.

And that’s not just a matter of Bezos having a busy day.

Senior news and opinion leaders at the Washington Post flew to Miami in late September 2024 to meet with Bezos, who had reservations about the paper issuing an endorsement in the 5 November election, the New York Times reported.

Oh yes? What kind of reservations?

Amazon and the space exploration company Blue Origin are

Target the…community centers?

Pro-Palestine protesters have been filmed “aggressively intimidating” attendees at a Jewish community centre as Metropolitan Police officers were accused of “sitting in their cars”.

A group of anti-Israel demonstrators gathered outside West Hampstead’s JW3 community centre earlier today. Tel Aviv-based newspaper Haaretz was hosting a conference at the JW3 in North London, with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and ex-Palestinian Foreign Minister Dr Nasser Alkidwa in attendance.

…

An eyewitness claimed there was “very little police presence” as only a “handful” of officers actively responding to the protest. They also accused a number of officers of remaining seated in their vehicles nearby rather than confronting the crowd.

Another video heaped more pressure on Scotland Yard after

Well, she’s not wrong.

Michelle Obama stood before a few thousand people at an event center in Kalamazoo on the first day of early voting in Michigan and confessed she was frustrated — and a “little angry” — at some of the things she’s heard about why people are holding back on support for Vice President Harris.

Speaking directly to the stark gender divide that polls show is a feature of this presidential campaign, Obama railed against “the lie that we do not know who Kamala is or what she stands for,” saying too many voters are shrugging off former President Donald Trump’s character and his track record on a wide range of issues.

…

“I hope you’ll forgive

It’s never possible to hate women enough. There’s always more to be done.

What is the “end game” here? Forbid #women in #Afghanistan to breathe?
What is particularly astonishing to me is that like the rest of humanity, every single one of those issuing and enforcing these edicts came from a woman’s womb and has/had a mother at some point. To be so keen… https://t.co/Dn7XYBTwhg

— Reem Alsalem UNSR Violence Against Women and Girls (@UNSRVAW) October 27, 2024

… Read the rest

That’s so Trump.

Trump says his biggest White House mistake was hiring ‘disloyal people’

It’s like those people who say “My biggest fault is being too generous/kind/caring/empathetic.”

Those comments – which also described “neocons”, or neoconservatives who generally aim to promote democracy, as “bad people” – came days after the Trump White House’s former chief of staff John Kelly said the Republican nominee in the 5 November election met the definition of a fascist.

Oh that kind of “disloyal” – disloyal to him personally, in the sense of being aware of his many massive flaws. Loyal to the country, loyal to the people, loyal to his values, but not loyal to The Monster.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan at Miscellany Room.

Driving home earlier tonight I was listening to Billy Bragg’s Changing Times, a documentary about protest music that originally aired in 2019. Bragg was speaking with the British folk-punk singer, Tom Robinson, about Robinson’s ‘British gay anthem’, (Sing if You’re) Glad to Be Gay.

For those not familiar with the song, here’s a brief précis culled from the song’s Wiki page:

The song was originally written by Tom Robinson [an out gay singer] for a London gay pride parade in 1976.

“Glad to Be Gay” is built on four verses criticising British society’s attitudes towards gay people. The first verse criticises the British police for raiding gay

There was a new batch of laws telling women to shut up in late August:

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

Women’s voices are also deemed to be potential instruments of vice and so will not be allowed to be heard in public under the new

So now Republicans are just straight-up saying what the hell let’s decide everyone voted for Trump and give him the votes before they’re counted.

The newly elected chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Andy Harris, suggested that North Carolina’s Republican-controlled state Legislature should consider awarding the state’s electors to Donald Trump before all votes are counted, according to a video of his remarks posted on social media on Friday.

Citing North Carolina counties hit by Hurricane Helene where residents may have difficulty voting, Harris said during a Q&A at a Maryland county Republican Party dinner Thursday night that it “makes a lot of sense” for the state Legislature to convene a joint session to allocate the state’s

Trump did an interview with that Joe Rogan fella, who is apparently very popular with the bro contingent or something. Said one stupid thing after another, so what else is new?

But this is a bit special:

Trump said that he hadn’t ruled out there being life in space.

“There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” he said, referring to discussions he’d had with jet pilots who’d seen “very strange” things in the sky.

He meant “there’s no reason to think” or “all these planets do have life” but never mind, we can’t expect him to keep track of all those nots. Anyway that’s special because there is in fact every… Read the rest

I am in receipt of an email today from Devon Graham at American Atheists, about Ron DeSantis’s frenzied efforts to force Florida women to stay pregnant against their wills.

In recent weeks, there have been a number of reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been abusing his administrative powers and spending unprecedented state resources in a religiously motivated bid to quash Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban and enshrine reproductive health care access in Florida’s state constitution. 

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which DeSantis oversees, launched a website alleging the initiative “threatens women’s safety” and is paying for public service announcements urging Floridians to vote no on the measure.

(That’s … Read the rest

Trump promises to imprison everyone who resists him.

I think maybe the most notable thing about Trump's campaign this year is that he has been extremely up front and transparent about the abuses of power he intends to commit if he returns to power. https://t.co/AFdCyf6uGu

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 26, 2024

Trump would disagree he’s said that the way Colonel Jessup disagreed that he ordered the Code Red on Santiago.

Bezos did it.

The Washington Post said Friday that it will not endorse a candidate in the presidential election this year — or ever again — breaking decades of tradition and sparking immediate criticism of the decision.

But the newspaper also published an article by two staff reporters revealing that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over GOP nominee Donald Trump in the election.

“The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” the article said, citing two sources briefed on the events.

…

The Post on Friday evening published a third article, signed by opinion columnists for the newspaper, who said, “The Washington Post’s decision

Uh oh.

Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Putin for two years, says report

The Wall Street Journal, citing several in-post and former US, European and Russian officials, reported that the conversations between the two men ranged from the personal to the geopolitical and included a request from the Russian leader not to activate his Starlink ​​satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favour to the Chinese leader and Putin ally, Xi Jinping.

The implications of a secret channel of communication between Musk and Putin are enormous for western security. The Tesla tycoon is a key player in the US space programme and has a high-level security clearance. His company SpaceX launches US national security satellites, his

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Taking all the medals.

My heart breaks to see the Alliance Defending Freedom in there alongside the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. It’s horrifying that the ADF and Reem Alsalem are mentioned side-by-side so casually. And it’s sickening to see so many men and women I thought were allies participating in ADF-organized events.

The ADF are hardcore Christian nationalists who devote massive amounts of effort into recriminalizing homosexuality, and throughout the world, trying to prevent the decriminalization of homosexuality. I don’t hesitate to analogize them as an anti-gay parallel to the KKK. I think they are vile, ignorant bigots of the very worst kind.

There was a time just … Read the rest