Yeah no he doesn’t get to do that.

“I hereby declare your airspace closed!”

“Backsies!”

Venezuela has reacted angrily to US President Donald Trump’s statement that the airspace around the country should be considered closed.

The country’s foreign ministry called Trump’s comments “another extravagant, illegal and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people”.

The US does not have legal authority to close another country’s airspace and the Venezuelan statement accused Trump of making a “colonialist threat”.

Colonialist or idiotic. One of those.

Trump wrote on Truth Social: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

Writing something on a personal social media platform is just … Read the rest

When the mainstream media just plain lie to us:

The Guardian:

Woman jailed for harassing Rachel Reeves’s MP sister

But it’s not a woman. But the Guardian just plain lies about it before admitting it.

A woman who tried to summon her MP, the solicitor general Ellie Reeves, to court has been jailed for harassment in London.

Tracey Smith sent Reeves 22 emails and 10 voicemails calling her “transphobic” and accusing her older sister – the chancellor, Rachel Reeves – of physically assaulting her at a buffet bar.

Smith, who is a trans woman, used phrases including “a person is dangerous when they have nothing to lose” and “bullets will be flying around”.

Not until the third paragraph … Read the rest

When the headlines say woman but it’s not a woman.

Susan Dalgety in The Scotsman:

…a few days ago, my friend and co-editor Lucy Hunter Blackburn and I were sent an open letter signed by a motley crew of more than 150 members of Scotland’s “academic, heritage, arts, literary and cultural sectors”.

It was addressed to the board and senior management of the National Library of Scotland and, in the whiny voice of an entitled teenager denied the latest iPhone, complained that the inclusion of a “certain book” in the library’s centenary exhibition created a “hostile environment for queer and trans people working at and visiting the library”.

How would that work exactly? Can people visiting the library somehow sense that the “certain book” is there even if they … Read the rest

Trump thinks exercise is bad for you.

It’s old news, but it’s so absurd I can’t just look away.

Most recently, there was this nugget of information from a New Yorker magazine story about the president. Trump “considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy,” writes Evan Osnos.

This belief is also described in the Washington Post’s biography of the 45th president, which explains that he gave up sports after college because of this same mysterious “battery” belief, that working out would deplete his energy.

But but but then how does he explain all the successful athletes who…work out?

Spoiler: he doesn’t.… Read the rest

Hmmm yeah people don’t get to declare other people’s countries’ airspace closed. That’s not how that works.

Trump said on Saturday that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety”, but gave no further details as Washington ramps up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

A fool shouting something on social media is just a fool shouting something on social media.

What he means is that he’s planning to shoot down planes in Venezuelan air space. He’s not allowed to do that either.

U.S.

It’s called escalation.

A judge has told a non-binary health worker who tried to sue their NHS Trust over being ‘deadnamed’ and ‘mis-pronouned’ that they should not have been so offended.

Using preferred pronouns to live as non-binary does not have the same protected status as reassigning sex, employment judge Ann Nicola Benson found.

Ooooooooooh you’re not allowed to say that. Living as non-binareee is SACRED and nobody is allowed to say it’s not as anything as anything else.

The case was brought against Cheshire and Wirral NHS Foundation Trust and six staff members by Haech Lockwood, a cognitive behavioural therapist.

Rilly? Who wants cognitive anything from an egocentric loon?

‘We therefore find that the claimant does not have

To the surprise of no one, Trump is doing what Trump does.

Trump is doubling down on the aggressive anti-immigration policies that helped deliver him a second term, launching an interagency federal investigation into the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, while also directing his administration to take steps to stem migration into the US.

In the hours following the shooting, an emboldened Trump addressed the American public. He painted a picture of a country overrun with “cuckoo” and “unvetted” migrants and he vowed a crackdown to expel them from the country and “permanently pause migration” from others – a priority he’s centered in his return to the Oval Office.

…

Hours later, the president intensified

From SEEN in Journalism:

We’ve contacted BBC Scotland about the trigger warning, or ‘content signposting’, on Scotcast with Naomi Cunningham.

The use of signposts on content based on the reality of sex is unique in this debate.

We’re pleased that Scotcast conducted and published this interview even though the other side did not respond to an invitation.

This is in line with Editorial Guidelines: items must not be vetoed because one side does not take part.

However having to ‘empty chair’ the other side does not justify repeated content warnings, which imply potential offence, abuse, discrimination, extreme or hateful speech or misogyny.

We’ve asked the BBC never to use trigger warnings for ‘gender critical’ content again, unless it’s also

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Who just went along with it.

I’ve heard working-class women come out very strongly for “the ideology”. I’ve heard a female friend saying that she would have no issue with sharing a changing room with a trans-identified male, even if he still had male genitalia.

Perhaps this is an illustration of how memes work, right? There is this idea that a female mind (and mind is ill-defined) can be trapped in a male body, and since it’s the male mind that is most likely to commit sexual abuse then such women feel safe with an intact male who has a female mind in their space. So, for Brian Wu to go in … Read the rest

Jump to conclusions much?

Trump vowed on Thanksgiving to “permanently pause migration” from poorer nations in a blistering late-night, anti-immigrant screed posted to social media.

The extended rant came in the wake of the Wednesday shooting of two National Guard members who were deployed to patrol Washington, D.C., under Trump’s orders, one of whom died shortly before the president spoke to U.S. troops by video on Thursday evening.

A 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan War is facing charges for the shooting. The suspect emigrated as part of a program to resettle those who has helped American troops after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

One Afghan national faces charges for a shooting. One. Not a hundred, … Read the rest

The Society of Authors is hemorrhaging members.

A number of writers have quit the Society of Authors after the literary union was accused of failing to defend members, The Telegraph can disclose.

The literary union, which has around 12,000 members, has been at the centre of a series of “cancel culture” rows involving Sir Philip Pullman, Kate Clanchy and Rachel Rooney.

Critics have also accused the union of failing to defend prominent authors, including JK Rowling, who were attacked over their gender-critical views.

Which is to say, their views that men are not women.

Now members of the society’s management group have quit over its perceived failure to speak out against cancel culture. The union

Aaaand there it is – the Central Park 5 writ large.

Trump says U.S. to ‘permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries’ after DC shooting

[Note the bonehead mistake. You can’t “permanently pause” something. It’s one or the other, not both. A pause is temporary by definition.]

Trump on Thursday announced sweeping plans to tighten immigration rules, including a suspension on migration from “Third World Countries” and cancellation of all federal benefits and subsidies to “noncitizens” in the country.

Of course he did. One, he’s too dense to grasp that one murder doesn’t establish anything about all people from whatever he chooses to consider third world countries. Two, he’s more than evil enough to punish millions or billions of … Read the rest

Oh Thomas.

Is he not aware that wrongful or targeted or political prosecutions and imprisonments have been a leftwing cause for generations? Is he not aware that the police can get it wrong, that prosecutors can get it wrong, that judges can get it wrong, that juries can get it wrong? Can and do?

Yes, bro. Some “convicted criminals” are our heroes.

Does the name “Nelson Mandela” ring a bell?

Sacco and Vanzetti?

Joe Hill?

Is Thomas Willett a spy for the secret police?… Read the rest

The invader reminds us he’s not doing all this for the hell of it. If he doesn’t profit what was any of it for?

Vladimir Putin has said that the outline of a draft peace plan discussed by the US and Ukraine could serve as a basis for future negotiations to end the war – but insisted Ukraine would have to surrender territory for any deal to be possible.

It’s like when you rob a bank, or a woman walking down the street. You do it because you want their money. If you don’t get any money, you’re not going to stop, are you. You’re there for a reason.

Speaking to reporters during a working visit to Kyrgyzstan, Putin

The anticipation is intense.

It’s SO VERY Euan to 1 use a tiresome cliche and 2 get the tiresome cliche wrong. Where exactly do you place the dot on the T? Except it’s not the T, it’s the t, because the dot on the i is not on the I. Two stupid blunders in one six-word semi-sentence.

Also, he’s cheerfully telling us his previous work was sloppy. You don’t say.… Read the rest

Michael Deacon at the Telegraph asks an important question:

How did something as self-evidently bonkers as trans ideology gain such a powerful grip over our society?

Or to put it another way, how did and do so many adults manage to believe, or act as if they believe, such a self-evidently bonkers claim?

(Which claim? The claim that sex is not in the body but the mind; that people can be the opposite of the sex they obviously are; that sex is a matter of idenniny as opposed to fact; that genitalia have nothing to do with which sex a person is. That claim.)

Over our politics, our universities, the BBC and countless other institutions? Funnily enough, the

A long title:

Trans activists trying to ban feminist book for a SECOND time by claiming its return makes national library ‘unsafe and hostile’ for staff

Well it didn’t work the first time, so might as well try again, right? The project of silencing feminist women is not for the faint-hearted!

Trans activists are trying to force the National Library of Scotland to ban a feminist book for the SECOND time by claiming its return has made the building an unsafe and hostile space for staff.

The Mail has seen an open letter signed by publishers, academics, as well as book festival staff demanding that the library’s board, who after a public outcry reinstated ‘The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht’, immediately

Oh honestly.

I haven’t read a single book by a delusional person about what it’s like to be a tree or a toad or a 747 or a library or New Jersey. Should I feel ashamed? Should I rectify the error? No and no. We don’t have to read about every possible delusion there is. What’s necessary is to grasp that delusions are delusions, which means they’re not the beginning of a new way of being human. They’re just delusions. In the end they’re pretty boring.… Read the rest

BBC Sport admits:

Briton wins world’s strongest woman after trans athlete disqualified

Not the clearest title ever. The Briton didn’t win a woman; the Briton is a woman and she won the strongest woman contest after a male athlete was disqualified.

Britain’s Andrea Thompson has been crowned world’s strongest woman after it transpired the original winner was a transgender woman who was not eligible to compete.

Well it didn’t just “transpire” now did it. Many if not all the people in charge must have known, and the man in question certainly knew. Andrea Thompson knew, and she was shown all over social media standing on the podium below the cheating man, and proceeding to say “this is bullshit” and … Read the rest