Sackbut pointed out this cloying image:

Naaaaaaaaah.

That’s just the old self-esteem movement updated for even more solipsistic times.

No, parents shouldn’t treat their children like gods. No, parents shouldn’t be constantly wooing their children like lovers. No, parents shouldn’t be training their children to think they’re miraculous and supernatural. Unconditional love, yes; an infinite stream of flattery, no.

And this “become yourself” shit needs to die. As I keep saying to the point of monotony, the cult of the self needs to die. Encourage children to have a spine, think critically, resist peer pressure when necessary, all that, but obsess over a special unique magical Self, no.… Read the rest

With only four or five weeks to do anything with them, the House Dems finally have Trump’s tax returns.

Sort of.

The supreme court ordered the release of six years of returns last Tuesday, rejecting Trump’s plea to stop the treasury from acting.

On Wednesday, the release of the tax returns was first reported by CNN. According to the network, which cited an unnamed aide to the Democratic committee chair, Richard Neal, Democrats on the panel were due to be briefed on Thursday on the “legal ramifications on section of the tax law that … Neal used to request Trump’s tax returns” but would not immediately see the returns.

Well let’s do all this as slowly as possible so … Read the rest

Joan Smith on another heartbroken dude:

In an interview veering between self-pity and entitlement, Bridges claimed to be ‘heartbroken’ after being refused permission to ride for Wales as a woman in the Commonwealth Games. (British Cycling has suspended its policy on transgender athletes while it carries out a review.) Bridges also claimed to understand the anxieties of female athletes who don’t want to compete with biological males, but dismissed them because ‘I am not a man’. 

Which is funny, because he is a man, and this whole business of dismissing women’s anxieties about being displaced by him and men like him is the very thing women are anxious about.

Not many people, one would guess, really believe that

They have got to be kidding.

An Oxford student union official has apologised for her supposedly trans- exclusionary stance after objecting to the abolition of the women’s officer role.

Ellie Greaves, the vice-president for women at Oxford’s student union, put out a statement after a backlash against her comments in The Times.

The union is replacing its women’s officer with a liberation and equalities representative from next year. The reorganisation of union leadership will keep the same number of roles — one president and five vice-presidents — but female students will lose a dedicated women’s officer. The union said this was because the role was created at a time when women could not get full degrees and colleges were segregated,

And another thing. It’s so typical of the maudlin hand-wringing hanky-drenching sympathy for men who claim to be women along with complete indifference toward actual women. Look at this insulting dreck:

Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges has opened up to ITV about her journey, competing at an elite level and social media backlash.https://t.co/Qebd7x2WhR

— ITV Wales News (@ITVWales) November 30, 2022

Awwww, his journey, cheating women at their own sport. His “competing at an elite level” but actually not doing that because he competes against women and he has the advantage that male athletes have. Imagine a news outlet getting all soppy and flattery about a big hulking adult male competing against children. Why is it not ok to … Read the rest

Mara Yamauchi on “Emily” Bridges:

2. Bridges blaming those who speak up against gender ideology for the Colorado attacks. No mention of alleged attacker being non-binary, nor that 2-3 females are killed per week in UK. Bridges dismisses widespread valid concerns by using “so-called” & quotation marks. pic.twitter.com/Pldd2mKU9D

— Mara Yamauchi (@mara_yamauchi) November 30, 2022

Bridges is horrified and terrified yet women are murdered at a far higher rate than trans people are. What’s he got to be so terrified about? Does he ever pause to think about the terror of women?

7. Female athletes everywhere who have things of value taken from them by males in their own, the female category, are also broken. None of them gets a

I had much the same thought.

One thing that struck me in Zoe Williams' attempt to terf-shame Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was that when CNA points out the logical conclusion of ZW's politics, ZW accuses her of "reducing it to the absurd". Yet nothing CNA says is untrue or not happening https://t.co/1diyH2er0g pic.twitter.com/LLhcHKf0BR

— Victoria Smith (@glosswitch) November 28, 2022

As I said Monday, Adichie didn’t reduce it to the absurd, it IS absurd. It comes pre-absurded.

Hugely. There was an uncomfortable tone throughout that ZW – the white woman – needed to educate the African CNA about this higher level of thinking.

— Arnie B (@arnie_booth) November 28, 2022

In fact…how is Zoe Williams not just the Guardian version of … Read the rest

Hilarity:

As fallout from Donald Trump’s meeting with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes continues, a far-right activist has claimed the meeting was a set-up, meant to “make Trump’s life miserable”.

Sigh. Now I have to catch up with the Trump news. I overlooked the meeting and the fallout.

NBC News reported that in an attempt to “send a message” to the former president, Milo Yiannopoulos, a rightwing provocateur and former Breitbart editor, helped arrange for Fuentes to travel to Mar-a-Lago in Florida for a dinner between Trump and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.

Trump ate with the pair. He’s been criticized for doing so.

Ye, who like Trump is running for president in 2024, said he

Wait who is doing the obsessing here?

Arwa Mahdawi wrote a column on creepy advertising by Tampax and Balenciaga, but in the process she managed to take a swipe at The Designated Enemy.

If any brand has licence to make jokes about things being up vaginas, it’s Tampax. Sexualising tampons, however, is revolting. Still, the tweet had the intended effect, I suppose, which was to get people talking about Tampax. The gender-neutral language also sparked a heated argument about trans people because, hey, what doesn’t spark a heated argument about trans people these days? While I admit spending 60% of my life on Twitter isn’t healthy, it’s not as unhealthy as spending 99.99% of your waking hours obsessing over

Alex Massie in The Spectator:

Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon spoke at an event celebrating 30 years of the charity Zero Tolerance and its long running – and essential – commitment to ending violence against women. In a revealing sign of the times in Scotland today, organisers emailed those attending the event to warn them certain subjects should be ignored. As they put it: ‘We wish to create a safe and supported environment for our guests and ask you to support us in this aim by refraining from discussions of the definition of a woman and single sex spaces in relation to the gender recognition act.’

But…how then will they know what anyone is talking about? If they don’t know people … Read the rest

Good grief.

First I see this:

Then I see a reply saying Lady SH is Lady Susan Hussey so I hie me to Google for information on Lady SH and find a bouquet of headlines saying she’s resigned. I chose the BBC:

Lady Susan Hussey quits over remarks to charity boss Ngozi Fulani

The late Queen’s lady-in-waiting Lady Susan Hussey has apologised and resigned after she repeatedly asked a black British charity boss where she was from.

Ngozi Fulani, a charity founder, was questioned about her background at the charity event at the palace on Tuesday. Ms Fulani said she was “totally stunned” by Prince William’s godmother’s comments.

The palace described the comments as “unacceptable and deeply regrettable”. An

The Telegraph solemnly reports:

A non-binary senior US nuclear official has been charged with stealing a suitcase at an airport.

The owner of the suitcase however is non-non-binary. She’s not a man, even half.

Sam Brinton, 35, became the most prominent genderfluid person in the US government in June, overseeing the disposal of nuclear waste.

He’s a man non-binary as opposed to a woman non-binary.

The appointment of the MIT graduate, who uses the pronouns “they” and “them”, was hailed at the time by diversity campaigners.

By laughably credulous “diversity campaigners.” A pale man who calls himself “them” and has a high-up government job is not much of a blow for diversity.

When Brinton took up the post in

Found guilty.

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes of seditious conspiracy for leading a months-long plot to unleash political violence to prevent the inauguration of President Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The panel of seven men and five women deliberated for three days before finding Rhodes and a co-defendant guilty of conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transition of presidential power. Rhodes and all four co-defendants on trial were also convicted of obstructing Congress as it met to confirm the results of the 2020 election. Both offenses are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

…

The indictment brought against Rhodes, 56, and other Oath Keepers

I’m looking for more on this claim by anthropologist Dan Hicks that Bentham “contested immediate emancipation.”

It’s certainly possible in the abstract, given utilitarianism’s “greatest happiness of the greatest number” principle. The obvious objection is that lots of people can be made happy about the sufferings of a smaller number of people, so let’s not do it that way. Actual utilitarians wrestled with the problem; working imperialists, not so much. How about in the concrete? Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews has a relevant article:

Classical Utilitarianism, on one reading, is the view according to which an action, rule, policy or social institution is right if and only if it is designed to advance aggregate well-being, hedonistically construed. Relying on some

Hipster captioning.

Taken by a friend at the Wellcome Collection. This is real. pic.twitter.com/ylciJ6pa65

— Sam Bowman (@s8mb) November 27, 2022

The full caption:… Read the rest

Suddenly the BBC is being a good deal more blunt:

A trans woman who groomed and had sex with a 14-year-old girl, making her pregnant, has been jailed.

The defendant – named by police as “David Orton, also known as Danielle Rose Gemini” – was found guilty of penetrative sexual activity with a child following a trial.

…

The offender, whose name was recorded as Danielle-Rose Gemini by Leicester Crown Court, was jailed for nine-and-a-half years.

Leicestershire Police – who said the 25-year-old identified as a woman at the time of the offences – were not able to give a current gender identity.

That “who said the 25-year-old identified as a woman” is two layers of skepticism right there … Read the rest

End violence against women…

…unless of course that might inconvenience men who call themselves women.

A charity event to push for an end to male violence against women and girls has banned discussion about single sex spaces.

Push for an end to male violence! But don’t push hard – in fact push as gently as you possibly can.

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, is scheduled to give the main speech to the 30th anniversary gathering by Zero Tolerance in Edinburgh today. The charity‘s core belief is that male violence should not be tolerated.

Unless the male “identifies as” a woman. Then the violence is quite all right.

A note sent to attendees said it wanted “to create a

Won’t someone please have some sympathy for the poor beleaguered fragile trans laydee who makes racist taunts?

He’s deleted the tweet but there are many many screengrabs.

The enlightened sympathize with India but also remember to be intersectional.

She’s a cunt, but you’re better than this. Please be better than saying something racist to prove a point.

— Cis (@angel_in_a_cage) November 28, 2022

But don’t ever ever ever be better than calling a woman a cunt. That’s absolutely fine, in fact it’s obligatory.… Read the rest

And how are we defining equality exactly?

We are proud to be trans allies.

We stand with the LGBTQIA+ community.

We support women, girls and marginalised people.

We do not police who is a woman that’s reserved for the patriarchy.

— Right to Equality (@Right2Equality) November 28, 2022

What does it mean to “police” who is a woman? It doesn’t seem like something anyone can police. Either you are or you aren’t. It’s commonplace to police things like who is a citizen, who is a lawyer, who is a doctor, who is an Olympic medalist – that is, there are criteria for all those things, which can be lied about or faked. You don’t want a pretend dentist messing with … Read the rest

Still working on the government by force thing.

2:30 AM post: “Kari Lake should be installed Governor of Arizona.” pic.twitter.com/Nxm4h08U8L

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 28, 2022

And who should do the installing? The military?

Rolling Stone has more:

Much of Lake’s Trump-backed campaign was centered around bolstering unfounded claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 election, and the former TV anchor has lived up to her commitment to only accept election results if she won.

Lake, who lost her bid for governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has refused to acknowledge the election results, instead filing a lawsuit requesting public records from Maricopa County that would detail which voters experienced issues casting their ballots, and information regarding errors