Peter Wehner in The Atlantic:

This new account of what Trump did leading up to, on, and after January 6 was shocking, yet not surprising. His behavior did not amount to an abrupt about-face by an otherwise honorable man, but was the last link in an almost unfathomably long chain of events—vicious, merciless words and unscrupulous, unethical acts that were said and done, many in public view, in ways that were impossible to deny. All of the signs of Trump’s corruption and disordered personality were obvious for years.

And yet he was able to become the president. Without the popular vote.

Perhaps the case against Trump presented by the January 6 committee and previous Trump loyalists—by now so overwhelming

LP is trying to sound intelligent again. This never goes well.

Pedantry is always regressive.
The idea that a word like ‘woman’ should only ever have one meaning – a meaning that is sanctioned by the state and enforced at every level of society – should horrify anyone who loves language and cares about freedom of expression.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) June 28, 2022

I wonder what she thinks she means by “a word like woman.” Like woman how? What other words are like the word woman? Man, girl, boy, I suppose. Will those do? Is that what she’s saying? The four words that name people of the female and male sex?

If so why do those words, in particular, … Read the rest

CNN underlines some points from yesterday’s January 6 hearing:

The reality of Trump’s intentions became clear to national security officials in real time as they learned the Secret Service was scrambling to find a way for the former President to travel to the Capitol while he was on stage urging his followers to march, according to National Security Council chat logs from that day that were revealed for the first time during Tuesday’s hearing.

The NSC chat logs provide a minute-by-minute accounting of how the situation evolved from the perspective of top White House national security officials on January 6 and, along with witness testimony delivered on Tuesday, contradict an account by Meadows in his book where he says Trump

How it started.

Pronouns matter. #ItsAPeopleThing pic.twitter.com/vj9UdlBnLy

— Halifax (@HalifaxBank) June 28, 2022

How it’s going.

Hi, I'm Lee. At Halifax, we strive for inclusion and equality. Giving our colleagues the option to add their pronouns on their badge, helps to create an inclusive environment for our customers and colleagues.

— Halifax (@HalifaxBank) June 28, 2022

We strive for inclusion, equality and quite simply, in doing what’s right. If you disagree with our values, you’re welcome to close your account. ^AndyM

— Halifax (@HalifaxBank) June 28, 2022

Ruthless anything for a buck capitalism in action!… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Freemage on But which people, which Americans, whose bodies?

“Karen” didn’t originally mean “aggressive female racist”. It originally (as used by the male black comedian who coined the term) was mostly about class-privilege (in, of course, a gendered way), about upper-middle-class women who made life tough for front-line service industry workers by complaining incessantly and immediately demanding to ‘speak to the manager’. So not about feminists specifically, and mostly focused on class, but with that sexist tag-along.

It didn’t really have anything to do with race until the New York Central Park incident, where the white woman calling the cops on a black man as a threat was considered the ultimate form of ‘speaking to the … Read the rest

The incident of the catsup in the nighttime.

Same transcript via NPR:

LIZ CHENEY: The physical altercation that Ms. Hutchinson described in the Presidential vehicle was not the first time that the President had become very angry about issues relating to the election. On December 1, 2020, Attorney General Barr said in an interview that the Department of Justice had not found evidence of widespread election fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the election.

Ms. Hutchinson, how did the President react to hearing that news?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: Around the time that I understand the AP article went live, I remember hearing noise coming from down the hallway. So I poked my head out of the office. I saw

NPR has a transcript of today’s hearing on the January 6 [attempted coup].

Bennie Thompson: In the weeks ahead, the committee will hold additional hearings about how Donald Trump summoned a mob of his supporters to Washington, spurred them to march on the Capitol, and failed to take meaningful action to quell the violence as it was unfolding on January 6th. However, in recent days the Select Committee has obtained new information dealing with what was going on in the White House on January 6th and in the days prior, specific detailed information about what the former president and his top aides were doing and saying in those critical hours, firsthand details of what transpired in the office of

And one more thing. (This day of the hearing is proving to be startling.) NYT reporter Carl Hulse:

Murmurs through the hearing room as Mike Flynn refuses to answer whether he believes in the peaceful transfer of power and whether the Jan. 6 violence was justified, citing his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

NYT reporter Peter Alexander:

To see a retired four-star general who swore an oath to defend the country and the Constitution plead the Fifth when asked if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power in America is another stunning moment today.

This country is in deep trouble.… Read the rest

Some observers are saying Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony indicates a seditious conspiracy.

Removing the magnetometers, in the context of the whole situation, really amounts to evidence of seditious conspiracy.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 28, 2022

Doing what? It seems the people attending the rally on the lawn were checked for weapons first, so a lot of them were shut out, because of ALL THOSE GUNS. So then apparently the White House or Trump ordered the magnetometers removed…so that heavily armed people could attend the rally and then head for the Capitol, heavily armed.

It’s…yikes.

It’s now fairly clear why the DOJ declined to charge Meadows with contempt: it’s going to be charging him with much more severe charges along

So. According to new testimony from a Trump White House aide, Trump got violent when he was told he wasn’t going to the Capitol after the January 6 rally.

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies that she was told that as then-President Donald Trump was being driven back to the White House after the Jan. 6 rally that he demanded to be taken to the Capitol and tried to grab the steering wheel from a Secret Service agent. https://t.co/JefVhEsY0b pic.twitter.com/uUyQcnSlLG

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 28, 2022

“I’m the fucking President,” he said. “Take me up to the Capitol.”… Read the rest

It’s a preview of the not at all distant future, too.

The number of people migrating globally has steadily risen in the past two decades as poverty, climate change and violence have led people to flee their homelands.

Climate change is only going to get worse, much worse and very fast, so poverty and violence will get worse too, and migrations are going to accelerate, and resistance to migrations will accelerate too. People roasted to death in the backs of trucks will be an everyday occurrence.

The bodies of more than 40 people who appeared to have crossed into the United States illegally were found on Monday in one of the worst episodes of migrant deaths on the southern

Erase erase erase erase.

Menopause is for everyone.

The NHS has ditched the terms ‘women’ and ‘woman’ from its menopause guidance, despite ministers promising to crack down on woke gender-free language in medical advice.

…

Now MailOnline has found ‘women’ and ‘woman’ have also been omitted from official advice about the menopause, which is unique to biological females.

In its online overview about the menopause, NHS advice used to contain six gender-specific mentions. But it was updated on May 17 to remove the terms.

Experts have warned de-gendering medical advice could be dangerous for women by over-complicating vital health messaging.

NHS Digital, which manages health information webpages, told MailOnline it wanted to ensure language was ‘inclusive’.

One, the goal … Read the rest

Janice Turner cops to having grown up thinking the feminist women who preceded her generation were dreary old has-beens.

Other political movements respect their elders even when their views no longer align with modern mores. Black Lives Matter would never forsake Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X; the LGBT movement deifies those who in 1969 bravely defied homophobic police at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Feminism alone lays waste to each preceding generation of leaders, campaigners and thinkers as impure, backward, irrelevant, wrong.

It’s true. That “second wave”? We weren’t really second at all, we just thought we were. I wonder often why feminism is that way, and if it’s rooted in the perceived need to Reject Mommy in … Read the rest

This happened.

Many thanks, @Baroness_Nichol pic.twitter.com/OzQnuCTWDv

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) June 27, 2022

I can’t get the Twitter version to magnify but it’s readable if I copy it in here, so that’s what I’m doing, because we need to be able to read it.

“You cannot discriminate in the provision of services because you are prejudiced.”

Oh. Bump. How disappointing.

“Irrespective of what Stonewall has told you, I fear it is simply unlawful.”

“the cancellation was the product of misguided and systemically unlawful policy.”

Oh. Bump. Oops.… Read the rest

Boys and men get to be called boys and men, but girls and women don’t get to be called girls and women. Who made that rule I wonder? And why are so many people obeying it?

JL via The Spectator in A Week in the War on Women:

Young Scot is a publicly funded organisation which received a £975,000 grant from Scottish Government last year for various projects, one of which is the provision of information for young people.

Young Scot has produced advice about menstruation but there is no mention of ‘girls’ or ‘women’ in the text. Instead, it makes vague references to “Those of us that have both our ovaries and a womb” and “

Eilis O’Hanlon in the Independent (Ireland):

The coalition now known as Trans Equality Together launched last Monday with the stated aim of ensuring “trans and non-binary people are equal, safe and valued”.

By Thursday, it had secured the signatures of such august bodies as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Amnesty Ireland and the National Women’s Council on a letter denouncing RTÉ for daring to host a debate on Liveline with women who refuse to bend to the notion that anyone with a penis must be automatically accepted as a woman if they say they are one.

So that’s what equal, safe and valued mean? That women are not allowed to say men are not women?

I don’t have … Read the rest

Emily Tamkin in The New Statesman on the overturning of Roe:

I could reiterate that the laws that will now go into effect in many states banning abortion in most cases will disproportionately impact poor people, and people of colour, who do not necessarily have the financial resources or the time to go out of their home state to seek an abortion. Or I could say that, though the impact will be greatest in states where abortion will be outlawed, the whole country will be affected; a burden will now be put on providers in states where abortion remains legal, and women in those states, too, will probably find it harder to schedule an abortion.

People, people, women. Why … Read the rest

Another win for theocracy:

The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former high school football coach from Washington state in a case about religious freedom and prayer in public schools. In a 6 to 3 decision delivered by Justice Gorsuch, the conservative supermajority decided in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that coach Joseph Kennedy’s Christian prayers after the games were protected by freedom of speech and freedom of religion under the First Amendment. “The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” Gorsuch wrote.

But of course an adult in authority over teenagers is not just exercising freedom of speech and religion by … Read the rest

The tweet has since been deleted but the screenshots live on.

A former friend of Ivanka Trump has taken to social media to claim that she supported her in getting an abortion when she was younger.

In the since-deleted tweet, Lauren Santo Domingo, a high school friend of Ivanka’s, claimed to have taken Ivanka, first daughter of former President Donald Trump and former senior White House Adviser, to get the alleged abortion.

…

“Ivanka Trump you are noticeably quiet today,” Domingo’s tweet read.

“The high school friends who took you to get an abortion are not.”

Pass the brioche.… Read the rest

The horrors are rolling in.

Abortion for *lethal* fetal anomalies is now *illegal* in Ohio
 
I’m a high-risk obstetrician here. I diagnose birth defects
 
So some point soon I may look someone in the eyes & say that they, against their will, will carry to term, undergo delivery & then have their child die

— David N Hackney MD, FACOG (@DavidNHackney) June 27, 2022

Got that? In Ohio it’s now ILLEGAL to end a pregnancy that will produce a baby that can’t survive.

Here is how today’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe impacts Arkansans.

Arkansas’s abortion ban (in effect today) allows no exception for rape. It allows no exception for incest. It allows no exception for a lethal fetal condition.