When the choice is between Proud Boys and Drag Queen Story Hour:

Authorities in the San Francisco Bay area are investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men stormed into a library where a drag queen was hosting a children’s reading event, and allegedly shouted homophobic and anti-LGBTQ+ slurs.

Why do children’s reading events need drag queens?

I suppose it could be like the old panto Dame, or Edna Everidge, but we’ve seen too many reports of such “reading events” that were not that. I don’t think there’s really any burning need for drag queens to do events at the children’s section of the library.

But I certainly don’t want Proud Boys to be the ones making … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Djolaman on Rock climbing without ropes.

There’s a trope about militaries building their strategy for any war according to what worked or conspicuously didn’t in the last war, based on the people in charge often having been in more junior roles learning how things worked at the time. Examples include the US treating Vietnam as a rerun of Korea and coming unstuck very badly, or the French preparing the Maginot line to deal with another iteration of world war 1 and finding it was utterly unsuited to the technological and tactical advances that had taken place by thectime world war 2 broke out.

To a great extent we see what we expect to see, and … Read the rest

So Trump casually said his daughter committed perjury when she testified the other day. Dear ol’ dad.

During an appearance on MSNBC on Sunday afternoon, Mary Trump claimed that her uncle Donald’s dismissive comment that daughter Ivanka had “checked out” when he tried to undermine her taped testimony before the House select committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection could be taken as an accusation she perjured herself.

…

Trump lashed out on TruthSocial at the hearing and included his daughter in his criticism claiming, “Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results,” adding she, “had long since checked out, and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his

Originally a comment by Colin Daniels on Many other women and girls.

Obviously this has been going for a very long time but here in the UK the situation was exacerbated a decade or two ago when the government introduced “league tables”, ostensibly to give the public a measure of how well various institutions were performing. They did it for things like education, health and policing.

What happened, in fact, was that institutions began to focus their efforts in areas that pushed them up the table, in order to increase the funding that they received. “Problem” children, that are difficult to teach; patients, that are difficult to treat; and cases, that are difficult to prosecute, are ignored in favour … Read the rest

Matt Taibbi talks to Kara Dansky:

Kara Dansky, a former WoLF board member and the author of The Abolition of Sex, may be the most outspoken feminist in America when it comes to criticizing popular current beliefs about gender identity. A former ACLU public defender, she’s focused heavily on the presence of biological men in women’s jails, and for her troubles has been essentially booted out of mainstream progressive politics.

Taibbi admits having sat on an interview with Dansky for months because of fear of we know very well what. He apologizes for doing that.

Matt Taibbi: I’ve known some people who identified as trans or as women in my life, who wanted to be called she. As somebody

Hadley Freeman writes:

Young people have always believed that they know better than the older generation, and now the older generation agrees with them. Middle-aged and experienced editors working in journalism and publishing live in fear of printing something that might displease the twenty-somethings who work in their company’s digital and publicity departments. Parents defer to their teenaged children about the correct languages to use and opinions to hold.

There was that chunk of time when, broadly speaking, the younger generation did know better about some things. The Civil Rights movement, opposition the the war on Vietnam, the return of feminism, the LGB rights movement were all partly generational conflicts. That background left practically everyone with an impression that … Read the rest

Raskin says he knew.

Jamie Raskin on CNN says he thinks the January 6 committee can prove that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election while he was lying about it and trying to overturn the result pic.twitter.com/eeZG1q7r8n

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 12, 2022

I don’t disagree with any of that, it’s just that I think Trump is peculiarly skilled at going on believing what he already believes no matter what other people are telling him – skilled at not listening, in short. He simply pays no attention to things people say that are inconvenient to him, apart from blasting them with dragon breath. He ignores them, in short. That is not a legal defense, I’m pretty sure.

“Barr … Read the rest

The Times has noticed the ACLU’s determination to erase women from abortion rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union, whose advocacy on reproductive rights is of more than a half-century vintage, recently tweeted its alarm about the precarious state of legal abortion:

“Abortion bans disproportionately harm: Black Indigenous and other people of color. The L.G.B.T.Q. community. Immigrants. Young people. Those working to make ends meet. People with disabilities. Protecting abortion access is an urgent matter of racial and economic justice.”

But nothing to do with women. It’s not just the ACLU, the Times correctly points out.

From Planned Parenthood to NARAL Pro-Choice America to the American Medical Association to city and state health departments and younger activists, the word “women” has

Seeking pre-emptive pardons may turn out to be a mistake.

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed at its inaugural hearing that Donald Trump’s top Republican allies in Congress sought pardons after the January 6 insurrection, a major disclosure that bolstered the claim that the event amounted to a coup and is likely to cause serious scrutiny for those implicated.

Why? Because “Pardons for what, Senator?”

The news that multiple House Republicans asked the Trump White House for pardons – an apparent consciousness of guilt – was one of three revelations portending potentially perilous legal and political moments to come for Trump and his allies.

Note to journalists: don’t ever write a sentence with “portending potentially perilous” in … Read the rest

What’s wrong with this picture?

Brace for heatwaves next week and more often, says Met Office https://t.co/kRYL6f76Px

— The Guardian (@guardian) June 12, 2022

Too easy. The story is about a heatwave. What do you do in a heatwave? Try to stay as cool as possible. What do you not do? Lie in the sun in a bathing suit.… Read the rest

Well of course he does. He always did. He didn’t want to be bounced out in the first place. We all want nice things, but that doesn’t mean we always get to have them.

The Duke of York has asked the Queen to be reinstated as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, The Telegraph understands, as he pushes for a return to royal duties.

But he was uninstated for a reason, so it seems pretty toddleresque to whine at Paddington Bear’s friend to let him come back. Has he taken to lying on the floor drumming his heels and screaming?

A source said: “The colonelcy of the Grenadier Guards was his most coveted title and he wants it back.

Originally a comment by Papito on What kind of “experts”?

Experts said that in today’s world, children must fight against the devil for their souls even while they’re asleep.

Really, what’s the difference?

The difference is that the believers in gender ideology have so completely captured the media elite that, though a reporter may question whether children have “souls,” none may question whether children have “gender identity.”

A reporter who went on NPR or wrote in the Times about how today’s children had to guard their souls against the devil would be seen as religious, and the media organization would fence them in with a counterpoint. No counterpoint is allowed for the hundreds of times a week they assert that … Read the rest

I guess “white supremacist” is a kind of all-purpose political orientation that starts with hating everyone? A group of them were interrupted at a Pride parade in Idaho.

Police in the US state of Idaho have arrested 31 members of a white supremacist group and charged them with plotting to riot at a gay pride event.

Someone saw them piling into a truck with shields and masks, and called the cops.

The vehicle was soon stopped, and the men – members of the Patriot Front group – were arrested.

“They came to riot downtown,” Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said.

He added that riot gear and a smoke grenade were found in the vehicle.

The lorry was stopped

Just for fun: Jordan Peterson having a very reasonable calm thoughtful moment.

This dude is still *seething* about seeing one woman on a magazine cover, who looked a little different to what he's used to. He simply cannot get over it.

Imagine the privilege it takes to have a weeks-long tantrum over something like that. pic.twitter.com/swSUdwP0uz

— Eiynah — (@NiceMangos) June 8, 2022

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty at Miscellany Room 8.

Per the New York Times:

Experts said that young people increasingly have the language and social acceptance to explore their gender identities

This drives me crazy. What kind of “experts”? The journalistic principle in play should be to weigh the testimony of “experts” against the possibility of influence by a religious belief system that’s applying pressure on the debate.

If you’re talking about any other religious belief — say, Scientology — it becomes very clear that there’s two kinds of “experts” about it: believers themselves, and those who look at the belief system from the outside. Everyone on the inside will of course have nothing but good things to … Read the rest

Another one of those “rights” that isn’t a right.

‘We have a right not to be insulted,’ demonstrator claims as Cineworld fears for workers’ safety

Well, no, you don’t, not exactly, and especially not if you define “insulted” so broadly that it includes living in the same city as a movie house that’s showing a film about Mohammed’s daughter.

A cinema chain has been forced to pull a film about the prophet Muhammad’s daughter over fears for the safety of its staff.

And you don’t have a right to threaten and terrorize people, either.

Demonstrators outside branches in Bolton and elsewhere claimed the work was blasphemous and that freedom of speech should not apply to the subject of 

Jason Stanley is going all-in on the abuse, not to say libel.

That’s an academic colleague he’s talking to.

Interesting times. Not in a good way.

Updating to add: I see it’s a continuation of his accusations yesterday, which I shared at the time. He’s consistent, at least.

Morality aside, it just doesn’t seem sensible or reasonable or adult to talk this way to a colleague (or anyone else, but administrators could be watching the colleague problem). Bye Felicia at the Washington Post just learned that a couple of days ago.… Read the rest

Women’s cis privilege in China:

CCTV footage of the incident widely circulated online shows a man placing his hand on a woman’s back as she shares a meal with two companions at a barbecue restaurant in the city of Tangshan in Hebei province in the early hours of Friday.

After the woman pushes him away, the man strikes her before others drag her outside and deal a barrage of blows as she lies on the ground. Another woman is also knocked to the floor.

Why are women so cruel and violent to men?

The video quickly went viral on China’s internet and renewed a debate about sexual harassment and gender-based violence in a country where the conversation around women’s

Virginia Thomas is even more coup plot-involved than we thought.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona — 27 more than previously known — to set aside Joe Biden’s popular vote victory and “choose” presidential electors, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.

Which means she tried to leverage Clarence Thomas’s position to bully state legislators into stealing the election.

The Post reported last month that Thomas sent emails to two Arizona House members, in November and December 2020, urging them to help overturn Biden’s win by selecting presidential electors — a responsibility that belongs to Arizona voters under state law.

She used an online platform that … Read the rest

Absolutely classic oblivious male lefty sexist pig type guy. Sports editor at The Nation.

Thread. Right wing state houses are weaponizing and empowering the worst behaviors of parents and coaches. If you don't think snarling moms and dads will line up to do this after their precious Susie loses the big race, then you've never been around youth sports. https://t.co/DpPsPV57Md

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) June 11, 2022

Right? Right?? That precious little Susie, who does she think she is? Bitch.

It's intolerable, the idea that the results of sporting success won't be cheering crowds and irrepressible joy, but genital inspections demanded by some parent throwing a tantrum because their kid came in second.

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) June 11, 2022