Gee, now why would we despise Trump and all his works? It’s such a mystery, and just so rude of us.

With COVID cases spiking in mostly unvaccinated Arkansas, Former WH Press Sec. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says if she is elected governor there will be no mask or vaccine mandate:

“We believe in personal freedom and responsibility.” pic.twitter.com/TDOGnBbUwy

— The Recount (@therecount) July 23, 2021

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Hot damn this is a stupid piece for the Washington Post to bother publishing.

When supporters of former president Donald Trump hear media pundits analyze them with the usual collection of belittling observations, they must be tempted to respond, “Hey, we’re right here! We can hear you!”

So we shouldn’t think it’s stupid or evil or both to vote for Donald Trump for any public office at all, let alone the presidency? Why? Why shouldn’t we? He’s one of the most thoroughly godawful human beings on the planet, and possibly the only one without a single redeeming quality.

Yes, they are indeed here, and living among us. And they have every right to be insulted by being accused of believing

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A nitwit writer for Jezebel writes the 40 millionth piece on JK Rowling the transphobe blah blah:

We can certainly quibble over how much Rowling needs to be defended from random Twitter users, especially considering the violence associated with her transphobia and the transphobia of her supporters (who haven’t hesitated to defend Rowling with threats of their own). But here’s what’s most glaring about Rowling’s responses: Her insistence on framing this as gendered violence against women, perpetrated by men. Rowling cannot accept that the transgender women who have clowned her, who have told her to “go die,” who have been the loudest critics of her TERF agenda, are women. It’s easier for her to simply dismiss them as men,

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David Frum is gentler on the anti-vaxxers than I am.

Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans. Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty.

And that’s profoundly wicked, because statements of identity and tests of loyalty are trivial compared to spreading a killer virus. Utterly utterly trivial. People have no right to put their identities or political loyalties ahead of public health. It’s disgusting and contemptible.

Part of the trouble is that pro-Trump state legislatures are enacting ever more ambitious protections for people who refuse vaccines. They are forbidding business owners to ask for proof

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FBI confirms the “investigation” of Brett Kavanaugh was a sham.

Nearly three years after Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s tumultuous confirmation to the Supreme Court, the F.B.I. has disclosed more details about its efforts to review the justice’s background, leading a group of Senate Democrats to question the thoroughness of the vetting and conclude that it was shaped largely by the Trump White House.

Ya think?

In a letter dated June 30 to two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, an F.B.I. assistant director, Jill C. Tyson, said that the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips the agency received during an investigation into Mr. Kavanaugh’s past were referred to White House lawyers in the

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Originally a comment by latsot on The chemistry teacher’s question.

A brilliant, moving article. Lesbian and Gay News gets better and better. Any comparison with the off-red comic would be such a glaring category error that it would blind us all from space.

I have much sympathy with the author. I was bullied in much the same way, relentlessly, by kids and teachers alike. Every single day, from around the age of four to when I left school at 15. While I had a few friends, I don’t remember a single day that wasn’t hell. At first, my family didn’t seem to notice. After I had an enormous, violent explosion one night, they most certainly knew about it, but … Read the rest

Another thing that’s funny (but infuriating) about that “Duhhhhhh wut’s GC?” is –

Unlike most of the people who criticise me over this, I HAVE got my head round both sides, which is why I don't think that coming to conclusions is easy. Maybe there are no conclusions. Maybe some problems are just not resolvable.

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) July 20, 2021

He knows all about it, unlike us, but he doesn’t know what GC is.

And it gets worse.

How does anyone find things out without asking?

— Philip Pullman (@PhilipPullman) July 22, 2021

Yes you find things out by asking but you just told us you already know all about the subject and that WE DON’T.

So there’s … Read the rest

More pathetic by the day.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1418091302747623424

When you try to engage @gorskon with calm appraisal of the evidence for treatment of paediatric gender dysphoria he blocks you. EZ insta-blocked for this thread. We are seeing something quite disturbing. https://t.co/SzAX9usRPY

— Andy (@lecanardnoir) July 22, 2021

“Evidence? Don’t come pestering me with your evidence – I’m SCIENCE-BASED MEDICINE.”

It is difficult to understand how @gorskon can come to such an absurd conclusion when he has been exposed to detailed critical appraisal of ideologically driven science. And no examples are given. What is he on? pic.twitter.com/LjVwVkPKoU

— Andy (@lecanardnoir) July 21, 2021

What is he on? Some kind of tribalism train is my guess. All the doors are locked, it blasts through … Read the rest

What’s Tucker Carlson’s complaint?

In a March interview with The Washington Post, Dunn said he was called the n-word more than a dozen times that day in January. Black police officers, he said, “were fighting a different fight” as a throng of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol grounds and building — some violently attacking police officers standing in their way.

Dunn will be one of the first witnesses to testify next week before a special committee tasked with investigating the insurrection. But Fox News host Tucker Carlson, during his Wednesday night broadcast, cast doubt on the officer’s ability to testify objectively.

Ah yes, and by the same token an assault victim can’t testify objectively, a victim of … Read the rest

Here’s an interview Officer Dunn did on ABC News in February. We can see why Tucker Carlson wouldn’t like him…

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I really despise Tucker Carlson. I would be happy to see him get the virus and become deathly ill.

1/BREAKING NEWS – STATEMENT BY ATTORNEYS FOR @CapitolPolice OFFICER #HARRYDUNN

Responding to @TuckerCarlson & @FoxNews.#January6thInsurrection #January6thSelectCommittee pic.twitter.com/OOWsb6Md0C

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) July 22, 2021

Harry Dunn:… Read the rest

Macron has put his foot down.

More than 100,000 people took to the streets across France over the weekend to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s tough new vaccination strategy, which will restrict access to restaurants, cafes, movie theaters, long-distance trains and more for the unvaccinated.

More than a hundred thousand people took to the streets to protest measures to prevent the spread of a virus that kills.

Why are people so stupid?

Demonstrators in Paris and elsewhere vented against what some called Mr. Macron’s “dictatorship” after he announced that a “health pass” — official proof of vaccination, a recent negative test, or recent Covid-19 recovery — would be required for many to attend or enter most public events

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At Lesbian and Gay News:

“Why are you wearing a boy’s uniform?” That question has stayed with me since it was first asked by my chemistry teacher in front of a packed class when I was just 13 years old. The year was 1989, Thatcher was in power and had passed Section 28 the year before and it was the year that Stonewall was founded…

I often look back on that moment, in that class in front of my classmates, and wonder why it has stayed with me more than everything else about that dreadful time at that dreadful school. Over the years I’ve battled with my mental health, most of it due to trauma of living through the

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Science-based. SCIENCE-BASED I tell you! Is is is is IS.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1418090247120986114 https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1418162070407811074

It’s a SCIENCE-BASED block.… Read the rest

On the one hand women are terfs, on the other hand women are those bitches who won’t have sex with every man who asks. (Women who do have sex with every man who asks are of course sluts.)

An Ohio man who was part of an online community of “incels,” or misogynists who blame women for denying them what they believe is their right to sexual intercourse, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with plotting to shoot students in sororities, federal prosecutors said.

Not trans women, please note, just women. We’re constantly told about how vulnerable trans women are, but they’re not the targets of incels. I go on thinking trans women are not as vulnerable as women.

From

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Again we are reminded that the US is trembling on the brink.

The House speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, announced on Wednesday that she would veto the two top Republicans appointed by the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to the new select committee investigating the Capitol attack, saying the Trump-allied congressmen could threaten the integrity of the investigation.

That’s one of the reasons we’re trembling on the brink – the fact that some Republicans approved of the attack aka insurrection, and some helped it.

But the move triggered McCarthy to pull all five of the Republicans he had chosen off the committee if Pelosi wouldn’t seat the whole cohort – and threaten to set up their own investigation into

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What it does to people.

Having unwillingly undergone a five week intensive exposure to "gender critical" arguments, I've concluded that a disturbing number of them boil down to taking "Ew, trans people ick me out" and cranking that feeling up to, "Trans people are an abomination against nature/God/etc."

— David Gorski, MD, PhD (@gorskon) July 21, 2021

No they don’t. He must have been looking at the biblical arguments instead. Gender critical arguments don’t involve ew ick or god.

The ease with which he makes sweeping generalisations about women who disagree with him suggests he has issues with women too. As does the fact that he's liked this blatantly sexist and ageist reply from one of his followers. @gorskon pic.twitter.com/nYq3E31yyx

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There’s no such thing as “trans misogyny” any more than there’s such a thing as “trans racism.”

https://twitter.com/jvn/status/1417536266950881292

It’s not “the truth” that “trans and non-binary people have been here forever.” It may be, and probably is, the truth that people who have felt discomfort with their own sex and/or curiosity about being the other sex have been here forever, but “trans” has been expanded and expanded and expanded to mean far more than that, and the far more is mostly batshit crazy. There’s no reason to assume that that particular brand of crazy – so shaped by Twitter and other modern forms of media – has always existed.

When folks do threaten her it allows for her transphobic rhetoric

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Life expectancy in the US has fallen.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data showed the average US lifespan dropped from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020. Researchers said the pandemic was mostly to blame for the decline, with record-high drug deaths also noted as a contributing factor.

The data comes amid a resurgence of Covid-19 cases across the country. Hospital rates are also on the rise with daily deaths now almost 50% higher than last week, according to officials.

More than 600,000 Americans have died so far during the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s not what they mean – they mean from or because of the pandemic. I know this because that’s the number. I think … Read the rest