A lot can happen in three hours.

It took more than three hours for former President Donald Trump’s Defense Department to approve a request for D.C.’s National Guard to intervene in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the commanding general of the outfit told senators on Wednesday.

…

“At 1:49 p.m. I received a frantic call from then-Chief of U.S. Capitol Police, Steven Sund, where he informed me that the security perimeter at the Capitol had been breached by hostile rioters,” Maj. Gen. William Walker told the Senate Homeland and Rules committees in a joint hearing.

“Chief Sund, his voice cracking with emotion, indicated that there was a dire emergency on Capitol Hill and requested the immediate assistance of

Return of Pence:

Michael Richard Pence, the former Vice President of the United States, is a living monument to the sunk-cost fallacy. When his political career was close to death in Indiana, his interests momentarily converged with those of a comically heathen real-estate grifter from Manhattan who needed some Evangelical credentials on the Republican ticket.

So this theocrat who boasts of his own sanctity joined forces with an openly brutal and sadistic crook. Not even the fact that Trump’s lies about the election nearly got Pence killed is enough to turn him away.

Pence’s instincts for physical self-preservation have taken a back seat to those for political self-preservation, maybe because he feels he already sold too much of

Don’t do that.

Headline:

Child rapist threatened to kill herself when undeclared device found during visit

You already know the punchline. There aren’t a whole lot of female “rapists.” There may be some female sadists who shove things up children, but rape is anatomically impossible for women, as well as being just not something women want to do or feel driven to do. It’s not cute to pin male crimes on women because “pronouns!!!”.

A convicted child rapist who is banned from owning internet devices unless approved threatened to kill herself when one was found at her home.

That is, “to kill himself when one was found at his home.” That’s a man, who committed a peculiarly and particularly male … Read the rest

Hey this is boring let’s open everything up now! Right now! Never mind that vaccinations are only getting started, let’s do it now!

That’s Texas asshole governor Greg Abbott’s take anyway.

With less than 7% of Texans fully vaccinated and another Covid-19 surge potentially imminent, Texas is flinging open businesses to full capacity while simultaneously ending its highly politicized mask mandate, the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, announced on Tuesday.

“It is now time to open Texas 100%,” a maskless Abbott declared to cheers at a crowded restaurant in the city of Lubbock.

Yeah! Let’s have surge number 4!

When Abbott’s policy changes go into effect next week, Texas will be the most populous state in the country that does

It’s Women’s History Month and Robin Buckallew is again doing a writing marathon for it.

I’m back! Here we go again, another Women’s History Month, another marathon. Year four and counting. I hope you can follow me all the way through, right to the end. I could use someone else making this journey with me.

It feels so much like women’s rights are waning sometimes, doesn’t it? Recent Supreme Court appointments suggest that may not be an illusion. We still have so much of a fight ahead, and women around the world are facing much worse things than we face. It’s tempting sometimes to say to hell with it, go back to bed, take a bubble bath, binge watch

The Beeb reports the return of the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria:

The girls were abducted by unidentified assailants from their boarding school in Jangebe, Zamfara state, on Friday and taken to a forest, police said.

The state’s governor said on Tuesday that the 279 girls had been freed.

Such kidnappings are carried out for ransom and are common in the north of the country.

…

The governor of Zamfara state, Bello Matawalle, tweeted that it “gladdens my heart to announce the release of the abducted students“. “This follows the scaling of several hurdles laid against our efforts,” he added. “I enjoin all well-meaning Nigerians to rejoice with us as our daughters are now safe.”

Mr Matawalle has

Gender-neutral language outrage ensued.

Streaming platform Twitch has backtracked on a new policy to change its spelling of “women” after criticism from transgender communities.

Oh good, it’s extremely urgent to have “transgender communities” in charge of what language we can use. Women, on the other hand, can be ignored. [whispers: they’re just Karens.]

The company had said it would use the term “womxn” in order to be more gender neutral in its language.

How can you be “gender neutral” about women? That makes no sense of any kind. “We will use the term ‘mushrooms’ in place of ‘women’ in order to be more gender neutral.”

Ben Hunte has “analysis” for us.

Many social media users are still

So former heads of state can be prosecuted? And found guilty? And sentenced to prison? Whaddya know.

French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended, for corruption. He was convicted of trying to bribe a judge in 2014 – after he had left office – by suggesting he could secure a prestigious job for him in return for information about a separate case.

Sarkozy, 66, is the first former French president to get a custodial sentence.

His lawyer says he will appeal. Sarkozy will remain free during that process which could take years.

Or not. Anyway we all know of a pasty white guy with a fake goldy combover who’s sweating bullets … Read the rest

News from the white nationalistosphere:

Rep. Paul Gosar spoke Friday night at a Florida event organized by a white nationalist.

To make the appearance at the far-right AFPAC, an extremist alternative to the annual CPAC gathering of conservatives, Gosar, R-Ariz., had to skip voting in person on the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that passed the House early Saturday. He had notified the House in writing that he couldn’t be physically present in Congress because of the ongoing pandemic.

The ongoing pandemic of dogs eating his homework.

AFPAC stands for the America First Political Action Committee and was put together by Nick Fuentes, an anti-immigration conservative who attended the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville and last year was

Life is very dangerous for girls in Nigeria.

Families in Nigeria waited anxiously for news of their abducted daughters after more than 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped by gunmen from a government school in the country’s north last week, the latest in a series of mass school kidnappings in the West African nation.

Worried parents on Sunday gathered at the school, guarded by police. Aliyu Ladan Jangebe said his five daughters aged between 12 and 16 were at the school when the kidnappers stormed in. Four were taken away but one escaped by hiding in a bathroom with three other girls, he told The Associated Press.

…

Last week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the abductions and called for

A male reporter on Eastwood a couple of weeks ago:

BOZEMAN — When you’re a transgender athlete, and it seems the world is taking aim at what you are instead of trying to understand who you are, a walk — or run — on the wild side is the straightest path to clarity and balance and resilience.

As always, the issue isn’t being “a transgender athlete,” the issue is a male person competing against female people. It’s beyond annoying that journalists keep obscuring this point. Nobody is “taking aim” at what or who Eastwood is, but many of us are saying male people shouldn’t race against women, for the simple reason that it’s unfair. It’s unfair to all … Read the rest

Well we always knew that Biden is a conservative Democrat and that the Democrats in general are very conservative.

… we have seen Democratic senators prepare to surrender the $15 minimum wage their party promised by insisting they are powerless in the face of a non-binding advisory opinion of a parliamentarian they can ignore or fire.

That explanation is patently ridiculous and factually false, so Democratic apologists are starting to further justify the surrender by suggesting that even if the party kept a $15 minimum wage in the Covid relief bill, conservative Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would block it anyway.

So persuade them. Do the work.

And yet, whether you call this all deliberate

How about Nazis? War criminals? Genociders? Torturers? Rapists? Sadists?

You don’t know which people are those things on sight, but then you don’t know that about cops and “terfs,” either. (Unless the cops are in uniform but then they wouldn’t be, would they.)

What a world, when women who know that men are not women are considered more evil and shun-worthy than Nazis, war criminals, genociders, torturers, rapists.… Read the rest

The dogma is digging away its own foundations.

Let me perfectly clear:

Sexual violence survivors should be natural allies to the trans community. We understand the stakes of losing control of our bodies and being punished for breaking the gender rules. To be transphobic is to perpetrate those harms. And I won’t tolerate it.

— Dr. Nicole Bedera (@NBedera) March 1, 2021

In other words everything has to be about “the trans community.” Even rape, and rape victims, and the solidarity rape victims may feel or seek with other rape victims. That has to be about trans people in some way, and this sociology grad student won’t tolerate our refusal to agree that men are women if they say they … Read the rest

Originally a comment by latsot on Talk about imperfect timing.

And as for (over) sharing in general…. When I was an academic computer scientist, a lot of my research was about privacy. I’ve expanded on this work a little since for people with actual money and for the book I’m supposed to be finishing (I’ll do it in a minute, OK, stop nagging.)

Anyway, without going into detail, one of the things I talk about a lot is the idea of privacy as a community enterprise. We have a tendency to see secrets, for example, as things we own. But we don’t; most secrets are shared with other people and if they’re not, the mechanisms by which we keep … Read the rest

Trump got to put on his party suit and give a speech again!

A long long speech which started 50 minutes late because he couldn’t be bothered to show up on time.

Trump suggests he lied to foreign countries by withholding foreign aid unless certain conditions were met, and then still refusing to provide the aid even after those conditions were met pic.twitter.com/PyHzK1SgO2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 28, 2021

Trump, without a shred of irony, claims Biden is the most corrupt president in history (Trump owned and profited from a private business while in office, and benefitted from lavish Secret Service expenses at his properties) pic.twitter.com/rm0UNxME4M

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 28, 2021

these threats sound especially impotent now

Ructions!

Oh no! Splitters! Where did it begin? This maybe?

Swap “woke” with “fascist” and you’ll find the exact same rhetoric that Antifa has used to describe people like me as “crypto-fascist.”

This Us vs Them mentality is toxic and extremist. Cut it out @ConceptualJames https://t.co/NkSpZBh8d2

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) February 28, 2021

I knew what I was talking about a year ago when Critical Theory was "too obscure" for you and Quillette too. Now you're saying it. Looking forward to you catching up.

— James Lindsay, full varsity (@ConceptualJames) February 28, 2021

Sad sad sad. Next you’ll see Mike Pence falling out with Donald Trump and then where will we be?

Or maybe this is where it started?… Read the rest

That explains it.

Leading gay, lesbian and bisexual rights charity Stonewall has recognised CQC’s commitment to equality in the workplace by placing it in the top 100 UK employers in the Stonewall Equality Workplace index for the first time.

They forgot the T.

That was back in 2015. They’re not forgetting it any more. Not allowed to, mate.

The top 100 list is based on the results of Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index 2015, the eleventh published by the charity. The index is based on a range of key indicators which include a confidential questionnaire of lesbian, gay and bisexual staff, with over 9,700 participants. This consistently revealed that employees from organisations ranked in Stonewall’s Top 100 exhibited higher levels

It’s on Facebook, too. Not faring well.

Many sharp comments.

I would find it rather creepy/threatening and definitely intrusive if I was being cared for by a health professional who was wearing badges, written in a faux childish script, announcing ‘I am straight’ and ‘I like women’.

As a doctor myself, I would be concerned that some patients might take it as a license to be inappropriate as well. Plus, given how little time I have as it is to see patients – regrettably – I just don’t have the time to get into chats about ‘music’ and ‘cats’ and I wouldn’t want to set up expectations that I couldn’t fulfil in the moment.

These badges are unprofessional and

And speaking of changing everything for the sake of a handful of narcissists…

In a medical setting? People getting vaccinated or treated for Covid are supposed to want all that in their faces? Are you joking?… Read the rest