Now wait just a second here.

On Friday night, Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, declared: “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

There was an outcry, accusing McConnell of hypocrisy. When the conservative Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, also an election year, McConnell refused to act on Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the opening. The seat remained vacant until after Trump’s victory.

McConnell argues this case is different because in 2016 the president was Democratic and the Senate majority was Republican but now the same party controls both. His opposite number, Chuck Schumer, and the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, instantly rejected the view.

What are … Read the rest

“Well you see constable I was filming a video for Snapchat…”

A woman fell out of a moving car on the M25 while leaning out of the window to film a video for Snapchat.

She’s all right so we get to laugh at her.

The front seat passenger was hanging out the car whilst filming a SnapChat video along the #M25. She then fell out the car and into a live lane.
It is only by luck she wasn’t seriously injured or killed.#nowords
2846 pic.twitter.com/b7f1tPJTEb

— Roads Policing – Surrey Police – UK (@SurreyRoadCops) September 19, 2020

She’s another Fellini, a Truffaut, a Scorsese. I can’t wait to see the full movie.… Read the rest

You're A Coward, Harry pic.twitter.com/1B2EcGwCrt

— Tatsuya Ishida (@TatsuyaIshida9) September 19, 2020

… Read the rest

More transphobia spotted!

Trans advocate Jayce Carver said she believes Igor Dzaic should bow out of the Ward 7 byelection after his “transphobic” tweet came to light.

“Imagine thinking that to be a woman all you have to do is say you are and get a few surgeries, even though you’re a man,” read one of Dzaic’s tweets. “You must not value real women at all.”

Carver said Dzaic apologized for some of his social media posts, which she said is “kind of too little too late.”

How much do you value real women though, Jayce Carver?

“When you are a politician, you’re supposed to represent the entirety of your community,” said Carver. “Trans-identified people — although we are a

Even when pointing out that Rowling’s new novel isn’t all about a trans woman, it’s imperative to put the boot in anyway. After several paragraphs of plot summary to make clear that the minor character who puts on lady-coat and a wig isn’t trans and isn’t the main suspect, the final paragraph gets to the boot.

Perhaps some will still consider this depiction transphobic, given Rowling’s rightly widely criticised views on trans people.

How different that sentence would have been without the “rightly.” Miles less ugly and clumsy, for a start – “Rowling’s rightly widely criticised views” – that is a mess. But substantively – who says “rightly”? I say “wrongly” so now what do we do? It’s … Read the rest

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87

Fuck fuck fuck… Read the rest

Not all that funny.

I have to say that I find this pretty amusing. After Princeton’s President (like officials of many other colleges) wrote a letter flagellating himself and his University for systemic racism, the U.S. Department of Education has begun investigating Princeton for violating Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The charge is taking federal money for years while purporting to abide by federal nondiscrimination and equal-opportunity standards. If Princeton is indeed rife with “systemic racism” that it hasn’t addressed, then surely they have violated that agreement.

I saw items about it earlier today, and had the same ambivalent reaction.

I get why it’s a little funny, I suppose. I definitely get that it can … Read the rest

Heh.

Heh heh.

Heh heh heh heh.

Troubled Blood, the new book from Robert Galbraith aka J K Rowling, has shifted more copies in a day than Lethal White sold in its first week, according to publisher Little, Brown.

Oops.… Read the rest

Aaron Rupar on Trump’s Hymn to White Resentment:

The solution, Trump claimed, is to “restore patriotic education to our schools.” He said he’ll create a new “1776 Commission” to “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding.”

“Our heroes will never be forgotten. Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul,” he added.

What this will end up meaning in practice isn’t clear, and isn’t really important. For Trump, what matters is to signal to racial reactionaries that he’s on their side.

In case they hadn’t already figured that out.

This legacy of

Um…

Mister Stupid say that man is bad man, he doesn’t say anteefuh is bad people who do bad things, he must be bad man.

Sounds like FBI Director Wray should probably make sure his LinkedIn account is up to date and his resume is fresh pic.twitter.com/kAQRDIGCnU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2020

… Read the rest

The Voting Rights Act? What’s that? Never heard of it.

North Carolina Is Already Rejecting Black Voters’ Mail-In Ballots More Often Than White Voters’

In North Carolina, absentee ballots have already been sent back and the state has been updating statistics on those ballots daily. As of September 17, Black voters’ ballots are being rejected at more than four times the rate of white voters, according to the state’s numbers.¹ Black voters have mailed in 13,747 ballots, with 642 rejected, or 4.7 percent. White voters have cast 60,954 mail-in ballots, with 681 — or 1.1 percent — rejected.

…

“When there’s a barrier, it’s going to fall hardest on the most disadvantaged and disenfranchised in the community, which is

He’ll sue! He’ll sue any damn scientists who say he’s bullshitting. He’ll sue them into oblivion!

Scott Atlas, a Trump coronavirus adviser, has threatened to sue a group of Stanford professors who wrote an open letter denouncing multiple public statement[s] Atlas has made about responding to Covid-19.

A letter from his lawyer said the professors’ statement “maliciously defames” Atlas and demanded the signers of the letters to withdraw their claims or be sued, according to Politico.

The open letter, which was published last Wednesday, said that Atlas’s statements and opinions “run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy”. Over 100 faculty members with various medical

Another woman steps up to say Trump sexually assaulted her.

Amy Dorris told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that Mr Trump groped various parts of her body and forcibly kissed her as she came out of a bathroom at the US Open tennis tournament.

Trump’s lawyers say nuh uh he did not.

She says Trump was lurking outside the women’s room waiting for her.

“He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And that’s when the grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything,” she told the Guardian.

“I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it.”

Of course not. … Read the rest

This guy. Honestly.

He doesn’t so much gasp as emit a loud histrionic breath-squeal of shock-horror when Bev Jackson says “We personally don’t believe that anyone can be born in the wrong body.”

We not only don’t believe it, we can’t believe it. It’s six impossible things before breakfast all over again. We can’t believe these dopy science-fictiony fantasy run amok claims, because they are not believable.

I suppose they think there’s a giant warehouse in the sky, full of angels in overalls putting the right soul in the right body and occasionally getting it wrong. The box was mislabeled, or an angel is hungover after all that beer mixed with vodka, or they do it on purpose because … Read the rest

The Pantanal is on fire:

The Pantanal, a vast floodplain in South America, is among the largest wetlands in the world. The mosaic of grasslands, shrublands, forests, marshes, and lakes covers an area as large as West Virginia. It is home to thousands of species, including many that are rare and endangered, such as jaguars, giant river otters, hyacinth macaws, and giant armadillos.

Though the number of ranches and cattle pastures have increased on the plateaus that surround the Pantanal in Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia, the floodplain itself has remained mostly free of development in recent decades. But in the past few years, the Pantanal has faced a new challenge: uncontrollable fire.

The 2019 fire season (July through

Another Spiritual Message heard from:

A charismatic and outspoken pastor with a national following drew hundreds to a Snohomish church Wednesday to hear a spiritual message, while some embraced another message the pastor has made repeatedly in Facebook videos: He is adamantly against rules about being forced to wear a mask in public.

That’s redundant, and a thumb on the scales in favor of the “charismatic” (says who?) pastor – there are rules about wearing a mask in public, there are no “rules about being forced to wear a mask in public.” Nobody comes up to you and pins you to a wall and glues a mask to your face. There are potential fines and there is the possibility … Read the rest

Oopsie.

Olivia Troye, who until recently served as Vice President Mike Pence’s top coronavirus task force adviser, slammed President Donald Trump’s pandemic response in an interview with The Washington Post and in a new video for the group Republicans Voters Against Trump.

“When we were in a task-force meeting, the president said, ‘Maybe this COVID thing is a good thing — I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people,'” Troye says in the two-minute video. “Those disgusting people are the same people he claims to care about. These are the people who are still going to his rallies today, who have complete faith in who he is.”

Yebbut they … Read the rest

So now HHS is putting out disinformation under the CDC byline. That’s not cool.

A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month about who should be tested for the coronavirus was not written by C.D.C. scientists and was posted to the agency’s website despite their serious objections, according to several people familiar with the matter as well as internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

The guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus. It came at a time when public health experts were pushing for more testing rather than less, and administration officials told The Times that

Trump’s disgusting bilge about the need to force children to be fanatically PatriOtic and believe that everything we’ve ever done as a country has been perfect and heroicalistic:

Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world. (Applause.)

We’re not. There is much that’s interesting about our history, and even much that’s impressive. The Bill of Rights has been … Read the rest