All entries by this author

Gone already

Jul 16th, 2020 8:47 am | By

Trump is hiding the information.

Previously public data has already disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website after the Trump administration quietly shifted control of the information to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Since the pandemic began, the CDC regularly published data on availability of hospital beds and intensive care units across the country. But Ryan Panchadsaram, who helps run a data-tracking site called Covid Exit Strategy, said that when he tried to collect the data from the CDC on Tuesday, it had disappeared.

Just poof, gone, no warning, no explanation.

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told reporters on a conference call Wednesday that states were told to stop sending hospital information to

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Slice and dice

Jul 16th, 2020 7:58 am | By

There’s a Facebook page called Topsurgery by Miles. It’s what it sounds like. Guy posts before and after photos of breast amputations.

Last year he posted a bit of inspiration:

19th century advice; equally relevant today

Be yourself…by getting your breasts cut off.… Read the rest



Mandating no mandates

Jul 16th, 2020 7:37 am | By

Georgia’s damn fool governor Brian Kemp has banned mask mandates.

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp issued an executive order Wednesday night, which outright banned cities and counties in the state from issuing mask orders to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

Because freedom! Freedom freedom freedom. Our ancestors came here to get away from mandates to help slow the spread of plague and we must honor that proud tradition.

The move, despite neighboring states like Alabama requiring masks in public, voided mask mandates in 15 local jurisdictions in the Peach State where they had been implemented.

Peaches won’t do you much good once you get the covid.

While outlawing mask mandates, Kemp’s executive order “strongly” encourages all residents and

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Pretending you don’t know what a woman is

Jul 15th, 2020 4:45 pm | By

The fury at ActionAidUK is hot.

https://twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1283463024247033856 https://twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1283541329759342592

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Not open to the public

Jul 15th, 2020 4:25 pm | By

Trump is sidelining the CDC. During a pandemic. He wants us not to know the facts.

The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the

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Look forward to the beans in prison spanky

Jul 15th, 2020 3:31 pm | By

So what does president Pinhead do when people say Princess Ivanka committed an ethics violation by promoting Goya products?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCrAzKiBFUQ/?utm_source=ig_embed

“You want ethics violations? HOLD MY BEER.”… Read the rest



Not thinking at all

Jul 15th, 2020 12:30 pm | By

What was that you were saying about contagion?

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) announced on Wednesday he has tested positive for the coronavirus and will self-isolate, Tulsa World reports.

The 47-year-old Stitt is believed to be the first governor in the U.S. to test positive. He attended President Trump’s rally in Tulsa last month, which the county’s health department director said likely contributed to a surge in cases in the region.

Oh, gee. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Stitt led one of the most aggressive reopening plans out of any state and rarely wears a mask in public, according to AP. He has also resisted a statewide mask mandate and said Wednesday after testing positive

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New opportunities!

Jul 15th, 2020 11:50 am | By

Ivanka marketing brand-name beans came along right after Ivanka marketing Get An Exciting New Job! in the midst of a pandemic which has eliminated many jobs.

She’s so…er…white.… Read the rest



No such thing

Jul 15th, 2020 11:43 am | By

Sarah Phillimore tells us of someone who wrote to ActionAidUK asking them to use the word “sex” rather than “gender” in their mailings because

These words are being conflated on a regular basis and it is causing issues. Women and girls are being discriminated against and abused on the basis of their sex. Words are important and it needs to be crystal clear who is being subject to the violence so we can help those most in need.

You can write their reply in your sleep.

We agree that words are important. As ActionAid UK is an organisation focused on supporting the most marginalised women and girls in the world, it is important to us that we are clear that

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Getting story straight 101

Jul 15th, 2020 11:11 am | By

Trump and his hooligans just can’t get it together on what they’re supposed to be saying about Fauci. We hate him? We love him but he has to shut up about this whole pandemic thing? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about? He knows lots but he needs to be more tactful?

Yes, and more.

The White House on Wednesday disavowed an overt attack on the government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, from one of President Trump’s senior advisers on trade and China, Peter Navarro.

Navarro wrote an op-ed for USA Today on Tuesday in which he argued that Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on” — another salvo in a series

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Those on the margins

Jul 15th, 2020 10:09 am | By

So a bishop and a rabbi walk into a pub issue a joint statement:

It’s a funny kind of “statement” because I can’t find it in any form except that image, only excerpts in a few news items, mostly churchy ones. I just zipped through the bishop’s tweets for the past couple of weeks in case he’d tweeted a link but nope. He seems like a very decent man, full of concern for the downtrodden, but I still have to take issue with some of the claims in this statement.

We have noted with sadness the increasing use of the term ‘transgender’ ideology and other derogatory terms about trans people.

It’s not derogatory to say there is such a thing … Read the rest



Si es Goya

Jul 15th, 2020 9:00 am | By

I thought it was a photoshop when I looked to see why “Ivanka” is trending – but no, she really did tweet it her own royal self.

Remember, kids, she’s an OFFICIAL in the WHITE HOUSE.

She’s also someone who’s never eaten canned beans in her life.

She’s also the loyal daughter and employee of the president who calls Mexicans rapists and bad hombres.

Eyebrows are elevated:

Ivanka Trump is facing backlash after tweeting a photo of herself holding up a can of Goya beans. The tweet from the president’s daughter includes Goya’s slogan, “If it’s

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Just disagreeing with today’s list

Jul 14th, 2020 5:11 pm | By

Ross Douthat on cancel culture:

All cultures cancel; the question is for what, how widely and through what means.

There is no human society where you can say or do anything you like and expect to keep your reputation and your job. Reputational cancellation hung over the heads of Edith Wharton’s heroines; professional cancellation shadowed 20th-century figures like Lenny Bruce. Today, almost all critics of cancel culture have some line they draw, some figure — usually a racist or anti-Semite — that they would cancel, too. And social conservatives who criticize cancel culture, especially, have to acknowledge that we’re partly just disagreeing with today’s list of cancellation-worthy sins.

This is what I keep saying. (It surprises me to agree … Read the rest



Samizdat Sullivan

Jul 14th, 2020 4:44 pm | By

To lose one centrist columnist, Mister Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.

A pair of prominent writers announced they’re leaving their prominent publications Tuesday. The resignations appear to be related to recent debates within the wider media landscape about the alleged stifling of public discourse.

Bari Weiss, a former op-ed staff editor and writer for The New York Times, resigned from the newspaper today, while prominent New York writer Andrew Sullivan announced this would be his last week at the magazine.

So what’s the betting? Is a new and exciting Centrist Gazette about to burst onto the scene?

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Let’s sing the “Everyone With a Cervix” song

Jul 14th, 2020 4:05 pm | By

There’s a reason they call it Penis News…

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Hogging the microphone

Jul 14th, 2020 3:24 pm | By

Trump is holding a kind of rally disguised as a press briefing at the moment. Apparently he’s sweating heavily and failing to charm his audience.

That really … Read the rest



Guest post: The ability to have nuanced discussions

Jul 14th, 2020 2:32 pm | By

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on A firm grasp.

first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home

David Brooks, Bill Kristol,Thomas Friedman, Ross Douthat – just off the top of my head.

To a large extent the New York Times’ editorial page has long been a who’s who of “very serious people”, AKA the same centrist “very serious people” whose propagandising helped land America in Iraq. To say that centrist writers wouldn’t see the New York Times as their home, would imply that they’d never heard of it.

But the big thing that struck me here was this:

This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few

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Sneaky

Jul 14th, 2020 12:35 pm | By

I hadn’t, but now that you point it out…

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They’re stuffy and claustrophobic

Jul 14th, 2020 11:56 am | By

Another fresh exciting novel idea from Brendan O’Neill – masks! Masks are authoritarian! Fight the power!

Here come the sneerers. Their target this time? Anyone who expresses even a tiny amount of scepticism about mandatory mask-wearing in shops. Within hours, mask sceptics have become the new climate-change deniers. They’re granny-killers. They’re sociopaths. They’re the kind of people who care more for their right to breath all over the fruit and veg at Lidl than they do for the continued existence of people over the age of 75. The speed with which mask scepticism has been turned into a foul blasphemy that only thick people who probably voted for Brexit would ever engage in rather confirms that this latest manifestation of

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“She” likes child abuse images

Jul 14th, 2020 11:05 am | By

And then there’s this shit.

Blackpool woman accessed child abuse images in hospital bed

This “woman”:

Julie Marshall used public wifi to look at some of her 80,000 images as she recovered from a heart attack in August 2017, Preston Crown Court heard.

The 54-year-old, who had no previous convictions, admitted downloading images from the internet between June 2004 and April 2018 in February.

They included 677 images of the most serious nature, known as category A images.

She was also given a 10-year notification order to sign the sex offenders register and a six-year sexual harm prevention order.

“She” is also not a woman.

Statistics? What are they?… Read the rest