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

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.

Today in partnership w the @AdCouncil, @Apple, @IBM & private sector leaders our #PledgetoAmericasWorkers launched a robust ad campaign+website to connect all Americans to NEW pathways & jobs!

Never been a more critical time to explore new opportunities⤵️https://t.co/dRZMdZyON4 pic.twitter.com/AJ88lIlkgy

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 14, 2020

She’s so…er…white.… Read the rest

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

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

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

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.

If it’s Goya, it has to be good.
Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno. pic.twitter.com/9tjVrfmo9z

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 15, 2020

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

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

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?

I’m sad because the editors I worked with there are among the finest in

There’s a reason they call it Penis News…

UK's biggest cervical cancer charity shuts down disgustingly transphobic lie that 'only females get cervical cancer' https://t.co/BcZfB4ihSt

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) July 14, 2020

… Read the rest

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.

“What a terrible question to ask” — Donald Trump reacts to George Floyd’s killing by suggesting to CBS that systemic racism is a myth because more white people are killed by cops than blacks people (nevermind that a much higher percentage of black people are) pic.twitter.com/dhnHNh4irS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 14, 2020

The president is so dense that he doesn't understand freedom of speech only constrains the government. Nothing prohibits a private company from, say, banning the Confederate flag from being displayed at events. https://t.co/lSn8oLqSjj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 14, 2020

That really … Read the rest

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

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

Has anyone else noticed that it's "Woman" when transwomen have done something wrong, and "Trans women" when they're the victim? https://t.co/ozIE4DZH9T

— Jack (@j4ppleby) July 14, 2020

… Read the rest

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

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

Inclusive to all survivors…except women who want women-only spaces. Remove barriers to anyone who wants support…except women who want women-only spaces.

“We continue to provide women only space within our Centre to all who identify as women” – so a massive beardy bloke gets to be in the women only space at their Centre provided he says “I am a woman.” That’s fine then.… Read the rest

Bari Weiss has written a pompous self-admiring letter to the New York Times explaining why she is awesome and the Times is pathetic so she quits so there.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home.

Wait a second. Why would the Times want to bring in first-time writers? Why would it be a bad thing that first-time writers would not otherwise appear in the paper? Why isn’t it just obvious that first-time writers don’t just get to appear in the Times … Read the rest

A Vanity Fair piece from last month by trans woman Grace Robertson says how wrongy-wrong JK Rowling is and muses aloud about why.

Rowling, a British feminist, is soaking up these anti-trans views—she’s transphobic because everyone she reads and listens to is. Why? That’s the real mystery. Some pin the blame on many British journalists’ close ties to 2000s “skeptic” movement, largely built around dismissing pseudosciences such as homeopathy and “anti-science” views. My view is that it’s about just how white and privileged journalism is in the U.K.

Wait wait wait. Back up a step. Don’t be in such a hurry to step over that. What about this skeptic movement which is built around “dismissing” – or rather saying what … Read the rest

A Russian historian says things they don’t want to hear.

He is accused of child pornography; the charges may be a way to shut him up.

While Dmitriev was held in pre-trial detention, a group of Kremlin-backed historians have worked to rewrite the history of one of the largest sites the historian uncovered, Sandarmokh, where 9,000 victims of Stalin’s Great Terror are buried. The new narrative casts the site as a World War II-era burial ground and dilutes Sandarmokh’s association with Stalin. “This is happening across the board,” Galkova said. “We see how convenient it is to switch over attention from the collective memory of the repressions to the Great Patriotic War [WWII].”

You too, huh? We’ve got that … Read the rest

Kids – don’t try this at home.

Originally a comment by Papito on The thought-terminating lie.

I think the problem is that people don’t know the difference between “existential” and “epistemological.” I don’t believe that people such as JK Rowling pose an existential threat to transpeople so much as an epistemological threat.

Maybe “existential” sounds more fancy to TRAs, or more dramatic. They want desperately to be validated, but just like stolen library books, they won’t cease to exist because they’re not validated. Nobody is denying trans people (or stolen library books) exist, they’re just denying that trans people know what they think they know. That’s an epistemological quarrel.

The trans religion goes like this: in addition to the physical sex of people, people also have … Read the rest