The “let’s smear Fauci” plan doesn’t seem to be going all that well.

I've known Tony Fauci for years. He is a consummate professional whose advice has been sought out and respected by Presidents of both parties. These attacks on him are disgusting and say more about those leveling them than about Dr. Fauci. https://t.co/GARizcNM4s

— Zeke Emanuel (@ZekeEmanuel) July 13, 2020

your reminder that every disaster movie starts with some asshole president like Trump ignoring an expert like Dr. Fauci

— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) July 13, 2020

.@Acosta to @PressSec with the question of the day: "Why is the White House trashing Dr. Fauci and sending out opposition research like memos to reporters? The president has gone off

Business Insider notes that not listening to Fauci is one thing (Trump listens to no one and wouldn’t understand if he did) and smearing him is another.

Sidelining Fauci is one thing. Actively defaming him is much worse, though entirely expected from this White House.  Trump and his lackeys are smearing Fauci, probably the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, as wrong “about everything” and even circulating a list of Fauci’s alleged mistakes to reporters, as though it’s dirt on a political rival. 

President Trump tolerates only one kind of relationship with his employees, toadying. Everyone who won’t boot lick ends up fired, libeled, under investigation by Bill Barr, or all of the above. Since Fauci is a civil servant

Dan Scavino, the guy who helps Trump with his tweeting (he spells the hard words except when Trump forgets to ask him), posted on Facebook yesterday:

Sorry, Dr. Faucet! At least you know if I’m going to disagree with a colleague, such as yourself, it’s done publicly — and not cowardly, behind journalists with leaks. See you tomorrow!

Schools and…oh my god…football!!!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile no of course Trump is not trying to silence Fauci, why would you even think that?… Read the rest

Now Trump is just saying the CDC is lying about the pandemic to damage him.

He needs to be taken away and locked up.

President Donald Trump retweeted a tweet Monday morning which accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of lying about the coronavirus in order to obstruct his reelection. 

The original tweet was written by Chuck Woolery, the original host of “Wheel of Fortune,” who is also a conservative. 

I don’t know what “Wheel of Fortune” is, beyond “some game show or other.” Fabulous that the president is sharing the views of a game show Personality in order to persuade us that the CDC is lying about a pandemic.

The tweet reads: “The most outrageous lies

No.

“Center the trans person.”

No.

Now about this business of Trump and Pence and DeVos working to kill off teachers…

As coronavirus case numbers soar across the country, continuing to reach record highs in many states, the nation has begun to confront the uncomfortable questions of if and how schools should open in the fall. While there is near universal agreement on the need for the education system across America to provide classes to students, the question is how?  Should schools open up physically, risking the spread of the highly communicable virus among students, teachers, and ultimately to those who they live with? Or should there be a greater emphasis on virtual and distance learning, which sacrifices a significant part of the educational experience,

Oh good, now we’ve done our best to spread the virus to Okinawa.

The governor of Okinawa island in Japan has demanded that a United States military commander take tougher prevention measures and have more transparency after officials were told more than 60 marines at two bases have been infected with the coronavirus over the past few days.

On Sunday Okinawan officials reported 61 cases, 38 of them at marine corps air station Futenma, which is at the center of a relocation dispute, and another 23 at Camp Hansen since 7 July.

Sorry, sorry. Our bad. These things happen. We’ve put the bases into lockdown now; are we good?

The disclosure of the exact figures came only after repeated

Now there’s a profound question.

Will Boystown become Queerville, Legacy Street, New Town or Spectrumville?

Spectrumville??

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Boystown? What the hell is that? I thought it was some corny movie about Catholic priests with a deep interest in boys.

Under pressure from a Change.org petition that complains about the gendered nature of the name Boystown, particularly in the context of local incidents of sexism, racism and transphobia, business leaders in Chicago’s most prominent LGBTQ neighborhood have begun the process of considering a name change.

Oh, that’s what it is. Seems confused. Why Boystown if it’s for L as well as G?

More than 900 people have signed a Change.org petition calling on

Breathtaking. (Literally. I don’t think I’m the only one who finds herself holding her breath for several seconds when reading an exceptionally foul news item.)

The White House is seeking to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, as President Donald Trump works to marginalize him and his dire warnings about the shortcomings of the U.S. coronavirus response.

As a pandemic soars out of control thanks to the malevolent incompetence of the people in the aforementioned White House.

In a remarkable broadside by the Trump administration against one of its own, a White House official said Sunday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.”

Florida is breaking records.

The grim news from Florida continues: The state reported 15,000 new cases on Sunday. That breaks not only the record for a state in the US in a single day but is also more new cases than any European country has reported in a single day during the pandemic. Only the US, Brazil and India have reported more new cases in a day than Florida did on Sunday.

Yikes.

Florida’s population is 21.5 million. Germany’s is 83 million.

Hospitals are under strain in Florida as the virus surges, and the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has refused to introduce a statewide mandate requiring people to wear masks in public. He has also pushed for

The campaign to get us all killed continues.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos calls on schools to reopen despite CDC guidelines that say children meeting in groups can put everyone at risk: "There is going to be the exception to the rule. But the rule should be that kids go back to school this fall" #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/UPuYa7wGwo

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) July 12, 2020

She’s right that being kept out of school is itself a health risk for children, especially children with fewer resources. But that’s pretty much all she’s right about.

“Where there are little flare-ups or hotspots, that can be dealt with on a school-by-school or a case-by-case basis,” she said, without providing any recommendations for

Matt Lodder, who just had to apologize for tweeting damaging lies about Maya Forstater, is an academic. It’s my impression that academia has strong norms against lying – that, like the legal profession, it has powerful vocational reasons for valuing truth and truth-telling and disfavoring lies and slander.

Caroline Dodds Pennock is also an academic – a historian.

Solidarity with @mattlodder, fellow “so-called academic historian” and fighter of good fights. If the winged monkeys are after you, you must be doing something right. pic.twitter.com/NWaNqriiTU

— Caroline Dodds Pennock (@carolinepennock) July 12, 2020

That was about eight hours ago, before Matt Lodder admitted he’d told lies about Maya. But this is after he admitted it:

I think it aged PERFECTLY.

Dude tells lies, bad lies, about a woman. Dude is firmly informed the lies are lies, and bad lies at that. Dude gives the most minimal grudging apology possible.

He casually announced, on Twitter, that Maya harassed and bullied people. It’s a lie. He learned that it’s a lie. He said he apologizes for “any distress [he] caused her.”

What does he mean “any”? Why does he limit it to “distress”?

This academic dude announced publicly that a woman harassed and bullied people which is not true, and instead of apologizing for publishing damaging lies about a woman he simply apologizes for potential bad feefees that may have resulted. It’s basically “I’m sorry you’re so upset that I … Read the rest

The thought-terminating cliché strikes again.

Rowling isn't transphobic, everyone. It's all settled now. She's merely challenging the humanity of trans people under the umbrella of debate. https://t.co/qUIVLKxJey

— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) July 9, 2020

Except that she’s not “challenging the humanity of trans people.” Not even close.

Disputing some of the truth claims made by some trans ideologues is not challenging the humanity of trans people. Rowling is not challenging any claims of the type “trans people are human” or “trans people are human and deserve human rights” or “trans people are human and should not be persecuted.” Not even close, not even slightly.

Fight fair for a change.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Tim Harris on It’s almost as if there’s a pattern.

I do not think it was ‘vast swathes’ of Japanese intellectuals who suppressed or discounted the Nanking Massacre. Certainly a number of nationalists, many of whom could barely be called ‘intellectuals’, did (and do). Modern Japan had the misfortune to be re-born as a modern nation at the height of Western imperialism and racism, and was one of the only Asian nations never to be made a colony. In 1919, Japan proposed a ‘racial equality’ clause to be included in the Treaty of Versailles. This was turned down by Anglo-Saxondom – the British because of the Empire, the Australians because of the ‘White Australia’ policy, … Read the rest

Also Trump is playing the “not you” game with Fauci.

… as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

Because Trump’s personal grudges are way more important than the survival of hundreds of thousands of people.

During a Fox News interview Thursday with Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.” And when Greta Van Susteren asked him last week about

Dipshit has allowed himself to be persuaded to wear a mask this one time, but he’s not going to go all politically correct and say they should be worn whenever necessary. Dipshit must get his way! Ok so it costs millions of lives, but Dipshit don’t care.

President Donald Trump — who has stubbornly refused to wear a mask in public, ridiculed those who have and done little to encourage his supporters to embrace the common sense public health measure — has said he will wear a mask during a visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center on Saturday.

He is also expected to be photographed wearing it, a photo opportunity that some of the President’s aides practically begged

I’m reading some of the comments on Sophie Grace Chappell’s letter to Rowling, and # 7 by Jean (comments don’t have separate links there) is…informative.

I am so exhausted by all this. I’m disappointed that you only engaged with one point of the 5 Rowling made, but OK, I’ll meet you on the ‘bathroom’ issue. It’s extraordinarily disingenuous for you and others to assume that the ‘bathroom’ issue is about ordinary women going about their days. It is not. It’s about trauma and whose rights matter more.

I live on the west coast of Canada, where Trans dreams have largely all come true. And here is what I know:

I used to volunteer extensively at a charity for vulnerable

“Sophie Grace” Chappel wrote an open letter to Rowling last month; it was posted at Crooked Timber.

There are several paragraphs about the way Chappel derived understanding of his trans nature from reading fantasy novels including Rowling’s, and an expression of sympathy for Rowling’s experiences of abuse, and then the “but you’re wrong” part.

But I urge you to look a little more closely, and from a different angle, at some of the issues that you’re raising.

First, a quick harrumph of exasperation. You wrote on twitter that “If trans people were suffering discrimination on the basis of being trans then I would march with them”. To be honest, that tweet took my breath away. If we were suffering

The headline:

UK’s only trans philosophy professor to JK Rowling: Harry Potter helped me become a woman

So a trans philosophy professor is not a professor and knows nothing of philosophy?

Anyway, tell us a story.

In the autumn of 1969, a five-year-old boy called Timothy Chappell, in his first term at school, had an idea. Could he, he asked his mum, go to class as a girl? “My mother looked at me,” says Timothy – now Sophie-Grace – “and there was both terror and fury in her eyes. And she said to me: why?”

“Sophie-Grace.” Ffs. It’s as bad as “Sophie Labelle” who does that gruesome “Assigned Male” cartoon. Man becomes woman, names self wise-grace. But hey this movement … Read the rest