Religious programs intended to cure or manage addiction should never be forced on anyone, because they are religious (and religion should never be forced on anyone). One small step in that direction:

Health-care professionals who work in Vancouver-area hospitals and medical clinics will no longer be required to attend 12-step programs if they want to keep their jobs after being diagnosed with addiction.

The change comes as a result of a settlement between public health authority Vancouver Coastal Health and former nurse Byron Wood, who filed a human rights complaint alleging he was discriminated against as an atheist when he was fired for quitting Alcoholics Anonymous.

The settlement doesn’t allow him to talk about all the details.

But he

Local tv news station – not the Sinclair one – reports on the outburst of stupid over the WoLF event at the library.

The not at all tendentious or well-poisoning headline:

Event at Seattle Public Library causes firestorm, group accused of being ‘hate group’

Aka Trans activists lose their shit because feminists meet to discuss what we mean by “gender.” The event isn’t causing any firestorm, stupid angry unreasonable people are creating a firestorm out of nothing. Group is accused of being a hate group by stupid angry unreasonable people who are stupid and unreasonable. Group is not a hate group. People protesting group are much more like a hate group than group is.

An event is causing backlash at

Trump breaking yet more new ground in Repulsion Farm:

Not long after Donald Trump took to the stage at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday night, the president launched into one of his biggest crowd-pleasers: pillorying the “deep state,” particularly by performing fan-fic-style dialogue between the “FBI lovers” Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.

It’s a routine that he’s been honing on the re-election campaign trail for months, perhaps most famously during an October campaign event in Minneapolis, where he appeared to make orgasmic, panting noises—much to the audience’s delight—while doing a mock-dialogue between the two “lovers” about how much they “love” each other and hate that “son of a bitch” Trump.

And that, in turn, … Read the rest

Trump and Lavrov had a reunion.

Donald Trump held a closed-door meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, at the White House on Tuesday, but the two men gave diverging accounts of what was discussed, on a day articles of impeachment were announced against the US president.

Maddow pointed out the scorching ironies of having a closed-door meeting with Lavrov of all people on the day articles of impeachment were announced. Last time Trump met privately with Lavrov was that time he blabbed top security secrets to Lavrov and Kisliyak. The secrets were so top and Trump’s blabbing them was so horrifying that the US intel people were forced to extract their best source from Russia. What does … Read the rest

Life in Sydney right now:

I can’t breathe. They say something like 100 bush and grass fires are raging across the state. The city I live in feels like a scene from Blade Runner 2049 come to life in 2019. There is no other way to see it: our dead future is here.

The mornings are smoky and grey. The afternoons distinctly eerie with the sun a shrunken disc that is by turns eggishly sick, bright pink, or burning orange in the seemingly permanent haze.

Seattle was like that for a couple of weeks in August 2018. We had, literally, the worst air in the world for a few days. It was forest fires rather than bush fires, but … Read the rest

Jennifer Rubin is pissed at William Barr.

William P. Barr’s Tuesday interview with NBC News was certainly the most dishonest, frightful and deplorable given by an attorney general in modern times. He attacked the just-released inspector general report and excoriated the FBI for a “travesty” in investigating Russian manipulation of our 2016 election. His false — deliberately false — assertions were jaw-dropping:

Barr claimed, “From day one, it generated exculpatory information and nothing that substantiated any kind of collusion.” False. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found substantial evidence of interaction but did not pursue the noncriminal charge of “collusion.” He could not prove criminal conspiracy. Since then, at the Roger Stone trial, evidence has arisen confirming

The Australian reports:

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has banned a women’s group from office facilities made available to community organisations because of its “exclusionary” views on transgender issues.

The federal member for Clark allows community groups to use his taxpayer-funded photocopying facilities in Hobart. Until recently this included feminist group Women Speak Tasmania.

WST has in recent years clashed with transgender activists over law reform, with the group concerned about the sanctity and safety of female-only services and places. Mr Wilkie has now banned the group from using the facilities, telling The Weekend Australian he sees its views as “discriminatory” and “exclusionary”.

…

WST is furious over the ban, accusing Mr Wilkie of discriminating against the group, while allowing

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Advanced well-poisoning.

sexist & homophobic & transphobic

There it is again. That word, homophobic, as always, right at transpbobia’s side. It makes me increasingly uncomfortable to see it there. Upset even. I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts on why that is. It’s something like this:

Is this how they felt about gay rights? Is this how they felt about us? It scares me a little.

I thought society came to accept gays because they thought hard and came to truly understand in a deep sense what homosexuality is: namely, an immutable trait, not a choice, not a danger to society, etc.

But the way people are reacting to the trans agenda, and … Read the rest

NBC’s interview with Barr:

Attorney General William Barr said he still believes the FBI may have operated out of “bad faith” when it investigated whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, and he contends the FBI acted improperly by continuing the investigation after Donald Trump took office.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Barr essentially dismissed the findings of the Justice Department’s inspector general that there was no evidence of political bias in the launching of the Russia probe, saying that his hand-picked prosecutor, John Durham, will have the last word on the matter.

Except that’s not how it works. The inspector general oversees the Justice Department, not the other way around. Barr’s personal prosecutor doesn’t get to … Read the rest

Banana Republic stuff:

Attorney General Bill Barr’s NBC News interview attacking the FBI stunned many legal and government experts on Tuesday.

After Barr criticized Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s finding that the FBI’s investigations into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian agents during the 2016 presidential election was justified, he also accused the FBI of running a “bad faith” investigation and said actions like that represent the biggest threat to the integrity of American elections.

Don Moynihan, a professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, was astonished by the attorney general’s attacks on the law enforcement agencies that he oversees.

“The Attorney General is saying that the FBI is a bigger threat to the United States than Russia,” 

Julie Bindel is not impressed by Jo Swinson.

On the Today programme this morning, Jo Swinson, in her bumbling, inarticulate and irritating fashion suggested that biological sex does not exist. Yes, that’s right. A woman who has said, on many an occasion, that her female sex has given an unfair advantage to the male party leaders during the election campaign due to sexism, has effectively undermined her own argument. Because, for sexism to exist, so too must biological sex.

Indeed, and for male party leaders to have an unfair advantage over female candidates, there have to be male and female – real male and female, not subjective feelings of having a male or female essence or soul or idenniny.… Read the rest

The Seattle Times has a piece on the campaign to bully the library into canceling the feminist event scheduled for February 1. It’s a classic of the type, in treating The Trans Community as The Oppressed Group and feminist women as the oppressors – not just the oppressors but the obvious oppressors, the eternal oppressors, the everyone knows they’re oppressors oppressors. It’s as if that whole thing where people started to realize that it wasn’t somehow written into the laws of the cosmos that women had to be second-class citizens had never happened.

All the more pathetic since it’s a woman who wrote the piece. This woman:

“Libraries are an institution…situated in a society that is inherently sexist &

Originally a comment by KB Player on Any Man.

Jo Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, was on Today Radio 4 BBC this morning. Sarah Ditum spoke about it on LBC.

“When the leader of the Liberal Democrats was asked, “Do you recognise biological sex exists?”

J Swinson replied: “Not on a binary – I don’t think things are as binary as is often presented. Yes most people are male or female.”

“I think it’s an answer that sounds extremely strange if you haven’t been immersed in the whole debate about sex and gender for a really long time,” said Sarah Ditum, feminist critic and columnist, “the problem for Jo Swinson is the Liberal Democrats have cultivated … Read the rest

Call me crazy but maybe an active volcano is not an ideal tourist destination? Possibly?

Because

This is so hard to believe. Our whole tour group were literally standing at the edge of the main crater not 30 minutes before. My thoughts with the families of those currently unaccounted for, the people recovering now, and especially the rescue workers… pic.twitter.com/mn704hobRk

— Michael Schade (@sch) December 9, 2019

There are 5 dead and 8 missing.

The survivors were taken off the uninhabited island by boat or by helicopter. Emergency services have so far been unable to search the area because of dangerous conditions, with plumes of smoke and ash continuing to rise above the volcano on Tuesday.

Tourists had been

Abortion rights? The Supreme Court looks the other way.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to a Kentucky law requiring doctors to describe ultrasound images and play fetal heartbeat sound to abortion seekers.

…

Challengers, including an abortion clinic, argued that the law forced patients to see the images even if she didn’t want to, and that it violated doctors’ First Amendment rights.

…

Civil rights groups blasted the court’s decision not to take up the challenge.

“By refusing to review the 6th Circuit’s ruling, the Supreme Court has rubber-stamped extreme political interference in the doctor-patient relationship,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “This law is not only unconstitutional, but as

They just can’t get this right. The BBC on Jo Swinson and the LibDems and “reform” of the Gender Recognition Act:

Critics of the Lib Dems plan to reform the Gender Recognition Act, including some women’s rights groups and Christian organisations, have warned that it will make it easier for someone born as a man but now identifying as a women to gain access to women-only spaces such as toilets, changing rooms, prisons and women’s refuges.

No. They have warned that it will make it easier for any man to gain access to women-only spaces such as toilets, changing rooms, prisons and women’s refuges, whether he identifies as a woman or not.

Ms Swinson was challenged on the

Let’s hear from more women in philosophy! Philosophy as a discipline is notoriously bad at hiring women, so let’s strain every nerve to fix that.

Unless we don’t like them, of course.

Guy from InfoWars busking at the impeachment inquiry.… Read the rest

Trump, addressing a Jewish audience, regales them with anti-Semitic tropes.

On Saturday, speaking before the Israeli American Council in Hollywood, Florida, President Trump engaged in the anti-Semitic trope of a Jewish obsession with wealth. Discussing Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan for a wealth tax, he said that Jews in the audience should “be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes.”

Geddit? Money? Jews n money?

He doubled down on the bigoted tropes, broadcasting a harmful claim about Jewish business dealings. “A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well, you’re brutal killers,” Trump said. “You’re not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me.

Hannah Mouncey explains how cruel and unfair it is to exclude him from women’s anything:

I cannot lie—it would have been terrific to have been able to provide the trans community with a visible symbol of the fact that progress is being made towards greater acceptance, but if society is not at that stage then so be it. That time will come, and it is only because we shine a light on these situations and use our own negative experiences to give others strength, that we will eventually make the progress we as a community wish would happen today.

I am not myself actively involved in the trans community, short of attending the Transcend Christmas party each year and speaking