In Brexit news:

Boris Johnson has said he will press on “undaunted” with Brexit on 31 October, despite losing a crunch Commons vote.

The prime minister must now ask the EU for an extension to that deadline after MPs backed a motion designed to rule out a no-deal exit by 322 votes to 306.

He told MPs: “I will not negotiate a delay with the EU and neither does the law compel me to do so.”

He vowed to bring in legislation on Monday to implement the deal he struck with Brussels this week.

MPs could also be given another vote on the deal on Monday, if Commons Speaker John Bercow allows it.

The Commons defeat is a major

Walter Shaub is livid about the Doral crime. He’s also informative – he says the Doral thing is a whole new level. I thought that in terms of the extreme blatancy and defiance of boundaries, but he says more than that. I’ll just go way back early yesterday and quote the hell out of him.

Agents of chaos want you to be cynical about democracy and believe public servants are, were and always will be corrupt. If that’s true, nothing matters. The life of Elijah Cummings and last night’s #Sammies2019 tell a different story. Democracy requires belief in what can be.

David Farenthold said:

The summit will be held in June, when Miami is hot and Doral is usually

Also McKinnon:

The first item in his Twitter profile is “World Champion Cyclist.” But he’s a “World Champion Cyclist” only because he cheated in order to race with women even though he’s a man. He’s not really a “World Champion Cyclist.”

He’s not a public intellectual, either. He’s a public bullshitter and fraud and bully.

He’s pretending to be indignant because people who object to his cheating object to his cheating:

Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves. They’ve had to disable the live chat on the live feed for the world championships because transphobic bigots took over and wouldn’t stop. But I *am* glad they acted and disabled the chat, because it was a horrific mess.

He’s stealing prizes from … Read the rest

Sky News did a chat with cycling champion and famed trans woman Rachel McKinnon.

RM: I’m legally and medically female, but the people who oppose my existence still want to think of me as male, they use the language of that I’m a man, and so there’s this stereotype that men are always stronger than women, and so if you think of trans women as men, then you think there’s an unfair advantage.

No. We don’t “think of trans women as men” – that’s just what they are. It’s McKinnon who does the thinking of people as what they’re not; those of us who reject the bullshit just know men when we see them. We don’t “think of” McKinnon … Read the rest

Journalist goes to meet subject of interview, starts write-up with hipster description of meet and greet, so that we can get our attitude straight at the outset. Lila Shapiro meets Andrea Long Chu:

On an early fall afternoon at a dry-pot restaurant in the East Village, the critic Andrea Long Chu is talking about herself, which is, by her account, one of her favorite things to do.

I guess we’re meant to take that as irony? Or charming self-deprecating frankness? Or, ideally, some of each, so that we’ll fall all the more in love with Chu? I don’t know, but it doesn’t work on me. I’ve become profoundly resistant to people who love nothing more than talking about themselves. … Read the rest

#bedbugsummit is trending.

“Bring the leaders of the free world to Doral, he said. What could go wrong, he said,” tweeted songwriter Holly Figueroa O’Reilly, founder of Blue Wave Crowdsource, which supports Democratic candidates.

Twitter users began using the hashtag Thursday after White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney announced that the G7 summit would take place at Trump’s Doral resort because it was “far and away the best physical facility for this meeting.”

Except for the bedbugs. And the heat. And the humidity. And the overall who wants to be stuck at a crap Trump resort near Miami airport. And the fact that there are many better physical facilities. Other than that, it’s definitely the best.… Read the rest

The front page of the Baltimore Sun today:

… Read the rest

On the one hand you have the political or philosophical concept of freedom of speech, and on the other hand you have the commercial interest of various people who make lots of money by selling tv shows and magazines and tabloids, and/or the advertising they purvey. If we want to think about the political or philosophical concept of freedom of speech, we’re well advised to consult Tocqueville or Mill or Orwell rather than Murdoch or O’Reilly or…Zuckerberg.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is not impressed by Zuckerberg’s credentials to instruct the masses on free speech.

For his entire adult life, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has been able to make up in hubris what he lacks in education. He continued that trend on

So Mulvaney says yeah there was a quid pro quo, deal with it, ya big bunch of anti-corruption wimps.

Or almost that.

A senior White House official has admitted military aid to Ukraine was withheld partly to pressure Kyiv to investigate allegations on the Democrats and the 2016 election.

Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said President Donald Trump had mentioned Democratic “corruption”.

But Mr Trump was also concerned about wider corruption in Ukraine, he said.

Yeah like socialist corruption and Mexican corruption and…uh…Muslim corruption. Stuff like that.

Briefing reporters on Thursday, Mr Mulvaney gave a lengthy answer to a question about Ukraine, saying the president had told him Ukraine was a “corrupt place” and that Mr Trump didn’t

Originally a comment by What a Maroon on Not angels.

As many of you know, I spent some time in Turkey about 30 years ago. In total I was there for about a year, including a summer in Istanbul and about ten months in Ankara. While I was in Ankara, I also had the opportunity to travel around the country, and visited pretty much every region. I met a lot of wonderful people there and had a fantastic time, and have many cherished memories. Of course spending a year in the country three decades ago doesn’t give me any real insight into what is going on now, but the recent actions of the government have brought back some memories.… Read the rest

From Gordon Sondland’s prepared statement to the impeachment inquiry:

On May 23, 2019, three days after the Zelensky inauguration, we in the U.S. delegation debriefed President Trump and key aides at the White House. We emphasized the strategic importance of Ukraine and the strengthening relationship with President Zelensky, a reformer who received a strong mandate from the Ukrainian people to fight corruption and pursue greater economic prosperity. We asked the White House to arrange a working phone call from President Trump and a working Oval Office visit. However, President Trump was skeptical that Ukraine was serious about reforms and anti-corruption, and he directed those of us present at the meeting to talk to Mr. Giuliani, his personal attorney, about

I feel somewhat shattered at the loss of Elijah Cummings. Dan Rodricks in his hometown paper, the Baltimore Sun:

“We are better than this.”

Elijah Cummings said that over and over again, urging his fellow Americans and his fellow Baltimoreans to believe it — and to be it.

The U.S. congressman from Maryland, who died early Thursday morning at 68, was a long-time warrior for justice, truly a great man. He spoke truth to power even as a member of the power class. And the Democrat was not above pleading, with rival Republicans or constituents, for what he knew was right.

He chose politics and public life because he wanted a better country, a better city. Immersed in the

But wait, there’s more! James Kirkup introduces us to Deputy Chief Constable Julie Cooke of Cheshire Police.

DCC Cooke has rather a big job in Cheshire, where there were more than 30,000 violent crimes in the year to August 2019 and the monthly rate of violent crime is up by more than 50 per cent in the last year. 

Fortunately, however,  DCC Cooke has still managed to find time to make a video marking International Pronouns Day.

Marking what??!

No, I know what; I had heard of it; it’s just that it’s so idiotic, and so idiotic-squared that anyone is paying attention to it, let alone making police videos about it.

If you’re not familiar with that occasion, the