John Cleese in 2018:

My American friends are asking me about President Trumps’s observation that the British ‘like him’.

I regret this is quite unfounded.

The explanation for this canard is that Trump is pronoid.

Pronoid is the opposite of paranoid. A paranoid person thinks, without any basis in reality, that everybody is out to get them. A pronoid person is someone who thinks, without any basis in reality, that everybody likes them.

The fact is that the British loathe Donald Trump

This is because he is the polar opposite of a ‘ Gentleman ‘, who has qualities the British admire. A fine example is Gareth Southgate.

To the British, a ‘ Gentleman ‘ is a man who is … Read the rest

Unite Scotland turns out to be not all that unitey.

A statement from Unite Scotland's LGBT+ Committee on the comments made by Anas Sarwar on the GRA bill pic.twitter.com/eAVTgJBkyB

— Unite Scotland (@UniteScotland) February 21, 2025

I’m especially impressed by that breezy “Unite believes that the strengthening and protection of the rights of trans people does not mean the rights of others will be diminished or affected.” Well that’s nice, but they offer no explanation of how that claim can possibly be true. How can it be true that “rights” such as the “right” for men who say they are trans to have everything that belongs to women and go everywhere that women go will not diminish or affect the … Read the rest

Julia Carrie Wong chats with “scholar” Sophie Lewis about those evil women who dare to call themselves feminists even though they don’t think men are women.

…just three weeks into Trump’s second term, the man responsible for stripping women in the US of the right to an abortion was declared a “feminist kween”, “feminist hero” and “feminist icon” by several prominent feminist writers in the UK.

The occasion for these declarations was Trump’s all-out assault on trans rights. Since taking office, the president has used executive orders to attempt to restrict the ability of trans Americans to travel, work, receive medical care, serve in the military, attend school and participate

Meanwhile, Bannon…

Steve Bannon has been accused of making a “Nazi” salute while giving a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday.

The incident occurred soon after Elon Musk, another top ally of Donald Trump, was accused of giving a Nazi salute on stage during an event celebrating the president’s January inauguration.

There’s a clip, and I gotta say, it’s a pretty feeble “Nazi salute” if it is one at all. It’s not as energized as Musk’s was – it’s more like a wave than a Nazi salute. But I’m not going to quibble. It’s not as if either of these guys is a staunch opponent of Nazi-style messages.

H/t NightCrow

… Read the rest

Time for some Steve Bannon news.

He’s not a fan of the unelected overlord from South Africa.

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former White House chief strategist, has renewed his feud with Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and a top Trump adviser, calling him a “parasitic illegal immigrant” in an interview published online on Tuesday.

Mr. Bannon made the comments in an interview with UnHerd, a British news site, that took place last week.

“Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions,” Mr. Bannon told the interviewer.

Of course Trump too wants to play-act as god etc … Read the rest

This is an angle that doesn’t get enough attention.

Anyone who believes they can magically transition into the opposite sex, is mentally unwell and they should not be employed as doctors…
"Beth" Upton is proof of that… pic.twitter.com/yAQUysxFbh

— Jonny Bell (@Jonnywsbell) February 21, 2025

Do I want a doctor who is busy pretending to be the opposite sex alongside being a doctor? Like hell I do.

To spell out the obvious, that’s a doctor who misunderstands some very basic things about the human body. It’s also a doctor who is self-obsessed enough to pretend to be the other sex and to impose that fantasy game on patients. Why would anyone want that from a doctor?… Read the rest

Wes Streeting objects.

Wes Streeting has raised concerns after a Telegraph investigation found that doctors who change gender are able to have past wrongdoings scrubbed from the public record.

The Health Secretary said the General Medical Council (GMC), which regulates doctors, should urgently overhaul its practices, adding the situation should “not have been allowed”.

The GMC holds a public register of all doctors, allowing the public to check whether a medic has been subject to restrictions or suspensions, or has been struck off.

However, on Thursday the watchdog admitted that it erases the public disciplinary history of doctors who change their gender identities.

It raises the prospect that medics seeking to hide a chequered disciplinary history could

WHAT?!!

Doctors who change gender are allowed to scrub past wrongdoing from public record

Because changing gender=a new and improved doctor who has never done any harm to anyone?

Sandie Peggie’s case against NHS Fife for alleged harassment after the nurse raised concerns about a trans colleague has caused alarm among women and campaigners across the country. The NHS, she claims, was prioritising the rights of Dr Beth Upton, a trans doctor who was born male but insisted on using the women’s changing room, over her rights to a single-sex space.

Now, it can be revealed that the General Medical Council (GMC), which regulates doctors, takes an even more extreme stance on trans medics – effectively scrubbing the public disciplinary

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Congress is supine.

Musk warned Republican lawmakers in December that he was compiling a “naughty list” of members who buck Trump’s agenda. He also pledged shortly after Election Day that his political action committee would “play a significant role in primaries” next year.

A Republican senator told The Hill that Musk’s wealth makes primary threats “a bigger deal.”

One hopes that at some point, it will become a badge of honour to have opposed Trump. Unfortunately, that time is not now. What America needs are Republican members of Congress who realize Trump is destroying the country. They have to stop being okay with that. By supporting a man who famously … Read the rest

A joke but not a joke.

Donald Trump has called himself a king.

In a post to Truth Social on Wednesday, Feb. 19, the president, 78, praised his own efforts in attempting to revoke revoking New York City’s recently reinstated congestion pricing system.

“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan and all of New York, is SAVED,” he wrote, adding, “LONG LIVE THE KING.”

Hur hur, so funny, he’s such a card, hur hur.

Weird that other presidents haven’t made that joke though. Maybe they thought it would be inappropriate, unfunny, narcissistic, trashy?

Also of course you don’t save Manhattan by promoting more and more and more traffic. Manhattan isn’t built for a lot of traffic. It’s a skinny island: there

More terrifying (and terrorizing) every day.

Robert Reich:

Musk and his associates have not only burrowed into the Treasury’s payments system; they are now burrowing into the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration.

They are gaining access to the most sensitive personal information about Americans available anywhere, along with computer code capable of altering that information and those systems. The Muskrats have been able to turn off government funding without Congress’s consent, even in the face of federal court orders to turn the funding back on.

This is blatantly illegal, yet Congress remains silent.

Congress is supine because Republicans are in charge, and Musk has also become Trump’s hatchet man — threatening Republican members of Congress if

A news flash from Jonathan Gallant:

President Trump has issued an executive order, cancelling the name of the FDR Drive along the east side of Manhattan in New York City.   Asserting that FDR deserves no special recognition for leading the USA through World War II, President Trump asserted that there wouldn’t have been a world war at all if he had been president.  “The Poles just brought it all on themselves when they provoked Germany by signing a military alliance with Britain,” he said.  “Poland could have made a deal with Herr Hitler, by turning over Danzig and the Polish Corridor to him, and then there wouldn’t have been any war.” 

  President Trump added that FDR’s administration had … Read the rest

Lies Social

Liberal party will allow women to tell the truth.

The Liberal Democrats have been forced to allow women’s rights campaigners who believe in biological sex to have equal footing with other groups after claims that they had been “vilified and censured” for their beliefs.

Except they’re not beliefs, they’re facts.

Facts are beliefs in the banal sense that people may believe them, but it’s misleading at best and dishonest plus manipulative at worst to call facts “beliefs.” It’s not a mere belief that jumping off a tall building will cause death. It’s not a mere belief that fire burns, that rain is wet, that Antarctica is chilly. Women’s rights campaigners don’t “believe in biological sex”; we know that biological … Read the rest

Side with the aggressor much?

President Trump escalated his attacks against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday by calling him “a dictator without elections.”

Why it matters: The smear marks a new low in the deteriorating U.S.-Ukraine relationship. It comes as the Trump administration is negotiating a deal with the Kremlin to end Russia’s war in Ukraine without Kyiv’s participation in the talks.

Remember when FDR negotiated a deal with Hitler to end Germany’s war in Europe without Europe’s participation in the talks?

 “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his

So…we mustn’t oppress trans people by having criteria for what “trans” is and how anyone knows who is trans and who isn’t, but at the same time we also must agree that trans people are indeed trans (because they say they are). So…what does “trans” mean then? What is it? Why is there so much noisy pressure to give trans people whatever they ask for at any moment? What are we even talking about?

This is what happens when a brainwashed Green Party cult member with a poor degree in Zoology comes up against a properly trained mind that has a sensitive bullshit detector. It’s exquisite to watch.

(Side note – Dodgy ‘Beth’ [Mark 1] is sitting at the back).

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Accountable to the pumpkin.

Unfortunately, we’ve been sliding toward de facto dictatorship for a long, long time. Presidential administrations, regardless of party, have a history of expanding executive power and diminishing congressional authority as defined by the Constitution. (Or as Jon Stewart put it, “Again, for some reason, we have given presidents the power of a king. And then we say, oh, by the way, with that power, you’re not going to get all, like, kingly and shit on us, right?”)

  While this particular move directly asserts White House control over independent agencies, the broader pattern of presidents’ centralizing power at the expense of Congress has been ongoing for literal … Read the rest

Another winner…

Nathanielle Morin, the biologically male $140K/year govt employee who advises @MarciIen on genderwang, has put out a press release (in both official languages) after beating a 12-year-old girl to win a local running competition https://t.co/1liQcZyOzO

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) February 16, 2025

Not, oddly enough, a press release in which he admits he’s a cheating asshole.

https://t.co/pY8JQXRM8w https://t.co/OFPGcb4Vkq

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) February 16, 2025

Dude has the nerve to complain of “spreading hate.”

Aside from protecting women’s spaces from dudes, you mean ?

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) February 16, 2025

… Read the rest

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

I watched Sean Hannity’s Fox News interview tonight with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

But I am still not sure who’s in charge. If there is a headline from the interview, it is that the president of the United States feels that he requires the services of a multibillionaire to enforce his executive orders. Trump complained that he would write these “beautiful” executive orders, which would then languish in administrative limbo. Musk, for his part, explained that the president is the embodiment of the nation and that resisting his orders is the same as thwarting the will of the people. Hannity, of course, enthusiastically supported all of this whining about how hard it

It turns out that actions based on moving fast and breaking things can be…well…destructive. Who knew?

The movers and breakers are trying to unfire some of the crucial people they fired so swiftly and breakingly, but they’re having trouble because they did so much breaking.

The US government is trying to rehire nuclear safety employees it had fired on Thursday, after concerns grew that their dismissal could jeopardise national security, US media reported.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) workers were among hundreds of employees in the energy department who received termination letters.

…

The Trump administration has since tried to reverse their terminations, according to media outlets, but has reportedly struggled to reach the people that were fired after