And I thought we’d gone crazy. Boris is getting away with his coup.

Parliament will be suspended just days after MPs return to work in September – and only a few weeks before the Brexit deadline.

Boris Johnson said a Queen’s Speech would take place after the suspension, on 14 October, to outline his “very exciting agenda”.

But it means the time MPs have to pass laws to stop a no-deal Brexit on 31 October would be cut.

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said it was a “constitutional outrage”.

The Speaker, who does not traditionally comment on political announcements, continued: “However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of [suspending Parliament] now would be

Another one:

When June Eastwood steps onto the start line for the Clash of the Inland Northwest cross country meet on Saturday morning in Cheney, Wash., she will make history. Eastwood, a senior at the University of Montana, will become the fastest distance runner to ever compete in an NCAA Division I women’s race.

In fact, it won’t even be close.

Eastwood’s personal best in the 800 meters is 1:55.23. That’s almost four seconds faster than the collegiate record of 1:59.10 set by Raevyn Rogers in 2017.

Her personal best in the 1500 is 3:50.19. Jenny Simpson’s collegiate record, unchallenged for a decade, is almost 10 seconds slower (3:59.90).

Eastwood has run 14:38.80 in the 5,000, far ahead of

Pink News tweeted this clip from last year today.

One thing the “non-binary lesbian” on the left said – or “argued” – is interesting.

At the end of the day they are terms, they are linguistic tools to describe an experience that already exists. So someone telling me that I can’t be a non-binary lesbian doesn’t mean anything [snigger] because I already am one.

What?

Yes, they are linguistic tools to describe an experience that already exists, but to do that they have to do that. They have to be accurate as opposed to inaccurate, or otherwise they’re not describing the experience, but failing to do so. If she’s trying to describe her experience of being a lesbian and swaps … Read the rest

Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter today:

A follow up to the dead rat that was nailed to our door recently… this morning we found this writing scrawled across the windows of our storefront space that we use for support and training groups

“KILL TERFS / TRANS POWER”

Any chance it’s provocateurs, I wonder? It seems pretty insane for actual trans people to self-present that way…but then again it would hardly be the first time.

… Read the rest

I also went looking for recent Bret Stephens wisdom, and found some on the subject of The War On Excellence a couple of week ago:

Today’s students are not chafing under some bow-tied patriarchal WASP dispensation. Instead, they are the beneficiaries of a system put in place by professors and administrators whose political views are almost uniformly left wing and whose campus policies indulge nearly every progressive orthodoxy.

So why all the rage?

The answer lies in the title of Anthony Kronman’s necessary, humane and brave new book: “The Assault on American Excellence.” Kronman’s academic credentials are impeccable — he has taught at Yale for 40 years and spent a decade as dean of its law school — and his

Oh this is interesting. I wondered if I’d written anything about Bret Stephens here before so I did a search and I’ll be darned, look what I found from April 2018:

But sometimes a person’s worst tweets, like a person’s worst blurts or jokes or exclamations, tell you something.

Expressing a belief in a tweet – or on Facebook or Instagram – does not make that belief any less yours. That’s why I found it so odd when New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote an open letter to Williamson this weekend, apologizing to him over having his character “assassinated”.

“I jumped at your abortion comment, but for heaven’s sake, it was a tweet. When you write a whole

Another entry in the “horrors inflicted on other people are as nothing compared to a minor insult aimed at me” file: NY Times columnist Bret Stephens goes nuclear on one unnoticed tweet.

On Twitter Monday afternoon, a George Washington University professor compared conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens to a bedbug after a Times editor had posted that bedbugs were spotted in its newsroom.

David Karpf’s tweet, which read, “The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens,” initially gained little traction.

“Little” traction meaning no traction – zero retweets. But never mind traction; Stephens emailed Karpf all the same, and copied in the provost at GWU where Karpf is a professor.

“This afternoon, I tweeted

Also in today – Devon Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Services tweets:

Are you a self-identified woman? Are able to commit 3 evenings a month to volunteering? Are you passionate about gender equality & ending violence? If you’ve answered yes to all of the above we want to hear from you. Full details; http://devonrapecrisis.org.uk/support-us/get-involved

Which, as many women angrily responded, is just a terrible thing to do. Women who need rape or sexual abuse services don’t want them from men. They don’t want them from men even if those men “self-identify as” women. Rape and sexual abuse services should not be a place for men to exercise their fantasies. Rape and sexual abuse services should be … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey at the Miscellany Room.

Can you stomach another article on Epstein?

This one is a Mother Jones interview with Stuart Pivar, who described himself as a close friend of Epstein, until he realized what Epstein was up to. Though he still continued to engage in some fairly gross apologetics for him, so I take the claimed separation with a grain of salt. (Pharyngula readers may recall that Pivar once sued PZ Myers for calling him a “crackpot.”)

Some notable excerpts. Those dinners with scientific stars:

There were lavish dinner parties with the likes of Steven Pinker and Stephen Jay Gould during which Epstein would ask provocatively elementary questions like “What is gravity?”

The least useful message shirt ever:

Smirk smirk abortions not just for THE LADIES.

As if abortions were like earrings or Jimmy Choos or being on the cover of Vogue.… Read the rest

McKinnon is continuing to show what a reasonable, thoughtful, decent, other-regarding human he is.

Nathan Oseroff thought the issue was David Koch:

I saw one of those show up in my feed and I’m wondering if they really think David Koch was a young woman?

McKinnon had to explain he’d been talking the same shit about Magdalen:

Oh, I also said it in relation to a really truly horrible TERF who’s dying of brain cancer.

It’s the latter that they’re so uppity about.

Magdalen is not horrible. “TERF” is just trans-english for “cunt.” We’re “uppity” because gloating about her terminal brain cancer is disgusting.… Read the rest

Trump was too busy adding up how much money he was going to lose by making the G7 pay him for putting the next one in his hotel to make it to the climate session today. (It’s actually sort of relevant that the Doral is in Miami, because Miami is one of those scandalously reckless places that keep building giant hotels and condo towers on a sinking shore. Miami is committing suicide while the world watches, dumbfounded.)

Donald Trump did not attend Monday’s crucial discussion on climate and biodiversity at the G7 meeting of international leaders in Biarritz, missing talks on how to deal with the Amazon rainforest fires as well as new ways to cut carbon emissions.

Reporters

Trump says the best possible place to hold the next G7 is…you’ll never guess…one of his golf resorts. What a happy coincidence, because he’s in a position to get them a good deal.

Speaking as this year’s meeting of world leaders wrapped up, he told reporters that “my people” had toured venues across the US before concluding his Doral hotel would be ideal.

“It’s not about me, it’s about getting the right location,” he said at a news conference on Monday.

Of course. It’s never about him, it’s always about doing the right thing, and there is nowhere in the entire United States that would do as well for a meeting of world leaders than his personal golf resort in … Read the rest

There are bigger things to talk about in relation to the G7, but all the same…

Bolsonaro jeers at Macron because Bolsonaro’s wife is hot and Macron’s isn’t.

That’s how we’re doing the G7? Playing Whose Wife Is Most Fuckable? Really?

French President Emmanuel Macron has lashed out at Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro for endorsing “rude” remarks about his wife.

A supporter of the Brazilian president mocked Mr Macron’s wife, Brigitte, 66, in a Facebook post.

The post contained a photo contrasting the French first lady’s appearance with that of Mr Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, 37.

“Now you understand why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro?” it reads.

In response to the comment, Mr Bolsonaro wrote (in Portuguese): “Do not humiliate (him)…