No, I don’t think so.

Today we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or the place of our birth, we are all created equal by God. #MLKDay https://t.co/pEaVpCB8M4

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2019

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by latsot on A fate worse than.

It’s a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. We shouldn’t be altogether surprised when a Grue turns up.

I have tremendous sympathy for people who feel alone, unloved and unrepresented. We have systematically failed those people for as long as we’ve been people and we don’t appear to have learned much along the way. People are feeling desperate about gender identity? I sympathise. Heaven fucking forbid that we try to fix societal expectations, though. It’s obviously far better to reinforce that gender bullshit by mutilating children and.. well… what then?

Seriously. Many of the things I do for a living require that I keep really quite complex and … Read the rest

The smiling kid in the video has given a statement about what happened, one which I gather is corroborated by other, longer videos.

I am the student in the video who was confronted by the Native American protestor. I arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 4:30 p.m. I was told to be there by 5:30 p.m., when our busses were due to leave Washington for the trip back to Kentucky. We had been attending the March for Life rally, and then had split up into small groups to do sightseeing.

When we arrived, we noticed four African American protestors who were also on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I am not sure what they were protesting, and I

Oh go put your head under a truck wheel, Pence.

In a Sunday interview with CBS News, Vice President Mike Pence likened President Donald Trump to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Sure, don’t you remember how King clamored for a Wall? A Wall keeping black kids out of white schools? A Wall keeping black people from sitting at the Woolworth’s lunch counter? A Wall keeping black people out of white neighborhoods? A Wall keeping all the good jobs for white people and the ones that promise hard labor at low pay for black people? Wasn’t that a time.

“And honestly,” he opined, “the hearts and minds of the American people are thinking a lot today about [this] being the

This seems strange. It’s an entry on the NHS website, under the subhead Conditions, for Gender Dysphoria. Most of the conditions under that subhead are quite medical – you know, sciencey. The GD one isn’t so much.

Gender dysphoria is a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because there’s a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity. It’s sometimes known as gender incongruence.

Biological sex is assigned at birth, depending on the appearance of the genitals. Gender identity is the gender that a person “identifies” with or feels themselves to be.

That, for instance. Notice the scare quotes on “identifies” – yes quite, so why use it? Identifying with something isn’t a medical term. What … Read the rest

Andy Lewis, Le canard noir, tweeted an interesting letter:

Actually untested, unknown issues,

But hey? Who cares? pic.twitter.com/JFisZfc5r6

— Andy (@lecanardnoir) January 20, 2019

Can you read it? Don’t forget to zoom in if it’s difficult.

The first point is that puberty blockers leave the young person in developmental limbo, without the pubertal hormones or secondary sexual characteristic that would tend to consolidate gender identity. One particular puberty blocker “promotes a continued desire to identify with the non-birth sex” while 73 to 88% of GD patients who don’t get blockers “eventually lose their desire to identify with the non-birth sex.”

What caught my attention there is the fact that that loss of desire to identify with the non-birth sex is … Read the rest

Meanwhile in South Carolina –

A request to hang a group photo of the General Assembly’s female lawmakers in the State House led to an uncomfortable debate Tuesday in which a pro-life activist urged lawmakers not to endorse such symbols of “destructive and evil” feminism.

The 10-member State House Committee, made up of nine men and one woman, rebuked Columbia Christians for Life director Steve Lefemine, shutting down his testimony after three minutes.

Jeez, a guy can’t even testify about how evil feminism is any more, it’s political correctness gone mad.

By then, Lefemine had passed out packets of anti-feminist literature, expressed his view that the Bible says women are not fit for public office, and read aloud from

Updating to add: see the competing account by the kid in the cap.

More on the high school bullies who mobbed a Native American drummer in DC yesterday.

The images in a series of videos that went viral on social media Saturday showed a tense scene near the Lincoln Memorial.

In them, a Native American man steadily beats his drum at the tail end of Friday’s Indigenous Peoples March while singing a song of unity for indigenous people to “be strong” in the face of the ravages of colonialism that now include police brutality, poor access to health care and the ill effects of climate change on reservations.

Surrounding him are a throng of young, mostly white teenage boys,

Trump made his stupid “announcement.” He’ll extend DACA for awhile if he gets the 5 billion for Wall. No one took the bait.

Trump had indicated for weeks that he would not entertain an extension of DACA, which began in 2012 under President Obama and has offered renewable work permits to immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” who entered the country illegally as children. Trump had said he was hoping the Supreme Court would hear an appeal to a lower court’s injunction on his attempt to end DACA and, if the high court ruled in his favor, that ending the program would give him more leverage in talks with Democrats over the future of the Dreamers.

But the Supreme Court signaled Friday

Via Bad Cat.… Read the rest

Boys will be boys. White boys will be white boys. Racist white boys will be racist white boys. Racist white boys from all-boy Catholic high schools will be racist shits, apparently.

Covington Catholic High School faced backlash on social media Saturday morning after video was posted and widely shared showing a tense incident involving indigenous marchers and a group of young men in Washington, D.C.

The video shows a young man wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap standing near and staring at a man who is drumming as other young men surrounding them cheer and chant. Some of the onlookers appear to wear clothing bearing insignia from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills.

Covington Catholic High School … Read the rest

Pence is Offended. Deeply Offended. Profoundly Offended.

It’s about this Christian Skool where his wife has taken a job.

“My wife and I have been in the public eye for quite a while. We’re used to the criticism,” Pence said in an interview with Eternal Word Television Network. “But I have to tell you, to see major news organizations attacking Christian education, is deeply offensive to us.

“We have a rich tradition in America of Christian education and, frankly, religious education broadly defined. We celebrate it. The freedom of religion is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution prohibits a religious test for holding a public office and so we’ll let the other critics roll

Paul Farhi at the Post:

The fact that the normally buttoned-up special counsel’s office felt compelled to issue a statement suggests that the story’s conclusions were too baldly stated and too consequential to stay unchallenged. In effect, Mueller’s office seemed to be saying that BuzzFeed went too far and got some things wrong, though it did not say how or what.

In fact, what it didn’t say was important, too. It didn’t say Mueller had no evidence that Trump had sought to influence Cohen — just that BuzzFeed’s description of such statements was inaccurate. Nor did it spell out which reported statements were inaccurate and in what way. Further, it offered no details about how BuzzFeed had mischaracterized any

They never talk. They talked.

The special counsel rarely speaks. Whoa. https://t.co/nglu6h4Ney

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) January 19, 2019

We cannot underestimate the statement disputing Buzzfeed’s story from the special counsel. I’m sure it pained them to do this. I’m sure this went through many levels at the DOJ and FBI. They don’t talk. This is massive.

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) January 19, 2019

https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1086424301765574661

Shorter Special Counsel statement: ‘Your report may not be precise … but, more importantly WE don’t leak.’ #CarryOn https://t.co/SGBrOD4m3j

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) January 19, 2019

In other words they’re saying they didn’t leak anything?… Read the rest

Oh  now what?

Mueller’s team almost never comments on anything, but BuzzFeed reports that it is calling BuzzFeed’s Cohen story “not accurate.” https://t.co/0w2Y13gpgz

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 19, 2019

In other words: the Mueller team’s wording leaves open the possibility that some of the story might be accurate. But the fact that they called substantial elements of the story inaccurate should be taken seriously.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 19, 2019

https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1086424956672622592… Read the rest