This crap again. A conference called PantheaCon, meaning I assume AllthegoddessesCon, explains why after inviting the well-known scholar Max Dashu to speak it then told her to stay away. It explains, of course, by pouring abuse on Max and licking the bums of people it claims would be terrified by her presence.

To the trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming members of the PantheaCon community:

It was a mistake to include Max Dashu in the program and I want to personally apologize to each of you. I have communicated with many of you directly and have read every letter sent personally. I want to apologize for my part in causing the fear, pain, and sense of exclusion that many of you

Via Screechy Monkey in the Miscellany Room, the Miami Herald on the plea agreement that spared Jeffrey Epstein a long prison sentence:

On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz.

…

[Lefkowitz’s] client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.

He was also suspected of trafficking young girls for “parties” with his friends.

Facing a

Grotesque.

A lawyer for Paul Manafort, the president’s onetime campaign chairman, repeatedly briefed President Trump’s lawyers on his client’s discussions with federal investigators after Mr. Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, according to one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers and two other people familiar with the conversations.

Boom.

The arrangement was highly unusual and inflamed tensions with the special counsel’s office when prosecutors discovered it after Mr. Manafort began cooperating two months ago, the people said. Some legal experts speculated that it was a bid by Mr. Manafort for a presidential pardon even as he worked with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in hopes of a lighter sentence.

Whatever it was a bid for, it’s dirty … Read the rest

Maryam posted a Manifesto on Women and Secularism:

International Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism
25 November 2018, London

Today, far-Right movements, including religious fundamentalisms, are seizing power and on the rise in both democratic and authoritarian states. Even in more secularised societies, religious organisations have gained power because they have been considered valuable allies – to provide services as the state shrinks, to oppose radical social justice movements, as part of counter-terror strategies and post conflict ‘stabilisation,’ and as part of the privatisation of law. From development banks to Western aid and human rights organisations, fundamentalists, particularly Islamists, have been promoted in the name of minority and religious rights. The growth of community based ‘Sharia’ and other parallel

Peter Tatchell does keep getting this wrong.

I support both trans rights & women's rights. I deplore threats, intimidation & violence. The best way to resolve this issue is by peaceful protest & by rational, evidence-based ideas that show why trans women are not a threat to non-trans women pic.twitter.com/Iy6XYqRZVg

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) November 27, 2018

First of all the priority. Trans rights first, women’s rights the also-ran. What the hell. First of all that’s one of the core reasons for this whole conflict: this relentless insistence that trans rights are far more important and urgent than boring old women’s rights. Second, why? Why put trans rights first? Women are half of everyone; trans people are a … Read the rest

Mars from a mere 4,700 miles away.

Image of #Mars captured from a distance of 4,700 miles by #Marco pic.twitter.com/RPYWlJewSs

— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) November 26, 2018

… Read the rest

Oopsie. You know how Manafort agreed to a plea deal in exchange for getting some charges dismissed? Well he went and lied to the prosecutors after signing the deal, which means they’re filing those charges again.

Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago, the special counsel’s office said in a court filing late on Monday.

Prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said Mr. Manafort’s “crimes and lies” about “a variety of subject matters relieve them of all promises they made to him in the plea agreement. But under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Manafort cannot withdraw his guilty

Originally a comment by Freemage on There are wheels that have been squeaking for a lot longer.

Religion is an instrument of societal control, but the New Atheist dream that a world without religion would immediately cast off the old chains has been largely and soundly debunked, primarily by the actions and rhetoric of the New Atheists, themselves. Undermining religious conservatives, in particular, does deal with one stumbling block, but it helps to remember there are progressive religionists, too (Quakers, for instance, tend to be a decade or two on the right side of historical changes), who can be counted upon as allies in fights against oppression, at least so long as their atheist counterparts don’t kick things off … Read the rest

The logic of it.

Well done @AlexSharpe64 @BBCWomansHour for articulating the utterly sensible argument that cis women have nothing to fear from changes to the GRA. As Alex clearly stated, trans women have always been present in women’s toilets, refugees etc. That’s because trans women are women.

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) November 26, 2018

By the same token, men have always been present everywhere. And? Does it follow that women have nothing to fear from men? Hardly. It’s not a vanishingly rare occurrence for men to use their superior size and strength to get violent with women. Even if you think it’s uncomplicatedly true that trans women are women, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that some men will pretend … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Questions are rarely settled without debate.

Is it just me, or have certain tennets of trans ideology met with more rapid acceptance than one might expect? I know I’m noticing the effects of my own aging on my perception of time (incipient curmudgeonly relativistic time dilation), but things seem to have moved very quickly. The squeaky wheel may get the grease, but there are wheels that have been squeaking for a lot longer (say WOMEN, for example) that have not gotten their timely share of “lubrication.” To further mix metaphors, the extreme trans activists come across as queue jumping dogs in the manger, preventing women from retaining (or gaining in … Read the rest

The AP reports:

12:15 p.m.

Central American migrants, mostly men, appear to be trying to breach the border crossing between Tijuana and California.

U.S. Border Patrol helicopters flew low overhead, while U.S. agents held vigil on foot beyond the wire fence. The Border Patrol office in San Diego said via Twitter that pedestrian crossings have been suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry at both the East and West facilities.

Trump meanwhile was running his mouth. Of course he was.

Would be very SMART if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form (it is a way they get certain people out of their