The current public meltdown.

Mitch McConnell just told a group of people, and me, that he has been in the U.S. Senate for 32 years and the last two have been by far the best & most productive of his career. Tax & Regulation Cuts, VA Choice, Farm Bill, Criminal Justice Reform, Judgeships & much more. Great!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2018

The most important way to stop gangs, drugs, human trafficking and massive crime is at our Southern Border. We need Border Security, and as EVERYONE knows, you can’t have Border Security without a Wall. The Drones & Technology are just bells and whistles. Safety for America!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2018

“The

Another patronizing “here’s how you be perfect like me” thread from some authenticated woke genius, a thread full of glib claims that fall apart if you breathe on them and smug instructions on how high to jump when we’re told to jump.

Hello cis friends, here is a reminder that it's okay to feel confused about trans rights. It's something very much outside of our experience and therefore hard to imagine.

Do you know what our role is when we feel confused like this? It's to shut the hell up and listen.

— Fiona Longmuir // Looking for Emily is out now! (@fionalongmuir) December 22, 2018

Bad beginning, taking “cis” as 1) a meaningful and useful descriptive and 2) an … Read the rest

Julie Bindel on the potential peak trans moment:

The latest target in the vicious and often violent war being raged by extreme trans activists is one of my all-time heroes – the world tennis champion and LGBT rights campaigner, Martina Navratilova.

Navratilova has been accused of being ‘transphobic’ as a result of a tweet responding to a question from a follower about transgender women in sport.

‘Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard’, tweeted Martina.

‘For me it’s all about fairness. Which means taking every case individually…

Freedom Caucus dude tells unpaid federal workers they chose this.

To the hundreds of thousands of federal employees who will work without pay or be furloughed over the holidays if there is a government shutdown, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) says it is just part of the risk of working in public service.

Meadows, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and a leading conservative voice urging President Trump not to accept a short-term spending bill absent funding for a border wall, was responding to reporters who asked about Transportation Security Administration and Border Patrol agents who would be required to continue working on Christmas without getting a paycheck.

Takes some gall, doesn’t it – requiring people to work without … Read the rest

Lili Loufbourow at Slate puts a pin in the category of the Old Boy.

The Old Boy needs attention as well as power, and with this presidency, the former has finally trumped the latter. The results are disconcerting. So is the troubling scope of the problem. From Trump to Brett Kavanaugh, from Les Moonves to Jeffrey Epstein: This year we saw with startling clarity that what many of the nation’s powerful men share is less talent and vision than arbitrary cruelty, pleasure in retribution, bullying, shouting, sneering, a sense that they’re above consequences, and an unusual dependence on golf—the traits of aging manchildren.

…

Trump’s mainstreaming of Old Boy behavior set the stage for the biggest Old Boy spectacle

So philosophy instructor and prize-winning cyclist Rachel McKinnon decided it was time to take on Martina Navratilova.

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1075841076571836423

[Navratilova deleted that tweet in response to McKinnon’s bullying.]

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1075841663673778176

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1075841822029680640

Yes how dare she. In case we’ve forgotten who McKinnon is –

That’s McKinnon in the middle, taking first prize.

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1075847260691423237

That’s complete nonsense. There are many physical differences, which are highly relevant to sports performance. Some are visible at a glance, as in that photo.

McKinnon’s complete indifference to that fact and to what it means for women like the two on either side of “her” ironically do more to highlight “her” real sex than any number of terfy remarks.

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/status/1075848474334236672

Mediocre dude athlete insulting Martina Navratilova; that’s a good … Read the rest

Filthier and filthier:

A senior Justice Department ethics official concluded acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker should recuse from overseeing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe examining President Trump, but advisers to Whitaker recommended the opposite and he has no plans to step aside, people familiar with the matter said.

Earlier Thursday, a different official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said ethics officials had advised Whitaker need not step aside, only to retract that description of events hours later.

They know we can see them, right?

Within days of the president’s announcement in early November that he had put Whitaker in the role on a temporary basis, Whitaker tapped a veteran U.S. attorney to become part

Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed wrote an open letter in response to Grace Lavery’s “Grad School As Conversion Therapy” which in turn was a response to a thing Reed wrote. I wouldn’t bother you with that labyrinth except that the Reed-Castiglia one is a fine read.

The reciprocity and collectivity of language seems like a good place to start in a debate about speech and censorship. For, although trans-theorizing and trans-activism have the potential to open onto many interesting and important issues, far too often on today’s campuses they are reduced to exercises in language-policing in which attitudes of outraged victimhood are used to coerce certain forms of speech and to justify aggressive forms of censorship.

Emphasis mine, because … Read the rest