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

Oops wait a second come back

Trump’s administration is attempting to rehire officials with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) who worked on the government response to bird flu before being fired over the weekend, US media report.

The layoffs were a part of a cost-cutting mission across the US government by Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) leader Elon Musk.

The terminations came as the latest outbreak of the bird flu has wreaked havoc on poultry and cattle farms, causing egg prices to skyrocket and raising concerns among public health experts.

A USDA spokesperson told the BBC that although “several” officials working on bird flu were “notified of their terminations” over the weekend, “we are working to

The transfer to dictatorship proceeds apace.

Trump has signed an executive order making independent regulatory agencies established by Congress now accountable to the White House – a move that some experts said clashes with mainstream interpretations of the constitution.

The order forces major regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to report new policy priorities to the executive branch for approval, which will also have a say over their budgets.

Everybody and everything has to get Trump’s permission to do anything, and if he doesn’t give his permission, that’s the end of it.

In a fact sheet, the White House described the move as, “ensuring that all federal agencies are

Zelensky points out that Trump tells a lot of lies.

“I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,” Mr. Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv during a broader discussion about the administration, which this week opened peace talks with Russia that excluded Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky said that the U.S. president was “living in a disinformation space” and in a “circle of disinformation.”

Which is a lightly veiled way of saying he lies non-stop.

Later Tuesday, Mr. Trump said of Ukraine’s leadership and the war, “You should have never started it”…

Note: he didn’t start it.

“Yesterday, there were signals of speaking with them as victims,” he said of the Trump officials’ tone in discussing the Russian officials,

Jo Bartosch at UnHerd:

The United Nations has been dragged into the global conflict between the defenders of biological reality and the demands of transgender activists. UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, has dared to acknowledge the existence of two sexes in her reports — at once a fact so mundane and an act so rare — that over 200 NGOs have signed a letter denouncing her.

According to this outraged coalition, co-led by Planned Parenthood International (PPI) and Women Deliver (WD), Alsalem’s “sex-based” approach is nothing less than a “Western colonial patriarchal worldview” that “undermines decades of progress.” Apparently, recognising that men commit violence against women “further marginalizes vulnerable groups, including trans and

Michael Tomasky puts it starkly:

I’d be hard-pressed to argue that JD Vance’s meeting with the leader of the German fascist party on Friday was weakly covered by the press. Yet somehow, it hasn’t registered quite the degree of shock and revulsion here in the United States that it deserves to. That visit, along with Vance’s shocking speech at the Munich Security Conference, confirms every worst suspicion about this morally rudderless mountebank. The argot of diplomats and newspaper editorials, which express “concern” or even “grave concern,” doesn’t begin to describe how we Americans should feel about what Vance did last week in our name.

The Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has been declared a “suspected extremist” organization by the German

Well how do you think they get there?!

It doesn’t bother me to call trans women ‘she’, but it does bother me if they deliberately destroy women’s rights to fairness & equality. https://t.co/7BHRIzxbar

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 18, 2025

It’s not about being “bothered” ffs. It’s also not personal. It’s about the whole set of demands and changes and rules and lies that impose this terrible religion on all of us. How is it not blindingly obvious that if you call a man “she” you are accepting the ideology? And when you’re Piers Morgan doing it on social media you are promoting and validating the ideology. Cut it out.… Read the rest

A Congressional press release:

House Appropriations Committee and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro is warning of the fatal consequences of unelected billionaire and self-appointed president Elon Musk’s crippling of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By slashing CDC’s workforce, President Trump and unchecked billionaires are leaving Americans more exposed to disease, illness, and death.

“Elon Musk – an unchecked billionaire – President Donald Trump, and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are continuing their assault on Americans’ health,” said Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro. “In the midst of a severe flu season, and as a potentially deadly avian flu outbreak threatens to raise the stakes for public health even further, firing thousands

We take for granted the various safety measures and health protections the collective intelligence of humans has come up with over the years, so we take an axe to those measures to “save money.”

At least, some of us do, and unfortunately the some of us who do are busy with those axes.

Over a thousand (1300) probationary workers at the Center for Disease Control are being let go by the Trump administration, representing about 45% of all probationary workers at the CDC.

Being fired. I dislike that “being let go” euphemism, especially in cases like this where the firings are wholly arbitrary and reckless. There’s no room for euphemisms here.

Among those laid off include all 50 first-year

Maybe the CDC isn’t the right branch of government to slash? Maybe disease control is not actually a bad thing?

The Trump administration slashed hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including dozens of workers crucial to public health safety — as the country grapples with a potential “quad-demic,” according to reports.

As part of an effort led by the Department of Government Efficiency, which billionaire Elon Musk heads, thousands of probationary workers within the Department of Health and Human Services were told they were being terminated over the weekend, including 1,300 at the CDC.

According to NBC News, those departures included around two dozen workers at the Laboratory Leadership Service

Sometimes the bafflegab is so extensive that the reader literally cannot tell what the reporter is saying.

Scots councillor claims he faces disciplinary hearing for calling non-binary child a boy

Well which kind of “non-binary child”?

Astoundingly, the Scottish Express doesn’t say. The result is a dense fog where a news item should be.

A Scots councillor claims he is facing potential disciplinary action for allegedly calling a non-binary child a “boy.” Controversial independent representative Alastair Redman will be hauled in front of Standards Commission chiefs next week to face accusations that he has breached the code of conduct.

The Argyll and Bute councillor was embroiled in a row in 2023 about parents complaining to a secondary school about a

Maybe don’t take any plane trips for the next four years or so.

The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.

The impacted [fired] workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told The Associated Press. The air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

A Transportation Department

Man who pretends to be a woman and abuses any woman who points out he is a man tells JK Rowling to stop doing something she isn’t doing.

Please, please, please @jk_rowling – stop claiming you represent women. You absolutely do not. Most women abhor what you represent. Which is hate. Ask the 750,000 women of Unison who voted against your views last week. You represent the Gender Critical movement – very different.… https://t.co/pH6SEKdhhH

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) February 17, 2025

She doesn’t say she represents women. That would be an idiotic thing to say, and she’s not an idiot. (Jonathan on the other hand…) Saying women are organizing is not saying “I represent women.” It’s quite different, really.

The … Read the rest

Guy whines about not enough attention being paid to him our trans family especially the male part.

His name under the story is Jenny Maguire. He’s a man.

We must examine why a group that represents less than 1pc of the population now takes up such a large slice of the political and media landscape – and more importantly, what is being ignored as a result.

Well one major reason the group takes up so much space is the fact that it takes it up. It demands it, it grabs it, it camps out in it. The trans movement loves attention and can never ever get enough of it. If it had wanted to take up little space it … Read the rest

Seeking a way through:

Employers have handled disputes involving transgender issues “really badly”, the general secretary of the UK’s largest trade union has said.

Unison’s Christina McAnea said unions have a responsibility “to try and make sure that we find a way through this” and she would be happy to work with organisations on the issue. Speaking exclusively to The Scotsman, she referenced the need to ensure trans people are not discriminated against while also ensuring women with concerns are “listened to and heard”.

But what does “the need to ensure trans people are not discriminated against” mean? What does “discrimination against trans people” consist of?

That’s the problem. It doesn’t mean what it means in the case … Read the rest