Tom Nichols points out that we’re all the prisoners of Musk’s resentment and egomania.

One of the greatest tricks that Donald Trump and Elon Musk ever pulled is to convince millions of people that DOGE, the self-styled Department of Government Efficiency, is about government efficiency.

DOGE isn’t really a department; it’s not an agency; it has no statutory authority; and it has little to do with saving money, streamlining the bureaucracy, or eliminating waste. It is a name that Trump is allowing a favored donor and ally to use in a reckless campaign against various targets in the federal government. The whole enterprise is an attack against civil servants and the very notion of apolitical expertise.

But it must be … Read the rest

One to watch:

Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to approve the firing of the head of a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers in the first appeal of Trump’s new term and a key test of his battle with the judicial branch.

It’s pretty tricky – aka impossible – to have a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers if the Big Boss is free to meddle with said agency. Trump wants to get rid of anyone who did or does or could blow a whistle on him, and that’s unfortunate, because he’s breaking rules and laws and constitutional norms all over the shop. Trump is the last person on the planet who should be able to … Read the rest

Wait who’s the joke?

https://twitter.com/ThomasWillett9/status/1891200704070459857

That’s so dumb it’s hard to believe. Maya doesn’t say “he’s tall therefore not a woman.” Her point is that a lot of newspapers apparently took great care to hide the fact that Upton towers over Peggie, presumably because that fact hints at the malicious absurdity of Upton’s claim that Peggie bullied and harassed him.

Magic Gender Ideology is so stuffed with lies and manipulations like this it’s a wonder anyone takes it seriously.… Read the rest

snerk

Emergency Board Meeting at NHS Fife pic.twitter.com/HGOjsh0W7r

— Mr Malky (@MrMalky) February 16, 2025

… Read the rest

Oh wait, now the NHS is threatening Sandie Peggie with even more punishment for knowing that a man is a man. You’d think they could at least do them one at a time.

A nurse who challenged a trans doctor for using women’s changing rooms is being threatened with the sack by the NHS after “misgendering” her colleague, The Telegraph can reveal.

Sandie Peggie, who brought a landmark employment tribunal against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton, is understood to have been told to attend a conduct hearing on Friday which her employer has warned could lead to her dismissal.

They want to fire an experienced nurse because she knows that a man is a man. Wouldn’t you … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on As the US hurtles toward autocracy.

The United States, under Mr. Trump, cannot be considered an idle bystander in the great twilight struggle between the democracies and the dictatorships, as it was in the 1930s. It is now on the side of the dictatorships.

It is not just that the democratic world can no longer count on America. It is that America, under Mr. Trump, is no longer necessarily part of the democratic world: neither fully democratic in its own affairs, nor committed to the welfare of other democracies, but hostile to both. If the international order is to be preserved, then, it will have to be preserved, in part,

… Read the rest

Andrew Coyne at the Globe and Mail says the US is no longer one of the democracies.

Even now, as the United States hurtles toward autocracy – the petty grotesqueries perhaps tell the story better than anything else: a reporter barred from the White House for not using the name “Gulf of America,” President Donald Trump naming himself chair of the Kennedy Center by a “unanimous” vote of its board – the tendency is still to describe events in relatively conventional terms. For example, the “mistakes” that Mr. Trump is said to have made in his dealings with Vladimir Putin, of the United States as an “unreliable ally” under Mr. Trump, and so forth.

The tendency in journalism, that … Read the rest

Even the Spectator does it.

My original copy said “man” in the ladies changing room, but the trans cult which is essentially a men’s rights movement has captured the chocolate teapot that is IPSO so even the Spectator have to bow down to censorship. https://t.co/8rctcWNDPA

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) February 16, 2025

So the Spectator bows down to censorship AND obscures information that is central to the story. Saying “transgender doctor” is MEANINGLESS. The core fact in this whole conflict, which has been keeping a tribunal busy for days, is that a male doctor bullied a female nurse who objected to his presence in the women’s changing room. The fact that the Spectator alters Joanna Cherry’s writing such that … Read the rest

Alarming.

In December, more than a month before Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office, The New York Times reported a blockbuster scoop: Elon Musk and his SpaceX company had repeatedly failed to meet federal reporting requirements designed to safeguard national security despite being deeply entangled with the military and intelligence bureaucracy. These included a failure to provide details to the government of Musk’s meetings with foreign leaders, the Times reported.

Those lapses had triggered a number of internal federal reviews, according to the Times. Perhaps most interestingly, the Defense Department’s inspector general had opened a probe of the matter sometime during 2024. The Air Force and the Pentagon Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for

… Read the rest

Occupy Democrats wrote on Facebook:

BREAKING: Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center implodes in humiliating fashion as droves of talented celebrities abandon the legendary performing arts center in protest.

Trump is radioactive with the people he wants to impress most…

Actress Issa Rae announced on Instagram in a brief statement that she is cancelling her “An Evening With Issa Rae” event slated for next month. Tickets will be refunded.

“Unfortunately, due to what I believe to be an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artists of all backgrounds through all mediums, I’ve decided to cancel my appearance at this venue,” she wrote.

Trump made himself chairman of the center on Wednesday. Earlier this … Read the rest

So progressive.

https://twitter.com/Hoer_jetzt_auf/status/1890832633065578667 The police were slow to arrive, but when they did they got the little pukes out of there and the film was shown.… Read the rest

Vance drops in on Europe to yell “You all suck!!!”

In a chastising speech on Friday that openly questioned whether current European values warranted defence by the US, he painted a picture of European politics infected by media censorship, cancelled elections and political correctness.

Arguing that the true threat to Europe stemmed not from external actors such as Russia or China, but Europe’s own internal retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”, he repeatedly questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda.

Well no, and that’s because the US now = Trump.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the vice-president had been expected to address the critical question of the Ukraine war and security differences

… Read the rest

So “diversity staff” have more valuable skills than…doctors?

There have been a slew of recent job postings offering roles in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at salaries that exceed specialist junior doctors.

They include an NHS England EDI secondment position covering the southwest of England offering a pro rata salary of £122,000 per year, and a head of EDI role at a London trust with a salary of £91,336.

Junior doctors earn a basic salary of between £36,616 and £70,425, while consultants receive between £105,504 to £139,882 per year.

You do have to wonder what skills EDI people have that merit that kind of pay. I don’t think the NHS is wrong to want “diversity” in the sense of having … Read the rest

It’s also a class thing.

Dr Upton, for those who have not been following the case, was born male and is at least 6ft tall. Make-up and discreet silver jewellery cannot mask the good doctor’s male physiology. As Sandie Peggie told the tribunal, she was not discomfited by Dr Upton being transgender, but by having to share female changing facilities with a male-bodied person, as indeed most women would be, especially when bleeding heavily.

She made her feelings clear, much to Upton’s distaste. As the solidly middle class doctor, still in his 20s, told the tribunal, “I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life.”

Oh really? That explains a lot.

The employment tribunal, which will continue into

… Read the rest

Yes but how long had they been there in the first place?

The Trump administration has erased references to transgender people from New York’s Stonewall National Monument website.

Well guess what, the Stonewall monument started life as a monument to lesbians and gay men. The T was added later. Trump is the wrong person to meddle in all this, but it’s still true that the T colonizes everything it can reach.

On the National Park Service website, the acronym LGBTQ+ has been shortened to LGB, standing for lesbian, gay and bisexual.

No, other way around. LGB was lengthened to LGBTQ+ even though the T is not the same as the LGB and the Q is just empty. “The acronym” … Read the rest

Too easy.

A picture paints a thousand words. Tell me which one is a bully and a bigot? #GenderCritical pic.twitter.com/o3pKxYAigU

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) February 14, 2025

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Explain belief.

The late Ray Hyman, a leading expert on cold reading and arch-nemesis of parapsychologists, was once asked if he thought alleged psychic Rosemary Altea was a fraud. Hyman’s answer (from memory) went something like:

I don’t know if she’s a fraud, but if I were a fraud I would do exactly what she does.

Many of the things that seem crazy to us begin to make sense (in a ”reverse engineering” sort of way) once we ask ourselves:

If I were determined to defend the indefensible, what would I do?

To me the main virtue of Simon Edge’s The End of the World Is Flat is not that it’s a … Read the rest

Imagine having JD Vance lecturing you from a great height.

Vice President JD Vance publicly berated European leaders on a host of issues from free speech to security and mass migration, as simmering tensions between the United States and its close allies boiled over at an international conference in Munich on Friday.

The vice president used the podium at the high-level security gathering that had been focusing on the invasion of Ukraine and the threat Russia poses to Europe and the rest of the world to raise social issues animating many on the American right.

Well great, because European leaders have nothing better to do than fret about US social issues from the pov of Trump Toady # 3.… Read the rest

It all goes back to the fallibility of the first person point of view.

It’s a lifelong struggle for everyone. Our wants are much clearer to us than everyone else’s wants, because we are the ones who have our wants, while it’s everyone else who has those other, much less vivid and urgent wants.

And by the same token we think much more highly of ourselves than of everyone else, because we know ourselves from the inside, while everyone else is…well, everyone else.

We learn about this struggle as we get older, and we try to correct for the personal point of view, when we feel like it, and when we know we’ll be arrested if we don’t.

It’s a … Read the rest

Trump the KGB agent:

Some leaders make history. Others have it thrust upon them when they fail to understand the moment. Donald Trump’s announcement that he has opened bilateral negotiations with Vladimir Putin over the future of Ukraine, which Putin invaded and where his armies have been accused of committing war crimes, is one such “moment”.

Keir Starmer must now decide whether he has what it takes to lead the country – or go down in history as an appeasement prime minister like Neville Chamberlain.

…

Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement traded a large chunk of Czechoslovakia for a commitment from Hitler that Germany’s imperial ambitions would end with the absorption of 3 million Czech citizens from the Sudetenland into the Reich. In 1938, the British

… Read the rest