Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Don’t let the door hitcha

    Oh hooray, the first good news in what feels like years – Orban is out.

    Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, a lodestar for MAGA culture warriors and right-wing populists in Europe, conceded defeat on Sunday in a general election, breaking the momentum of a global nationalist revival promoted by President Trump.

    …

    Sunday’s vote was widely seen as showdown between friends and foes of liberal democracy, a cause that Mr. Orban has battled against for years to applause from his fans in the United States, Europe and Latin America. The race was closely watched by the Trump administration and the Kremlin, both of which wanted Mr. Orban to win and both of which offered support in his campaign.

    The implications of the outcome extend far beyond Hungary’s borders. The next prime minister may help alter the course of the war in Ukraine, a neighbor that Mr. Orban has cast as an enemy of Hungary, and affect European security. And the results will be looked at by populists around the world who view the Hungarian leader as a model of success and of pugnacious defiance of the mainstream.

    …

    Long a thorn in the side of E.U. officials in Brussels, Mr. Orban has consistently blocked European assistance to Ukraine, worked to water down sanctions on Russia and presented Ukraine, not Russia, as the principal threat to Europe’s security.

    Those positions made him an invaluable ally for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.

    Well any ally of Putin is…

  • How to ruin a good adventure

    Well that was interesting.

    I went to the other side of the city for a walk along the Lake, and very nice it was. Then I got on the third and last bus of the homeward trip. I sat in the only nearby vacant seat, next to a very beefy man who made no effort to make room for me. This meant I had to kind of wedge myself in, with much more contact with beefy man than I wanted. The result was that he then punched me hard with his elbow. I don’t mean he nudged me, or pushed or leaned sideways, I mean he lifted his arm and slammed me hard.

    I yelled “OW!” and he explained that I deserved it for wedging myself in. I said it’s called sitting down in a vacant seat. People nearby stared but said and did nothing. This is life in Trump’s America I guess. I hate Trump’s America.

  • The blasphemy law is not a blasphemy law

    They’re trying to square the circle.

    A new tsar is to be created to tackle growing hatred towards Muslims. The ‘special representative on anti-Muslim hostility’ will be appointed to ‘strengthen understanding, reporting and response’, the Government said.

    …

    But ministers insisted the new definition would also guarantee ‘the fundamental right to freedom of speech’ amid fears it would create a blasphemy law by the back door.

    The Government ditched a plan to give a definition for the word ‘Islamophobia’ amid free speech concerns and decided to adopt a definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ instead. 

    In other words they tried to hide the fact that they are working to make it illegal to criticize Islam. It won’t fly. You can’t specify a particular religion as under government protection from debate without making it taboo to criticize that religion.

    Islam is not like race or sex or place of birth or social status aka class. Islam is a religion, a bunch of rules and taboos in a book written 1400 years ago. The book is intensely hostile to women. How is The Government going to square protecting that hatred of women with its duty to protect the rights and freedoms of women?

  • The M word

    Daniel Martin in The Telegraph:

    Bridget Phillipson has been accused of blocking guidance on upholding women’s right to single-sex spaces over fears it could damage her career.

    Baroness Falkner – who drew up the equality law changes – said Ms Phillipson was putting her “personal ambition” before her role as women and equalities minister over fears pro-trans backbenchers would scupper any chance of promotion if she publishes the guidance.

    Well, you know: it’s a tough call. On the one hand the rights of women and girls, on the other hand one woman’s career.

    Lady Falkner, who led the Equality and Human Rights Commission until the end of last year, suggested the Government risked making the same mistake over trans rights as it did with grooming gangs, by failing to take action for fear of upsetting a minority group.

    Well, you know, not all “minority groups” should be protected from being “upset”. Murderers are a minority group; so what? Their feelings don’t become the standard of what we can say and do about murder just because they’re a minority group. It’s the same with men who pretend to be women. If they’re taking our stuff and barging into our spaces we get to tell them to stop, no matter how “minority” they are.

    Before Lady Falkner left her previous role in November, the EHRC submitted an updated code of practice to Ms Phillipson, instructing businesses and public bodies to ensure that trans women were barred from toilets and changing rooms.

    But almost 12 months after the Supreme Court’s ruling and the updated code being submitted to the Government for sign-off, Ms Phillipson has still not proceeded with its publication, claiming time is needed to get it right.

    It means hospitals and sports centres across the country are still allowing trans women into female spaces.

    Men’s desire to invade women’s spaces continues to outweigh women’s desire not to have men invading our spaces – what does that sound like? It sounds rapey. Men blithely ignoring what women want is the main ingredient of rape.

  • Short and to the point

    Well? Anything?

  • Kanga wore boxer shorts

    Uhhhhno.

    Victorian boys were gender-fluid, museum claims

    Yeah sure, and they told each other so on their phones.

    Subhead:

    The Bowes links 19th-century breeching practice to LGBTQIA+ ideology but gender-critical campaigners say it is ‘rewriting history’

    Because of course it is. “Gender fluid” was neither a concept nor a condition that 19th century people discussed. They were too busy wishing they had fast cars and Buddy Holly and the internet.

    The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham, tells visitors that “gender fluidity” was a feature of 19th-century childhoods because some boys wore dresses up to the age of eight.

    A leaflet produced by the museum claims the fashion trend – known as breeching – was equivalent to the modern phenomenon of gender nonconformity.

    Well gender nonconformity is not the same thing as gender fluid. But in any case having small boys wear tunics instead of trousers when a lot of other small boys were doing the same thing is not gender nonconformity, it’s just a minor trend in children’s clothing.

    The LGBTQIA+ leaflet is offered to visitors at the museum and art gallery, which opened in 1892, and contains pictures of two boys’ dresses dating to the 19th century.

    “It’s often assumed that gender binaries (the classification of gender into two opposing categories: male and female) have always been strictly enforced and that gender fluidity is a recent development,” it reads.

    “However, this is not true. Throughout history, gender distinctions in children’s clothing were less rigid, especially in early childhood.

    “Both boys and girls commonly wore dresses during infancy and toddlerhood for practical reasons.

    Yes, for practical reasons – for ease in changing diapers/nappies, to be exact. Being able to put the kid on a flat surface, hoist its bum into the air, remove the used diaper and replace it with a clean one, is obviously simpler if you don’t have to undo buttons or zippers and then peel the garment down the legs, trying not to smear poop everywhere. It’s all about the poop. (For more see: dogs, passim.) It’s not about “gender”. It‘s about poop.

    Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, told The Telegraph: “The idea that Victorian children were ‘gender fluid’ because of practicalities relating to clothing is absolute nonsense.

    “The so-called ‘opposing categories’ of male and female, as the museum puts it, are to do with biology and have nothing to do with little boys wearing dresses instead of trousers because elastic was a brand new invention and not widely used.”

    Elastic. Good old Victorians. Imagine not having elastic! We wouldn’t have sweatpants. I couldn’t stand not having sweatpants. I hasten to assure you I don’t wear them in public, but at home I live in them. Jeans are too cold on the legs. That too is not a genner idenniny choice, it’s a practical one.

    Anyway. Christopher Robin was not “gender fluid”.

  • Even the parks?

    Tim Dickinson at The Contrarian:

    Like fragile strongmen everywhere, Donald Trump wants to plaster his name and likeness in as many official places as possible.

    Toxic narcissism has led Trump on a crusade to rebrand navy ships, federal buildings, and international airports in his own honor, as well as to splash his face on everything from immigration documents to national park passes to banners draped outside of federal department headquarters. If Trump gets his way, he’ll soon get his face on a gold coin, his signature on U.S. currency, and — who knows — maybe even an NFL stadium named for him.

    The currency is a good deal more outrageous than the stadium.

    If you want to vacation a America’s crown jewel national parks you’ll now have to contend with Trump scowling at you every time you flash your America the Beautiful annual pass. (Trump also announced free admission to parks on his birthday, while revoking free admission on Martin Luther King Jr. day and Juneteenth, because racism.)

    I just…I just can’t…

  • One Year Later

    There’s an uprising.

    These men are the establishment. Led by men such as Jolyon Maugham who promise us men with balaclavas and hammers if we won’t get in line. These men exist because of the cowardice of our Government. I am so glad to see you here today. This is a direct threat to women’s safety, dignity and the rule of law. We need to keep saying NO.

    We need to keep saying NO in thunder.

  • Larger than arches of antiquity

    Philip Kennicott at the Washington Post on Trump’s self-aggrandizement project:

    But renderings of the arch, submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts in advance of its discussion of the project Thursday, refer to it as the Triumphal Arch. And it will be as big as feared — 250 feet high — larger than arches of antiquity, taller even than ghastly monuments to authoritarian triumphalism, including the victory arch in Pyongyang, North Korea.

    Of course. What’s the point of it if it’s not bigger than everyone else’s? Big dick, big brain, big arch – whatever. It all has to be the biggest.

    It is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives toprotect democracy, who have fought in wars against fascism, who have actually achieved victory rather than merely declared and celebrated it. Its symbolism is borrowed and confused, and it will block a sacred vista that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the final resting place of the Civil War dead, and veterans from every major war and conflict this country has fought.

    It will be grandiose and ugly, in line with everything Trump does and with Trump himself.

    The main body of the arch will rise 166 feet from an elevated base. Atop that will be a 60-foot-tall gilded statue that looks like an AI-mash-up of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch and the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, resembling in its glittering ostentation the statue atop a victory column in Mexico City erected by the brutal dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1910. The design of the arch is a little simpler than some of the more garish proposals Trump floated earlier. Gigantic Corinthian columns have been removed, and there are no longer gilded statues in the niches on the two main supporting legs.

    But there is no lack of gilding in other places, including the ornamental relief on the face of the attic, with lettering spelling out “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice For All,” and on the four sculpted lions that flank the arch.

    But “one nation under god” contradicts “liberty and justice for all”. It’s neither liberty nor justice to impose a dictator god on 350 million people. I don’t consider myself “under god”; it’s not liberty or justice to enroll people in such a theology from the top down.

  • Similar but way bigger

    Can we not?

    The Interior Department has submitted renderings of President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery, showing that the structure would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac River. 

    The proposal calls for the arch to be roughly 250 feet tall, more than twice as high as the 99-foot tall Lincoln Memorial. It would be the tallest triumphal arch in the world, like the president said he wanted, roughly 30 feet taller than the Plaza de la República in Mexico City. 

    As he said he wanted, you mean.

    Anyway, let’s not. Let’s not do that. Let’s not add yet more oversized vulgar tat to DC just because Trump wants to.

    American taxpayers will help fund the construction of the arch, according to the spending plan for the National Endowment for the Humanities released by the administration earlier this week. 

    Don’t want to.

    The president said he wants the arch to be the “biggest one of all” in the world. The proposed site is situated along a flight path for nearby Reagan National Airport, raising questions about it might affect planes’ approach.

    Or, as the peasants say, about how it might affect planes’ approach.

    Anyway, how about no. Enough already. He’s trashed the Kennedy Center and the Rose Garden and the East Wing of the White House; basta.

  • A safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for everyone

    The boilerplate language of huffy cancellation is always interesting. Stroud Brewery’s apology & cancellation is no exception.

    We were made aware of concerns regarding an upcoming private booking within the last 24 hours. After fast-tracking our usual internal processes and careful consideration, we have concluded that the event will not proceed.

    Stroud Brewery is committed to being a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for everyone. Our values guide every booking, and we take community concerns seriously. This decision reflects our commitment to ensuring that all members of our community feel respected and safe.

    It’s almost funny. Almost. Our commitment to ensuring that all members of our community feel respected and safe EXCEPT THE ONES WHO WANTED TO HEAR THESE SPEAKERS.

    In other words they’re trying to square the circle. We love our communinny, we love everyone in our communinny, we are nice lovable kind enlightened compassionate people, EXCEPT of course when it comes to those evil people who fail to believe that men can be women. Those people we hate and want to harm. Aren’t we lovely?

    One comment from Team Cancel Them:

    Thanks for flagging this – it does look like the author of the book holds views that would make members of our community feel extremely unwelcome which isn’t what the brewery is about at all (and why I love it so much as a space!)

    Appreciate it’s a private booking, but the brewery is such a community space I think it would send the wrong message to allow the event to go ahead. It could taint the otherwise inclusive and welcoming feeling we all love.

    Really glad you’re taking this seriously x

    Oh that inclusive and welcoming feeling we all love – we all having the identical thoughts and knowledge that we all have, which empowers us to shun and banish people who have different thoughts and knowledge. That is the true incloosivity we practice.

    Allowing and enabling a forum where people can gather and discuss their exclusatory views about how their opinions are more important than others wellbeing is not good community spirit. Well done stroud brewery for holding your inclusive policies and actively demonstrating your support for historically marginalised groups

    Well done Stroud Brewery for cancelling a talk, there is nothing more incloosive than cancelling a talk by people who know that men are not women.

    Many of the comments echo this rather blatant contradiction.

  • They do not tolerate discrimination, they inflict it

    More on that.

  • Welcoming for everyone – no not you

    Ah isn’t that sweet, incloosivittee at its best.

    You’ll NEVER guess what kind of “community concerns” the brewery means. You’ll never guess what kind of people are being made to feel respected and safe at the expense of which other kind of people, who are being made to feel disrespected and silenced.

    Working backward in time, here are the answers to those questions.

    Incloosivittee for me not for thee.

  • Physician heal thyself

    Hmmm.

    McBride is a man.

  • Man sad to be unable to cheat

    Yet another sloppy title.

    Transgender players to be banned from women’s darts events

    Male players. The problem is not that they’re transgender but that they’re men. If they’re women who don’t dope then they’re not banned, whatever they claim to be or idennify as.

    Noa-Lynn van Leuven, a transgender competitor, has described the decision as ‘huge hit for the trans community’, with the ruling coming into force immediately

    A male transgender competitor.

    Transgender players have been banned from women’s darts tournaments after the sport’s regulatory authority ruled that only biological females will be allowed to compete.

    The new policy, which comes into force immediately, means Noa-Lynn van Leuven, a Dutch transgender player who has won several women’s tournaments, will no longer be able to compete in them. She said the decision by the Darts Regulation Authority (DRA) was “a huge hit for the trans community”.

    He said. And it’s not a hit, it’s a reversal of what should never have happened in the first place. If he weren’t a greedy ruthless cheat he would know that.

    In a Facebook video reacting to the decision, a tearful Van Leuven, 29, said: “Apparently I am going to have to retire as I’m no longer allowed to compete.”

    Wah. Now think about how the women feel.

    “I have worked so damn hard for years just to get here. I respected the sport, and now I’m being told I just don’t belong. Every day it is getting harder and harder for trans people to exist.”

    Nonsense. Competing in a women’s sport despite being a man is not necessary to anyone’s existence.

  • Yes but compassion and care for which people?

    Greg Lukianoff on victim groups and morality on the left.

    But once people on the left had defended other perceived victim groups, there seemed to be only one place left to go. The result was that the issue was pursued as a quasi-religious social movement rather than as a scientific or public policy question that needed to be carefully thought through and rigorously examined. Once people’s identities revolved around the idea that compassion and care were the highest moral ends, and therefore essentially sacred, hysteria was bound to follow. The Founders tried to guard against this kind of dynamic through things like the pairing of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, but those protections do not work as well when the ideology in question does not call itself a religion.

    I don’t think that’s quite it though. It’s not just the idea that compassion and care are the highest moral ends, it’s also that women don’t count as “victim groups” aka a set of people who have been systematically treated as inferior and subordinate since forever. It’s the sudden and ruthless displacement of women’s long campaign for equality and respect by men who dress up as women. That can’t be due to the idea that compassion and care are the highest moral ends, because in that case where is the compassion and care for women? Where did it go all of a sudden? How was it decided that women are the oppressor as opposed to the oppressed?

  • What have trees ever done for Trump?

    Now Trump is taking a chainsaw to the National Forest Service.

    The Trump administration says moving the Forest Service headquarters to Utah and shutting down 31 research stations will streamline operations and bring leaders west, where the forests are.

    Well yeah, it will “streamline” operations in the sense of getting rid of them. That kind of streamlining is not always a good thing.

    In announcing one of the largest reorganizations in the 120-year history of the U.S. Forest Service, the Trump administration declared that there would be “no interruption or change” to the agency’s firefighting force.

    But critics say the upheaval comes at the worst possible time—with the agency’s ranks already depleted and demoralized, and a new federal wildfire forecast showing exceptionally high fire risk in both the Southeast and across much of the West over the next three months.

    Yes but how can anyone possibly expect Trump to care about that?

    By the end of March, 1.62 million acres had already burned across the country this year —231 percent of the previous 10-year average, the National Interagency Fire Center said in its seasonal forecast released Wednesday. That included the largest wildfire in Nebraska’s history, which last month scorched 640,000 acres and killed an 86-year-old woman who was trying to escape. 

    Yes but focus: Trump does not care.

    “President Trump has made it a priority to return common sense to the way our government works,” said U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose agency oversees the Forest Service, in making the announcement on Tuesday.

    Yes but what Trump means by common sense is “more cheaply no matter what the outcome is.”

  • Pope shan’t visit party

    Now Trump is quarreling with the Vatican. Great – let’s hope they tear each other to shreds.

    The Vatican has shelved plans for Pope Leo XIV to visit the United States after what officials describe as a deeply alarming confrontation with the Pentagon.

    A stunning new report — now independently confirmed the publication Letters from Leo — reveals that a top U.S. official summoned the Pope’s then-ambassador, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and delivered a stark warning: America has the military power to do whatever it wants — and the Church “had better take its side.”

    Even more shocking, officials reportedly invoked the Avignon Papacy — a dark chapter when secular powers used force to control the Catholic Church — a reference some in the Vatican interpreted as a veiled military threat against the Holy See.

    The confrontation came after Pope Leo publicly condemned a world driven by “a diplomacy based on force” and a growing “zeal for war” — remarks that reportedly enraged Pete Hegseth Pentagon officials, who viewed them as a direct challenge to the U.S.

    The fallout has been immediate and significant. The Vatican has indefinitely postponed a planned U.S. visit. And instead of coming to America, Leo will spend July 4, 2026 in Lampedusa, standing with migrants, a powerful and deliberate rebuke. For the first time in modern history, the Pentagon offered no Good Friday services for Catholics this year.

    Journalist Christopher Hale notes: “Earlier this year, Pete Hegseth invited his pastor to speak at the Pentagon. That pastor has called for banning public expressions of Catholicism in the United States.”

    While tensions escalated behind closed doors, Pope Leo didn’t back down. He doubled down.

    Doing the Vatican Rag.

  • Ours

    The records belong to us, not to him.

    The world’s largest association of historians is suing the Trump administration over a recent effort to justify the president keeping his official records rather than turning them over to the National Archives.

    The American Historical Association and a second organization, American Oversight, filed the suit in Washington, D.C., District Court Monday, describing the case as an attempt to “preserve the historical record that belongs to the American people, before it is forever lost.”

    “This case is about the preservation of records that document our nation’s history, and whether the American people are able to access and learn from that history,” the complaint said.

    They’re ours. His current job isn’t a business job, it’s a government job, and he doesn’t get to make his own rules.

    Last week, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an advisory opinion that stated Trump “need not further comply” with the decades-old law governing the handover of presidential records for public preservation after a president leaves office.

    What else is there that he “need not” do? Everything?

    Passed by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Presidential Records Act established that official presidential records — such as emails, phone records, and other materials created by White House staff over the course of their official duties — become public property and are maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration.  

    After his first term in office, Trump was accused of violating the Presidential Records Act by storing boxes of sensitive presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago estate and taking steps to thwart the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

    He was indicted for allegedly retaining classified information and obstructing justice, though the case was dismissed over U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s concerns about the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith. 

    Judge Aileen Cannon being, funnily enough, a woefully underqualified hack appointed by none other than Trump.

  • Hands across the water

    Vance helping the fascist dude. No not that one; a different one.

    JD Vance has railed against the EU, accusing it of blatantly interfering in Hungary’s upcoming elections, even as the US vice-president said he had travelled to Budapest to “help” Viktor Orbán win Sunday’s vote.

    Yes but that’s completely different, because Vance is from Rust Belt Ohio. Rust Belt protects all forms of double standards.

    Speaking to reporters shortly after landing in Budapest on Tuesday, Vance’s tone was combative as he alleged that the EU was responsible for “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he had ever seen.

    …

    Vance, however, made no effort to conceal the reason he had arrived in the country five days before a heated election in which Orbán is facing the possibility of being ousted after 16 years in power. “Of course, I want to help, as much as I possibly can, the prime minister as he faces this election season,” said Vance.

    Wull, he said; he’s helping; that’s not interfering.

    At the evening rally – called a “Day of Friendship” event – Vance delivered further attacks on the EU. “I’m not telling you exactly who to vote for, but what I am telling you is that the bureaucrats in Brussels, those people, should not be listened to,” he said. “Listen to your hearts, listen to your souls, and listen to the sovereignty of the Hungarian people.”

    He added: “I see that those who hate Europe the most, who hate its borders, its energy independence, the people who hate its Christian heritage, they hate one man above all others and his name is Viktor Orbán. And if they hate him, it means he’s on your side.”

    Hearts, souls, Christian heritage. It’s all so familiar.