Measles continues to spread.

The South Carolina Department of Health reported three additional cases of measles in Spartanburg County. That brings the number of cases in the state to 19 in 2025 overall and 15 in the current outbreak.

Two Spartanburg elementary schools have been linked to the ongoing outbreak ― Global Academy of South Carolina and Fairforest Elementary. About 140 students are quarantined at home.

“We have seen measles spread quickly in unvaccinated households here in South Carolina,” state health officials said. DPH confirmed that the three new cases are among unvaccinated individuals.

Thanks Trump, thanks Evil Kennedy.

Dr. Aqil Surka, with AnMed Pediatrics, underscored that vaccines are safe and effective in a recent Greenville News article about the outbreak. “They’re one of the best evaluated treatments we have, and they’ve been instrumental in preventing disease,” he said.

But, you know, a couple of ruthless sadists with no medical training whatsoever know better.

Trump thinks Putin owns vast chunks of Ukraine because “they fought.”

He is helping an enemy country because it has career-
ending information on him https://t.co/rHdUNmEkYB

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) October 19, 2025

Yeah we know, bozo, they attacked Ukraine and “they fought”; that doesn’t mean Ukraine belongs to them.

There are usually more than two possibilities. Lots more. Sometimes it’s just on or off, up or down, in or out, red or blue, but most of the time it’s more or less rather than yes or no.

Like, reasons for objecting to Trump, for instance. This is a subtle point but I think it’s fair to say it’s not just communists who consider Trump a regrettable head of state.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday doubled down on his criticisms of millions of protesters who joined Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies across the nation, decrying the widely peaceful demonstrations as evidence of “a rise of Marxism in the Democratic Party.”

Mmmno. Really. No Marxism is required to perceive that Trump is a wretched human being and a disastrous head of state. I could cite some reasons but you know them already.

Demonstrators gathered across the country in an estimated 2,700 separate “No Kings” rallies Saturday to protest what they call President Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. It was the third mass mobilization against the Trump administration since he returned to the White House in January.

Reports of the protests show demonstrators dressed in costumes of inflatable animals, dancing in the streets and holding signs criticizing Trump and his administration. Organizers estimated that almost 7 million people took part.

Ok when exactly did Marx say people should wear inflatable animal costumes on demonstrations?

Leo Varadkar in the Times:

Our gender recognition law is not perfect, but it is right

Is it? How is it right to have a law that “recognizes” pretend genders? Is it right to have a law that recognizes the human ability to fly like a bird?

Subhead:

Opponents spout myths on sport and single-sex spaces while ignoring the evidence that the trans community poses no threat and self-determination works

Point either missed or deliberately ignored. After all this time, the latter is far more likely.

What does saying “the trans community poses no threat” have to do with anything? Nobody says they’re like the Taliban. Point one is that people can’t change sex. Point two is that letting men pretend to be women with zero real-life restrictions makes nonsense of women’s rights. It’s not a threat, it’s an ongoing reality.

What does “self-determination works” even mean? If I self-determine that I’m Leo Varadkar would that work for Leo Varadkar?

It’s just glib empty slogans in place of thought, and I’m fed up to the back teeth with it.

Last month marked the tenth anniversary of the coming into force of the Gender Recognition Act. It is one of the most progressive laws of its type in the world, given that it allows people to have their preferred gender recognised in law without having to undergo a medical or psychological test, let alone surgery or medication.

That’s not progressive. Ask women, you stupid tree trunk.

All around the western world, trans people are being demonised and scapegoated by populist, nationalist and religious fundamentalist actors. As always, those actors need an enemy within to target. They tell their citizens that allowing people to have their preferred gender recognised in law will lead to social breakdown and disaster. Women and children will not be safe. The floodgates will open and millions of confused children won’t know if they are a boy or a girl.

Blah blah blah. Doesn’t get within shouting distance of the actual problems.

With heads of state like this…

The struggle to demolish women’s rights never ends.

A group of peers is at the centre of a House of Lords plot to derail guidance protecting women’s single-sex spaces, leaked documents have revealed.

The group, which includes a former head of Stonewall and one of its founder members, is seeking to scupper rules drawn up by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) by delaying the government’s process until a new chair of the regulator is appointed.

A source told The Times that Lord Collins of Highbury, the government’s equalities spokesman in the House of Lords, had been involved in “strategy development” with the group.

Always with the doublespeak. An equalities boffin is working to destroy women’s rights. Where’s the equality in that?

The women’s and equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, received the updated rules last month. They are understood to restrict the ability of trans people to access services of their chosen gender and follow an April Supreme Court ruling to clarify that, under the Equality Act 2010, the term “woman” refers to biological sex.

Even the Times, not generally considered a woke outlet, words it in this snotty women-ignoring way. Wa wa the updated rules – the ones that tell men to stay out of women’s spaces – are mean to trans people!!! Wa!!! It’s like saying laws against rape are mean to rapists. What about women god damn it? Why do men’s projects to force themselves on women matter more than women’s projects to avoid men in places like toilets and changing rooms?

It is understood the group of peers met in parliament on Wednesday after a debate in the Lords on the guidance.

Among those in the group is Baroness Hunt, who previously led Stonewall’s “no debate” approach on transgender rights. The group, calling itself “friends and allies”, believes “the EHRC is at risk of being pulled towards more restrictive positions”, documents showed.

Friends and allies of what? Not women, obviously.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow equalities minister, said: “It’s outrageous, though hardly surprising, that peers with links to Stonewall are trying to delay this crucial guidance. Women and girls deserve protection, not dither and delay. Bridget Phillipson needs to get on with the day job and publish the EHRC guidance immediately.”

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of the charity Sex Matters, said it was “devastating to see a group of peers in the House of Lords plotting to thwart the law”.

She said: “The Supreme Court has spelled out what the Equality Act means, and that women’s rights depend on recognising that everyone is either male or female, and no one can change sex. There is nothing kind about this wicked attempt to put trans identifying men’s wishes ahead of the privacy, dignity and safety of women and girls.

“The government must stamp on this disgraceful behaviour and get on with confirming the EHRC Code of Practice and ensuring compliance with the Equality Act across the country.”

Yeah! Stamp on it! Hard!

Julie Burchell asks: How do so many women end up as ‘Feminists for Islam’?

The first sign that something might have been amiss at FiLiA was a hijab’d woman selling similar head-coverings in the foyer. ‘What next, binders?’, Sonya Douglas asked on X. The number of keffiyehs and Palestinian flags on show could have persuaded a person that they had wandered into the Oxford Union debating chamber by mistake. Veteran feminist Bev Jackson posted that: ‘An organisation called Total Woman Victory had a stand at FiLiA disseminating a pamphlet with some of the most virulent anti-Jewish tropes I’ve ever seen.’

Jewish women have had to put up with enough monstrous bullying and belittling from the world generally over the past two years (BELIEVE ALL WOMEN – UNLESS THEY’RE JEWISH, as the saying has it). And now the poison of anti-Semitism seems to have trickled into the very heart of a conference where women of all races and belief systems should feel safe. But sadly, we’ve seen before that Islam and diversity, though often used in tandem by politicians and other clueless scolds, are often strangers to each other. Here at the FiLiA conference was evidence of a strange beast – here was Feminists for Islam.

A strange beast but not a totally unfamiliar one. Much of the left has been trying to mash together feminism and Islam for years despite the obvious fact that Islam treats women like shit. That clash was the main spark for writing Does God Hate Women?

[D]uring the FiLiA conference a rather un-British spat broke out when the aforementioned group of Feminists for Islam ended up waving a Palestinian flag at a disco, only to be challenged by the beautiful and brilliant Aja the Empress, a long-time beacon of glamour and guts in the women’s rights movement (which has surpassed the rather weedy ‘feminism’ so beloved of academics). Unpleasantness ensued and the losers, as ever, were Jewish women, even if their Gentile allies did their best to speak up for them. One, Freya Papworth, said that she was ‘deeply concerned about the dissemination of disgustingly anti-Semitic material at the FiLiA conference… [the organisers] made an egregious error in platforming a speaker who has openly shared anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas material.’

Let’s make this clear. You cannot be both an Islamist and a feminist. It’s as illogical as saying you can be a woman and be a penis-haver. Yet it seems increasingly difficult for a group of otherwise enlightened women to grasp.

The trouble is that the Islam issue gets mixed up with the immigration issue (see also the anti-immigrant issue and the racism issue and the xenophobia issue) such that people on the left feel compelled to defend Islam itself. Lots of people are racists therefore Islam is benign. Sadly, not true.

Women who voluntarily don the hijab are trampling on the broken bodies of all the brave women – the young women of Iran come most heartbreakingly to mind – who are raped, tortured and murdered for daring to take theirs off. 

Let’s not forget what the point of the hijab is. It’s to make women just ugly enough so that men can refrain from raping them for the few seconds it takes to walk past them in the street. That’s all it’s about. There’s nothing inherently pious or goddy about it; it’s just a cold shower in portable form.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Blame the women.

The thing the pro-Palestine idiots don’t get is how this contributes to creating the ideal conditions for a genocide.

Look at it from the Israeli perspective, practice some of that empathy that these activists love to yammer on about without ever once in their lives exhibiting.

I mean, these are the same types who think death and rape threats will somehow magically make people think trans women aren’t a potential problem in prisons, women’s shelters or toilets. “Accept us into your places of safety or we’ll beat you up” isn’t the sales pitch they seem to think it is.

Anyway, you are told that your country is committing genocide, by the same people who initially celebrated an act of mass rape against your country. When that turned out to be less popular than they expected, they turned to denying the rape happened. When that didn’t work, they started protesting anyone talking about the rape.

These same people targeted Jews who don’t live in or even particularly support Israel for harassment, blocking Jewish students from going to classes. They include professors who went to tell the US congress that calls for genocide against you aren’t necessarily hate speech.

Understand, UNRWA was part of this, UN workers took part in the attack, the UN taught Hamas propaganda in Gaza, the UN dithered on admitting the attack was a war crime. The UN is infested with the same types of people.

Do you believe the people telling you your country is committing genocide? On an emotional level, do you believe that the pro-Palestinian side is a reliable source of that sort of information? And if you don’t believe that, what information sources do you really have to know if a genocide is happening?

Speaking of community leaders…

Put your hands together for…

the Green Party.

I’ve been asking these questions for YEARS. It’s good to see others asking them.

One more urgent question is how do we get the BBC to stop using it so relentlessly and so entirely without thought?

Originally a comment by Arcadia on Beneath his notice.

Malinauskas is in fact, my state Premier, so this feels personal, even though I’ve never been to jail.

I take issue with this: “ adding he would not characterise as “the number one priority” the issue of transgender women in female prisons”.

The persistent magical take on priorities. It is apparently simultaneously so low a priority that it need not be given any thought, while also such a high and urgent priority that they must turn prison policy upside down over it.

Let’s be honest, shall we? It is not a high priority to record on official documents what convicted prisoners think of their gender. It is not a high priority to transfer male prisoners to female prisons based on the requests of those same male prisoners. It is not a high priority to ensure that male prisoners have easy, unimpeded access to female prisoners.

However, from his actions, we can conclude that things not on his priority list are: the safety of female prisoners, the safety of female prison staff, or the risk of being sued by either of the former for exposing them completely unnecessarily to unacceptable and avoidable risks.

Joan Smith on yet another protest against women talking:

Students at the London School of Economics (LSE) have tried to cancel a private meeting to discuss sexual violence committed by Hamas during the October 7 attacks of 2023. The event went ahead last night with a heavy police presence as pro-Palestinian protesters chanted anti-Israel slogans outside the building. Inside, an Israeli lawyer spoke about the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in several countries where women have been targeted by mass rape and other kinds of sexual assault.

Notably, one of the organisations calling for the meeting to be cancelled was a feminist society at the university. In an “open letter to LSE management”, they demanded that the “egregious” event shouldn’t be allowed to go ahead, claiming that it ignored “concerns expressed by experts and LSE staff”.

If that’s the feminist society, one shudders to think what the other societies are like.

When it became clear that the meeting would take place as scheduled, an “emergency rally” was planned outside the venue. “Zionists off our campus,” a flyer proclaimed. “No platform for genocide apologists”. This is not a one-off: women with legitimate and long-standing concerns about sexual violence are suddenly finding themselves labelled as supporting “genocide” for demanding justice for victims who happen to be Israeli.

It’s always women’s fault in one way or another.

World’s hugest woman wins another prize for his womanyness.

The ban is not universally admired.

The decision to ban fans of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending a Europa League match in Birmingham has ignited a storm of criticism, underlining deep divisions over public safety, antisemitism, and political accountability.

The ban, recommended by Birmingham City Council’s Safety Advisory Group and supported by West Midlands Police, was labelled “utterly unacceptable” by Culture Minister Ian Murray and denounced as a “national disgrace” by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer condemned the ban, calling it the “wrong decision” and emphasising that the UK must actively combat antisemitism. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch warned that barring Maccabi Tel Aviv fans risks sending a “horrendous and shameful message” that Jews are not welcome in parts of Britain. Israeli officials, alongside the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, have also criticised the move.

Yet the controversy is complicated by local politics. Ayoub Khan, the independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr and a pro-Gaza campaigner, publicly supported the ban, framing it as a matter of operational safety.

And not at all one of ethno-religious hatreds. Yeah right.

Khan’s support for the ban is inseparable from his track record of controversial remarks, which have repeatedly sparked public outrage.

In April 2025, Khan faced a political storm after referring to Pakistani grooming gangs scandal as a “right-wing narrative.” Critics accused him of dismissing the widespread abuse of young girls across England. Former Conservative MP Michael Portillo condemned Khan’s comments as “naive at best and malicious at worst,” arguing that such remarks undermine public trust and trivialise the suffering of victims.

This is because religions have content. The incloosivity fans like to pretend they don’t, but that’s absurd. Much of the content of religions is hatred of rival religions. Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? Nope.

Jolyon rejoices in a win.

In a landmark decision for trans rights, the High Court has ruled that a panel acted unlawfully in denying a trans man a gender recognition certificate because he was trying to conceive.

Ooooh they never, did they?! Those fiends! Imagine telling a woman she’s not a man merely because she’s trying to do what only a woman can do?!

In February, a gender recognition panel denied the man, whose identity is protected by an anonymity order and is referred to in the judgment as W, a gender recognition certificate. This was on the basis that he had been trying to conceive a child – concluding that this meant he was not living as a man.

With the support of Good Law Project, W challenged this decision in the High Court in July. The court has now concluded that there was abundant evidence that W was living as a man, and that requiring him to abandon either his male identity, or his desire to have a family, “would be to dismantle and fracture the person he is”. 

Ok but what does “living as a man” mean? She watches enough hours of football per week? She’s perfected the dudely walk? She never ever notices there are dishes to wash?

Given the distress that trans people face when their gender is denied, the judge held that the Gender Recognition Act “leans actively towards the facilitation of gender recognition”. He considered that any approach to determining whether a certificate was awarded should be “permissive” and consider the evidence in the round, rather than relying on any one factor. He emphasised that whether someone was living in their acquired gender was “necessarily a far more subtle and nuanced concept” than allowed for by the panel.

Ahhhhh is that what it is, subtle and nuanced, as opposed to stark raving mad.

Joly modestly concludes with four paragraphs of frenzied flattery of the Bonkers Law Project.

How to deal with anti-Semitism: tell the Jews to get out.

Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv will not be allowed to attend the Europa League match at Aston Villa on 6 November owing to safety concerns.

West Midlands police said it had classified the fixture as “high risk” based on “current intelligence and previous incidents, ­including ­violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 Uefa Europa League match between Ajax and ­Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam”.

The police said it believed the measure would “help mitigate risks to public safety” and that it remained “steadfast in our support of all affected communities, and reaffirm our zero-tolerance stance on hate crime in all its forms”.

I think you’ll find that telling Jews they are banned from a football match is itself a hate crime.

The move was condemned by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who said: “This is the wrong decision. We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets. The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation.”

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the decision was a “national disgrace” and urged Starmer to reverse it.

The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, posted on X: “Shameful decision! I call on the UK ­authorities to reverse this coward decision!” The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said the match should be cancelled, writing on X: “Israeli football teams shouldn’t play in international tournaments whilst it commits genocide and apartheid.”

The Independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, Ayoub Khan, said: “I welcome the Safety Advisory Group’s decision. With so much hostility and ­uncertainty around the match, it was only right to take drastic measures.”

Drastic measures against the Jews, that is.

Football, religion, and race: what a brew.

Unbelievable.

The Guardian reports:

Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv will not be allowed to attend the Europa League match at Aston Villa on 6 November owing to safety concerns.

West Midlands police said it had classified the fixture as “high risk” based on “current intelligence and previous incidents, ­including ­violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 Uefa Europa League match between Ajax and ­Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam”.

The police said it believed the measure would “help mitigate risks to public safety” and that it remained “steadfast in our support of all affected communities, and reaffirm our zero-tolerance stance on hate crime in all its forms”.

What about the hate crime of banning Jews from a match?

The move was condemned by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who said: “This is the wrong decision. We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets. The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation.”

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the decision was a “national disgrace” and urged Starmer to reverse it.

…

The Independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, Ayoub Khan, said: “I welcome the Safety Advisory Group’s decision. With so much hostility and ­uncertainty around the match, it was only right to take drastic measures.”

Drastic measures against the Jews.

Today we learn that women’s safety is a niche issue that the bosses can’t be bothered to notice.

Premier Peter Malinauskas is resisting pressure to ban transgender women from female prisons in South Australia, labelling it a “niche issue” behind reducing reoffending and indigenous incarceration rates.

In an interview with The Advertiser, Mr Malinauskas said he had “not turned my mind to our policy pertaining to trans prisoners”. Mr Malinauskas repeated his early 2023 definition of a woman as “an adult female”, adding he would not characterise as “the number one priority” the issue of transgender women in female prisons.

Dude. It doesn’t need to be the number one priority. Saying it’s not the number one priority is not a reason to ignore it. I think it’s pretty much baked into your job that you have to deal with a lot of things, and that you don’t get to shelve everything that’s not The One Most Important Priority.

Also, it’s not cute to treat the tiny trivial matter of women’s safety as the equivalent of saving a half-eaten piece of toast when the house is on fire. Women’s safety is not in fact a trivial matter.

The Northern Territory this week became the first Australian jurisdiction to prevent transgender women being detained in female prisons and Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has challenged others to follow.

But Mr Malinauskas said: “When it comes to corrections, the government’s policy focuses on reducing recidivism. We’ve also got an interest in trying to tackle the overrepresentation of indigenous people in incarceration. As Premier of this state, I can honestly say I have not turned my mind to our policy pertaining to trans prisoners.”

In other words you can honestly say you don’t give a shit about women’s safety.

We’re not doing this right.

The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped by a record amount last year, amid growing concern that forests and other carbon “sponges” are starting to fail.

The amount pumped into the air by factories, power plants and vehicles was almost static last year, a report by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) found.

However, the Geneva-based UN organisation said atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, the main driver of climate change, had increased by a record 3.5 parts per million (ppm). Between 2011 and 2020, the average rise was 2.4ppm a year. The finding, scientists said, raised the “scary” prospect of even more global warming.

Not doing it right. We want to go the other way. Not more; less.

Carbon sinks may be weakening because more heatwaves and droughts are limiting tree growth and forests’ ability to soak up carbon. Last year wildfires in the Amazon were on a scale unseen in decades, releasing CO₂ on a par with Germany’s total emissions.

Scientists worry that this could be the beginning of a vicious cycle, or “feedback loop”, where rapidly rising temperatures trigger changes in the natural world and lead to even more climate change.

A 2024 study by European and Chinese researchers had previously sounded the alarm on the “unprecedented” weakening of land and ocean carbon sinks in 2023. The amount of carbon ecosystems and seas soaked up that year was the weakest since 2003.

Wrong direction. We should be making it better, not worse.

Oh good, yet more vulgar ostentation, because we haven’t had enough of that yet. The mix of evil and ludicrous gets more nauseating every week.

Trump wants to build a triumphal arch across from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, the latest in his efforts to make over the capital city in his style.

The so-called Arc de Trump would commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary next year and is reportedly being privately funded by Trump’s supporters.

Can we not? There’s enough of that already thanks to Trump’s previous riots in the gilt shop, we don’t need more.

His other second-term developments include a gilded makeover for the White House, paving over the Rose Garden and constructing a $250m ballroom…

What I’m saying. It’s already way too much.

He unveiled a “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the West Wing colonnade in September, displaying gold-framed portraits of himself and the 44 other presidents along the white exterior wall.

In place of former President Joe Biden’s headshot, Trump instead hung a photo of an autopen signing his name. The move appeared to refer to Trump’s claim that Biden’s use of the autopen signalled his decline at the end of his presidency, although it is common for US presidents to use such a tool.

Critics, including a guest essayist for the New York Times, have called his Oval Office remodel a “Gilded Rococo Nightmare”.

Trump himself is a gilded rococo nightmare.

Jolyon is furious.

Also in today, the EHRC offers legal advice.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has written to the Minister for Women and Equalities, urging the UK government to ensure that accurate and up-to-date statutory guidance on the Equality Act 2010 is available to those that need it.

The EHRC provides expert advice on how to comply with the Equality Act and put the law into practice. On 4 September the regulator submitted an updated code of practice for services, public functions and associations to the minister for approval. Tomorrow (16 October) will mark six months since the Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers, and six weeks since the draft code was sent to the minister.

I suspect that their advice will be rather different from that of the “Good Law” Project.