Putin is like that kid who keeps slapping or pinching or tripping smaller kids because he wants an easy fight.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has denounced Russia’s “reckless behaviour” after drones violated Polish airspace, and said the alliance’s response [was] “very successful.”

“A full assessment is ongoing. But of course, whether it was intentional or not, it is absolutely reckless, it is absolutely dangerous,” Rutte said after talks among NATO members.

He said his message to Russian President Vladimir Putin was clear: “Stop violating allied airspace, and know that we stand ready, that we are vigilant, and that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Putin rolls his eyes.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that Poland has no doubt that the drones that flew into its territory were not an accident. He was commenting on Russian drones that entered its airspace overnight during the Russian attack in western Ukraine.

“We have no doubt that this was not an accidental event… We are dealing with an unprecedented case of an attack not only on Poland’s territory but also on the territory of NATO and the European Union,” Sikorski told reporters.

Sikorski added that the mass use of drones threatens all of NATO and that Prime Minister Donald Tusk has asked NATO allies to provide Poland with stronger air defense.

Fortunately we have a very level-headed guy in charge of our armed forces.

The fix is in.

The feminist group that secured the landmark Supreme Court ruling asserting that sex is binary has raised fears that a “Nicola Sturgeon crony” has been put in charge of implementing it in Scotland.

Minutes of a Scottish government working group set up to consider revisions to allegedly unlawful gender self-ID policies in place across the public sector reveal it was initially led by Louise Macdonald, director-general for communities.

Macdonald, then working in the charity sector, was hand-picked by Sturgeon to co-chair the then first minister’s independent taskforce on women and girls before joining the government in 2022 as director-general for the economy.

Fox guarding henhouse much?

Macdonald displays “she/her’ pronouns on her online CV and has previously posted online in support of Transgender Day of Remembrance, an event some gender critical activists claim is designed to spread unevidenced claims that trans people face heightened risk of murder.

Gee ya think??? Are you sure it’s only some gender criticals? I’d bet on most or all. It’s so trans ideology typical: maudlin claims of fragility and vulnerability as men help themselves to everything women have struggled for over the past half-century. If only we could have 365 days of trans forgettance.

John Swinney, the first minister, has said the group chaired by Macdonald is taking forward detailed work on how to implement the Supreme Court ruling, which found that for the purposes of UK equalities law sex is based on biology.

However, he has faced repeated accusations of deliberate delays in implementing the ruling, with For Women Scotland pushing ahead with a third legal case, after two earlier victories over SNP ministers in court, designed to quash self-ID policies in schools and prisons.

No no no it’s not that the delays are deliberate, it’s just that his shoelaces keep breaking.

The group formally lodged legal papers at the Court of Session on Monday, after ministers failed to meet a deadline to withdraw the schools and prisons guidance.

They tried to meet it! Really they did! It was those damn shoelaces!!

Marion Calder, a For Women Scotland director, said: “How can women have confidence in the Scottish government to implement the law, when a first minister who doesn’t even know what a woman is cherry-picked this person to lead a women and girls taskforce?

“It comes as no surprise that the Scottish government is refusing to follow the law when a Nicola Sturgeon crony was apparently tasked with leading its response.

“That she displays pronouns in her biography and has endorsed transactivist propaganda only goes to show that, even now, no lessons have been learnt.”

Calder added: “Formal papers have now been lodged at the Court of Session and if the SNP will not do the right thing voluntarily, we have no option but to force them to through the courts.”

…

The working group set up by the Scottish government was instrumental in drawing up its response to an EHRC consultation.

It called for an “inclusive approach” to be taken to both “biological women and trans women” in granting access to single-sex services, such as domestic abuse centres or homelessness services, leading to new accusations that it was trying to get around the law.

Sigh. You can’t take that kind of “inclusive approach” and still be doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing. If you take that kind of “inclusive approach” to domestic abuse centres or homelessness services then you’re not providing women with safe domestic abuse centres or homelessness services. What you are doing is coddling your own vanity at the expense of extremely vulnerable women. I sincerely hope you can’t sleep at night.

Trade unions vow to continue trashing women.

Trade unions have vowed to oppose the Supreme Court ruling on transgender issues and have called official guidance on single-sex spaces “flawed”.

Delegates at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) voted unanimously in favour of a motion which said the April ruling went against the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

…

The unions’ motion added that since the Supreme Court ruling “there has been a surge of transphobic hate promoted by the far-Right for political advantage”.

Jenny Black, a transgender woman from Unison, told delegates: “This is not the preserve of the far-Right. It’s the Left as well, and it’s the Labour Government as well. They’re using this as a political football and it’s trans people they are kicking around.”

Is it? I wonder if Mr Black has noticed the way women have been kicked around for the last ten years or so.

Ms Black spoke of how her employer, a local authority, had considered creating new “trans-only toilets”, adding: “That’s segregation. Segregation in Britain in 2025.”

Oh shut up. It’s the familiar old necessary “segregation” of men away from women in some circumstances. We’re meant to understand that as being like racial segregation, but it isn’t. Obviously.

Julia Georgiou, a member of the TUC LGBT+ committee, accused the Government and in particular Ms Phillipson, of being prepared to “sacrifice trans people”. The remarks came just hours after Ms Phillipson gave an address to the TUC.

The Labour deputy leadership front-runner is likely to continue facing criticism from the Left and figures in the trade union movement over her stance on gender issues throughout the contest. During her speech, a handful of protesters silently held up pride flags and signs that read: “Protect trans lives. Reject the EHRC ‘guidance’”.

Right because trans people’s lives are in danger if men are not allowed to invade all of women’s spaces and take all of women’s prizes. Protect trans lives by letting trans people do whatever they want all the time.

Sorry, it’s policy.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley had a bruising encounter with the BBC’s Emma Barnett on the Today Programme this morning over the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan. Rowley refused to say the arrest was a mistake, instead blaming “national policies” and Home Office rules. Rowley said he wouldn’t “pore over one case”.

How interesting. This “one case” is a matter of grotesque police overreaction and bullying, and the Comish sneers that he’s not going to bother paying attention to it. Bro it’s your job to pay attention to it. It’s also probably your job to say something less stupid in response to questions.

Barnett went on to ask whether the officers were “scared” not to arrest Linehan, to which Rowley said:

“I don’t think scared is the right word… officers are making judgments in thousands of cases. The national guidance is very clear about following through on what the victim alleges, taking that at face value.”

Really? Really? So every time a victim alleges that someone said something unkind on TwitX the police will send five armed cops to arrest that someone as publicly as possible?

I don’t believe that for one single second. To start with we know it doesn’t apply to women. The police don’t stir when a woman says a man raped her, so why would they stir when a woman says a man said something unkind to her? But we know it doesn’t apply to men either. It doesn’t apply at all; it’s complete fantasy. There aren’t enough cops on the planet to do that, let alone in the UK, let alone in London.

No. Come on. This was no boating accident.

The Scottish Greens are deranged.

The newly elected co-leaders of the Scottish Greens have said anyone who does not accept that trans women are women has no place in their party.

Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, who were chosen last month to succeed Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, used an interview on the BBC’s Scotcast to make clear that backing trans rights is a “red line” for the Greens. Anyone who does not accept that men are women has no place in their party.

That’s going to be a very tiny itty bitty barely visible party then.

Asked if someone who was committed to the climate cause but did not believe trans women were women would have a home in the Greens, Ms Mackay said: “I think that is probably a red line for us. Trans people have been massively targeted over the past few years, entirely wrongly, by a great number of people, and they just want to go and live their lives.”

No they haven’t been “targeted”. They’ve been told they’re wrong, and that’s because they are. Men are not women, and men who claim to be women are not being “targeted” or persecuted or anything else along those lines when they are told they’re not.

“It is a matter of basic human decency in some cases as well, and having that and having empathy for people who have been marginalised and targeted, who just want to exist in public spaces. That is becoming more and more difficult for a great many of them.”

Blah blah blah. What about women, you damn fool? What about women who want to exist in public spaces without finding leering giggling bullying men taking their jobs and prizes?

Asked about the Supreme Court ruling that the terms sex and women in the Equality Act mean biology rather than gender identity, Mr Greer said the law could be changed.

“The Supreme Court’s job is not to make up law. The Supreme Court’s job is to interpret the law as it has been written. We would argue that the Equality Act clearly does need to be changed to clarify the rights of trans people, and in this case in particular, trans women.”

Attaboy. Take a flame-thrower to women’s rights.

Green shmeen.

The BBC simply lies in this bit of chat about Glinner.

Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has told BBC News he stands by his posts on X which led to his arrest last week, over his views on challenging “a trans-identified male” in “a female-only space”.

Scare quotes scare quotes. The BBC doesn’t put scare quotes on female pronouns for men who pretend to be women but it does put them on truthful labels.

Recalling his flight, which landed in the UK on 1 September, he said he “realised something was up” when no one on the plane was allowed to stand up.

“I didn’t expect it to be what it turned out to be. And then they called my name out and I think I immediately knew what was going to happen,” he said.

Jeezus, I didn’t know about the everyone remain seated bit. That’s disgusting. You’d think he was a serial killer. FIVE COPS, and all passengers required to remain seated after a long tedious flight, because a man publicly disagrees that men can be women. WHY? Have the police even explained yet why they found it necessary to send five cops for such a trivial abstract non-violent matter?

When asked if the tone he took in his posts could be described as “vicious and personal to trans people” and if he had tried to “lower the temperature a bit” in what he writes, he said: “I’ve tried several times, but you always get met by a slap in the face.”

Oh shut up, Beeb. Have you ever asked a “trans woman” about vicious personal things he said to women? Ever ever ever even once?

The first post, from his X feed, said: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

It was put to him that what he wrote was insulting and violent, and he agreed, but said: “Women have a right to defend themselves from strange men in their spaces.”

Oh shut up, Beeb. Men invading women’s spaces is insulting and violent. Go talk to them for a change.

On 3 September the head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, defended the officers involved, but said he recognised “concern caused by such incidents given differing perspectives on the balance between free speech and the risks of inciting violence in the real world”.

Give me a break. How often do planeloads of people have to stay in their seats after a transatlantic flight while five cops arrest a man for inciting violence against women in the real world? Is the number more than zero? I put it to you that that has never ever happened.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski called the posts “totally unacceptable”, saying the arrest seemed “proportionate”, while Shami Chakrabarti, a Labour peer and ex-director of Liberty, a civil liberties group, said “the public order statute book and speech offences in particular do need an overarching review”.

“But inciting violence must always be a criminal offence,” she added.

God what a pack of shits.

Trump says male violence against women is trivial.

President Donald Trump seemingly diminished domestic violence while discussing the crime rate in Washington, D.C.

There’s no “seemingly” about it; it’s what he said.

During a speech at the Museum of the Bible, the president boasted about violent crime levels decreasing in Washington, D.C. since he deployed the National Guard to the nation’s capital. The only remaining crimes, he said, were incidents of domestic violence — “little fights” within the home that, in Trump’s words, are preventing his perfect crime improvement data.

“There’s no crime. They said crime’s down 87 percent,” Trump said. “They said, ‘No, no, no, it’s more than 87 percent. Virtually nothing.'”

Who are these “they”s who say one thing and then say the opposite?

“And much lesser things — things that take place in the home, they call ‘crime,’ ” the president continued. “They’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, ‘This was a crime.’ So now I can’t claim 100 percent.”

I see. A man hits “the wife” just a few times and that’s not a crime at all, it’s simple justice. People mention it only to mess with Trump. It’s so unfair.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has downplayed the severity of domestic violence and its perpetrators.

Most recently, Attorney General Pam Bondi restored actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights after losing [he lost] them in a 2011 conviction. Gibson, a vocal Trump supporter and one of the president’s new “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, was found guilty of misdemeanor domestic violence regarding an incident with his then-girlfriend and their child one year earlier.

The restoration of Gibson’s gun rights was a controversial decision in the months leading up to it. Department of Justice pardon attorney Elizabeth G. Oyer was reportedly asked to recommend Gibson’s gun rights be restored, though she told The New York Times she didn’t feel comfortable doing so.

Shortly after she declined to do so, she was fired. The Trump administration denied any link between Oyer’s resistance and her termination.

“There are real consequences that flow from people who have a history of domestic violence being in possession of firearms,” Oyer said, per the Times. “This isn’t political — this is a safety issue.”

Yes but it’s the safety of women, so it doesn’t matter.

Oh dear oh dear – if only Laurie Penny had said this to Piers Morgan when he asked her what she meant by claiming to be “non-binary”.

Lazy reporter is excited to find a way to talk smack about JK Rowling in an article about funding the Vancouver Parks department.

It’s a story bringing together two very different things that nonetheless regularly attract controversy: the Vancouver Park Board and the Harry Potter universe. 

Those are two very different things all right, but are they really being brought together? Or is the reporter just saying they are, because (yawn) funding parks doesn’t draw as much attention as the tantrums of livid they/thems do?

“J.K. Rowling’s actions against the trans community are so egregious that I think we need to look at changing our minds on this,” said Vancouver city Coun. Lucy Maloney.

On Monday, she along with fellow opposition Coun. Sean Orr, called for the park board to reconsider the Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Experience — a temporary immersive attraction that will open in Stanley Park in November. 

Ooh how exciting! Egregious! Cage fight! You bring the beer, I’ll drink it.

The attraction was announced last week, and tickets starting at $49.50 for adults will go on sale on Wednesday.

Because of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s long history of funding and advocating for one side of the debate over transgender rights and issues, much of the online conversation around the event quickly pivoted to whether the city’s elected park board should have approved the event. 

What “debate” is that then, clumsy journalist? You mean the debate over whether or not a bulky irritable occasionally violent man should be welcome in women’s toilets? You really think that’s a debate as opposed to a systematic dismantling of women’s rights?

“It’s really hard to separate the artist from the art,” said Ky Sargeant, the QMUNITY vice-chair for a large queer, trans and two-spirit resource centre in Vancouver. 

Yeah and it’s really hard to separate the putz from the censorious blather.

However, multiple commissioners said if the vote happened today, the conversation might have gone differently.

“I regret not knowing more,” said commissioner Scott Jensen, who said the vote predated his knowledge that Rowling had funded legal cases challenging the definition of gender in Scotland.

You mean the “definition of gender” that allowed violent men to be housed in women’s prisons? That “definition of gender”?

Hey I wonder if we decided to redefine “cliff” it would become safe to step off one.

But Jensen said many students he teaches are big Harry Potter fans, and hoped they could enjoy the attraction separate from Rowling’s views, which he said he opposed. 

Well of course he said he opposed, because he’s not allowed to say he doesn’t oppose.

H/t ibbica

Comedy interlude:

Donald Trump has claimed that the Club World Cup trophy that has featured prominently in the Oval Office will stay there, and that Fifa made a copy of the trophy that was awarded to Chelsea after their win in the tournament’s final on Sunday.

Trump attended the final along with numerous members of his cabinet and Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino. The pair of presidents jointly presented the trophy to Chelsea captain Reece James, with Trump staying front and center despite the apparent confusion of Chelsea players and the pleading of Infantino.

The pleading of Infantino is hilarious. Trump is the new Alfred E. Newman/Zelig, popping up to ruin everyone’s special moment.

Infantino unveiled the Club World Cup trophy for the first time in an event at the Oval Office in March, and the trophy has stayed there for all subsequent events in the historic space since.

“I said, When are you going to pick up the trophy? [They said] ‘We’re never going to pick it up. You can have it forever in the Oval Office. We’re making a new one,’” Trump said in an interview with official Club World Cup broadcaster Dazn on Sunday. “And they actually made a new one. So that was quite exciting, but it is in the Oval [Office] right now.”

That’s Trump for “They wanted it back but they’re not getting it.”

Planning for next year’s World Cup has faced a few hurdles presented by the second Trump administration, including travel bans on countries that would affect fans hoping to travel to the United States to see the games (though there are exceptions for athletes and staff), threats of Ice raids at games and long wait times for visas to get into the country.

Other than that we’re totally friendly and hospitable.

This is the real problem – the how we got here. It’s more basic even than the belief in magic gender.

It’s the obsession with self self self self, and the insistence on forcing one’s precious divine holy sanctified fascinating SELF on everyone else.

Adults used to know that other people are never as interested in Precious Me as we are, and that it’s childish and embarrassing to act as if they are.

Teachers aren’t there to tell the children all about the teachers’ darling selves. That’s not the job. That’s not the point of school. They’re not there to chat to the kids about their sex lives.

I suppose it goes all the way back to the dreaded “self-esteem” movement. Forget the self-esteem; shut up and teach something.

Oh come on. Seriously??? The head of MI6? Don’t jobs of that kind usually go to adults?

Victoria Smith does another one of those Every Damn Sentence Is a Gem articles at The Critic.

She starts with Jon Ronson’s 2015 book about being publicly shamed.

Back then, I’d been classed as a “terf” for over a year, having written a piece very tentatively critiquing the concept of cis-ness (I would not be so tentative now). It was a strange, disorienting period…

2015 is the year I left “Freethought” blogs as “colleagues” tripped over each other in the rush to class me as a terf. A strange period indeed.

You’d have to have been within certain specific circles — in my case, the feminist blogosphere, in which we were suddenly ordered not to write about abortion rights or pregnancy as women’s issues — to suspect something else was happening. You’d also have to have dared to question such orders to come up against the true level of woman-hatred fuelling this supposed civil rights movement. 

I did and I did.

It was a tad disillusioning. Those particular illusions remain dissed to this day.

“Decent, smart people recognize who the villain is when a misogynist attacks a feminist writer,” wrote Ronson. “Hurry up, decent, smart people,” I’d think. “Time to give us feminists a bit of a hand!” Only it never happened. We waited, as it became more and more obvious that no, we hadn’t made anything up. Yet all of these supposed deep thinkers – all of these speakers of truth to power, these brave challengers of online bullies, these people who had already made it clear that they would have found it all insane if only it was real – sat back and said nothing, or even threw their lot in with the mob. The switch from “this would never happen (and thinking it could makes you a bigot)” to “this is happening and it’s great (because only bigots worry about it happening)” was remarkable.

It was. It was and still is. It’s like a tatoo; we’re stuck with it.

Gladwell now admits that when he participated in a 2022 discussion on male people participating in women’s sports, “I heard that and thought, ‘This is nuts,’ and yet I didn’t say anything”. He claims to have been “cowed”. I get that. Everyone has something to fear in a world where you can be torn to pieces for simply saying sex matters. But this world only came into being because people who agreed with feminists spent years refusing to say so. We were scared, too, and we would have had far less to be afraid of had we had some support. 

But we didn’t have that support, because the Gladwells were scared. The Gladwells have had an easier ten years than we have.

While I can empathise with being afraid, all too often the reasons given for “not being able” to speak up rest on the assumption that those of us who do are blessed with some form of inferiority which mitigates the costs.

Oh dang. Those bullseyes she hits.

The final bullseye:

Even if tomorrow every single person were to say “yes, you were right”, it won’t restore the loss of trust. Because we know that you knew we were right all along. You just didn’t think we mattered enough to say so. Instead of telling us how scared you were, why not think about what this has felt like for us?  

Blam!

Even Rand Paul doesn’t admire Vance’s joy in murdering people.

The Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers.

See, vice presidents are supposed to know things like “you can’t just kill people you think did a crime without any due process first.” I’m pretty sure it’s taught on the very first day.

Trump also framed the boat attack as military activity against “terrorists” in subsequent statements on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United ​States,” he said. “The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this strike … Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”

Yeah that’s not how that works. You can have them arrested, but you can’t have them summarily killed. Not legally you can’t.

But wait a second, how does he know it’s not radio waves? Or the speed limit? Or bad vibes? Or over-ripe plums?

Doctor uses Reform conference speech to link king’s cancer to Covid vaccine

The speech by Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who was appointed as a senior adviser to the US health secretary and vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy, drew sharp intakes of breath in the Birmingham auditorium where he was handed a prime speaking slot.

After setting out what he said were findings showing that vaccines “created havoc” in the human body, Malhotra said he had been asked to share something by a doctor who[m] he described as one of Britain’s most eminent oncologists.

“He thinks it’s highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a factor, a significant factor in the cancer of members of the royal family,” said Malhotra, who had previously said: “This isn’t just his opinion many other doctors feel the same way.”

Yes ok but it’s highly irresponsible of them to ignore the vibes aspect.

A spokesperson for Cancer Research UK said: “There is no good evidence of a link between the Covid-19 vaccine and cancer risk. The vaccine is a safe and effective way to protect against the infection and prevent serious symptoms.”

You mean like death? Those serious symptoms?

Updating because I forgot: H/t Mostly Cloudy

The Scotsman reports:

One of Edinburgh’s top performing secondaries has been accused of censorship after it emerged senior teaching staff banned an interview with a gender-critical MP.

A pupil at Boroughmuir High School secured an interview with the former SNP politician Joanna Cherry last year – but the headteacher pulled the article from the school newspaper citing fear of controversy.

Fear of controversy? No. Fear of relentless uproar and shouting and bullying. So the noose tightens and tightens – no you are not allowed to talk to someone who says men are not women, because those men would shout at us. It’s not years in the Lubyanka, it’s not life in Siberia, it’s angry stupid deluded men shouting at us, and we just can’t face it.

The censure [censorship] occurred following a storm of publicity after it was revealed the school was teaching children there are “three sexes”.

Note: there are not three sexes.

The teenager, who is now about to start a law degree, told The Scotsman: “Fellow pupils were unhappy about having a ‘terf’ in the paper and that was fine, I was happy dealing with that because you can have these debates. But to have it from the school itself – about our local MP – was shocking and odd.”

The council was the first in Scotland to criticise existing Scottish Government schools guidance – which is currently subject to legal threat – as “unlawful”.

A council insider said: “It shows how far this issue has moved back to sanity when we had one of our best schools censoring Joanna Cherry for her gender critical beliefs and now we are pushing for single-sex spaces in schools.” Edinburgh city council declined to comment but did not offer any corrections to the teenager’s version of events.

The former pupil said he was taken out of class to be told that the head had held a meeting with senior members of staff and they had decided an interview with Ms Cherry was “too political”.

Too political for what?

The student appealed to Ms Cherry’s parliamentary office for help.

Staff from the English department and school library privately told him they were supportive but could not say so publicly. “Another teacher approached and told me Joanna Cherry is a ‘horrible terf’, and that language was normalised,” he added.

Ms Cherry said it had been “very disappointing” that a school head should have seen “fit to censor the hard work of a bright pupil in this way”.

“This reprehensible behaviour is just another example of the capture of our public institutions by a regressive ideology which puts magical thinking about gender above the rights of women and above basic human rights to freedom of expression and belief,” she added.

Quite the package holiday.

Sarah Barker is not impressed by Malcolm Gladwell’s mea culpa.

Hard-boiled editors, presidents of sports organizations, communications directors who were used to being screamed at, who were used to getting their way, they all smiled and nodded along meekly to the most nonsensical garbage, adopting absurd ideological language that they knew to be absurd ideological language…

Malcolm Gladwell, well known author, journalist, columnist, and all-around influential person, both in the sports world and beyond, came clean on that front, and my goodness, hasn’t it created a stir…

Gladwell quickly moved past that bombshell—that he knew back in 2022 that what these trans activists were saying was “nuts” but that he was “cowed” into not challenging it; that he agreed with what Tucker was saying but did not say so or ask the trans panelists to respond to the science; and that he’s “ashamed” of his actions—without ever reflecting on how a person whose job it is to tell the public the truth could be “cowed” by a couple of activists talking nonsense, or how his failure to speak up until now, three years and a cultural epoque later, affected women. He did not utter the word “women” at all. While he wanted to appear contrite to Ross Tucker for letting him twist in the wind on that panel, he never apologized to women for his complicity in allowing the fundamental violation of women’s human rights to continue.

It’s interesting how easy it is for men to forget to mention women. I keep noticing it, and that includes noticing that it never changes. All these decades of active feminism but still, men forget to mention women.

Gladwell fancies himself a thought leader, and he is accorded status and speaking fees as an influential person in our society. If he is those things and was those things in 2022, imagine the power he could have exerted by simply pushing back on trans activist ideas he knew to be “nuts.” Imagine how much good he could have done for women, women’s rights, and women’s sports. But he made a decision in the moment (what was that book he wrote on intuitive thinking? Blink?) to cover his ass instead. Fine. But after that conference, he had three years to speak up for women’s sex-based rights. But he didn’t. Again. Even now, during the podcast, he had trouble identifying who was really harmed by his failure to speak up. He seemed to think it was Ross Tucker, or maybe his own self-regard. No. It was women. The group he pointedly did not mention (Suck it up? You should have to live with that? Those were not general statements. Women have to suck it up. Women should have to live with that).

…

A few minutes later, he noted how the whole world went crazy during Covid for two or three years—was he blaming Covid for his crazy cowardice?—and that now the world has returned to “normal.” So, that’s apparently why it’s okay for him to say he always believed what his good buddy Ross was saying, and the whole trans thing is more or less over. For him. Now that he’s got this off his chest. No acknowledgement that women have been trying to claw back rights that were taken from them for more than two decades, well before Covid, that they did not take the two-to-three years of Covid off to go crazy, and that, possibly due to his vacation from duty, there are more men than ever in women’s sports. And their fight continues.

Well it certainly wasn’t entirely due to his vacation from duty, but his vacation was one of thousands of such vacations which did add up to more men than ever in women’s sports.

CNN on Trump’s megalomania:

President Donald Trump posted a meme on social media Saturday saying that Chicago “will find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” as the city’s officials brace for an immigration crackdown.

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the post reads. Trump signed an executive order Friday to rebrand the Pentagon as the “Department of War.”

…

Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Saturday called Trump’s post “not normal.”

To say the least.

On the one hand it’s absurdly childish, which I suppose is why my first reaction was to laugh, but on the other hand it’s outrageously fascist, which is not remotely funny.

“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” Pritzker wrote on X. “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

That depends on what the wannabe dictator does, I think.

The Trump administration has also reserved the right to call in the National Guard if there is a reaction to the operation that warrants it, the officials said. The Chicago operation is being modeled [on] a similar operation carried out in Los Angeles in June. A judge ruled this week that the June deployment broke federal law prohibiting the military from law enforcement activity on US soil in most cases; the Trump administration has appealed.

…

“The President’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution,” wrote Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on social media. “We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump.”

If we can. It’s not a slam-dunk that we can.

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth described Trump’s post on X as “Stolen valor at its worst,” writing, “Take off that Cavalry hat, you draft dodger. You didn’t earn the right to wear it.”

Rep. Mike Quigley, who represents part of Chicago, said Saturday afternoon on CNN that the post is an example of Trump “edging more and more toward authoritarianism.”

“This is a scary time. For those who haven’t paid attention, it’s time to watch what this president is doing,” Quigley said.

It’s scary and it’s sickening.

Trump declares war on Chicago. Not metaphorically.

President Donald Trump posted a meme on social media Saturday saying that Chicago “will find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” as the city’s officials brace for an immigration crackdown.

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the post reads. Trump signed an executive order Friday to rebrand the Pentagon as the “Department of War.”

As people have been saying for months, this isn’t the approach to fascism, this is the thing itself.

Rep. Mike Quigley, who represents part of Chicago, said Saturday afternoon on CNN that the post is an example of Trump “edging more and more toward authoritarianism.”

Edging??? This is jumping in with both feet.

It just gets worse and worse and worse.

A retired police officer was visited by her former force over social media posts “dead-naming” a transgender activist, The Telegraph can reveal.

Cathy Larkman, who served with South Wales Police for more than three decades, was shocked when former colleagues turned up at her door near Port Talbot on Sept 4.

The former superintendent said police informed her that the home visit was related to a handful of social media posts about a transgender activist named Freda Wallace.

Ms Larkam had called the activist Fred, using the “dead” male name of the now transgender woman, and this act had been reported to the police.

What??? What the fucking fuck? What “act”? Why on earth did the police act on such a ridiculous childish trivial nothing of a “reported”? Police, police, that lady looked at me funny! Why do the police show up at women’s doors for a “dead” name while they don’t move so much as a muscle when a woman reports being raped? Why is “dead-naming” treated as a serious crime while rape is put on the back shelf of a locked closet in the basement? Why why why why why?

It is believed that Ms Larkman was reported by a disgraced transgender police officer named Lynsay Watson – a figure with a history of urging the authorities to pursue criminal investigations of people who are critical of gender ideology.

Watson, born Alex Horwood, is believed to have also reported Linehan to the police over several social media posts last week.

The police jump to arrest anyone Horwood complains about while ignoring crimes against women.

What a planet this is.