Philip Bump at the Post says why Trump’s failure to disavow QAnon is so dangerous:

The FBI was concerned enough about the emergence of “anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories” last May that it issued a formal intelligence bulletin to American law enforcement agencies. It warned of people being inspired to engage in “criminal and sometimes violent activity” by such philosophies, given that they “tacitly support or legitimize violent action.”

So Trump thinks they sound nice.

The spread of QAnon is seen by federal law enforcement as a threat to the public. There are obvious cases in which QAnon is used by disturbed individuals as a rationale for their action, as in the murder of a reputed Mob boss on Staten Island last year. This is the central concern, that fostering a belief that there exists a particularly evil group — its members defined by individual observers — will lead to some of those observers taking steps to confront the presumed evil. That some QAnon adherent will decide that some other person is part of the cabal Q is discussing. That is allegedly what happened on Staten Island.

Trump could have said that the theory was obviously not true and itself stood as a danger. He could have fervently denied that he or anyone in his administration was involved in any action like that Q describes. He could have indicated that his government was taking steps to contain the theory. But he didn’t. QAnon adherents like him and, hey, what’s wrong with being seen as a guy who wants to take on Satanic pedophiles?

Somebody has to, right? If they’re there. Anon says they are, and who is Trump to contradict them? They like him. He has no conceivable reason to contradict them.

Axios has more on Trump’s playdate with QAnon.

QAnon is a sprawling internet conspiracy theory that baselessly alleges that a powerful cabal of sex traffickers within the “deep state” is engaged in a global fight to take down Trump. The FBI identified fringe conspiracy theories, like QAnon, as domestic terrorist threats in 2019.

Why would sex traffickers want to take down Trump though? It’s not as if he’s a vocal opponent of sex trafficking or any other form of sexual exploitation.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a vocal supporter of QAnon, won the Republican nomination in Georgia’s deep-red 14th Congressional District runoff last week. Trump tweeted his congratulations and called her a “future Republican Star.”

Well he had to say something, and his vocabulary is small.

“I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much. Which I appreciate. But I don’t know much about the movement,” Trump said.

“I have heard that it is gaining in popularity and from what I hear … these are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on in places like Portland, and places like Chicago and New York and other cities and states.

“I’ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don’t like seeing it. So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me and they also would like to see problems in these areas, like especially in the areas that we’re talking about, go away.”

He’s got the intellect of a child, but all the greed and malice and venom and belligerence of an angry self-obsessed adult man. It’s not a good combination.

When informed that the crux of the theory is a belief that he is “secretly saving the world from this Satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals,” Trump responded, “Well I haven’t heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?”

It’s supposed to be a made-up thing, sir. It’s supposed to be a laughably silly conspiracy theory that makes no sense and is supported by no evidence, sir.

“If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there.”

Hahahaha no he’s not. He’s willing to flap his lips, that’s all. He’s “willing to put himself out there” to the extent of walking a few hundred yards with a heavy escort after gassing civilians to get them out of his way. That’s not what the rest of us call willingness to put oneself out there. He’s willing to tweet, sure, he’s willing to call names and bully and ridicule, but genuinely put himself out there, no.

Q maintains President Trump is secretly fighting a child-selling cabal in the U.S., though the conspiracy has spiraled to cover a vast array of claims, from JFK Jr. having faked his death to help Trump behind the scenes to the coronavirus being a hoax or a biological weapon engineered in either case by sinister elites.

The sinister elites is Trump.

Others are not quite so cheery about QAnon as Trump is.

I read some of that West Point one. It’s interesting.

Anyway it’s ok, a reporter explained it to Trump and he caught on perfectly.

And he says we are akshally, we’re saving the world, we’re saving the world from a radical left philosuffy that will destroy this country, an when this country is gonn, the rest of the world would follow – the rest of the world would follow. He gives that “uh huh yup it would” look that he gives when he’s pulling it out of his ass.

Trump is asked about QANON. His response is that they like him.

What else does he need to know? Nazis? “They like me very muccchh.” Mass murderers? “They like me very muccchh.” Pedophile rings? “They like me very muccchh.” Putin? “He likes me very muccchh.” Jeffrey Epstein? “He liked me very muccchh.” Michael Flynn? “He likes me very muccchh.”

Trump:

Jim Wright:

Guy who wanted you to inject bleach now wants you to buy shitty cheap tires made in a foreign country to own the libs.

Also, his MAGA hats are made in China.Remember when Republicans got mad and started throwing their Keurigs off balconies before they figured out they didn’t actually know how to make coffee for themselves?

Looking forward to Republican Pinterest where they offer tips on making your own tires from MAGA hats, MyPillows, and Alex Jones Yak Piss Boner Juice.

Also looking forward to responding to the next Republican who complains about “Cancel Culture.”

Doesn’t Trump usually try to present himself as the friend of the working stiff? Lot of jobs at Goodyear…

The verbal re-engineering continues. A self-described “Trans & Queer Centered Full-Spectrum Doula & Childbirth Educator” wants to know what you and you and YOU call that thing where you give a baby milk that your body produces and the baby derives nourishment thereby.

While we’re working to dispel stigma around feeding babies from our bodies this month, I just want to pipe up with a little reminder that this practice goes by many names for many different people! For some of us, it’s chestfeeding, for some of us it’s bodyfeeding, and for some of us it’s something else! What words do you use to talk about feeding your baby the milk that your body makes?

I gotta say, “bodyfeeding” sounds pretty gross. Too many options.

It’s a clothing line. Of course it is.

Amazon has removed a clothing line emblazoned with an offensive slogan referring to Kamala Harris from its website after complaints from Twitter users who branded it “unacceptable”.

The T-shirts, tank tops and hoodies which had the words “Joe and the hoe” written in red, white and blue in the style of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Harris’s campaign logo, were on sale for between $24.99 and $42.99.

Ok but you can’t seriously expect people to ignore the opportunity of a great rhyme can you? I mean it cries out for product placement. His name is Joe, and she is – ? Right? Come on. You know it’s what you were thinking too.

Meghan Murphy was also unimpressed by Solnit’s rhapsody on her own hippitude. (Do I like to beat everything to death? Yes, I do, why do you ask?) Meghan Murphy does excellent unimpressed.

The increasing banality of Solnit’s writing might explain why she published a 1700 word letter in The Guardian, in response to nothing and no one, never making clear why this and why now. Perhaps she has a hat from which she can pull hot takes, or perhaps a predictable and dull editor requested the polemic for clicks. A writer myself, it strikes me that these kinds of pieces are what happens when one runs out of things to say.

“Dear ladies who are fearful and hostile to trans women,” she begins. Which ladies, we will never know. One presumes Solnit has never encountered said ladies, personally, as she declines to offer examples. But that’s not the point. The point was to offer herself a way to launch into an advertisement of her own perceived Cool Girl-ness — the “I have black friends” version of queer politics. Much of the piece documents Solnit’s humble participation in San Fransisco’s LGBTQ scene, where everyone was kind, which I suppose is meant to comfort women who have concerns about, say, violent men raping women in prison and the complete dissolution of female sport.

While also at the same time making them feel small and pathetic for not being as hip and San Franciscoish as Rebecca Solnit. The whole piece simply reeked of that “I’m better than you” just barely not spelled out implication.

She claims, “Transphobes are always warning us that if trans people live in peace and legal recognition and even have rights, there will be terrible consequences,” which has never been true, not even once.

That was one of the major faults of the piece: the outright falsehoods. Murphy then tackles the bit where Solnit says we’re all fine, and asks if “Jessica” Yaniv’s victims are fine, if the girls losing out on scholarships because boys are taking their places in sport are fine, if women in prison with violent men are fine.

It’s not only the fact Solnit seems to believe we should just take her word for it, but that she seems not to believe in listening to any woman who might like her word considered fairly and accurately as well. To refuse to seek out evidence to support your own claims is bad enough for someone of Solnit’s stature, but to actively misrepresent and lie about what other women say and believe is worse.

It’s all too typical though.

That’s nice.

DeAnna Lorraine ran for Congress in Pelosi’s district; she lost the primary in March. She’s a self-employed “life and relationship coach.”

There was this the other day too:

What is wrong with people?

The longer clip makes clear what a fool this Mike Lindell is. He’s the kind of guy that if he sat next to you on the train you would move to another car.

There is no evidence that oleandrin is a miracle cure.

Reports of this oleandrin push in the White House have raised eyebrows this week, as there is no evidence that oleandrin works to treat COVID-19 in humans. While oleandrin has been developed to treat cancer, it is still considered an “investigational new drug” that is not an approved cancer treatment in the U.S. What’s more, both oleandrin and the plant it is derived from are toxic to humans and animals; eating one oleander leaf can kill an adult.

Injecting bleach isn’t too healthy either.

Yet Lindell argued on Tuesday that oleandrin is “the miracle of all time,” and that “the tests are out there.” Indeed, he said he was contacted about it as far back as Easter Sunday, when he recalled that he “told the whole country to pray for the end to this pandemic.”

Oh well in that case there’s no more to be said. Bottle them babies up.

But the more Cooper grilled Lindell over any proof that oleandrin is effective against COVID-19, and that it has been tested for this purpose in humans in rigorous peer-reviewed, clinical trials, the more flustered Lindell became. “There has been studies the FDA has not published yet,” Liddell insisted. He repeated that one involved “a thousand people,” but he could offer no details about when or where it was done, or why the public hasn’t seen this report yet.

He said “a thousand people” a lot, in a very impassioned way, as if it were a clincher.

Good answer.

Go Anderson!

Notice the cross worn outside the shirt, where a loosened necktie would be. Baby Jesus says oleander is MAGIC for the covid.

Female people aren’t human, they are merely the mechanism for creating humans and the mechanisms that make more humans and mechanisms, and so on. No mechanism is permitted to say no to the duty of a mechanism. It doesn’t matter if the mechanism is too small to create a human, the worst that can happen is that the mechanism will permanently break in the attempt. Nothing of value is lost.

Scores of Brazilian women have taken to the streets to protect a 10-year-old child who was being persecuted by religious extremists for trying to legally undergo an abortion after being raped, allegedly by her uncle.

So she’s a child, so she was raped, so the rapist is her uncle, so what – she’s a mechanism for creating humans (and mechanisms), she can’t refuse.

The girl, from São Mateus, a small town in the south-eastern state of Espírito Santo, was admitted to hospital on 7 August complaining of abdominal pain and doctors confirmed she was pregnant.

Saint Matthew in Holy Spirit state – they never let you forget, do they.

Brazil’s highly restrictive abortion laws – largely written in 1940 – permit terminations in cases of rape, when the mother’s life is at risk and when the birth defect anencephaly is detected.

Well it’s rape and childbirth is hella dangerous for a ten-year-old but what the hell, put her through it anyway, amirite? She probably seduced the uncle with her slutty ten-year-old ways.

She had to go 900 miles to Recife to get the abortion.

When the girl reached the hospital where the termination was to be performed on Sunday afternoon, its entrance had been occupied by far-right anti-abortion activists and politicians who were filmed hurling abuse at hospital staff and the child, and trying to stop them entering.

The child hadn’t been abused enough yet, I guess.

The activists appear to have discovered the hospital’s location, which was kept secret for security reasons, from a hardcore supporter of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

In an online video, which was later deleted but the Guardian has seen, the pro-Bolsonaro extremist Sara Giromini names the girl and falsely claims authorities had kidnapped her and chartered a private jet to transport her to the termination.

…

“It’s just unbelievable this is happening in Brazil, that part of the population really believes abortion is worse than rape,” said Viana from the women’s rights group Curumim. “But we weren’t surprised because we know we have a president who is supportive of these shows of hatred.”

Their god hates women, so they hate women too.

Fun choice:

Donald Trump has confirmed he will address the Republican convention next week from the White House, a controversial choice.

It’s not just “controversial,” it’s unethical and revolting.

But it’s worse than that: the racist couple who pointed guns at protesters are scheduled to speak at the Republican convention.

In a racially charged incident in late June, Patricia and Mark McCloskey, who are white, were pictured outside their mansion in St Louis, pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters heading for the mayor’s house nearby.

Mark McCloskey held an assault rifle, Patricia McCloskey a handgun. The couple, both lawyers, said they feared for their own safety and were defending their home.

And the Republican party said booya, we want more of that, let’s have them at our convention! Vote racist!

Sad.

The epistemology is obviously a joke, but the allegiance underlying the joke is for real. His allegiance is to team men are women if they say they are, and his hostility is to team men are not women just because they say they are.

I would have thought that verification by “because I say so” would be anathema to scientists. I especially would have thought that when the issue is an obvious material fact which is being denied on the basis of an internal subjective mental state. That doesn’t work for other things – we can’t say “I am the Chrysler building” or “I am a humpback whale” or “I am the solar system” and expect to be believed, so why does it work for men who say they are women? Why does a scientist treat it as obviously and rock solidly true?

Granted “women” and “men” are squishier categories than those. It’s possible to masquerade as the other sex, and it may even be possible to fool people for a while. Several of Shakespeare’s plays are constructed around women (played by boys) masquerading as men, and women were not allowed to perform on stage in most cultures until quite recently. But actors play monarchs, murderers, extraterrestrials, all sorts of identities not their own; that doesn’t change the underlying realities. Burt Lahr was never in any danger of actually becoming a lion.

We can all pretend it’s true that men become women by saying the words, but feminists have been explaining why that would be the end of women’s rights so let’s not decide to do that. Apparently Phil Plait doesn’t give a shit, which is sad.

Trump is bragging about…New Zealand?

Donald Trump has called out New Zealand for its recent Covid-19 outbreak, saying the places the world hailed as a success story is now facing a “big surge” in cases.

“The places they were using to hold up now they’re having a big surge … they were holding up names of countries and now they’re saying ‘whoops!’.

“Do you see what’s happening in New Zealand? They beat it, they beat it, it was like front-page news because they wanted to show me something,” the US president said at a campaign rally in Mankato, Minnesota.

That’s why they did it?

Of course the US has a lot more people. New Zealand has 4.8 million, the US has 328 million. The US would have to have around 600 new cases today to match New Zealand’s 9 but of course it has only…uh…42,000.

Overall 22 people have died from Covid-19 in New Zealand, compared with more than 170,000 in the US, the highest death toll in the world. It accounts for nearly 22% of deaths globally.

Yes but we have 66 times the population! 66 times 22 is…uh…1452.

The demonic shit is pushing ahead with his plan to destroy the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. No matter how busy one is golfing and watching Fox News and tweeting sexist insults, there’s always time to destroy irreplaceable wilderness.

The Trump administration is pushing ahead with plans to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The first leases to drill for oil and gas in the area could be sold by the end of 2020, Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt said as his agency formally announced its leasing program on Monday.

We need more oil so that people can sit in their cars with the engines running for hours playing with their phones. It’s a basic human right.

Environmental groups have pledged to sue to stop the move. They said that once drilling rights are sold, it will be harder for a future president to reverse course.

…

“The Trump administration never stops pushing to drill in the Arctic Refuge — and we will never stop suing them,” said Gina McCarthy, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “America has safeguarded the refuge for decades, and we will not allow the administration to strip that protection away now.”

…

Sierra Club lobbyist Athan Manuel has been fighting to keep rigs out of the refuge for more than 20 years. He said the Trump administration is rushing to get at least one company to bid on leases before the end of Trump’s term and the possible arrival of a new president who opposes drilling.

“I think they just want to ram this down people’s throats to show that they can still drill where they want to drill and still prop up the oil industry, even in the face of evidence of climate change,” he said.

Wilderness Society’s Alaska state director, Karlin Itchoak, said in a statement that the move by the Trump administration “ignores science and shortcuts the public process in an irresponsible rush to help oil companies secure leases on the coastal plain before the 2020 presidential election.”

They want to hurry up and break it while they can, in case the anti-breaking party wins.

Now Trump is promoting a poison to “treat” the virus.

President Donald Trump and Mike Lindell, the creator of MyPillow and an avowed supporter, participated in a July meeting at the White House regarding the use of oleandrin as a potential therapeutic for coronavirus, Lindell confirmed to CNN.

What other meetings are they having? Meetings regarding being run over by tanks as a potential therapeutic for coronavirus? Meetings regarding being sliced up by swords as a potential therapeutic for coronavirus? Meetings regarding jumping out of planes without a parachute as a potential therapeutic for coronavirus?

Oleandrin is an extract from the plant Nerium oleander. The raw oleander plant is highly toxic, and consumption of it can be fatal.

So let’s use the presidency to tell people to try it! To cure a deadly disease! Which everyone would like to see a cure for!

[Lindell] described the President’s response toward the extract as “enthusiastic.”

“He was enthusiastic, as he is on everything that’s going to help people,” he told CNN, adding that Trump wanted the Food and Drug Administration to “do its course.”

No, as he is on random things that random people mention to him and that he knows nothing about. Things that really are going to help people he’s not enthusiastic about at all.

Trump confirmed he’s “heard about” oleandrin when asked Monday on the White House South Lawn, but still seemed to be in an information-gathering phase.

Hahahahahaha is that what you call it.

Last week, Lindell was added to the board of Phoenix Biotechnology, which makes oleandrin, and received a financial stake in the company.

Well great, thank god Trump is getting his information from a disinterested observer.

“The reason I did that, I want this to get to the public so bad and I want to get it out there to help people,” he said.

As far as I can tell Lindell has no medical training. Wikipedia says his background is more in crack addiction.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Lindell was addicted to cocaine, crack cocaine, and alcohol, leading to foreclosure of his house, and his wife filing for divorce. Lindell stated that he achieved sobriety through prayer in 2009, and, since then, has been clean.

That’s nice but it’s no substitute for medical or pharmaceutical training. You need that before it’s of interest that you’re “enthusiastic” about a poisonous plant as treatment for a virus.

How poisonous is it though? Pretty damn poisonous.

While it’s a beautiful shrub, all parts of it are toxic to people and animals. Ingesting any part can cause serious symptoms or even death. Skin contact also can result in irritation, such as rashes and sores. Plus, even smoke from burning the plant is toxic. 

But hey, let’s get all excited and “enthusiastic” about popping it for covid or to prevent covid or just on general principles.

Sean Coughlan at the BBC explains now what:

The next part of the A-level U-turn jigsaw is that the government is allowing universities in England to add more places – to meet the extra demand from young people who have had their results upgraded.

…

To increase capacity, the government in England will lift the “student number controls” which would have capped places.

Which means universities can add more students but

But that still depends on it being possible – they will still need to have enough spare space, teaching staff and accommodation, along with the pressures of Covid-19 social distancing measures.

Which doesn’t just magically pop into being because it’s needed.

A later update (the BBC doesn’t provide links to each segment of live reporting, unlike the Guardian):

Queen Mary University of London said in a tweet it was “deeply sympathetic” to affected students, and that it would guarantee a place to any students who had originally missed but now met the terms of their offer.

An hour down the page there is a student who was sad about her lost place at Queen Mary:

“I’m relieved but quite frustrated at the same time. It’s too late,” says Zainab Ali, 18, from London.

…

She’s come to terms with the fact that she’s going to her second choice, the University of Westminster, instead – but still feels frustrated because she had “always wanted” to go to Queen Mary’s since being a child.

So it looks as if she’ll get to go after all (perhaps with overcrowding).

That’s a bit of good news for a change – or just the undoing of a bit of bad news, as so often, but we take what we can get. They’ve said “Sorry, we’ll reverse the whole thing, sorry” about the exams-evaluations-algorithm mess. I was reading a lot of desperately sad tweets yesterday by parents of kids at state schools who’d earned a place reading engineering at Cambridge and then had it snatched away by the algorithm.

Gavin Williamson and Ofqual have apologised to students and their parents, as they announced that all A-level and GCSE results in England will be based on teacher-assessed grades.

In a spectacular U-turn, the education secretary announced the government would scrap the controversial standardisation model drawn up by the exams regulator to award grades in lieu of exams.

Instead, both A-levels and GCSE results will revert to centre-assessed grades, which were submitted by schools earlier this summer.

There are winners and losers either way, but since the losers were heavily weighted toward students in state schools as opposed to posh schools, it seemed doubly or triply cruel.

The climbdown comes after days of turmoil triggered by the publication of A-level results last Thursday, when almost 40% of predicted results were downgraded, with some students marked down two or even three grades, which resulted in many losing university places.

…

Hundreds of pupils took to the streets of London, demonstrating outside the Department for Education to express their anger, while others took to the airwaves and social media to describe their sense of devastation. Lawyers had began to consider taking action on behalf of affected teenagers.

…

Ofqual argued that the algorithm was essential to ensure results were standardised across the country and in line with previous years, but hundreds of individual stories documenting disappointment and an overwhelming sense of injustice among those affected proved too much to ignore.

However hard they tried.

Graham Linehan hosts a scorching retort by Victoria Smith to Rebecca Solnit’s smug glib mess of a Guardian open letter, starting from an essay of Solnit’s about male violence.

On this, you are totally right. Male violence is a global outrage. Why, then, have you written a piece which dismisses women’s fears as “really weird”, writes off actual occurrences of male violence as “lurid what-ifs”, euphemistically characterises sexual assault as “unpleasantness”, tells women which male people they’re allowed to be wary of (the ones who aren’t your mates) and accuses women of “posing a threat” if they are insufficiently accommodating? Do you have any idea what you sound like?

But of course, Victoria goes on, Solnit would say she’s not talking about people who are male, she’s talking about this much more sophisticated thing “because “science has gotten smarter in the decades since [the 1970s] and we now know it’s a complex interplay of chromosomes, hormones, primary and secondary sexual characteristics and other stuff”” blah blah blah.

Let me be clear: even if you can bodge together a sort-of argument to defend it, it’s disgraceful to tell a subset of female rape victims that their experiences don’t constitute male violence, that, on the contrary, they don’t constitute experiences at all, just “lurid what-ifs”. Disgraceful, too, to suggest that domestic abuse victims who require female-only shelters just haven’t understood that “complexity and fluidity can be a blessing”. Truly, what was your thinking here? That if these women hadn’t spent drab childhoods in Nowheresville but had spent more time in “the loudest, proudest queer town around”, they wouldn’t have become such bigots? Are you sure it’s your superior open-mindedness, and not your privilege, that’s talking here? 

What I’m seeing here is not a challenge to patriarchal thought. On the contrary, you’re supporting its endless repackaging. Don’t you realise that those of us who grew up beneath the shadow of domestic abuse, however “traditional” its presentation, rarely thought this was what was happening to us? The patriarchy is always other people, hence the ease with which you tell other women which male people they’re permitted to fear (not your friends, just everyone else’s).

We always want to make exceptions for our friends, Victoria goes on, which is why Harvey Weinstein got away with it for so long.

You know perfectly well, as The Longest War shows, that in condemning male violence we do not condemn all male people. This does not mean that we should pick out subsets of the male sex class – priests, respectable family men, friends of Rebecca Solnit — and grant them a free pass.

Another such subset: men who say they are women, men who say they identify as women, men who say they have a woman’s brain in a man’s body, men who say they have the soul of a woman.

You do know better than this. You just don’t want to because it would cost you too much in terms of social standing amongst your peers, who’ll cheer as you point the finger at the easy targets – the far-right politicians, the Christian fundamentalists, the incels – but start screaming bigot the moment you question whether male socialisation and entitlement lurks amongst them, too. Honestly, you, me and every feminist on Earth could have a lovely communal rant about what an evil patriarch Trump is, but some of us will still have to go home to allies who beat the crap out of us, and to violence which you insist requires no definition, no political context, no words at all. This thinking – this strategic ignorance – is what patriarchy depends upon. Without it the whole thing would fall apart. 

A scorcher. Read the whole thing.