Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Casual contempt

    Rob Henderson in the Times:

    In recent years, casual contempt for white women has come mostly from the left. On May 25, 2020, the same day that George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, a white woman called the police on a black man who was birdwatching in Central Park. Derek Chauvin went to prison for murdering Floyd, and Amy Cooper was given an insulting nickname for her supposedly racist reaction.

    She was dubbed “the Central Park Karen”.

    Since then, many conservatives have complained about the left’s attack on white people and the “values” of white supremacy, which apparently include perfectionism, urgency, individualism and objectivity. All of this helped fuel a political backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and the second term of President Trump.

    Henderson blunts his point by failing to point out that there is no male equivalent of “Karen”. Part of the venom of the pejorative “Karen” is that this despicable person is female. Yuck. Yet there is no Bob or Dave or Steve. Why’s that then? It can’t possibly be because there’s something disgusting or contemptible about just being female, can it?

    After a federal ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old white woman in Minneapolis, on January 7, Republican officials and conservative commentators characterised her as “very violent”, a “deranged lunatic woman” and a “domestic terrorist”. They also tarnished her with an insult long used in certain corners of social media but which is new to the general public: Awful.

    The term, which first appeared on Wiktionary as AWFL, stands for “Affluent White Female Urban Liberal”, and it’s how the conservative commentator Erik Erickson described the killing of Good on X. “An AWFUL,” he wrote, “is dead after running her car into an ICE agent who opened fire on her. Progressive whites are turning violent. ICE agents have the right to defend themselves.”

    And yet there’s no AWMUL. Why’s that? Because it’s much worse when women do it?

    Because long before Awfuls existed, the progressive left had been demonising Karens. Take The Root, a left-wing outlet that covers race in America, rounded up “20 real-life Karens who ruined someone’s day” over the past few years. The piece noted that: “You can’t even board a plane or even feed the homeless without one of them spawning into a racist or ignorant tantrum. Luckily, some of them end up facing the law when their tirades escalate into acts of violence or other harmful behaviour.”

    But no such rants about George or Mike or Jim.

    Funny how that works.

  • Her nephew is her niece

    Sigh.

    No, the argument cannot “then develop to” whatever scenario you dream up. Knowing that men are not women does not “develop to” or lead to or prompt or motivate or allow random extreme remarks along the lines of “you’re out because you have blue eyes.” Saying, pointing out, underlining that men are not and cannot be women is not random the way “because blue eyes” is. What sex people are is not random and it’s not always or automatically irrelevant. It’s not random and arbitrary to say that men should not be in women’s sports or in jobs reserved for women.

    Trans nephews are irrelevant to this fact.

  • Hey kids, it’s random commas time

    Trump big mad at Canada.

    Trump rescinded on Thursday his invitation for Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada to join his “Board of Peace,” an organization that he had founded to oversee a peace deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza but that he has now tried to broaden into an institution to rival the United Nations.

    Which is like trying to square the circle, because the United Nations is what it says on the tin – a grouping of nations – while Trump’s “Board of Peace” is one deranged man’s plaything. There’s no rivalry because there’s no commonality.

    In a high-profile speech at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday, Mr. Carney had urged leaders of smaller nations to band together to resist Mr. Trump’s America First doctrine and his efforts to dismantle the post-World War II international order. On Thursday, hours before Mr. Trump’s announcement, Mr. Carney went further, denouncing “authoritarianism and exclusion” in a speech that appeared to be referencing the president.

    Though Mr. Trump did not explain why he was rescinding the invitation, Mr. Trump, who often lashes out against leaders who publicly defy him, appeared to be reacting to Mr. Carney’s candid remarks. In a similar episode months earlier, Mr. Trump sought to punish Canada with additional tariffs because of a Canadian television ad that quoted former President Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs.

    And so he struck the blow.

    “Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post framed as a letter to Mr. Carney.

    In a language purporting to be English but not really managing it.

    Trump rescinding the invitation to Mr. Carney was also the latest sign that the Board of Peace would be anything but a typical international organization, where disagreement and open discourse among member states is tolerated or even encouraged. Its charter grants Mr. Trump, the chairman of the organization, outsized power, including the authority to veto decisions, approve the agenda, invite and remove members, dissolve the board entirely and designate his successor.

    So why would anyone want to join such a “board”?

  • Hallmark signs

    Well, does he?

    Trump Shows ‘Unmistakable’ Signs of Advanced Dementia, Experts Say

    [M]any U.S. mental health experts have been warning for years that Trump not only fits the profile of a dangerous psychopath, but has numerous hallmark signs of dementia. Today, we revisit their findings – a reminder that the future of the world is at risk if we continue to deny that the emperor has no clothes.

    A psychopath with dementia is an alarming prospect. You know who else is an alarming prospect? Trump. What a coincidence!

    [T]he authors did not just warn that Trump was dangerously callous, mentally disturbed and showing clear psychopathic tendencies. In later interviews, petitions and editorials, Bandy Lee and others pointed out that he was showing hallmark signs of cognitive decline, including in a statement on the World Mental Health Coalition’s website. Their concerns included not only Trump’s incoherence, impaired memory, and “confabulation, where memory gaps are filled with false or fabricated details,” but also an “amplification” of his paranoid, narcissistic, and antisocial personality traits, which they described as “criminal and dangerous.” The experts also noted Trump’s aggression, disinhibition in behavior and vulgar, hateful language. 

    Is that dementia or is it just who Trump is? I don’t know, because I never paid any attention to him until it suddenly became imperative (at which point it was way too late).

    Former Johns Hopkins professor Dr. John Gartner has raised similar concerns, both in media appearances and a 2024 petition saying that. “Donald Trump is showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia, based on his public behavior and informant reports that show progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills.” 

    ​​In an April 2025 conversation with MindSite News, Gartner explained his conviction that “there was absolutely no doubt” that Trump has dementia. “We’ve collected dozens and dozens of Trump’s phonemic paraphrasias, in which you use sounds in place of an actual word (a hallmark of brain damage and dementia),” said Gartner in one of the many examples he gave. “Trump will say something like ‘mishiz’ for missiles, or ‘Chrishus’ for Christmas, because he can’t complete the word. He is losing his capacity for coherent speech…Then there is the physical deterioration. He used to be quite graceful, and now he uses a wide-based gait typical of frontotemporal dementia.”

    Scary enough yet?

  • Progressive cheating

    Sucks to be you, girls.

    It’s the girls’ category. He’s not a girl.

  • Guest post: The asteroid doesn’t care

    Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Ownership.

    I’m getting increasingly annoyed when people make a point of how America already has military bases on Greenland and are free to pretty much do what they want. So if they didn’t have have the Danish government’s permission to act as if they owned the place, that would indeed be a legitimate reason to invade? There’s a reason why negotiating with terrorists is considered such a terrible idea. If it were up to me, the American forces on Greenland would be given 24 hours to get the hell out the moment Trump put forth his threat (at the very latest).

    As embarrassing as it must be (or at least should!) to be American these days, it’s hardly any better to be European. It’s been sickening to watch our leaders compete to abase themselves before the orange bully and sacrifice every shred of integrity, dignity and honor in exchange for less than nothing. If cringiness had mass, the world would have collapsed into a black hole long ago. Not only are they failing to protect Europe, but they’re turning it into something not even worth protecting. I don’t know whether the European spine died with Churchill and De Gaulle or simply atrophied out of existence through decades of disuse, but anyway it’s gone.

    Think of Trump’s America as asteroid on a direct collision course with the Earth. You wouldn’t waste your time trying to talk the asteroid into changing its trajectory or argue about what we need the asteroid to do? It doesn’t care. You simply do whatever you have to do to push it out of the way. There is no harm the asteroid is going to do if you fail to appease it that it’s not going to do anyway. Same with Trump. He is going to do as much harm and evil as you allow him to do, and that’s it. There is no possible consequence of fighting back with everything you’ve got that’s worse than failure to do so.

  • Third warning. Gas, gas, gas.

    The Battle of Minneapolis continues.

    Federal agents deployed smoke and chemicals on Jan. 21 as they clashed with protesters and observers at two spots in south Minneapolis.

    U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino lobbed a smoke canister at Mueller Park in the Whittier neighborhood. “I’m gonna gas. Get back. Gas is coming. Gas is coming, second warning. Second warning,” Bovino can be heard saying in a video captured by Ben Luhmann. “Gas on film! Gas on film!” Luhmann shouts in response.

    “Third warning. Gas, gas, gas,” Bovino says, before tossing the canister and pushing people away from the street. Plumes of green and gray smoke burst over the crowd as protesters and observers run from the scene. Some were hit in the face with orange spray. The smoke left behind green stains in the snow.

    Just a short while earlier and about a mile away, near West 28th Street and Blaisdell Avenue, agents held a person to the ground as they sprayed a bright orange chemical irritant directly into their face.

    I suppose this is what Trump wants. There could be a slower, calmer, less sadistic process by which people who have overstayed their visas (or never had a visa, and so on) are given notice to leave, but that wouldn’t provide MAGA with the thrills it craves.

    Just a short while earlier and about a mile away, near West 28th Street and Blaisdell Avenue, agents held a person to the ground as they sprayed a bright orange chemical irritant directly into their face.

    The violent encounters between federal agents and local residents set off just before 2 p.m. Wednesday after the detainment of two people near Blaisdell Avenue and West 28th Street drew dozens of protesters who began to yell at the officers.

    The encounters came soon after the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily stayed a lower court’s order that had sought to prevent immigration agents from detaining and pepper-spraying protesters and observers.

    This sounds kind of familiar. I wonder what it’s reminding me of…

  • Irrevocably

    Broken beyond repair.

    Trump’s posturing over Greenland has irrevocably changed the transatlantic relationship, even after he backed away Wednesday from his threats of a US takeover of the Danish autonomous territory, European officials told CNN.

    One European diplomat, speaking anonymously, described the last week as a “whirlwind of absurdity that damages transatlantic relations, distracts from Ukraine, and makes China and Russia very happy.”

    …

    Trump ruled out using military force to annex Greenland in his keynote speech at Davos on Wednesday, and he went on to drop his threatened tariffs and announce “the framework of a future deal” over the island after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

    But the diplomatic chaos he unleashed over the last two weeks still lingers, with profound ramifications for the US-European economic and diplomatic relationship. A key group of European Parliament members blocked a vote to ratify a US-European trade deal Wednesday, underscoring the tensions between the transatlantic allies.

    Of course it lingers. Trump has made it all too clear how reckless and clueless he is, and the fact that he retreats just a little when the adults push back does not mean he has become not reckless and clueless. He will never become that.

    Trump ruled out using military force to annex Greenland in his keynote speech at Davos on Wednesday, and he went on to drop his threatened tariffs and announce “the framework of a future deal” over the island after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

    But the diplomatic chaos he unleashed over the last two weeks still lingers, with profound ramifications for the US-European economic and diplomatic relationship. A key group of European Parliament members blocked a vote to ratify a US-European trade deal Wednesday, underscoring the tensions between the transatlantic allies.

    When you have a deranged ignorant lunatic to deal with you don’t relax.

    Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre emphasized that “NATO countries are cooperating day-by-day very closely.”

    “Europe has its challenges. The United States has its challenges,” he told CNN. “But they’re all strong democracies, and they are allies in NATO. … We have great security to look after us and a very proud history of collaborating on that.”

    Not really. The United States is not currently a strong democracy. It’s far too vulnerable to the deranged monstrous presider to be strong.

  • Far beyond

    Ah yes the old “It was another guy, you don’t know him, he doesn’t go to this school” alibi.

    The judge in the Sandie Peggie Employment Tribunal case has laid blame on a “judicial colleague” for the numerous errors in his ruling.

    Cool cool.

    Wait a second.

    What?

    Aren’t judges kind of expected to do their own homework? If they consult colleagues isn’t it still their responsibility to get it right? Kind of like the military, where the top brass is not supposed to blame the troops for failure?

    Judge Sandy Kemp insisted that he did not us AI to help him write his 312-page judgment in the case, which has now been corrected a number of times.

    His claim followed a formal complaint of judicial misconduct made by retired lawyer and former part-time tribunal chair Ewan Kennedy, who said that the corrections went far beyond those permitted under section 67 of the Employment Tribunal Rules 2024, which provides for the correction of clerical mistakes.

    He said it was “a very serious matter” for corrections to stray into “substantial matters”, among them substituting a word with its opposite.

    Why yes, that would be a very serious matter.

    Mr Kennedy said: “Suggestions have been made in the press that the falsehoods may have resulted from careless use of some form of artificial intelligence, but that can be no possible excuse. Any solicitor who did something similar in professional practice could expect immediate disqualification for life.”

    But but but it was the kid next door who did it, honest.

  • Ownership

    Your basic local extortionist speaks to the world:

    Trump said Wednesday that he had reached the framework of a deal with NATO over Greenland’s future, hours after alliance officials separately discussed the possibility of the United States obtaining sovereignty over land for military bases, according to three senior officials familiar with the talks.

    Mr. Trump’s announcement was among a series of moves on Wednesday that appeared to draw the United States back from the possibility of military and economic conflict with his allies over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

    Mr. Trump also withdrew the threat of additional tariffs for European allies that had resisted his insistence on owning Greenland, and said he would not use force to assert American ownership.

    “I’m not gonna rough you up, you just gotta play nice with me, that’s all.”

    Asked for details of the framework that Mr. Trump announced, NATO said in a statement that “negotiations between Denmark, Greenland and the United States will go forward aimed at ensuring that Russia and China never gain a foothold — economically or militarily — in Greenland.”

    Mr. Rutte did not release details of the possible framework. Allison Hart, a spokeswoman for Mr. Rutte, said that he “did not propose any compromise to sovereignty during his meeting with the president in Davos.”

    In other words he told Trump to fuck off, but politely. Trump doesn’t understand politely. He doesn’t know how to use it himself, and he doesn’t know how to react to it from others. He has a very crude and basic way with language.

    Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament, rejected what Mr. Trump said about his potential deal with NATO.

    “What we are witnessing these days in statements from Trump is completely absurd. NATO has absolutely no mandate to negotiate anything whatsoever without us in Greenland,” she said in a post on social media.

    …

    News of the possible framework came hours after Mr. Trump told European leaders in Davos, Switzerland, that he would not settle for anything less than the United States taking ownership of Greenland. Mr. Trump had promised dire economic and security consequences for Europe if he did not get his way.

    Addressing a room full of heads of state, billionaires and other world leaders, Mr. Trump said repeatedly that the United States needed Greenland for national security purposes. He said that only the United States was strong enough to defend Greenland from external threats, and that defending it made sense only if the United States owned it.

    He called for “immediate negotiations” to discuss transferring ownership of the semiautonomous island to the United States from Denmark and derided European countries as dependent on the United States. “Without us, most of the countries don’t even work,” Mr. Trump said.

    Charm offensive 101.

    Rasmus Jarlov, chairman of the defense committee in Denmark’s Parliament, said in an interview that “we’ve heard a lot worse” from Mr. Trump. “I’m glad he’s ruling out military force,” Mr. Jarlov said. “I didn’t see in his remarks today an escalation. He insists he wants Greenland, but that’s not new. Of course, we still insist that we are not handing over Greenland.”

    Mr. Trump left little room for compromise in his speech, however. Many European leaders have maintained that they cannot countenance ceding ownership of Greenland to the United States, but they also say they would be open to almost any other arrangement that expands America’s presence there. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said, again, that would not suffice. “You need the ownership to defend it,” Mr. Trump said. A moment later, he added: “Who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease?”

    Never rent; always own.

  • Despite being invited

    Dictator blocks speech.

    California Governor Gavin Newsom has said he was blocked from speaking at a World Economic Forum event in Davos and blamed the Trump administration.

    Newsom’s office said on X that USA House, the official US pavilion at the global event, denied his entry to speak there on Wednesday despite being invited as part of an event by media partner Fortune.

    The Democratic governor, whose state has the fourth largest global economy, wrote on X: “California was just denied at the USA House. Last we checked, California is part of USA.”

    I didn’t know that about the fourth largest. Google says it’s true: right up there with Germany and Japan.

    But wait, it gets worse.

    The White House criticised the governor for attending the summit of global leaders and said that he should instead focus on his state.

    “No one in Davos knows who third-rate governor Newscum is or why he is frolicking around Switzerland instead of fixing the many problems he created in California,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to the BBC.

    Oh for godsake. Press secretaries shouldn’t adopt Trump’s vulgar nicknames for people he doesn’t like.

  • All of these varieties of men are men

    Naomi Cunningham on “the dolls”:

    So in plainer words, “dolls” refers to men who say they are women. And “protect the dolls” means “protect men who say they are women from being faced with the reality that they are men, and the consequences of that reality”.

    Ok, that’s clarifying. I’m not going to protect those men. They don’t protect us so why should we protect them?

    “Trans women” are a subcategory of men. They are men who for whatever reason (and we are not privy to their individual reasons) either wish actually to be mistaken for women, or would like other people at least to pretend to mistake them for women. They go to a variety of different lengths to be seen as women. Some do everything in their power to “pass” as women, including radical remodelling of their genitals, voice surgery, facial feminisation surgery, laser hair removal, and modifying their gait and social behaviour. I’ve heard tell that the anguished desperation of some of these men to be seen as women has even led some of them to go so far as trying to modify their habit of interrupting and talking over women.

    HAhahahaha. Very few of them though. Without interrupting and talking over women life just becomes so drab and pointless.

    All of these varieties of men are men. And as I have already noted, we are not privy to their reasons for claiming to be women or performing their conception of womanhood. No doubt some proportion of these men feel a genuine distress that they were not born female, and are managing that distress by pretending as hard as they can that the reality they find unpalatable is not real. I couldn’t think that a healthy or a grown-up way of coping with the disappointments of reality even if it didn’t entail entitled demands to have everyone else join in with the pretence. But the demand is both delusional and oppressive.

    YES. That’s what I wish more people would say more often and more loudly. That demand is a god damn outrage, yet so many people pretend it isn’t. Adults don’t play pretend games in public, let alone forcing other adults to play along.

    At least, they don’t unless they’re as arrested in their development as the male characters in The Big Bang Theory. Adults who go to comic book conventions probably are fatuous enough to pretend to be the other sex, but that’s not an argument for pretending, it’s a reason for not being an adult obsessed with comic books.

    But there are other kinds of men who say they are women. There are men for whom dressing as women is a sexual fetish. There are men who are sexually aroused by invading supposedly women-only spaces. There are cross-dressing men who talk to each other on Reddit chats and other places about their “euphoria boners”. There are men who go into women’s toilets and changing rooms in order to masturbate, film themselves while they do so, and then post that footage online. It’s a porn category.

    There are even men who take drugs to induce lactation, and either express the resulting milk or get infants to suck on their nipples. That’s a porn category too.

    But it’s bundled into the oppressed minority category, so we’re evil if we say those infants should be rescued before another sun sets.

    …there’s exactly one acceptable way for men to behave in relation to women-only spaces, and that is to stay out of them. That’s what decent men do. If a man doesn’t stay out, he’s not a decent man. Even if he’s genuinely distressed by his male body and invading women’s spaces with no more nefarious intent than to comfort himself for that distress by playing pretend, he’s showing a callous indifference to women’s privacy and boundaries by doing so. He’s behaving like a man who doesn’t think women have the right to privacy away from the male gaze. He’s behaving like a man who’s not good with the word “no”.

    There are so many of those around. The struggle continues.

  • His written remarks

    They’re trying to tell us he didn’t say it. Child we heard him.

    “His written remarks” she said, as if we were born yesterday. His written remarks were written by people who are not quite as bad at writing (and talking) as he is. His blurted remarks said Iceland. What you wrote down for him to say is not the same thing as what he did say.

    Lying for Trump isn’t going to look good on your resume forever.

  • Ruined WHOSE life?

    Scottish Daily Express:

    Ross Greer questioned the “reliability” of Sandie Peggie as he complained that the employment tribunal involving her had “ruined” the life of Dr Beth Upton. The Scottish Greens co-leader also doubled down on his refusal to call trans double rapist Isla Bryson a man, hitting out at [rebuking] this line of questioning by the BBC.

    So the Scottish Greens co-leader thinks Sandie Peggie is the one who messed up someone’s life, and that it wasn’t at all “Beth” Upton who messed up Sandie Peggie’s life. Women must always comply when men tell them to, even (or especially) when the men in question are pretending to be women and forcing themselves on women in the rooms where they change their clothes. Men who say they are women are both heroic and fragile, while women who say men are not women are wicked and terrifyingly strong and violent.

    Sometimes it seems as if men don’t even try to understand.

    Greer went on:

    “And I don’t think it has been good for anybody involved in that situation. But I do keep coming back to the fact that Beth Upton, the doctor here, was dragged through this whole process. Horrible accusations were made of her. Her private life was invaded constantly. Her face was plastered all over the place. And in the end, the conclusion was, she had absolutely no case to answer.

    “She had done nothing wrong. She was a doctor who was just trying to care for her patients. And for no other reason than being trans, her life has basically been ruined by this situation. So, let’s imagine that for no other reason than being Jewish someone had been dragged through that same situation. I think we would all acknowledge how outrageously utterly unacceptable that was.”

    Lying or stupid or both?

    Yes he had done something wrong, no he was not just trying to care for his patients. He was also using a women’s changing room despite being a man, and he did everything he could to wreck Sandie Peggie’s career as a nurse after she objected to his presence in the women’s changing room. That is in fact something wrong.

    The comparison to being Jewish is wildly offensive.

    I think men like this should have to wear a label, so that women know to stay well away from them.

  • The shame

    Take a deep breath first.

  • Given the continued and escalating threats

    Oh darn, Trump fucked around and found out.

    The European Union’s legislative body on Wednesday halted work on the formal approval and implementation of the trade deal it reached last summer with President Donald Trump.

    “Given the continued and escalating threats, including tariff threats, against Greenland and Denmark, and their European allies, we have been left with no alternative but to suspend work” on the deal, said Bernd Lange, the chairman of the European Parliament’s international trade committee.

    Wait that’s not supposed to happen. Everybody is supposed to say “we bow before your superior wisdom Sir” – not “ok then no trade deal for you, Donny from Queens.”

    On Thursday, leaders of the 27 E.U. countries will meet to discuss their coordinated response to Trump’s Greenland threats.

    This may include a package of retaliatory tariffs worth nearly $110 billion, which would impact a wide range of U.S. exports, from Boeing airplanes to soybeans to Kentucky bourbon.

    Another potential retaliatory measure would be to deploy the bloc’s “Anti-Coercion Instrument,” a policy option sometimes referred to as the E.U.’s trade “bazooka.”

    The ACI would allow the European Commission to target nearly any U.S. goods or services in Europe with a wide range of restrictions and barriers.

    Go for it. Turn the heat up. Burn him.

  • Cultivate your garden instead

    Trump is on a calling-other-people-stupid roll.

    Trump on Tuesday accused Britain of “an act of great stupidity” for agreeing to end British sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, in a blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s attempts to cultivate the president.

    …

    In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump abruptly reversed that position and argued that the decision strengthened the case for the United States to acquire Greenland.

    “Shockingly, our “brilliant” NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER,” he wrote.

    He added: “The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”

    It’s odd/funny/bizarre that he does that, when stupidity is such a conspicuous and large aspect of what he is and does and is known for. Maybe that’s why he does it – if he calls other people stupid then that makes him not stupid himself. Stupid of him to think that.

    It’s a taboo word, of course. I’m violating the taboo whenever I call him stupid, which I do often, despite knowing it’s taboo. It’s taboo for good reasons, but at the same time, it’s a very important part of what’s so wrong about Trump that he is so weak in the intellect yet feels entirely qualified for the job he has. To put it crudely (and tabooly) he’s stupid enough to think he’s not stupid.

  • Man woman person camera tv

    Trump calls other people stupid.

    “If they don’t get this done, they are stupid,” Trump says of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia reaching a peace deal. Trump, who is now speaking with Borge Brende, the World Economic Forum president, then caveats, “I don’t want to insult anyone,” prompting one person in the crowd to cackle.

    Only one?

    Many of President Trump’s comments about energy in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, were not grounded in reality…And China and the United States get a similar share of their electricity from wind turbines — about 10 percent as of 2024, according to data from the research firm Ember Energy and the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In his speech, Trump claimed China sells turbines “to the stupid people that buy them, but they don’t use them themselves.”

    Glass houses; stones.

  • If it is considered safe

    We are sooooooo tired of having to point out the glaringly obvious problem.

    Banning biological males who identify as transgender from being placed in female prisons would violate their human rights, the Scottish Government will argue in court.

    Not banning men from being placed in female prisons would violate women’s human rights you obtuse clueless head in the sand lunatics.

    The campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) has launched a legal challenge seeking to overturn existing prison guidance in Scotland, with a hearing due to begin at the Court of Session on February 3.

    Current rules allow trans people to be placed in a prison matching their gender identity if it is considered safe to do so. This does not include those with a history of violence against women and girls, or who are judged to present a risk.

    If it is considered safe to do so by whom???

    Clearly, by people who are not going to be in those prisons, and so don’t need to worry about the men who don’t wear “RAPIST” badges but are in reality not risk-free if housed in a women’s prison.

    FWS argues this is unlawful as ministers are statutorily obliged to provide women-only prison accommodation. It previously won a landmark Supreme Court fight against the Scottish Government over the legal definition of a woman under equality law, which judges ruled is based on biological sex.

    …

    In advance of the latest case, the Government has published its note of argument, which argues the position on prisons put forward by FWS contains “fundamental errors” and the Equality Act 2010 “does not mandate sex segregation”.

    So the Government is perfectly happy to force women to take their chances.

    Susan Smith, a co-director of FWS, said it was “depressing, but not unsurprising, that in page after page referencing human rights, the Scottish Government has, apparently, not considered that women are also human and also have rights”

    She added: “Article 3 [of the ECHR] protects everyone from torture, inhuman treatment, or degrading punishment, yet women in, or recently released from, prison tell us the same stories of violation of boundaries and physical or mental abuse from the men they are locked up with.”

    It’s almost as if a lot of men really don’t like or respect women. It’s almost as if all of us have grown up in a culture that sees women as contemptible, weak, sly, rebellious, and rapeable.

    MSP Tess White said it “beggars belief that SNP ministers are still arguing that male-bodied criminals can be housed in women’s prisons”.

    See above.

  • The big ten

    The Magic Ten Orders yet again.

    The ten orders suck. They’re not just theocratic, they’re bad. Don’t steal; don’t kill; don’t lie. Well no shit; can you not come up with a little more than that? Be compassionate? Don’t hurt others? Be generous? Try to make your part of the world a little better? Can’t you come up with some affirmative suggestions instead of just the most basic don’ts plus a ton of godbothering nonsense?

    No, you can’t, so get that crap out of the schools.

    Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, who was in the courtroom for the debate, said, “I like our chances.” Asked what he would say to parents who don’t want their children taught the Ten Commandments, he said he would “advise parents like that they find some moral code.”

    “You either read the Ten Commandments or your child is going to learn the criminal code,” he said.

    Absolutely wrong. The ten are not even close to being a moral code. They are as minimal as they could possibly be on the moral front, and the rest is just monotheistic bullying. There’s not a word about generosity or compassion or helping others. Landry is the one who needs to learn something about morality.

    Before Tuesday’s hearing, Texas state Rep. Candy Noble, a Republican and one of the authors of her state’s Ten Commandments law, urged the 5th Circuit judges to back it.

    “Returning the Ten Commandments to our Texas classrooms gives our school children an understanding that the Ten Commandments were foundational to America’s educational and judicial systems,” Noble said in a statement.

    Nonsense. They’re too minimal and empty to be foundational to anything, as well as being too theocratic to be tolerable to 99 percent of people.