Trump plans to have a fireworks & sojers party at “Mount Rushmore” next month. What a disgusting idea in every way.

Trump’s plans to kick off Independence Day with a showy display at Mount Rushmore are drawing sharp criticism from Native Americans who view the monument as a desecration of land violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to native people.

Desecration and uglification. That thing is a monstrosity.

The event is slated to include fighter jets thundering over the 79-year-old stone monument in South Dakota’s Black Hills and the first fireworks display at the site since 2009.

Loud noises! Bangs! Roars! He can understand those.

Trump has long shown a fascination with Mount Rushmore. South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, said in 2018 that he had once told her straight-faced it was his dream to have his face carved into the monument.

Oh ffs. What could matter less? It’s about as significant as a Paul Bunyan statue outside a diner.

The National Park Service stopped staging pyrotechnics at Mount Rushmore in 2010 out of concern that it could ignite wildfires under drought conditions, the Washington Post reports. The memorial is surrounded by 1,200 acres of forested lands, including ponderosa pines, and lies next to the Black Hills national forest’s Black Elk Wilderness.

A multi-state effort was focused on Thursday on fighting a wildfire that started in nearby Custer state park on Wednesday, burning about six miles from Mount Rushmore, the Rapid City Journal reported.

So by all means let’s start a new wildfire so that we can have some loud bangs.

The monument was conceived in the 1920s as a tourist draw for the new fad in vacationing called the road trip.

What I said. It’s like a Paul Bunyan statue, not like the Lincoln Memorial. It’s tacky as well as ugly and intrusive and kind of white supremacistish. (Behold our Giant White Faces, Lakota people, and be overawed.)

Oh what do you know look at that – the Independent in 2018 doing a whole piece on the need for girls’ toilets in schools.

Unesco is urging governments around the world to prioritise providing single-sex toilets in schools, warning as many as 1 in 10 girls in some countries are missing out on lessons because of their period.

The UN’s education body surveyed 189 countries as part of its sixth annual gender review, obtained exclusively by The Independent ahead of International Women’s Day.

While the report found some progress had been made in gender equality in education, it said one in three countries still failed to allow equal numbers of boys and girls into primary school.

…

One “obstacle” to girls attending school was a lack of segregated toilets in schools, review director Manos Antoninis said, adding the agency found there was “little focus” on menstrual hygiene in schools in 21 low and middle income countries.

So sex-segregated toilets are needed for girls to be able to attend school? Is that what we’re saying?

“Improved sanitation to address adolescent girls’ concerns over privacy, particularly during menstruation, can influence their education decisions,” he said. “Single-sex toilets are desperately needed to overcome girls’ barriers to education.”

Huh. But we’ve been told it’s the worst kind of transphobia for women to say that women and girls need privacy in the toilets.

In Bangladesh, 41 per cent of schoolgirls aged between 11 and 17 reported missing three days of school every month because of a lack of adequate sanitary care, according to the report.

Meanwhile, in rural areas of west African nations including Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, less than a fifth of schools had four or more of Unesco’s five recommended menstrual hygiene services. These include separate sex toilets with doors and locks, water and rubbish bins.

And one more thing…

Unesco also for the first time recommended children be taught about power dynamics between boys and girls in school.

Teaching children about the relationship between the genders in sex education classes would not only tackle gender-based violence, but also help reduce teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, Unesco said.

Not a word about trans girls in the whole piece. Was anyone sacked?

M. K. Fain on that election in Queens:

Emilia Decaudin, a man, has won the Female District Leader position for New York City’s 37-A district, which resides in Queens. Last year, Decaudin successfully petitioned to eliminate the sex parity rule in New York Democratic Leadership Council roles—a rule which was put in place by feminists to ensure women’s fair and equal participation in the democratic process.

And along came a man to say no, let’s not ensure women’s fair and equal participation in the democratic process. Let’s keep women out, instead.

Decaudin, who identifies as transgender and non-binary, defeated Deirdre Feerick, a woman, for the female position by a margin of about 5.5 points. Feerick was an experienced politician who enjoyed the endorsement of the Queens Democratic Party. Decaudin appears to have only recently moved to the district after residing in Westchester County.

In October, City Democrats insisted that changing the rules “would NOT affect the gender parity of (half of the seats reserved for women) outlined for elected office seats such as District Leaders.” This has proven to untrue—as was expected by feminists. District 37A will now be represented by two white men, despite the fact that the District as a whole is a “majority minority” District, largely consisting of Hispanics, and does, in fact, also contain women, who have now been deprived of a representative.

Sorry, wims, sucks to be you.

They have another scalp.

Damian Barr is leading a charge of writers, including one former Booker prize winner, who are calling on the Booker Foundation to remove the allegedly “homophobic” peer Emma Nicholson from her position as vice-president.

Lady Nicholson of Winterbourne, who voted against the same-sex marriage bill in 2013, is the widow of the late former chairman of Booker, Sir Michael Caine, who helped establish the prize. She is currently a vice-president of the Booker Foundation, and a former trustee of the prize.

Barr, a novelist, memoirist and host of the Literary Salon, learned of her association with the prize earlier this week, after Munroe Bergdorf, the model and transgender activist, said she was referring Nicholson to the Parliamentary Standards Conduct Commissioner over Nicholson’s posts on social media about the trans community. The peer also drew fire earlier this month over her views on same-sex marriage.

What “posts on social media about the trans community”? The issue is whether or not men can become women by saying words, not gossip about some mythical entity called “the trans community.”

Also, Munroe Bergdorf? That’s who’s leading the charge?

Barr immediately challenged the Booker on Twitter, writing that “as a gay writer I feel very concerned that a person who is actively and publicly propagating homophobic views holds a position of such power & prestige in your rightly esteemed organisation”.

As major writers including the Booker prizewinner Marlon James and the bestselling novelist Sarah Perry lined up to condemn Nicholson’s position with the Booker prize, the foundation released a statement on Tuesday in which its trustees said that “the views expressed by Baroness Nicholson on transgender issues are her own personal views”.

“Baroness Nicholson has herself recently said that she retired as a trustee of the foundation in 2009,” the statement continued, “and was then made an honorary vice-president. She has no role in the governance or operations of the foundation. She is not involved in selecting the judges nor in choosing the books that are longlisted, shortlisted and win.”

Doesn’t matter. The point is to punish her. The point is to hold her up for everyone to throw things at her. The point is to wound, to shame, to bully, to sideline, to ostracize, to monster.

Barr had a tantrum about the statement, calling it shocking.

Nicholson, who now sits in the Lords as a Conservative peer, told the Guardian she would “very much regret any move to remove me from an organisation I have been associated with for so many years” and rejected the accusation of homophobia.

“I did indeed vote against same-sex marriage in 2013,” she said. “I have not yet learned from my critics how I am offending by perceived homophobia. In other words, they have offered no evidence.”

I disagree with the vote, but I don’t think it establishes homophobia.

Former winner Marlon James, who took the prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, also slammed the Booker’s response. “While we’re at it, as a Booker prize winner myself, lets talk about your shitty response to having a hate monger on your board,” he said on Facebook. “It’s not enough to distance yourself from her views, you have to distance yourself from her and condemn HER. There’s certain kind of supposed liberal/moderate who still thinks that speech calling for my erasure deserves as much rights as speech call for my survival. Don’t be those people.”

See? “You have to distance yourself from her and condemn HER.” Kill the witch.

The Guardian understands that members of the Booker’s advisory board are unhappy with the current situation and response. A spokesperson for the prize said that “the trustees of the Booker Prize Foundation will be reviewing the situation again today”.

And they did, and they’ve now done the deed. The shits.

Statement on behalf of the Booker Prize Foundation:

We, the Trustees of the Booker Prize Foundation, met today and wish to reiterate that the views expressed by Baroness Nicholson on transgender people are her own personal opinions.

The issues are complex, but our principles are clear.  We deplore racism, homophobia and transphobia – and do not discriminate on any grounds.

They don’t deplore misogyny though. Lucky for them! Makes it easy to punish a woman for not agreeing with every claim of trans ideology.

Literature is open, plural and questioning. We believe every author’s work should be approached by readers in the same spirit. Integrity is central to both Booker Prizes, whose judging process is conducted at all times in keeping with these values.

Upon her retirement from the Board in 2009, Baroness Nicholson was made an honorary vice president, a role that gave her no say in the governance or operations of the Foundation or prizes. In recent days there has been some confusion about the nature of honorary titles used by the Foundation. Too many believe that these titles in some way symbolise the prizes. That is not the case.

We have today decided that these titles and roles should, with immediate effect, cease to exist. Those holding them have been informed and thanked for their longstanding interest.

Bam.

The absolute shits.

Another ignorant twerp jumps, very belatedly, on the Let’s All Monster JK Rowling train.

Since J.K. Rowling published “Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues” to JKRowling.com, Harry Potter fans, Wizarding Worldfilm stars and LGBTQ+ organizations have been speaking out against Rowling’s statement. Fans of Rowling’s work are questioning how to move forward, whilst LGBTQ+ organizations are publishing responses aiming to combat misinformation within the author’s essay.

No, the responses aren’t aiming to combat misinformation, they’re aiming to enforce a novel and stupid orthodoxy and to destroy yet another woman who doesn’t adhere to it.

Whilst some have defended Rowling’s right to an opinion, others, including Forbes.com Diversity & Inclusion Contributor Dawn Ennis, have illustrated the dangers of opinions and misinformation within her statements.

Gee, imagine being so benighted as to think Rowling has a right to an opinion. It should be pried out of her with a crowbar and then all traces washed away with acid.

The implications of Rowling’s statements and backlash on the future success of the Wizarding World franchise have also been questioned. Scott Mendelson, Forbes.com Hollywood & Entertainment Contributor, questions the future of the Fantastic Beasts film franchise, whilst Dani Di Placido, Forbes.com Arts Senior Contributor, says Rowling is “destroying” her legacy.

Also this guy waiting for the bus this morning said he’d never heard of her, and my neighbor’s dog barked.

George Washington University has issued a statement on William Barr:

The George Washington University Law School released a statement on June 23, 2020 calling for Attorney General William Barr to resign, for Congress to censure him, and for the Justice Department’s Inspector General to investigate him.

Barr received a juris doctorate from the Law School in 1977, served on its board of advisors, and has previously been honored by the school.

Most of the faculty signed.

The Law School’s statement cites the following as instances of Barr’s failure to uphold his constitutional oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The signers assert that Barr

• Deliberately misled Americans about the contents of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report,
• Intervened in Roger Stone’s sentencing,
• Interfered with the prosecution of Michael Flynn,
• And violated civilians’ First Amendment right to assemble and protest at Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020.

So why won’t Moses and Jesus validate him?

Jesus and Mo on Patreon

The new book

Trump did another gig yesterday, for a conservative group in Arizona. He said some words:

I want to thank also Kimberly, and I want to thank my son — boy, I watched my son.  I got here — wow.  I said, “What’s this all about?”  He’s good.  And people like him.  People like him a lot.

To everyone here today, and watching live all across our country, thank you for bravely defending our nation, our values, and our great American heroes.  (Applause.)

You know what’s going on because you’re on the frontlines of a tremendous intellectual struggle for the future of our country.  It’s really what you’re talking about — the future of our country.  You see what’s happening.  It’s a disgrace.  It’s a disgrace.  If we weren’t here, you could forget it.  Okay?  But we’re going to be here, and then you’re going to be here, and we’re going to keep it going for a long time.  (Applause.)

Eh?

He could be talking about anything, or nothing.

But he does get to some substance eventually.

Our people are stronger, and our people are smarter, and we are the elite.  We are the elite.  (Applause.)  You know, do you ever notice?  They said it two weeks ago.  I was talking to somebody who says, “Well, you know the elite…”  I said, “What are you talking about, the elite?  Who’s the elite?  They’re the elite?”  They’re not the elite.  You’re the elite.  You are.  (Applause.)  You’re smarter, better looking.  You have a better future.  You know your way around better, believe it or not.

There’s only one thing they have: They’re more vicious.  They are vicious.  They are vicious people.

We don’t repeat ourselves as much though.

We believe that the beloved heroes of American history should not be torn down by militant mobs, but held up as an example to the world.  (Applause.)  Now they’re after George Washington.  I said, “What did he do wrong?”  George Washington.  (Laughter.)  Thomas Jefferson.  We stopped them.  They were heading toward the Jefferson Memorial.  They have — they couldn’t care less.  I think half of them don’t even know who Thomas Jefferson is.  (Laughter.)

I wonder how much Trump knows about Jefferson. Sally Hemings maybe? Does he know about her? I don’t think so. (Laughter.)

So our heroes are not a source of shame.  They are an example and something that you can all look up to — a true example of greatness, a point of pride.  And we will honor them and cherish them forever.  We will cherish them.

And we have to cherish our past.  We have to cherish good or bad.  We have to understand our past.  We have to understand our history.  Because if we don’t know our history, it could all happen again.  We have to know our history.  (Applause.)

Then Trump should learn some.

He sings an ode to The Wall.

So, we built 220 miles.  We’re going to have — and it’s every single element.  I met with Border Patrol, who are fantastic, by the way.  Every single element they wanted.  You have to see through, which makes sense.  You have to do all of the different — we have cameras on it.  We have sensors on it.  It is just great.  Thirty feet high.  It’s very hard.  Very hard.  (Applause.)  We have anti-climb provision on the top.  We have the whole deal, and it’s very powerful.  And, by the way, where that wall is, nobody is getting through.  Nobody gets through.  (Applause.)

We put a chunk — California — off the record, California was saying, “Please, can we have the wall?”  This is California.  You know, they didn’t want the wall.  They didn’t want the wall.  But they wanted the wall, right?  Because right next to San Diego is a wonderful town in Mexico.  You know the town; I won’t mention the name.  (Laughter.)  But they’re heavily infected with COVID.

Do you ever notice?  I said, the other night — did anybody see my speech the other night, on Saturday night?  (Applause.)  But I said the other night, “There’s never been anything where they have so many names.”  I could give you 19 or 20 names for that, right?  It’s got all different names.  “Wuhan.”  “Wuhan” was catching on.  “Coronavirus,” right?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Kung flu!

THE PRESIDENT:  “Kung flu,” yeah.  (Applause.)  Kung flu.  “COVID.”  “COVID-19.”  “COVID.”  I said, “What’s the ‘19’?”  “COVID-19.”  Some people can’t explain what the 19 — give me the — “COVID-19.”  I said, “That’s an odd name.”  I could give you many, many names.

That doesn’t quite do it justice. When Mean Donnie said “Kung flu, yeah,” there wasn’t (Applause) but (Uproar, cheers, applause). There was a loud fervent surge of approval for the president’s use of a sneering racist nickname.

Here it is again so that you can confirm.

Amnesty International explains its view on women’s rights.

“We live in a society that is more likely to discriminate and commit violence against transgender people, so we are proud to stand with them here in the UK and around the world,” they say.

“More likely” than what?

They don’t say. What does that mean then?

It’s similar to that “the most vulnerable in society” of Jolyon Maugham’s on Monday. Maugham’s is more precise in a way, but it’s still just an assertion, and it’s not true. It’s not difficult to think of people who are more vulnerable than trans people (trans people as such, trans people who are vulnerable because of being trans). Uighurs come to mind. Women and girls in Pakistan. Children separated from their parents and imprisoned on the southern border of the United States. Women and girls in India. Atheists and humanists in Nigeria. Homeless people in the US. Women and girls in Saudi Arabia. Rohyinga. Racial minorities pretty much everywhere. Religious minorities pretty much everywhere. Poor people pretty much everywhere.

Why is it that people who think they’re cutting-edge progressive are so convinced that trans people are more vulnerable than the poor, the minority, the persecuted, the subject to enslavement? Why does Amnesty International, of all organizations, claim (however vaguely) that they are the most subject to violence? Why have all these people forgotten everything they know?

Amnesty then goes on to type the flat lie that “there is absolutely no evidence” that men would use self identification to get access to spaces where women are vulnerable: there is in fact a lot of evidence that men have done exactly that, which counts as evidence that they “would” do it. Having done it and doing it now=evidence that they will go on doing it.

I don’t know. It’s as if they’ve all been slipped a “forget what you used to know” pill. It’s not possible to make any sense of it otherwise.

The ACLU is right in line with the current craze for reviving misogyny.

Yeah. Those selfish greedy mean women trying to keep pregnability just for themselves. EVERYONE can get pregnant. EVERYONE can be forced to drop out of high school because he gets pregnant. EVERYONE can lose his chance to go to university because he gets pregnant. EVERYONE can be forced to give up a job because his employers don’t provide maternity parental leave. EVERYONE can spend nine months getting increasingly uncomfortable and tired. EVERYONE can push a baby out of a narrow channel with considerable sweat and pain. EVERYONE can provide milk for an infant. EVERYONE can face the practical difficulties of providing milk for a baby while going to university or working at a job. EVERYONE can do all of this, and none of this is an interruption or disruption of plans that affects only women, women only. Not at all. Women are just women; the hell with them.

I hope he drops dead before finishing the speech.

I saw it via Mayor Watermelon this morning.

What man tracking what woman down? This man tracking this woman down.

It’s horrible to watch. He’s a bully. He would be a bully even if she had “flipped him off” but his claims about her are not even convincing. And hello, he’s a man, he followed her home in his car, and then stood there shouting at her and filming her while she screamed and cried.

It reminded me of the Central Park clash between Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper, except that Amy Cooper called the police on Christian Cooper for no apparent reason, and Christian Cooper did not follow her home (or shout at her or keep escalating while she cried and shook).

Christian Cooper didn’t call Amy Cooper a Karen, either.

Ben Sixsmith in the Spectator US:

If you are on the internet you have no doubt heard of ‘Karens’. ‘Karens’ are middle-aged white women who have a fondness for reporting people, especially black people, to the authorities. ‘The archetypal “Karen”,’ says Vox in one of its invaluable explainers, ‘Is blonde, has multiple young kids, and is usually an anti-vaxxer.’ She ‘has a “can I speak to the manager” haircut and a controlling, superior attitude to go along with it.’

It sounds pretty fucking sexist right from the outset, doesn’t it, even before “Karen” has done much of anything. Oh no, she’s blonde. Oh no, she has kids. Oh no, I don’t like her haircut. Oh no, she talks in a way I would take for granted if a man were doing it. Sixsmith remarks:

In practice, calling someone a ‘Karen’ is generally an excuse to abuse a middle-aged white woman and make it seem woke.

Precisely.

Enter Karlos Dillard. Dillard is a young black man who was cut off while driving by a middle-aged white lady who then, according to him, showed him her middle finger. Mr Dillard followed her home and began to film her. Clearly, this woman had encountered the ‘Karen’ trend. She knew the rage of the internet could be turned on her, her family and her livelihood. She had what one can only describe as a breakdown, shaking, screaming and desperately trying to hide her face and her license plate.

Passers-by attempted to intervene to dissuade the young man from filming a woman in such obvious distress. Suddenly, Dillard insisted that she had called him the n-word. Really? Why he had not accused the woman herself of that is curious, given that no one would suggest that a raised middle finger is more hostile than the slur? Meanwhile, the woman continued to shake and cry.

Mr Dillard uploaded this video to Twitter, where he sports the unusual handle ‘wypipo_h8’. It took off, and has currently accrued 46,000 retweets and 97,000 likes. Commenters are laughing at the woman’s distress. ‘That’s extreme Karening,’ says one. ‘I wonder how they end up like this,’ says another, ‘Is it a defective gene or do they go for training?’

Yes, how dare women find it frightening if men follow them home. Nasty bitches with their haircuts and their attitude.

Edward Champion looks into the incident in more detail and doubts that Dillard is telling the truth about any of it.

Dillard claimed — in a series of Instagram stories — that he had the right of way to merge onto a street from Melrose Avenue in “Capitol Hill. Fucking Capitol Hill.” Dillard says that he was in the right lane. As the two lanes of the unspecified street were about to merge, Dillard says that the woman “freaked out and swung around me and got in front of me and slammed on her brakes and did a brake check.” He further claims that he nearly collided into the back of her car.

Well, you know, merges can be tricky. It’s not always clear what the other driver is planning and whether you should speed up or slow down or keep going at the same speed. It works fine when both parties are driving like adults, but there are assholes out there. Maybe it wasn’t “the Karen” who was being the asshole.

Dillard, a Trump supporter whose online record shows a clear angling for attention and online fame, saw an opportunity to go viral. So he chased the Geo Woman down in his car and confronted her, releasing the below video excerpt onto Twitter, which, as I write this, has been seen more than four million times.

He wants to be the next Christian Cooper, but here’s the problem: men following women home is not a social justice kind of look…at least it hasn’t been, and it shouldn’t be, but right now who knows, when the left has been so thoroughly steeped in angry misogyny by its trans wing that maybe now it is.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Fox and Owl and Drew.

I despise people who worry about being “seen as.”

People who were worried about being “seen as”, let gangs of rapists sexually enslave little girls in the North of England, because when the rapist is Muslim one has to worry about being called racist.

And this isn’t a knock on the Muslim community, the Catholic Church covered up child rapers for decades if not centuries, because it was worried that if word got out that they were basically a giant pedophile and money laundering ring their moral credibility would be undermined.

During all this time, they didn’t stop raping kids or embezzling money the Irish state gave them to run orphanages, they just covered it up because they were more worried about being “seen as” than actually doing anything about the abuse. The abuse you see, made them money.

Fuck the optics, reality matters, and reality requires that people are free to disagree. That’s what this all boils down to.

JK Rowling doesn’t agree with all of trans ideology, there are bits she disagrees with, there are bits she questions and because of that there is this tremendous pressure to shut her down.

Oh, but she’s rich and powerful, who cares? Well, its like this, if Rowling can be shut down, anybody can be shut down. If a publisher can be pressured to give up an author who nets them billions of dollars, what about all the critical authors who don’t?

A while back, I read a few Wild Cards stories, its a series of short stories curated by George RR Martin. One of the stories was about “Golden Boy” – a superhero during the setting’s version of the McCarthy trials.

The whole point of the story was how HUAC broke the titular character, and why did they break him? Because if they could break him, they could break anybody. Because he broke, nobody was safe from the witch hunts.

That is the case with Rowling. I personally don’t actually like the Harry Potter books, but I have to stand by her for the sake of all the good authors who might come along who don’t buy into what is a modern orthodoxy.

This isn’t even really about trans issues. This is the same issue that hit Amelie Wen Zhao, a native of Beijing who had the temerity to write a novel involving slavery in a non-western, non-racial context. You see to the “seen as” crowd, popularly known as the woke, not being racist pile of trash is less important than not being “seen as” a racist pile of trash.

So forcing their cultural lens onto writers who do not share that lens isn’t being colonialist bastards its tooting their virtue horn. She’s “anti black” because she was more influenced by the history of China, where she’s from, than Alabama.

And if they can toot that horn so loud Rowling falls, they’ll toot that horn at anybody over any perceived slight to their holy wokeness (provided the person has a vagina, you’ll be amazed at the shit you can get way with if you’ve got a penis) just to demonstrate that they can.

One doesn’t give bullies a pass because you think they’re “punching up” – there are a lot of much smaller people who get flattened if Rowling falls.

In which the doctor backs himself into a corner, to the amusement of onlookers.

How the contagion happens:

Six months into the coronavirus crisis, there’s a growing consensus about a central question: How do people become infected?

It’s not common to contract Covid-19 from a contaminated surface, scientists say. And fleeting encounters with people outdoors are unlikely to spread the coronavirus.

(All the same I do wish people would move away when they can. It does annoy me when they stick to the middle of the sidewalk when it would be so easy to just veer to the side.)

Instead, the major culprit is close-up, person-to-person interactions for extended periods. Crowded events, poorly ventilated areas and places where people are talking loudly—or singing, in one famous case—maximize the risk.

These emerging findings are helping businesses and governments devise reopening strategies to protect public health while getting economies going again. That includes tactics like installing plexiglass barriers, requiring people to wear masks in stores and other venues, using good ventilation systems and keeping windows open when possible.

Keep those windows open.

“We should not be thinking of a lockdown, but of ways to increase physical distance,” said Tom Frieden, chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit public-health initiative. “This can include allowing outside activities, allowing walking or cycling to an office with people all physically distant, curbside pickup from stores, and other innovative methods that can facilitate resumption of economic activity without a rekindling of the outbreak.”

All of which of course underlines how appalling it is that Trump insists on doing rallies. Crowds, enclosed spaces, people talking loudly…

Something I always wonder about this guy.

He’s not a random young woke “activist” on Twitter, he’s an adult QC, yet he echoes the childish woke rhetoric as if there were nothing childish about it. It sounds bizarre coming from establishment figures like QCs.

Specifically, what makes him think that men who say they are women are “the most vulnerable in society”? That claim entails thinking that men are vulnerable to women; how did he get there? What sense does that make? Why does he believe that, or pretend to believe it?

I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out. Life is frustrating that way.

Trump’s people think it’s time to change the plan, but Trump doesn’t wanna.

In what amounts to a relaunch of a relaunch, Trump now travels to Arizona, a battleground state, to embrace his most comfortable signature issue with an event marking the 200th mile of his wall on the US-Mexico border (most of the construction has in fact replaced existing barriers).

The president will then speak at a “Students for Trump” event in Phoenix. Despite soaring cases of coronavirus in Arizona, his campaign team will be hoping for an enthusiastic turnout to get back on track.

In other words despite the fact that cases are swiftly rising in Arizona, Trump is eager to put more people at risk of illness and death because he enjoys shouting at crowds. What a mensch.

Observers argue that Tulsa was a warning that he needs to reset, not least because of the health risks of big indoor rallies – but there appears to be little chance of him heeding advice.

“From what I’ve been told, Trump just insists on these rallies and he wants more and not fewer compared to 2016 because he’s got all of the trappings of office and he can fly Air Force One low so people can be awed and all the rest of it,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

He doesn’t care that he’s killing people so that he can fly Air Force One low so people can be awed. His fun in being in Air Force One when it flies low is more important to him than any number of deaths.

“Obviously, he didn’t calculate properly for the pandemic and other factors. He thinks they can correct it and go on. He wants one every couple of weeks or more frequently. He didn’t learn a thing. His campaign staff would gladly give them up, along with the tweets, if they could. But they can’t.”

Well, that’s Trump, isn’t it. He doesn’t learn things because he’s incapable of learning, and his staff can’t persuade him to do less-stupid because he prefers more-stupid.

Trump wants to see cruel and unusual punishment for people who make political gestures he dislikes.

Trump referred to the protesters who tried to tear down the Andrew Jackson statue near the White House as “vandals” and “hoodlums” who don’t love America.

“We are looking at long term jail sentences for these vandals and these hoodlums and these anarchists and agitators,” the president told reporters shortly before leaving for Arizona.

He wants people in prison for years for a minor property crime.

“Call them whatever you want. Some people don’t like that language, but that’s what they are. They’re bad people. They don’t love our country. And they’re not taking down our monuments. I just want to make that clear.”

Not his call. He’s not a god-emperor, he can’t stop us taking down monuments. They’re ours, not his, and we can collectively decide we don’t want monuments to genocide or slavery or Jim Crow.

Andrew Jackson was a genocider, so yes, there damn well is something very dubious about having a statue of him in Lafayette Park.

Granted, I don’t expect The Authorities to stand around and watch people destroy it, but that doesn’t make long prison sentences the appropriate response.

More rally!

Even as more of his campaign staffers test positive for coronavirus, Trump is still scheduled to hold a campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona, tomorrow.

The president will speak at a “Students for Trump” event at the Dream City Church in Phoenix, despite Arizona seeing a rise in its number of coronavirus cases.

In a video, two of the church’s leaders said they have installed cutting-edge technology that “kills 99.9% of Covid within 10 minutes.”

Oh yes? What “technology” is that exactly? Why isn’t it being installed everywhere?

These two fellas explain it. It’s ionization. Or ionizidation. The one guy isn’t quite sure. Anyway it cleans out all the particulates and the virus can’t live in that. They said so. Thank god for technology, they also said. (So why didn’t god give us the technology back in October?)

They’re very upbeat about the whole thing.

That crude old technology of wearing masks won’t be mandatory though. Whew! Freedom freedom freedom freedom.

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said on Sunday that the city’s policy requiring face masks to be worn in public will not be enforced during President Donald Trump’s upcoming event at a Valley megachurch…

She added that she is hopeful Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey — who will attend the event — will take the opportunity to set an example regarding mask usage.

Well that’s good enough. Just hope. Just hope the governor will set an example, and hope people will wear them even though they don’t have to, and hope no one catches the virus, and hope the event won’t cause a huge spike in cases. Just hope. Maybe say a little prayer.

“We would hope that our governor … can send a strong message,” she said. “He believes in masks and he could be a great spokesman for telling the young people who are there to wear masks. But the best spokesman would be the president — if he told everyone at that rally it was important to wear masks, I believe they would do it.”

But it has to be voluntary. The city won’t be enforcing the policy, it will just be hoping people set a good example. That’s responsible and wise and adult.

White House press secretary has no problem with Trump’s racism.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked if Trump regrets using the racist phrase “kung flu” to describe coronavirus during his Saturday rally. McEnany replied that the president “never regrets putting the onus back on China” for the coronavirus pandemic.

But that wasn’t the question. The question was whether he regrets using the racist phrase “kung flu” to describe the coronavirus. Lying Fox News sleaze changed the subject.

Another reporter noted that, earlier this year, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway described the phrase “kung flu” as offensive and wrong.

Asked repeatedly whether the White House disagrees with Conway’s characterization, McEnany ignored the question and then called on someone from the far-right website One America News Network.

Of course she did.