Meanwhile another anti-vax propagandist learns the hard way:

A conservative radio host in Tennessee, who repeatedly spread misinformation about coronavirus and mocked vaccines but changed his tune after falling seriously ill, was still fighting for his life on Saturday, weeks after contracting the virus.

Phil Valentine, who hosts a talk radio show on 99.7 WWTN-FM in Nashville, is hospitalized and is receiving supplemental oxygen while in critical care battling COVID pneumonia, his family said in a statement Friday.

I wonder if, while fighting for his life, he’s thinking at all about the people who listened to his misinformation about coronavirus and mockery of vaccines. I wonder if he’s feeling any shame at all about people he put in the hospital with his radio chatter. I wonder if he’s worrying about how many of them are as desperately ill as he is. I wonder if he feels any fucking remorse.

In a blog post in December, days after doses of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine [were] first authorized for emergency use in the United States, Valentine said he was simply following the logic in deciding not to get vaccinated.

“I’m not an anti-vaxxer,” he wrote. “I’m just using common sense. What are my odds of getting Covid? They’re pretty low. What are my odds of dying from Covid if I do get it? Probably way less than 1 percent. I’m doing what everyone should do and that’s my own personal health risk assessment. If you have underlying health issues, you probably need to get the vaccine. If you’re not at high risk of dying from Covid then you’re probably safer not getting it.”

Even if that were true (which it’s not), it overlooks everyone else. Vaccines protect the vaccinated but they also protect the population.

His brother, Mark Valentine, posted an impassioned message to Facebook on Wednesday, suggesting that watching Phil Valentine who was “fighting for his life,” had persuaded him to get vaccinated when he was previously not inclined to do so.

“Having seen this up close and personal I’d encourage ALL of you to put politics and other concerns aside and get it,” he added, noting that he wouldn’t wish his brother’s condition on his worst enemies.

Yes well this is the thing: politics should have nothing to do with it. This is a non-partisan apolitical politics are beside the point issue if ever there was one. It’s only dribbling morons and psychopaths who pretend it’s political.

Apparently hating Democrats is an excellent reason to risk getting the virus and dying.

Many people here and elsewhere in the Southeast are turning down Covid-19 vaccines because they are angry that President Donald Trump lost the election and sick of Democrats in Washington thinking they know what’s best.

Hey people in the Southeast? That’s a really really really stupid reason to risk getting and transmitting the virus. That’s about as stupid as it gets. If you get the virus and die it will be you who’s dead, not the pesky Democrats. If you transmit it to other people and they die they will be the ones who die, not the pesky Washington Democrats. This is called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The pushback from both state officials and people who refuse vaccination underscores the extent to which the federal government may never be able to convince rural, conservative populations in parts of the South to get the shot.

And it’s not just rural, conservative populations.

How did that happen? I have no idea.

One day last week in Sheffield, Melton and Grabryan were sitting in a large van in front of a local church. Its parking lot displayed a small white sign advertising Covid-19 vaccine to anyone who wanted it.

Only 18 people showed up. It’s been like that for weeks. At one point, Grabryan laid his head back on the van’s cushy seat, shaking it side to side. “I’ve been out to the funeral home for more visitations this year than I have before,” he said. “There’s no one in this area that doesn’t know someone who was affected by it.”

That’s not “hysteria” – it’s just reality.

Louisiana regional medical directors and physicians described a horrific last two weeks marked by overcrowded ICUs, people showing up to emergency rooms after suddenly developing shortness of breath, and Covid-19 patients clinging to their last hours before abruptly letting go and dying. Almost all of these people died because they chose not to get the vaccine.

To punish the Democrats. I don’t think they’ve thought this through carefully.

The state has recorded an average of 2,400 coronavirus cases in the last 14 days, an uptick of more than 230 percent from the two weeks prior. The patients seeking medical help are younger than ever before, between 30 and 60 years old. And they are dying. Two of the doctors at Our Lady of the Lake hospital say they both lost unvaccinated family members to Covid. In the past several weeks, two nurses in the hospital nearby died, too.

…

Doctors and health officials in Alabama and Louisiana say their only hope for getting people vaccinated is if the media outlets that message to these areas, primarily Fox News, start advocating people get the shot, instead of pushing them away from the jab.

But Fox News isn’t going to do that, because…

…I don’t know why. I can’t understand it. They’re promoting death, for the most frivolous of reasons, and I can’t get my head around it.

Alex Massie has a fine blast of rage at the bullying of JKR:

Today, like yesterday and like tomorrow too, the most famous person living in Scotland will probably receive at least one death threat and all but certainly be the lucky recipient of plenty of other promises of violence. And today, like yesterday and probably like tomorrow too, very few people will bother to be concerned about this. There will be no vigil, no statements of support or solidarity, no suggestion this is a monstrous state of affairs to be deplored by all decent people, no indication at all, in fact, that there is anything to see here at all. It will be just another day in the life of JK Rowling.

Even if the Scottish parliament were sitting, no politician would draw attention to the abuse heaped upon Rowling for the crime (sic) of thinking women’s rights and those of trans people may sometimes conflict. Scottish PEN will remain silent and so will the actors and other artists whose fame and fortunes have in large part been made as a result of Rowling’s work. That may be their right, but it is craven nonetheless.

All this is because they declare she is transphobic. No need to establish that she really is; it’s enough to say it.

Last week, drawing attention to one threat made against her, Rowling acidly observed, “Now that hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me I’ve realised that this movement poses no risk to women whatsoever”. It is important to note that these threats are not confined to the fetid swamps of social media. At a Trans Pride march in London last month, activists carried signs emblazoned with the messages “Rot in Hell Rowling” and “Kill JK Rowling”.

Progressive yeah?

Nor is there any way of avoiding the obvious truth that Rowling’s thought crimes are exacerbated by her sex. She not only dares to say what she thinks, she has the audacity to do so as a woman. The level of hatred directed towards her is sex-based too. It cannot be explained away by her wealth or celebrity; it is of a type and an obsession that is wearily familiar to many women. To put it simply: there are plenty of men who hate women and it is always a mistake to forget this.

I used to think the hatred had gone underground a little.

Ha.

Many of the loudest voices in the so-called trans-rights movement are not those of trans people themselves but, rather, of men whose self-professed alliance with trans people often seems like a convenient cloak for rampant misogyny. Any woman who dares note this can count on receiving a vastly greater measure of abuse than a man making the same argument might. This has always seemed telling.

The relish with which Rowling’s haters assail her is also revealing. The violence wished upon her may often be a lurid fantasy but such fantasies are themselves acts of male violence. Some men get their kicks in truly miserable fashion.

No no they’re Being Kind.

The Independent tells us that women just love women’s toilets.

We do?????

I must not be a woman then; I don’t love any public toilets, because they’re, you know, public toilets. It’s not exactly a luxury environment, nor is it a breezy bright day in the mountains. It’s a public toilet.

Public spaces where women feel entirely safe can be few and far between: a 2019 report by the Trades Union Congress found one in two women have been sexually harassed at work. Survey data from reviews site FitRated found 71 per cent of women have had an uncomfortable interaction at the gym, and a YouGov survey last year found that 55 per cent of women in London have been a victim of some form of sexual behaviour by a stranger on public transport.

But! But! There is one saving grace.

Enter the women’s bathroom, a place of camaraderie and bonding.

A place of what?

That’s where women have to go to find safety and camaraderie? That’s pathetic.

Whether it’s at the giant loos in Wetherspoons (and those central fountain-style sinks), the toilets at crowded train stations or at your favourite club, complete with a friendly attendant who has lollipops, hair grips and hairspray on hand, the feeling of the ladies bathrooms is unmatched.

Oh yes the toilets at crowded train stations are divine, if you can even find any.

A night out at a club has many highlights; there’s getting ready with friends, pre-drinking in the taxi, the strangers you meet in the smoking area, but there’s nothing quite like the girls you meet in the bathroom. “Those interactions with kind strangers are something that a lot of people, including myself, have been missing since Covid,” Bella says.

Ah well, there’s my problem, I’m not acquainted with this “night out at a club” phenomenon, and don’t want to be. It sounds repulsive. And it kind of has to be repulsive, doesn’t it, if the highlight is hanging out in the toilets?

For Joss Prior, 45, these girls provided a sense of safety on her first Pride since she transitioned to living as a trans woman.

But you were just saying the toilets were the one safe place for women. Joss Prior, 45, is a man.

Never mind, I have to go get dressed up to hang out in the sewer. You wouldn’t believe how much fun we have down there.

Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers:

An Arizona Republican who called for a new presidential election in the state and the recall of President Joe Biden‘s electors has said she likes two famous Confederate generals but doesn’t like “traitors” to the U.S.

Yo! Confederate generals were traitors. Go back to school and learn what the Confederacy actually was.

Our culture is racist pancake mix and instant rice?

I did not know that.

Let’s try yet again to tease out some of the polarities of Critical Race Theory versus The Approved Kind of Discussion of Racism.

Marisa Iati in the Post a couple of months ago:

Some lessons and anti-racism efforts, however, reflect foundational themes of critical race theory, particularly that racism in the United States is systemic.

So there’s one: racism as systemic, i.e. embedded in various systems and institutions, as opposed to being random and individual – just people with bad manners.

Critical race theory is an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic, and not just demonstrated by individual people with prejudices. The theory holds that racial inequality is woven into legal systems and negatively affects people of color in their schools, doctors’ offices, the criminal justice system and countless other parts of life.

Ok so do we think that’s wrong? Do we think it’s factually mistaken?

If we do I have to ask why. Why would it be wrong? At what point did we complete the job of removing racism from all US systems? I must have missed the news that day.

Just off the top of my head I know that black women have much worse statistics in childbirth than white women do. Is it likely that systemic racism has nothing to do with that? Generations of poverty because employers and unions and landlords and realtors are riddled with systemic racism? Unequal access to healthcare because of the above plus systemic racism in the healthcare system (such as it is)? And I know that the prison stats are grotesquely out of whack – and even if you decide “Wull that’s because there are fewer white criminals” you can surely see that that can be for similar systemic reasons. Jobs, schools, housing, transportation – they’re all part of a system that was not what you’d call enlightened on the issue of racial equality.

Khiara Bridges, author of “Critical Race Theory: A Primer,” said traditional civil rights discourse maintained that racism would end when people stopped thinking about race. The dissenting scholars, she said, rejected that conclusion and believed race consciousness was necessary to overcoming racial stratification.

“I don’t see color” versus “Oh yes you do see color and we all need to talk about what happens because of that, so that we can FIX IT.”

“Critical race theory is an effort really to move beyond the focus on finding fault by impugning [should be “imputing”] racist motives, racist bias, racist prejudice, racist animus and hatred to individuals, and looking at the ways in which racial inequality is embedded in structures in ways of which we are very often unaware,” said Kendall Thomas, co-editor of “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement.”

Which means in a way that conservatives ought to like it, because it’s not about sniffing out individual racists; it’s impersonal. It also means those stupid “Give us lots of money to come to your dinner party and call you racist” scams are the very opposite of CRT.

Although the phrase “critical race theory” refers to an area of academic study, its common usage has diverged from its exact meaning. Conservative activists and politicians now use the term as a catchall phrase for nearly any examination of systemic racism in the present. Critical race theory is often portrayed as the basis of race-conscious policies, diversity trainings, and education about racism, regardless of how much the academic concept actually affects those efforts.

The Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, recently attributed a range of events to critical race theory: property destruction and violence during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, efforts to fire a Yale University professor amid a Halloween costume controversy, two White actresses stating that they would not play mixed-race characters, and the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17. They reasoned that critical race theory makes race the primary lens through which people see the world and reimagines the United States as divided by factions that are pitted against each other.

Christopher Rufo, a prominent opponent of critical race theory, in March acknowledged intentionally using the term to describe a range of race-related topics and conjure a negative association.

Hat tip to Jesse Singal for asking about that today.

And the badass women are…Simone Biles, Allyson Felix, Naomi Osaka, Laurel Hubbard, and the US Women’s Soccer Team.

Yes that’s right, Laurel Hubbard is included as one of the badass women. A shameless cheating man becomes a badass woman just by saying so.

The women won’t wheesht rally:

I think we get a glimpse of latsot as the camera pans left.

Republicans are using this “everybody’s always picking on me” rhetoric as cover for their campaign to suppress the Enemy Vote.

In Texas, Republican state legislators are pushing a new bill to require an audit of the 2020 results, one conducted by a third party appointed by top Republicans.

But tellingly, as The Post reports, the audit would be required only for the largest counties — virtually all of which backed President Biden.

Aka the cities are where all the Jews and communists are. We’ve been down this road before.

This is being justified by the notion that Republican voters no longer “believe in their election system,” as its chief sponsor, Republican state Rep. Steve Toth, put it.

Anything to do with the Trump-Fox lies about it? Maybe?

But why audit just in larger counties? Behold this remarkable answer:

While Toth said he would support a statewide effort, he also argued the undertaking would be too expensive and time-consuming. Asked if he would consider including some smaller counties, Toth replied, “What’s the point? I mean, all the small counties are red.”

Oopsie. You’re not supposed to say that part out loud.

Interesting.

This is what I’ve been saying all along – people are slapping the CRT label on every kind of anti-racism they find stupid or bullying or both. It’s helpful to see Christopher Rufo himself confirm that that was the plan.

Gee, now why would we despise Trump and all his works? It’s such a mystery, and just so rude of us.

Hot damn this is a stupid piece for the Washington Post to bother publishing.

When supporters of former president Donald Trump hear media pundits analyze them with the usual collection of belittling observations, they must be tempted to respond, “Hey, we’re right here! We can hear you!”

So we shouldn’t think it’s stupid or evil or both to vote for Donald Trump for any public office at all, let alone the presidency? Why? Why shouldn’t we? He’s one of the most thoroughly godawful human beings on the planet, and possibly the only one without a single redeeming quality.

Yes, they are indeed here, and living among us. And they have every right to be insulted by being accused of believing a “big lie,” and by the implication that they are violent, or traitors, or mindless sheep — racist sheep, of course.

No they don’t. Trump is a very bad man, and he promoted racism, violence, treason, and mindlessness, and he still does. They have zero right to be insulted by being told that a vote for Trump is a vote for those qualities.

They’re fed up not just with the overt insults, but also with more subtle digs, such as former defense secretary Leon Panetta saying last week that he worries that Trump “will continue to try to somehow sway his followers” to attempt another Jan. 6-style uprising. Followers? No one refers to President Biden’s “followers.” It’s a word generally reserved for adherents of cult figures.

No shit, Sherlock, because that’s what they are, because there is zero rational reason to vote for Trump, let alone to support his attempts to overturn the election. That’s not because he’s a Republican or a conservative, it’s because he’s an evil sack of shit.

I’ll stop now. The Post can surely find better right-wingers than this chump.

H/t Mike Haubrich

A nitwit writer for Jezebel writes the 40 millionth piece on JK Rowling the transphobe blah blah:

We can certainly quibble over how much Rowling needs to be defended from random Twitter users, especially considering the violence associated with her transphobia and the transphobia of her supporters (who haven’t hesitated to defend Rowling with threats of their own). But here’s what’s most glaring about Rowling’s responses: Her insistence on framing this as gendered violence against women, perpetrated by men. Rowling cannot accept that the transgender women who have clowned her, who have told her to “go die,” who have been the loudest critics of her TERF agenda, are women. It’s easier for her to simply dismiss them as men, and regard their anger as male violence directed at her, a “real” woman. It’s a convenient misreading of feminism that positions Rowling as the vulnerable victim of dangerous men.

Ah yes it’s so very glaring that JKR recognizes male entitlement and male contempt for women and male aggression when she sees it. It’s so glaring that she doesn’t politely nod and agree that these men are women if they say they are. It’s so glaring that she considers herself a real woman and men as not real women. It’s such a misreading of feminism to see dangerous men as dangerous men.

More than that, it’s a sly way of misgendering that acts as a dog whistle for the many people who celebrate Rowling’s “bravery.” But Rowling’s sex and gender essentialism isn’t brave, it’s the status quo.

Well status quo isn’t the opposite of brave, for a start, but more to the point, not everything that’s the status quo is wrong or evil or in need of reversal. Women are women and men are not women, and that’s not like a fashion in hats or a taste in music, it’s just reality, status quo and all.

David Frum is gentler on the anti-vaxxers than I am.

Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans. Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty.

And that’s profoundly wicked, because statements of identity and tests of loyalty are trivial compared to spreading a killer virus. Utterly utterly trivial. People have no right to put their identities or political loyalties ahead of public health. It’s disgusting and contemptible.

Part of the trouble is that pro-Trump state legislatures are enacting ever more ambitious protections for people who refuse vaccines. They are forbidding business owners to ask for proof of vaccination from their customers. They are requiring cruise lines, sports stadiums, and bars to serve the unvaccinated. In Montana, they have even forbidden hospitals to require health-care workers to get vaccinated.

So stay out of Montana for the duration, since you can’t be safe even in the damn hospitals.

As cases uptick again, as people who have done the right thing face the consequences of other people doing the wrong thing, the question occurs: Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth—and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another. Something else they do for one another: take rational health-care precautions during a pandemic. That reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld.

This is what makes me want to smack people like Tucker Carlson and Lauren Boebert. They’re enjoying flashy careers here and they refuse any reciprocal duty.

… there’s no getting around the truth that some considerable number of the unvaccinated are also behaving willfully and spitefully. Yes, they have been deceived and manipulated by garbage TV, toxic Facebook content, and craven or crazy politicians. But these are the same people who keep talking about “personal responsibility.” In the end, the unvaccinated person himself or herself has decided to inflict a preventable and unjustifiable harm upon family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet.

Will Blue America ever decide it’s had enough of being put medically at risk by people and places whose bills it pays? Check yourself: Have you?

Hell yes, and I have all along.

FBI confirms the “investigation” of Brett Kavanaugh was a sham.

Nearly three years after Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s tumultuous confirmation to the Supreme Court, the F.B.I. has disclosed more details about its efforts to review the justice’s background, leading a group of Senate Democrats to question the thoroughness of the vetting and conclude that it was shaped largely by the Trump White House.

Ya think?

In a letter dated June 30 to two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, an F.B.I. assistant director, Jill C. Tyson, said that the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips the agency received during an investigation into Mr. Kavanaugh’s past were referred to White House lawyers in the Trump administration, whose handling of them remains unclear.

It was a background check not a criminal investigation, so the rules are different, she pointed out.

Ms. Tyson’s letter was a response to a 2019 letter from Mr. Whitehouse and Mr. Coons to the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, posing questions about how the F.B.I.’s review of Mr. Kavanaugh was handled.

Oh, so it took the FBI only two years to respond. How impressive.

In an interview, Mr. Whitehouse said the F.B.I.’s response showed that the F.B.I.’s handling of the accusations into misconduct by Mr. Kavanaugh was a sham. Ms. Tyson’s letter, Mr. Whitehouse said, suggested that the F.B.I. ran a “fake tip line that never got properly reviewed, that was presumably not even conducted in good faith.”

And they didn’t tell the senators it was a sham at the time.

Originally a comment by latsot on The chemistry teacher’s question.

A brilliant, moving article. Lesbian and Gay News gets better and better. Any comparison with the off-red comic would be such a glaring category error that it would blind us all from space.

I have much sympathy with the author. I was bullied in much the same way, relentlessly, by kids and teachers alike. Every single day, from around the age of four to when I left school at 15. While I had a few friends, I don’t remember a single day that wasn’t hell. At first, my family didn’t seem to notice. After I had an enormous, violent explosion one night, they most certainly knew about it, but did absolutely nothing. For that, I can never forgive them.

I was constantly called a girl by kids, teachers and family and while I never thought for a moment to actually question my sex, I knew I was a broken kind of boy, not a boy like any of the others.

I was so vulnerable in other words, to grooming of virtually any kind. Thank goodness, that didn’t happen. After a period of homelessness, I went back into education and achieved the towering success I enjoy today. But as I’ve said here before, I could so easily have been seduced by a cult – any cult – that told me there was nothing wrong with me. I don’t think I’d ever have believed I was a girl, but I’m damn sure I would have gone along with it anyway, for a while at least, if I thought it might have given me some respite.

I think mine is a fairly extreme case. I was a very strange kid, have a remarkably uncaring family and it was a very rough school. But then, transing was not an option back then and acceptance of any kind of gender or behavioural nonconformity was unthinkable. Now that new genders are available off the peg it is no wonder that children – and especially girls – want to wear them like a costume. Or a suit of armour.

If only it could remain a costume, I’d be delighted. But groomers like Mermaids, institutionalised by organisations like Stonewall, are grinding children to pieces with their zealotry and we haven’t even begun to see the carnage, yet.

It has to stop.

Another thing that’s funny (but infuriating) about that “Duhhhhhh wut’s GC?” is –

He knows all about it, unlike us, but he doesn’t know what GC is.

And it gets worse.

Yes you find things out by asking but you just told us you already know all about the subject and that WE DON’T.

So there’s that.

Uhhhh…that unlike most of the people who criticise you over this, you HAVE got your head round both sides.

It was two days ago. Click on Tweets & replies. It’s right there.

More pathetic by the day.

“Evidence? Don’t come pestering me with your evidence – I’m SCIENCE-BASED MEDICINE.”

What is he on? Some kind of tribalism train is my guess. All the doors are locked, it blasts through all the stations, all it does is speed ahead until it runs out of track.

What’s Tucker Carlson’s complaint?

In a March interview with The Washington Post, Dunn said he was called the n-word more than a dozen times that day in January. Black police officers, he said, “were fighting a different fight” as a throng of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol grounds and building — some violently attacking police officers standing in their way.

Dunn will be one of the first witnesses to testify next week before a special committee tasked with investigating the insurrection. But Fox News host Tucker Carlson, during his Wednesday night broadcast, cast doubt on the officer’s ability to testify objectively.

Ah yes, and by the same token an assault victim can’t testify objectively, a victim of rape can’t testify objectively, a victim of burglary can’t testify objectively, and so on.

“Dunn will pretend to speak for the country’s law enforcement community, but it turns out Dunn has very little in common with your average cop,” Carlson said. “Dunn is an angry left-wing political activist.”

So what Tucker Carlson is saying here is that your average cop, your normal cop, is a racist. Your average cop apparently has no objection to violent armed insurrectionists shouting “nigger” as they try to overturn an election. I’m not sure your average cop is going to be as thrilled with that picture of them as Carlson thinks.