This is a puzzler. I’m seeing people laughing at a column by Virginia Heffernan for its clueless entitled snobbery crossed with self-righteous “liberalism,” which sounded odd to me because when I first encountered her writing she was a libertarian with some modest leanings in a more leftish direction. Also, she was sharp, and the writing in this piece is very dim – so the piece must be a parody, right? Surely? Poe’s law?

Let’s see…

Oh, heck no. The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway, who seem as devoted to the ex-president as you can get without being Q fans, just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job.

How am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness?

Of course, on some level, I realize I owe them thanks — and, man, it really looks like the guy back-dragged the driveway like a pro — but how much thanks?

Surely that’s parody-naïve not real naïve …isn’t it?

These neighbors are staunch partisans of blue lives, and there aren’t a lot of anything other than white lives in neighborhood.

This is also kind of weird. Back in the city, people don’t sweep other people’s walkways for nothing.

Yeeeaaah I don’t think this can be real Heffernan talking in her own voice.

On the other hand if it is parody I’m not sure what her point is.

The Green Party is losing women:

Dozens of activists have quit the Green Party in protest at the election of a transgender campaigner as head of its women’s group.

That is, at the election of a trans woman as head of its women’s group. Quite a few women think that positions of that kind should be for women rather than trans women. We think that because women are still far from being equally represented in top jobs, let alone over-represented, so to make a man who identifies as a woman (which is not the same as just plain being one) the head of a party’s women’s group is insulting to women.

The exodus, involving at least 40 women, follows the appointment in December of Kathryn Bristow, who was born a man but now identifies as a transwoman.

If you’re born male you’re a man, however you identify. Identifying as something doesn’t change physical reality.

[H]er critics claim Ms Bristow’s new role means women are losing representation within the party.

Because it does. Obviously.

Some even fear that its focus on trans issues could overshadow its traditional campaigning against environmental catastrophe.

“Even”? It’s not a huge leap.

A source suggested Ms Bristow’s appointment has added to internal strife that erupted five years ago when the party referred to women as ‘non-males’, adding: ‘Many women in the Green Party have had enough of being told what to think. 

‘We’ve fought hard for over a century to have a seat at the political table. Trans people face their own challenges and need spokespeople, but so do women.’

In emails from departing supporters seen by The Mail on Sunday, furious female activists among the 52,000-strong membership criticise the party’s stance on women’s rights.

…

The party’s grassroots have been further outraged by an email sent to LGBTQ+ members urging them not to include motions for discussion on items such as ‘women’s sex-based rights’ which were labelled as ‘non-inclusive’. 

Yes, and discussion on black people’s rights is non-inclusive, discussion on lesbian and gay rights is non-inclusive, discussion on workers’ rights is non-inclusive, discussion on immigrants’ rights is non-inclusive. Any kind of specificity is non-inclusive. The fact remains that there are particular sets of people who are deprived of rights because they are in one (or more) of those sets, not because of generic human-ness. Workers don’t have to be inclusive of bosses and women don’t have to be inclusive of men.

Ms Bristow rejects the claims. She tweeted: ‘My rights as a trans person don’t conflict with anyone else’s, as that’s not how human rights work. Fighting for trans liberation is part of everyone’s liberation, because we all must be free for any of us to be.’

Of course that’s how human rights work. If it were otherwise we wouldn’t need human rights at all. If nobody ever exploited or dominated or oppressed anyone else, human rights wouldn’t even be a concept. We need the concept because the more powerful do all that to the less powerful. All our human rights conflict with people’s rights to exploit and harm us. That is how human rights work.

Last night, a Green Party spokesman said: ‘We are unequivocal in our support for trans rights.

‘We recognise that transwomen are women, transmen are men and non-binary identities exist and are valid.’

They “recognise” a falsehood, and their doing so conflicts with women’s rights.

The misogynist hyperbole is out of hand.

One small good thing:

Activists in Indonesia on Thursday lauded the government’s decision to ban public schools from making religious attire mandatory, a move that followed national outrage over non-Muslim students being forced to wear a hijab.

Muslim students shouldn’t be forced to wear it either, of course, not even by their parents.

The special autonomous province of Aceh, which enforces sharia law, is exempt from the decree, Education Minister Nadiem Makarim said.

So stay out of Aceh.

Andreas Harsono, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said schools in more than 20 provinces still make religious attire mandatory in their dress code, so the decree was a positive step.

“Many public schools require girls and female teachers to wear the hijab that too often prompt bullying, intimidation, social pressures, and in some cases, forced resignation,” he said.

It’s a badge of inferiority, whatever else it is.

She’s still there though.

Interesting. You know all that $$$ Trump raised with the “stolen election!!!” claims? He’s taken a big chunk of it for himself. I’d have thought that was just plain fraud, but what do I know.

Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, which never received a cent from the former president, moved an estimated $2.8 million of donor money into the Trump Organization—including at least $81,000 since Trump lost the election.

Doesn’t that look like theft?

In addition, one of the campaign’s joint-fundraising committees, which collects money in partnership with the Republican Party, shifted about $4.3 million of donor money into Trump’s business from January 20, 2017, to December 31, 2020—at least $331,000 of which came after the election.

The money covered the cost of rent, airfare, lodging and other expenses. All the payments are laid out in filings the campaign submitted to the Federal Election Commission. Representatives for the Trump Organization, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Two days after the election, on November 5, the joint-fundraising committee paid $11,000 to Trump’s hotel empire. A week later—after the Associated Press, Fox News and other major media outlets had already called the race for Joe Biden—the same committee put another $294,000 into Trump’s hotel business to rent space, order catering and pay for lodging.

Conflict of interest, fraud, theft – it’s at least one of those, right?

Sleazy to the end.

The charges are piling up.

All 56 FBI field offices are engaged in a huge investigation that ranks alongside the biggest the bureau has conducted. As Michael Sherwin, acting US attorney for Washington DC which is leading the hunt, has put it: “The scope and scale of this investigation are really unprecedented, not only in FBI history but probably DoJ history.”

…

Already the number of people who have been arrested, either by the FBI, Capitol police or local Washington DC officers has reached 235, spanning more than 40 states. As the investigation widens and deepens, the focus is tightening on anyone considered to have acted as a coordinator of the action in an attempt to take out the ringleaders.

So that they can’t do it again.

As more has become known about those arrested, the strategy being pursued by the FBI has also revealed itself. In several cases, people who participated in the storming of the Capitol were picked up and charged with relatively minor offenses such as trespassing or theft of mail simply as a means to get them into prosecutorial clutches.

Once in the system, more serious charges could then be added as intelligence came in. That pattern of escalating charges can be seen in the cases of Nicholas DeCarlo from Texas and Nicholas Ochs from Hawaii.

Initially, the pair were accused of unlawful entry into federal property. But new conspiracy charges were added this week in which they are alleged to have planned out their travel across state lines, raised money to pay for it, and then made the trip to Washington DC in a premeditated attempt to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden as winner of the US presidential election.

…

Prosecutors have made clear that they are ramping up the charges against select individuals as a means of discouraging further violence from Trump supporters and their far-right and white supremacist allies. “We are going to focus on the most significant charges as a deterrent, because regardless of if it was just a trespass in the Capitol or someone planted a pipe bomb, you will be charged and you will be found,” Sherwin said.

Because you posted it all online.

The FBI’s work has been greatly assisted by the plethora of intelligence swirling around online – in many cases posted by the suspects themselves. Take the hapless duo, DeCarlo and Ochs.

A photo of the pair, posing thumbs up in front of the memorial door of the US Capitol on which they had scrawled the words “MURDER THE MEDIA”, was easily found online. It has been included in the indictment against them, and earned them the special attentions of the media assault strike force set up by federal prosecutors to investigate violent threats against members of the media.

Inspired by the hoodlum from Queens.

As they sift this mountain of evidence the FBI is finding that far-right and white supremacist groups were in the lead. Surprise surprise.

Oh you mean if we tell thousands of damaging lies about you on our very popular “news” channel you’re going to sue us? For real???

Lou Dobbs is out at Fox Business, just a day after the voting machine company Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against him, the cable news network and several purveyors of the debunked theory that its technology was used to commit massive voter fraud.

It wasn’t really a “theory,” bunked or debunked. It was a story. Trump wanted a story so they made a story for him.

After the initial threats were made, Fox News and Fox Business ran deposition-esque segments on the shows of the three anchors now sued by Smartmatic — Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro — downplaying the evidence for such claims. Newsmax read a statement on air saying pretty much the same thing, and it has since awkwardly tried to shut down MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell when he made such claims. One America News has resisted retracting claims made on its airwaves and has ridiculed its far-right competitor for “censoring” Lindell, but it has quietly removed several stories about Dominion from its website. And the station carrying Giuliani’s radio show on Thursday played a disclaimer distancing itself from claims made on the show, to Giuliani’s chagrin.

We disavow our lies! They were never ours! It was all those weirdos who work for us! Sue them, not us!

Also reinforcing the potential legal jeopardy: Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel recently acknowledged that, during a particularly far-flung news conference held by Giuliani and then-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell at the RNC, “I certainly was concerned it was happening in my building.” She added that she was specifically worried about “what is the liability of the RNC, if these allegations are made and unfounded?”

Lie down with dogs get up with fleas and libel suits.

It just always has to be misrepresented. From a Guardian piece on the sacking of Joanna Cherry:

Some SNP MPs described a “palpable sense of relief” within the Westminster group this week, along with a degree of frustration that action had not been taken sooner. As one MP said: “The party has a hard-won reputation for being socially liberal, pro-equality, and any perception that our politicians are not has a terrible effect on younger supporters in particular, and with that comes the fear that they will go to the Greens at the next election.”

So the implication is that Cherry, and the rest of us pesky feminists who don’t agree that men can become women, is socially conservative and anti-equality.

What a grotesque, destructive, loathsome thing to say. We are not anti-equality. Feminists who want to hang on to women’s rights are not anti-equality – women are half (or slightly over half) the world population and we’re pro-equality for them, so how can we be anti-equality? We think women should have equal rights along with men; how is that anti-equality? We also think trans people should have equal rights along with women and men, we just don’t think men who identify as women should take rights away from women.

Can that nice man who defiled Pelosi’s office go home if he promises to be good? No.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the detention of an Arkansas man photographed with his feet on the desk of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the Jan. 6 rioting at the U.S. Capitol, describing his behavior as “brazen” and “entitled” after excoriating his defense lawyer over “frivolous” claims of prosecutorial misconduct.

In ordering the detention of Richard Barnett, Chief Judge Beryl Howell said the charges he faces, including unlawfully entering the Capitol grounds with a weapon, are “in some ways, too benign sounding to fairly describe what happened.” The judge went on to describe the deadly events that took place at the Capitol during the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s election win, which took place down the street from the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., within sight of her chambers.

I walked past there last time I was in DC, after a quick look at the Capitol. They are indeed not far apart.

“We’re still living here in Washington, D.C., with the consequences of the violence” that Barnett and others committed, Howell said, describing how she could see members of the National Guard patrolling outside her window.

She added that Barnett’s prior conduct, including reports of him pointing a rifle at a car with a Black Lives Matter sticker and him carrying a weapon at a “Save the Children” rally—an event rooted in the QAnon conspiracy theory—were part of a behavior of troubling conduct.

He’s shown us who he is. Believe him.

Oh hooray, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I have been educated, curly blonde red eyeshadow boy has EXPLAINED FEMINISM and everything is different. Thank god for curly blonde red eyeshadow boy and his hatred and contempt for women!

Still at it.

“the person is pregnant”…

Should Trump get intelligence briefings?

Uh, no. He shouldn’t have been getting them for the past four years and he sure as hell shouldn’t be getting them now.

President Joe Biden said that former President Donald Trump should not receive intelligence briefings even though they typically have been given to other former presidents.

Biden told CBS News in an interview that Trump was “unfit to be president” and his “erratic behavior” is why he should [not] have access to the nation’s classified information.

…

Biden added, “I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”

You might as well give intelligence briefings to Champ and Major. At least they wouldn’t do any harm.

Intent doesn’t matter?

Use/mention distinction.

Also…

Maybe there’s more to it.

The Daily Beast is patting itself on the back for being the source:

The New York Times on Friday announced the ouster of science and health reporter Donald McNeil Jr., who The Daily Beast reported had allegedly used racist language while on a 2019 trip with students to Peru.

McNeil, formerly the paper of record’s top reporter on COVID-19, leaves amid fallout from an incident that occurred during a Times-sponsored educational trip to Peru when he used the “n-word” and made other racist comments, according to complaints first reported by The Daily Beast. At least six students or their parents claimed McNeil had made racist and sexist remarks throughout the trip.

…

McNeil’s departure comes just days after Times staffers wrote a letter to the paper’s top brass expressing outrage over the allegations that McNeil had used racial slurs, and over the response from Times leadership, which the letter’s signers suggested was wholly insufficient.

Times executive editor Dean Baquet had previously said McNeil should be “given another chance” because his comments were not “hateful or malicious” in intent, but in a message to staff on Friday, the top editor wrote, “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent.”

See above. The word appeared in the paper just this week. Reporting on the word is not using the word.

Maybe there’s more to it. Maybe there isn’t.

More “Jessica”:

They’re so bitchy, do they need Tampax, do they need Midol, are they all PMS hur hur hur?

I’m sure that will go well for him.

Chase Strangio is just straight-up libeling people now.

I hope JKR has a word with Chase. She’s not bashful about introducing her lawyers to libelers.

An old acquaintance continues to contribute to the gaiety of nations.

That’s the erstwhile Jessica Yaniv, of course, after another whimsical name change. It seems there’s a celebrity Jessica Simpson, so no doubt Yaniv will be suing her for impersonation soon.

He did sue his local health service just a couple of weeks ago, so while he was also harassing the Langley fire department. Busy guy.

A Langley woman known for her controversial legal and human rights challenges is now suing Fraser Health and the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) for allegedly breaching her personal health information.

Jessica Simpson, formerly known as Jessica Yaniv, filed a small claims case in Surrey Provincial Court against the two health agencies on Monday, Jan. 18.

And then went home to take a bath and summon the fire department.

Simpson has also been arrested and found guilty of one charge of possession of an unauthorized weapon after she brandished an electric stun gun-style weapon on a YouTube livestream. She was sentenced to probation and a firearms prohibition in September of 2020.

She has also attempted to sue the Township of Langley over her alleged treatment by Langley RCMP after her arrest on the stun gun charge.

Now he can attempt to sue the Township of Langley over his treatment by Langley Fire Services. It’s an exciting life he leads.

This seems like a bad idea.

Hunter is writing a book about himself.

When Joe Biden first launched his presidential bid, inquiries about his son, Hunter, were so taboo they were met with the full fury of the campaign.

“Ask the right question!” Biden snapped at a reporter early in the campaign who asked about Hunter Biden’s business interests in Ukraine.

That’s bullshit. As I said about 5 thousand times during the campaign, Biden should have stopped him. Biden should have told his son he couldn’t leverage his daddy’s job into a highly lucrative job for himself for which he had no particular qualifications. It was sordid at best and corrupt at worst. Joe Biden had no right to snap at people asking about it.

Now, it’s the president’s son who is revealing his own story — and, along the way, opening himself up for more scrutiny — just as his father’s presidency is taking hold.

So, again, he’s leveraging his daddy’s job into profit for himself.

Hunter Biden’s new memoir, “Beautiful Things,” to be released April 6, details his struggles with addiction.

But it also piggybacks on his daddy’s job.

[T]he Biden family on Thursday said they stood by his decision to pen the book.

“The shared feeling is that telling this story takes a hell of a lot of strength and courage,” said a close Biden ally. “And right now when [the American public’s] substance use has increased during the coronavirus outbreak and when so many families are feeling the pain of the opioid epidemic, this is especially meaningful and could help others find the support they need. “

But also it will sell more copies because of who Daddy is.

Yes the Republicans exploited the Hunter issue during the campaign, but they didn’t create the issue. Hunter did that.

The Biden campaign adopted a strategy to forcefully push back on media questions about Hunter Biden, arguing it was a distraction from Trump’s conduct and likening the scenario to the media’s fixation on Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016.

So corruption is ok then.

The upcoming memoir is being portrayed as a way to further those conversations around addiction. But it could also open up Hunter Biden to charges that he is once more using his last name for profit.

Because he is.

Such criticism was directed at Ivanka Trump, when she published “Women Who Work” in 2017, months after Trump took office and she started working as a White House adviser to him. She said at the time that she’d donate the unpaid part of her advance and any royalties to charity. It is unclear what Hunter Biden plans to do with his earnings.

Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, released “Triggered” and “Liberal Privilege” while his father was in the White House. The Republican National Committee bought copies of both books to give to donors, shelling out more than $100,000 on copies of “Triggered.”

Note to the DNC: don’t do that.

Well shown and said.

Marjorie Greene has been stripped of her committee duties, and she’s exploiting her rebuke as a way to get people to give her money. Very trumpy.

Greene defended herself ahead of the vote in a speech on the House floor and attempted to distance herself from the dangerous and debunked QAnon conspiracy theory, which she has previously embraced.

But Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California, who has introduced a resolution to expel Greene, told reporters he still believes she should be removed from Congress even after watching her floor remarks. The congressman said of his resolution, “I’m committed to bringing it up, and I said that to leadership that there needs to be a vote sooner rather or later on this.”

Gomez said that the reason why he is pursuing a resolution to expel Greene “is to send a message that this kind of discourse in our politics is not acceptable, inciting political violence, threatening people as is not acceptable and a person like that should not hold a position in the House of Representatives.”

But the voters voted her, so that’s that.

The Constitution gives Congress the ability to impeach federal officials and judges, but not its own members. They can only be removed by expulsion, which requires a 2/3 vote, a high bar that would be unlikely to be cleared with Democrats holding only a narrow majority.

Hey, all she did was threaten to kill them.

Greene, meanwhile, has been highlighting how much she has been able to fundraise amid the controversy sparked by reports over her past conduct, including from CNN’s KFile that she repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress.

That’s democracy.