But nobody is claiming trans women don’t have a right to play – the issue is whether trans women (people with male bodies) have a right to play against women, in defiance of the danger to the women and the unfairness to the women.

And there’s this.

Their “motion” is protracted filthy bullying.

I had to Google to find out what the GMB is – it’s a huge general union, the product of amalgamations over time. GMB=General, Municipal, Boilermakers but it’s lots of other things too. This branch is for people who work for MPs, if I’ve understood correctly. Anyway they’re joining the bullying of Rosie Duffield. Here’s the whole thing:

It’s interesting that they say they “condemn all harassment towards anyone within a protected characteristic” while in the act of harassing Rosie Duffield. It’s annoying that they chummily call her “Rosie” while in the act of harassing her.

Another lawyer bails out of Barr’s Justice Department:

Barr has never actually investigated, charged or tried a case. He’s a well-trained bureaucrat but has no actual experience as a prosecutor.

Unfortunately, over the last year, Barr’s resentment toward rule-of-law prosecutors became increasingly difficult to ignore, as did his slavish obedience to Donald Trump’s will in his selective meddling with the criminal justice system in the Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone cases. In each of these cases, Barr overruled career prosecutors in order to assist the president’s associates and/or friends, who potentially harbor incriminating information. This career bureaucrat seems determined to turn our democracy into an autocracy.

…

It took federal Judge Reggie Walton (who sharply criticized Barr for a “lack of candor”) to at least temporarily stop Barr from dismissing all charges against Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, who admitted lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. Rather than representing the interests of the American public, Barr chooses to act as Trump’s lap dog.

More recently, Barr directed federal officers to use tear gas in Lafayette Park to quell what were, at that time, peaceful protesters. Barr’s assertion the square was not cleared due to the president’s desire for a Bible-carrying photo op is laughable. It is certainly a case that Barr would lose before a jury (again, though, this may not be clear to him due to his unfamiliarity with jury trials).

Major put-downs about no experience with prosecution. It’s rather like hardened combat vets talking about an officer who has never left Fort Dix.

Barr also turned his back on the rule of law by supporting the president’s selective use of federal troops to assault citizens protesting the killing of George Floyd in Portland, Oregon. Yet he stood silently by when armed right-wing protesters stormed the Michigan state Capitol building to protest the Democratic governor’s public health orders.

Fortunately, Barr has only weeks left.

Yes but it’s even worse than that. It mandates the recognition of other people’s subjective individuality. How the hell are we supposed to be able to do that? How can we recognize something internal to someone else? We can’t; it’s literally impossible, impossible by definition.

We try to do that up to a point with people we have some connection to – with friends, family, colleagues. We take their word for it that they feel X, in general, unless we have good reasons not to. But that’s all we’re doing – taking their word for it. Their feelings remain internal, as do ours. We can’t literally “recognize” something hidden.

And as for total strangers, as for the world at large – we are under no obligation to take their word for it. None, zip, zero. We can’t “recognize” it and we’re not required to declare belief in it. The whole idea is literally nonsensical.

Summons a lot of memories, this does.

Heather Peto is a man who identifies as a woman. It’s classic the way men who identify as women tip their hands by being so comfortable and at home with bullying women. Heather here takes it for granted that he gets to tell Rosie Duffield MP what to do and even – and especially – WHAT TO THINK. That’s the bit that especially summons memories, that telling women what to think and the bullying when they refuse to be told.

Heather Peto’s profile says “LGBT-Labour Co-Chair (she/her).” That makes it sound (or at least it did to me) as if it’s a branch of the Labour party, but (I looked it up) it’s an independent group allied to Labour. It’s not in any way the boss of Rosie Duffield MP.

Anyway – that patronizing de haut en bas “Each time we thought we had made progress with Rosie by explaining” just makes me bristle with rage. I’m not the only one.

And many more.

Mother Jones on the Giuliani/New York Post “bombshell”:

On Wednesday, the New York Post released what it hailed as a bombshell: an unidentified computer repair store owner in Delaware had come to possess a laptop that contained Hunter Biden emails (and purportedly a sex tape), the hard drive and computer was seized by the FBI, the store owner at some point passed a copy of the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, and one of the emails suggested that Hunter, who served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, may have in 2015 introduced a Burisma official to his dad, Vice President Joe Biden. The story depicts this as a big scandal, and Guiliani tweeted, “Much more to come.” 

Got all that? No, me neither. I can’t be bothered, because Giuliani and the Post? Pfff.

But the key point of the article was predicated on false information that Giuliani has been spreading for a long time—and that appears to be linked to a Russian disinformation operation that the Post neglected to note in its article. That is, the Post piece, based on an unproven smear, is in sync with Moscow’s ongoing effort to influence the 2020 election to help President Donald Trump retain power. (The FBI and other parts of the US intelligence community have stated that Vladimir Putin is once again attacking the US political system to boost Trump.)

And the news media should be reporting that, not this bullshit story.

Rupert Murdoch’s paper is using this one email to revive the Ukrainian scandal that Giuliani has been trying to gin up for over a year. (This crusade included trying to raise $10 million to make a documentary that would be released before the election.) And don’t forget that it was Giuliani and Trump’s search for Ukrainian dirt that led to Trump’s impeachment. 

And don’t forget what a Trump-licking sleaze Giuliani has shown himself to be.

The Post, Fox, and the Trump campaign will try to turn this disinformation and whatever else might be on that laptop into an October Surprise. The big question is how the rest of the media will contend with this, especially if Giuliani or others keep leaking other material (which may or may not be legitimate) from this computer. Will reporters at other outlets repeat the mistakes of 2016 and focus obsessively on these leads without examining the source or investigating the operation that put them into play? Will they wittingly or not assist an obvious ploy to generate headlines that suggest there is a new scandal about old (and already disproven) allegations? Will they fall for it? 

If they’re Maggie Haberman they will.

On Wednesday morning, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted out the Post story and its headline referring to a “smoking-gun email.” Subsequently, she posted tweets taking a more skeptical view of the story. To his credit, Chris Megerian, the White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, quickly pointed out, “The story does not say that allegations of Ukrainian corruption have been pushed by Russia to undermine Joe Biden, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Nor does it mention that Rudy Giuliani has worked with a Ukrainian lawmaker identified as a Russian agent.”  Facebook executive Andy Stone noted that the social media giant would limit the Post article’s distribution on its platform. 

Three weeks.

Our pal Benjamin Cohen (CEO of Pink News in case you’ve forgotten) is still at the woman-hating.

Which people would those be? By “might use to describe Helen” does he mean certainly would and he would be right there with them? Why would these mysterious people be deploying “the sort of language” he hints at? Not really a hint though; we know he means “cunt” and variations.

These guys would be happier hanging out with Donald Trump than with Kamala Harris.

Lindsey Graham is just thrilled that Amy Coney Barrett wants women to be forced to remain pregnant when they would prefer to stop. He’s lucky enough to be the kind of person who can’t be forced to remain pregnant.

“I have never been more proud of a nominee,” Graham said. “This is history being made, folks. This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology. And she’s going to the court. A seat at the table is waiting on you.”

It’s not that she’s “pro-life.” People who favor abortion rights are not “anti-life” or “pro-death.” It’s that she’s pro-forced pregnancy. That’s the issue. Abortion ends a pregnancy, usually at an early stage. Pregnancy is not the kind of thing that should be forced; it’s the kind of thing that should be as voluntary as possible.

Graham criticized some of his Democratic colleagues’ questions about a 2006 ad that Amy Coney Barrett signed on to, which said life begins at fertilization.

The ad was organized by St Joseph County Right to Life, an extreme anti-choice group that has also argued the process of discarding unused or frozen embryos created during the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process should be criminalized.

Embryos matter more than adult women; that’s goddy world for you.

Misogyny loves Halloween.

What’s the scariest thing you can be for Halloween 2020?

A “Karen,” according to Los Angeles-based artist Jason Adcock.

Aw haw haw, so funny. It’s always a laugh-riot to see men telling us how terrifying and evil women are.

“2020 is the year of the KAREN! Scare all ur friends with ur big hair and narrow mind,” Adcock, 34, wrote on Instagram.

Hur hur

Adcock told “Good Morning America” that his idea stemmed from having a dark sense of humor.

“I’ve kind of seen Karens in the wild my whole life, and I just thought it would be kind of a funny thing to make for Halloween, and I didn’t think it would really take off,” he said. “Karen is transcendent of all gender and size. She is just like a modern day tyrant. Anybody evil can be a Karen.”

But we use a woman’s name because…you know…most tyrants and evil people are women, obvs.

Oy. Amy Cooper made two calls to the police that day.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office filed a misdemeanor charge Wednesday against the White woman who called police on a Black man birdwatching in Central Park in May and revealed that she had made a second 911 call about the encounter.

Amy Cooper was charged in New York County Criminal Court with falsely reporting an incident in the third degree, according to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.

The second call wasn’t to say never mind, I got rattled but nothing actually happened, I’m fine, I apologize for wasting your time. No, she went the other way.

In addition, according to the criminal complaint and as stated in court, Amy Cooper made a second, previously unreported call to police and repeated the accusation, adding that the man “tried to assault her,” the DA’s office said.

“When responding officers arrived, Ms. Cooper admitted that the male had not ‘tried to assault’ or come into contact with her,” a release from the DA’s office said.

I wonder if she’s ever heard of Emmett Till. She shouldn’t aspire to be another Carolyn Bryant.

Cooper and her attorney appeared before a judge on Wednesday morning. No plea was entered and the case was adjourned until November 17 as the prosecutor and defense work toward a possible disposition.

The prosecutor indicated they are exploring with the defense a program designed to have the defendant take responsibility for her actions but also educate her and the community on the harm caused by such actions.

It’s hard not to wonder how many such explorations happen when the defendant is not white, but at the same time if her sentence is educating the community on the harm of racism, at least that could be useful.

Speaking of the police and dversty n incloozhun – TOMATOES ARE FRUIT – no wait – TOMATOES IDENTIFY AS SALAD – no wait – IF SOME LEMON SAYS TOMATOES ARE NOT FRUIT THEN CALL THE POLICE!!! Yeah that’s it.

Funny…the Rugby Football Union has a page on Diversity and Inclusion, which shows that they do realize women exist and are not always included. The RFU says it wants to improve diversity and inclusion…or, as they call it, D&I.

The RFU has conducted research with over 4,400 people from the rugby community to understand attitudes and opinions to D&I in rugby and it has undertaken a detailed analysis of sport participation from Sport England Active Lives and YouGov data. The findings will inform areas of focus for D&I action planning in each part of the game. The results included: 

Despite growth of the women’s game and the most diverse England men’s team ever, compared to the overall England adult population, those who participate in rugby union are significantly less likely to be female, of a BAME ethnicity and of the lowest socio-economic group. 

Aaaaand…they’ll be even more less likely to be female now, because of this “we’re going to go right on letting trans women play on women’s teams” policy.

Brilliant joined-up thinking there.

But won’t somebody please think of the trans ladies?

Transgender women will still be allowed to play women’s rugby at all non-international levels of the game in England for the foreseeable future, the Guardian can reveal, after the Rugby Football Union decided that more evidence was needed before implementing any ban.

More evidence! More evidence needed to figure out whether or not male bodies are a danger to female bodies in playing a very rough contact sport! It’s all up in the air; we just don’t know; must collect more evidence, and more and more and more and more. We suspect there may never be enough evidence to convince us.

The RFU’s position is sharply at odds with World Rugby, which last week ruled that trans women could no longer play elite women’s rugby after a major review of the latest science concluded that the risk of “significant injury” was “too great’”.

However, the RFU’s view, which is understood to be supported by several other countries, is that more work is needed to assess whether there are safe ways to allow trans women to keep playing the sport they love.

Understood to be?? By whom?! What an absolutely crap bit of writing for a major newspaper. Thumb on the scale much?

And then that “to allow trans women to keep playing the sport they love” – what about allowing women to keep playing the sport they love? Why all this maudlin concern for the feelings of men who call themselves women coupled with brutal indifference to the feelings of women? It just never stops rattling my brain, this abrupt and complete replacement of women as the subordinated sex class with men who want to role play women.

The RFU’s decision means that trans women can continue playing women’s club rugby in England for now, provided their concentration of testosterone in serum has been less than 5 nmol/L continuously for at least 12 months. However, they are no longer eligible for selection for the Olympics or the Six Nations, competitions governed by World Rugby rules.

Or, rather, the RFU’s decision means that women cannot continue playing women’s club rugby in England without the risk of having to play against one or more men. This “inclusion” of trans women means either the exclusion of or danger to actual women. Giving women’s stuff to men entails taking that stuff away from women. Along with the danger there is also the fact that any man on a women’s team equals a woman who is not on that team – in other words the men who call themselves women will be taking places away from women. That’s not how this is supposed to work.

The RFU’s decision was greeted with disappointment by the women’s rights group Fair Play for Women. “Everyone knows that in a rough sport like rugby it is dangerous for males to play against females,” said the campaigning group’s Nicola Williams said. “And if it’s not safe, it can never be fair either. The science is clear. Growing up male will give transgender athletes a lifelong edge that simply cannot be fully reversed by a period of testosterone suppression.”

The RFU is simply punching women in the face. It’s disgusting.

No charges.

The federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr to review whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing, according to people familiar with the matter.

Oh gosh darn it, they were so looking forward to punishing Obama for something.

The revelation that U.S. Attorney John Bash, who left the department last week, had concluded his review without criminal charges or any public report will rankle President Trump at a moment when he is particularly upset at the Justice Department. The department has so far declined to release the results of Bash’s work, though people familiar with his findings say they would likely disappoint conservatives who have tried to paint the “unmasking” of names — a common practice in government to help understand classified documents — as a political conspiracy.

Maybe next time. Cheer up, little guy.

The department — [under both] Barr and Trump’s previous attorney general, Jeff Sessions — has repeatedly turned to U.S. Attorneys across the country to investigate matters of Republican concern, distressing current and former Justice Department officials, who fear department leaders are repeatedly caving to Trump’s pressure to benefit his allies and target those he perceives as political enemies.

Which isn’t how the Justice Department is supposed to carry out its work.

Trump is also furious that the Durham investigation won’t be making headlines before the election. That was the whole point!

Barr recently told some Republican lawmakers that no report of Durham’s investigation would be released before the November election, though unlike Bash’s review, Durham’s work seems to be ongoing, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has in recent days called the delay in the Durham case “a disgrace,” and asserted that his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, should be jailed. He was previously critical of another prosecutor specially tapped by then-Attorney General Sessions to investigate matters related to Clinton, but whose case ended with no public report or allegations of wrongdoing.

If they don’t find anything they make something up – is that so hard to understand??

ARE YOU KIDDING

Top elections officials in California are scrambling to find out how many illegal ballot drop boxes Republican staffers put up in three counties across the state over the weekend, as local law enforcement authorities continue to search for outstanding witnesses and potential suspects.  The state’s Republican Party, meanwhile, has indicated that it won’t comply with an official order to remove the boxes, and may even add more.

Law and order party, folks.

On Monday, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said his office, in conjunction with the state justice department, issued a cease-and-desist order to the California GOP to remove the illegal ballot drop boxes that have appeared in Los Angeles County, Orange County and Fresno County. … Last Thursday a regional field director with the California Republican Party in Orange County tweeted a photo of himself holding a vote-by-mail ballot, standing next to a black cabinet with a taped sign that read “official ballot drop off box.” The staffer, Jordan Tygh, encouraged voters to message him for “convenient locations” to drop off their ballots. 

Republicans say this is just ballot harvesting — a practice that allows volunteers, organizations, or campaign workers to collect completed ballots and drop them off at county election offices.    

And what possible reason could anyone have to doubt them?

This is what I’ve been wondering about. It is, however, just an unsourced item on Facebook, so not necessarily from an ER nurse at all. But I have been wondering – if Trump really did have a bad case and they really did fix it the way they said, why aren’t they fixing all the serious cases that way? What’s the deal here? What are we not being told?

Nurses and Midwives at Work:

“Copied and pasted from an ER nurse —ER nurse: Allow me to clarify some things as someone who’s taken care of a lot of covid patients. Trump is fine. And he will be fine. That’s because when he was MILDLY symptomatic, we threw all the things we throw at crashing patients at him. We didn’t make him wait. We didn’t make him meet criteria. We didn’t wait until he was almost vented. Trump got care that you can’t. After he trashed this pandemic. Let that sink in. He got care when he had a sniffle that we can’t give our patients until they are almost dead and it’s a Hail Mary attempt. So he will come out and say this was nothing and we have the best drugs and open up fully but don’t be blind to the fact that we can’t treat people the way he was treated because not everyone can pay for it, we don’t have the resources and there is a criteria in place that he was able to forgo. That, my friends, is privilege. You get what you vote for.

I can’t provide source link.”

That’s not entirely accurate – they didn’t throw all the things at him, unless they lied about it: he was never on a ventilator. If he had been he wouldn’t have been able to bounce back that quickly, as far as I know – being on one rips the hell out of your throat and you can’t talk right away, plus you’re wiped out. It takes weeks to come back from it.

But they threw some things at him that more mild cases don’t get – but maybe more severe cases do? I guess it depends on how swamped the local ERs are.

But it does seem fair to say “We didn’t make him wait. We didn’t make him meet criteria. We didn’t wait until he was almost vented. Trump got care that you can’t.”

Excuse me?

Is that right? So, is it illegal to murder people? Is it illegal to fly planes into tall buildings full of people? Is it illegal to hold up a bank? Is it illegal to stab people on the street? Is it illegal to extort money with menaces?

I guess she can’t characterize the facts in that situation and can’t apply the law in it either?

The US is a disgrace.

Early voting opened Monday in Georgia for the 2020 general election — but the first day was marred by technical issues and lines that in some locations stretched more than five hours long, particularly in the Atlanta metro area.

FIVE HOURS. Can you imagine?

But that’s not even the worst.

Back to NPR:

Voters arriving in the morning at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, the home of the NBA’s Hawks — and the state’s largest early voting site, with 300 voting machines — encountered technical issues, which election officials blamed on problems with the electronic poll pads.

So they didn’t test them ahead of time?

Looks like voter suppression to me.

ACB is a big fan of forced pregnancy.

Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court nominee, signed off on an advertisement in 2006 that called for the overturning of Roe v Wade, and called the landmark abortion rights decision “barbaric” and a “raw exercise of judicial power”.

The two-page ad, published by the St Joseph County Right to Life group, an extreme anti-choice organization in South Bend, Indiana, is the most striking evidence to have emerged to date of Barrett’s personal opposition to Roe v Wade.

And thus to women’s right to decide whether to be pregnant or not.

The first page of the ad, which is signed by Barrett and her husband, Jesse, states that life begins at “fertilization”. The ad, which the organization publishes every year to mark the anniversary of Roe v Wade, was signed by Barrett while she was working as a law professor at Notre Dame.

When “life begins” isn’t the issue. Viruses are alive*, bacteria are alive; so what? We don’t consider it murder, or bad, to kill them when necessary.

On the second page of the two-page spread, the group condemns Roe and claims that “the majority of those abortions were performed for social reasons”.

Meaning, reasons having to do with the woman’s life and plans and wishes. Apparently ACB thinks women have no right to let their plans and wishes decide whether or not they want a human growing in their abdomens for nine months. Apparently ACB thinks women’s abdomens don’t belong to them but instead belong to any egg that happens to get fertilized. This amounts to thinking that women are public property and have no personal rights of their own.

*Updating to add: Viruses not really alive:

Since viruses were first discovered in 1892 by Dmitri Ivanovsky, our ideas of what they are have shifted from poisons to biological chemicals. Some years after their discovery, scientists first raised the idea that viruses were living – albeit simple – organisms because they caused diseases like bacteria, which we know to be alive. However, viruses lack the hallmarks of other living things. They don’t carry out metabolic processes, such as making the energy molecule of life, ATP, and they don’t have cells and therefore the cellular machinery needed to make proteins by themselves. The only life process a virus undergoes independently is reproduction to make copies of itself, which can only happen after they have invaded the cells of another organism. Outside of their host some viruses can still survive, depending on environmental conditions, but their life span is considerably shorter. This complete reliability on a host for all their vital processes has led some scientists to deem viruses as non-living.

The NAACP has thoughts on Amy Coney Barrett.

We have reviewed Amy Coney Barrett’s record on civil rights, including her writings as a law professor and her three years as an appellate court judge. On issue after issue, we have found her to be stunningly hostile to civil rights. Her aggressive view of when past decisions should be overruled, combined with her reactionary positions on what rights the Constitution protects, will jeopardize our hard-fought wins in the Court. Her scholarship questions even foundational principles such as whether the Fourteenth Amendment was properly adopted and whether Brown v. Board of Education remains viable authority. Her repeated endorsement of discrimination in the workplace—including the stunning conclusions that separate can be equal when it comes to race and that the use of racial epithets does not necessarily create a hostile work environment—mark a clear willingness to jettison longstanding civil rights precedents.

Let’s not have her on the Supreme Court.