The US health department is throwing away $300 million on a Don’t Worry Be Happy campaign due to run in the weeks leading up to (purely coincidentally) the election. Or to put it slightly less combatively:

The health department is moving quickly on a highly unusual advertising campaign to “defeat despair” about the coronavirus, a $300 million-plus effort that was shaped by a political appointee close to President Donald Trump and executed in part by close allies of the official, using taxpayer funds.

The ad blitz, described in some budget documents as the “Covid-19 immediate surge public advertising and awareness campaign,” is expected to lean heavily on video interviews between administration officials and celebrities…

Because what is more urgent and pressing right now than interviews between Trump’s hacks and “celebrities”?

Senior administration officials have already recorded interviews with celebrities like actor Dennis Quaid and singer CeCe Winans, and the Health and Human Services Department also has pursued television host Dr. Mehmet Oz and musician Garth Brooks for roles in the campaign.

Worth every dime of the 300 MILLION dollars. Which, by the way, is vastly more than HHS or the CDC normally spends on campaigns to inform and advise. It’s not a normal or routine figure at all.

The public awareness campaign, which HHS is seeking to start airing before Election Day on Nov. 3, was largely conceived and organized by Michael Caputo, the health department’s top spokesperson who took medical leave last week and announced on Thursday that he had been diagnosed with cancer. Caputo, who has no medical or scientific background, claimed in a Facebook video on Sept. 13 that the campaign was “demanded of me by the president of the United States. Personally.”

Yes but that’s Donald Trump, so the answer should have been “Oh hell no.”

“The Democrats — and, by the way, their conjugal media and the leftist scientists that are working for the government — are dead set against it,” Caputo told his Facebook followers in the Sept. 13 video. “They cannot afford for us to have any good news before November because they’re already losing. … They’re going to come after me because I’m going to be putting $250 million worth of ads on the air.”

Conjugal???? What are you trying to say, little fella?

The campaign is indeed under investigation by Democrats, who have charged that the massive ad blitz is an attempt to boost Trump’s standing on Covid-19 before the election and have unsuccessfully called on HHS to halt the contract.

…

10 current and former health officials told POLITICO that they have concerns about the campaign’s scope, goals and even how it has been funded — by pulling money out of health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control that are in the midst of fighting the pandemic, rather than working with lawmakers to set up a brand-new advertising effort with congressional oversight, or drawing on substantial internal resources and expertise in running health-related public service campaigns.

It’s not how sick you are, it’s how cheerful you are about it.

The suspect confirms the motive.

A man suspected of stabbing two people with a meat cleaver in Paris has admitted to deliberately targeting the former offices of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, French media report.

The man, an 18-year-old born in Pakistan, reportedly linked his actions to the magazine’s recent republication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

I never can understand why religious fanatics don’t just let their god deal with it. Their god is supposed to be all-powerful and perfect, so why does it need their help?

Thinking their god needs human help to eliminate enemies betrays a certain feebleness in the belief department, if you ask me. The goddy murderers might as well be atheists.

The suspect, who was arrested not far from the scene on Friday, had “taken responsibility for his action”, sources told AFP, adding that he placed his actions “in the context of the republication of the cartoons”.

Oh well that’s all right then.

Disquieting.

President Donald Trump this week said he wants to immediately fill the new Supreme Court vacancy because he expects the panel to decide the 2020 presidential election. 

Which is bizarre all by itself because normally the election does that. But wait, there’s more.

On Friday, multiple news outlets reported that Trump intends to nominate Amy Coney Barrett, who would be the third justice on the court to have worked for Republicans directly on the Bush v. Gore case that handed the 2000 election to the GOP. She would be the second installed on the court by Trump.

And working “for Republicans directly on the Bush v. Gore case that handed the 2000 election to the GOP” means working for Republicans who stole the 2000 election.

Earlier this week, Trump refused to say that he would peacefully transfer power if he loses the election in November. He further suggested the Supreme Court will likely decide the election, underscoring the need to fill the seat left open by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.

He says that as part of his frenzied efforts to undermine the election, which he expects to lose.

If Coney is confirmed, she will join two other lawyers from the Republican team that worked on the case that handed the GOP the presidency in 2000. 

Chief Justice John Roberts counseled then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during that election, according to emails. The Los Angeles Times reported that Roberts “traveled to Tallahassee, the state capital, to dispense legal advice” and “operated in the shadows at least some of those 37 days” that decided the election. Roberts has a long record of working to limit voting rights. 

It is a similar story for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Miami Herald reported that during the Florida standoff, “Kavanaugh joined Bush’s legal team, which was trying to stop the ballot recount in the state.” Kavanaugh appeared on national television to push for the ruling that halted the statewide recount and handed Bush the presidency. 

What a sour joke this country is.

But nobody ever claimed that. Not ever. We were solemnly assured of it only yesterday. Nobody ever said trans people were “born in the wrong body.”

From the age of two and a half, Sasha has insisted she’ll grow up a girl. She was born in a boy’s body. In his tender observational documentary, film-maker Sébastien Lifshitz’s (Les Invisibles, Bambi, Adolescentes) spends a year following seven-year-old Sasha and her family as they struggle to navigate her gender dysphoria in their provincial French home town.

Maybe it’s a French thing? Everybody knows how zany the French are.

Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume captures Sasha in widescreen, his camera watchful as she pads delicately across the room in ballet class, growing in confidence and expressiveness with each purposeful step. Her teacher is less generous.

Meaning? The reviewer doesn’t elaborate. Perhaps the teacher was actually teaching ballet as opposed to being generous to the born in the wrong body segment of the class.

Also…children who are two and a half say a lot of things, and not all of them are necessarily true or accurate. That can apply even to things the children say about themselves.

Uh oh uh oh The Graun has fallen behind the trend.

Trump’s pick to fill RBG’s seat is a religious fanatic. Awesome.

A current Notre Dame law school professor, 48-year-old Barrett is a devout Catholic and mother of seven children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti and one who is a child with Down syndrome—all attributes that conservatives see as evidence that she will help overturn Roe v. Wade if confirmed. But Barrett brings another resume entry to the table that, while possibly enhancing her appeal to evangelicals, makes her an unusual candidate for the job.

She’s a member of People of Praise, a charismatic covenant community in South Bend, Indiana, that has been criticized by former members for being a religious cult. Though most of its members are Catholic, its practices, including speaking in tongues and faith healing, draw more from fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity than the Vatican. One of its most notable features is the submissive role played by women, some of whom were called “handmaids”—at least until the Handmaid’s Tale aired in 2017, At that point, the group started referring to them as “women leaders.”

Just fucking brilliant.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Barr seems eager.

Old conventional wisdom: Biden needs to win the popular vote by ~ 3 points to avoid an Electoral College loss

New conventional wisdom: Biden needs to win the popular vote by ~ 5-6 points to avoid it being close enough for Trump to steal.

Welcome to America, everyone. The shining city on a hill. (gag) A beacon of democracy. (eye roll)

On a related note, David Frum had a good Twitter thread recently where he called out the utter nonsense that gets babbled every Inauguration Day, when television talking heads marvel at the “peaceful transfer of power” that occurs, even between rival political factions. Such a uniquely American tradition! Except.. it’s not. Pretty much every other democracy has mastered that whole peaceful transfer of power thing… it’s kind of a basic requirement of being a functional democracy. Those other countries just don’t hold a big spectacle and pat themselves on the back for it. (“Yes, the streets of Ottawa are full today to witness Stephen Harper peacefully hand over the reins of power to Justin Trudeau. What a triumph of democracy! Canadians should be so proud for not shooting each other instead!”)

It WAS genuinely impressive when George Washington opted not to seek a third term, defying the speculation that he would be a monarch in all but name, and at least as impressive when John Adams, defeated after a single term, handed over power to his (then-) bitter rival Jefferson. But that was when America was a mere toddler. It’s not supposed to be an accomplishment any more. The inevitable cooing we’ll hear if (hopefully) Biden peacefully takes over from Trump will be the equivalent of applauding an adult for being potty-trained.

It all boils down to the Senate. Trump and Republican legislators are openly planning ways to steal the election.

So now a dark question arises. What will the US’s increasingly progressive majority do if Republican state officials reinstall Trump in the White House, in defiance of the voters? What will they do if that 6-3 court overturns Roe v Wade and bans abortion across the entire country?

Think for a second how that latter situation will have arisen: it is because the Senate picks the judges, and the Senate enshrines minority rule. With two senators per state, tiny Wyoming (population: 600,000) has the same representation as gargantuan California (40 million). On current trends, 70% of Americans will soon have just 30 senators representing them, while the 30% minority will have 70. When it comes to their right to medical treatment or to rid their streets of military-grade assault weapons, the urban, diverse majority are subject to the veto of the rural, white, conservative minority.

Wyoming has fewer people than Seattle. California has more people than a lot of countries – such as Canada for instance.

How long is that sustainable? How long will a woman in, say, California accept the presence of guns and the absence of abortion rights because that’s what a minority of voters in small, over-represented states wants? Serious people are beginning to ask that question. Gary Gerstle, professor of American history at Cambridge University, says he’s found himself reading about countries that once had democracy but lost it – and that he’s doing that “to understand the future of America”.

Two words: not rosy.

A week ago.

Bev Jackson: Now there are people who believe that they were born in the wrong body. We personally don’t believe that anybody can be born in the wrong body –

Benjamin Butterworth: Hunhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Bev Jackson: ……You find that shocking – but we don’t believe that someone can –

Benjamin Butterworth: I find that bigotry!

Today:

Hunhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Charlie Hebdo again:

Two people have been stabbed and seriously hurt in Paris near the former offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Two suspects have been arrested. One of them was seized in the nearby Bastille area with blood on his clothing, police told the BBC.

…

A blade – described as a machete or a meat cleaver – was recovered at the scene of the attack near the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

The people stabbed worked at a tv company in the area.

“Two colleagues were smoking a cigarette outside the building, in the street. I heard shouting. I went to the window and saw one of my colleagues, covered in blood, being chased by a man with a machete in the street,” another member of staff at the Premières Lignes production firm said.

The firm has offices in the Rue Nicolas Appert, a side street off Boulevard Richard Lenoir where the former Charlie Hebdo offices are located. A mural to the 12 people killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack is nearby.

Right, so, the former offices of Charlie are there and other people work nearby because it’s a city and that’s how cities work, so it totally makes sense to take a machete to some of those other people who work near the building that used to contain the office of Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo has marked the start of the trial by reprinting controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked protests in several Muslim countries.

In response, the militant group al-Qaeda renewed its threat to the magazine.

Because Islam is a religion of peace.

Barr plans to steal the election for Trump.

Donald Trump’s astonishing suggestion at a campaign rally last weekend that the US president will deploy government lawyers to try to hit the brakes on the counting of ballots on election night relies on the complicity of one federal official more than any other.

It’s Barr, the boss of all those lawyers who could stop the count.

Conveniently for Trump’s stated plan, Barr appears not only ready to acquiesce, he seems eager to bring the lawsuits, having laid groundwork for challenging the election with weeks of misleading statements about the integrity of mail-in voting.

It also looks as if he’ll be willing to sic the military on us.

In order for Trump to steal the election and then quell mass demonstrations – for that is the nature of the nightmare scenario now up for open discussion among current and former officials, academics, thinktankers and a lot of other people – Trump must be able to manipulate both the levers of the law and its physical enforcement.

Barr has been letting us know he’ll do it.

The erstwhile mild-mannered Washington lawyer has been spouting attacks on election integrity and hostility toward street protests while describing, in explicitly religious terms, an epochal showdown between the forces of “moral discipline and virtue” – which he believes he represents – and “individual rapacity” manifesting as social chaos, embodied by leftwing protesters among others.

It’s hard to get the head around seeing Trump as the head of Team Moral Discipline and Virtue and not of Team Individual Rapacity. He’s the most rapacious individual I’ve ever had the misfortune to be governed by.

In recent weeks, Barr has reportedly asked prosecutors to weigh charging protesters under sedition laws, meant to punish conspiracies to overthrow the government, and to weigh criminal charges against the Seattle mayor for allowing residents to establish a small “police-free” protest zone. He has designated New York City, Portland and Seattle as “anarchy” zones that he says “have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities,” threatening federal funding.

…

Barr has competed with Trump to erode faith in the upcoming election, peddling baseless conspiracy theories about foreign nations printing counterfeit ballots, spreading tales about mass mail-in ballot fraud – in a lie that was later retracted by the justice department – and expressing frustration that the United States uses mail-in voting and multi-day voting, which are common measures to accommodate voters going back decades.

It’s a holy war kind of thing to him.

[Barr’s social and religious] commitments, in turn, are a matter of public record, including in a speech Barr delivered at Notre Dame University about one year ago. In the speech, Barr described a political philosophy driven by the need to counter an “individual rapacity” in humans that quickly produces “licentiousness” and the destruction of “healthy community life” if not restrained. The only possible restraint, in Barr’s view, are “moral values [that] must rest on authority independent of men’s will – they must flow from a transcendent Supreme Being.”

But, again, if it’s individual rapacity that he fears (and I would agree it’s a bad thing), then how can he see Trump as a shield against it? Trump has done more to promote and flatter and normalize rapacity than almost any public figure I can think of. He’s comparable to mob bosses in his rapacity rather than to presidents, even the crooked ones.

It’s a mystery to me.

The NHS instructs trans women on how to do a “bum swish”:

In case the image isn’t legible – the underlined bit says: “As a trans woman with a more masculine appearance, you may need to compensate with other “elements” that convey that you are female.”

Trans women are women, but they have to jink around with their appearance so as to “compensate.” Compensate for what? They just are women, so why is there any need to compensate?

Sorry to interrupt; the rest of it is: “The “feminine walk” may help. If you place each foot across yourself each time you take a step this creates the “bum swish.””

And what else does it do? It slows down your walk, it throws you off balance, it makes you look affected and self-conscious and idiotic…all of which I guess is “feminine” and expected of women. Thanks, NHS. Much medical, very science.

In action.

Less than a month ago, though, Mermaids was energetically blaming JK Rowling for suicidal thoughts among trans youth and for sharing her non-expert opinions on what it is to be a woman.

Today, J.K.Rowling re-stated her position on transgender lives. We have previously reached out to her both publicly and privately, offering a calm conversation around the issues she has raised and today, we sent a further email to her team, renewing that offer. We are yet to receive a response…. Without giving personal detail, without betraying confidences, we must represent the seriousness of the situation. We are aware through our work with families that there have been cases of self-harm and even attempted suicide following J.K.Rowling’s statements and the public response on social media and in the press…. We do not believe J.K. Rowling ‘hates’ trans people. We also welcome and accept that she is sympathetic towards trans children and teenagers. Therefore, as a woman of great power and someone sympathetic to trans young people, we ask her to acknowledge the many young people around the world who fundamentally disagree with her position on trans acceptance and we beg her to at least consider the possibility that trans young people are able to express who they are for themselves.

But are trans young people “expressing who they are for themselves”? Or are they expressing who they think they are, which is shaped by what they have heard and read and picked up from social media and friends and tv documentaries and…organizations like Mermaids? Young (and not young) people don’t just decide they’re something called “trans” out of nowhere; they decide it because it’s a thing, a meme, a fashion, an item on the list of available “identities” and causes and opportunities for being special. How do we know? Because of the novelty of the whole thing. It simply wasn’t happening 20 years ago.

J.K. Rowling rightly speaks of brave ‘detransitioned’ young women. Yet, does she consider trans people, living openly in spite of public hostility, less brave? Are those who have fought for decades to be treated with respect and dignity in a society that ridicules and demonises them, less brave? Are those children and young people who state their true gender in the face of rejection from family and friends less brave?

But what is someone’s “true gender”? What does that mean? How does it differ from knowing one has a female or male body?

There’s a long and complicated rope of bullshit that’s been woven and it’s going to take a long time to unravel it.

It seems that Mermaids, in light of the new guidance, is…erm…trying to hide the bodies.

Creeeeeak…shiver…crack…shudder…will the great shambolic edifice topple?

David Smith at the Guardian on Trump’s prelude to dictatorship performance yesterday:

Trump careered from touting miracle vaccines to building supreme court suspense, from insulting a female member of the British royal family to abruptly departing for a mysterious “emergency” phone call. But first, there was the small matter of kneecapping American democracy.

Perhaps it was not chance that the president, ever eager to generate media outrage, gave the first question to Brian Karem, who describes himself on Twitter as a “Loud Mouth” senior White House reporter at Playboy. “Will you commit to make sure there’s a peaceful transferral of power after the election?” Karem asked.

And the answer was no, not unless I win.

“Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”

Later, Karem remarked on Twitter: “This is the most frightening answer I have ever received to any question I have ever asked. I’ve interviewed convicted killers with more empathy. @realDonaldTrump is advocating Civil War.”

And Julian Castro, who served in Barack Obama’s cabinet, tweeted: “In one day, Trump refused a peaceful transition of power and urged the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice to hand him an election if the results are contested. This is fascism, alive and well in the Republican Party.”

No joke.

There there, they say, don’t worry, they say, he didn’t really mean he’s going to steal the election. It’s an uphill battle though seeing as how he said what he said.

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the sole Republican to vote to remove Trump from office at his impeachment trial earlier this year, drew comparisons with a crisis in Europe, tweeting: “Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus. Any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.”

Right, but he did suggest it, so there we are.

But there were alarming signs of dissent on the Republican side. Thomas Massie, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, tweeted ominously: “In the spring, stores sold out of hand sanitizer and toilet paper. This fall, they sold out of ammo.”

…

The American Civil Liberties Union also registered its concern. David Cole, national legal director, said: “The peaceful transfer of power is essential to a functioning democracy. This statement from the president of the United States should trouble every American.”

And McConnell and Graham saying “don’t worry” is about as reassuring as an umbrella in an earthquake.

Failing state:

US President Donald Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses November’s election.

“Well, we’ll have to see what happens,” the president told a news conference at the White House. “You know that.”

No. Nobody knows that. It isn’t true.

“I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots,” Mr Trump, a Republican, said. “And the ballots are a disaster.”

When the journalist countered that “people are rioting”, Mr Trump interjected: “Get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very – you’ll have a very peaceful – there won’t be a transfer, frankly, there’ll be a continuation.”

Well yes, if we get rid of the ballots, there won’t be a transfer, and that’s called a coup. A continuation minus voting is a coup.

Any pretext will do.

In an interview with France Bleu Alsace radio, Elisabeth said she was walking home when one of the three men said: “Look at that whore in a skirt.”

Two of the three men then held her while the third hit her in the face, leaving her with a black eye, she told the station. The men then fled.

They hate women, and they’re stronger than women. No deeper reason needed. She’s in a skirt! She’s in jeans! She’s a slut! She’s a bitch! There is no Acceptable State for a woman.

She said more than a dozen people witnessed the incident, but no-one intervened.

On Wednesday, junior interior minister Marlene Schiappa – who is in charge of citizenship and was previously in charge of equality issues – visited the eastern city to discuss the safety of women in public.

She told France Bleu Alsace that “the skirt is not responsible for the attack and the woman even less”.

“A woman is never hit because she wears a skirt. A woman is hit because there are people who are misogynistic, sexist, violent, and who free themselves from any law and any rule of civility by striking them.”

It’s weird, inspiring that kind of visceral hatred, yet it also becomes kind of familiar. “Oh yes, that again.”

On Thursday, France Bleu Alsace reported that two women had been attacked in another eastern city, Mulhouse, on Wednesday, after a man told one of them her skirt was “too short”.

Whores in skirts, they’re everywhere.

The UK has issued new guidance for schools on sex and relationships teaching. One passage in particular has drawn praise from people with sane views on children and “gender”:

We are aware that topics involving gender and biological sex can be complex and sensitive matters to navigate. You should not reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance by suggesting that children might be a different gender based on their personality and interests or the clothes they prefer to wear. Resources used in teaching about this topic must always be age-appropriate and evidence based. Materials which suggest that non-conformity to gender stereotypes should be seen as synonymous with having a different gender identity should not be used and you should not work with external agencies or organisations that produce such material. While teachers should not suggest to a child that their non-compliance with gender stereotypes means that either their personality or their body is wrong and in need of changing, teachers should always seek to treat individual students with sympathy and support.

You should work together with parents on any decisions regarding your school’s treatment of their child, in line with the school’s safeguarding policy and the statutory guidance on working together to safeguard children.

Mermaids won’t like it though.