Within weeks – i.e. before the election. Definitely before the election.

Donald Trump has been on Fox & Friends this morning. Among the tidbits are that he said he had read Bob Woodward’s book Rage last night, and that it was “boring”. The book runs to some 400 pages.

Trump can barely read at all. People who can barely read read very slowly. They read one word at a time instead of a sentence or phrase at a time; it’s slow work. Being barely able to read rules out being able to skim effectively.

(By the way whatever happened to “speed reading”? Remember that? Claims of being able to read an entire page at a glance and thus read an average-length book in an hour? It never made any sense to me and still doesn’t.)

The president has promised there will be a coronavirus vaccine within “weeks”. “I’m not doing it for political reasons. I want the vaccine fast” he said.

News flash, pumpkin head: we all want the vaccine fast. You want it before the election.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, has said he is cautiously optimistic a vaccine will be approved by the end of the year or early next year. But Fauci has also emphasized the vaccine will likely not be widely distributed until well into 2021.

End of the year is too late. Has to be before the election. There will be announcements that a vaccine has been perfected before the election. Caputo and Alexander will issue them even if no one else will.

Why is this man laughing…

That’s Trump in California yesterday meeting with Gavin Newsom and other officials.

He’s not wearing a mask.

He’s not social distancing.

He’s sitting right next to them, breathing on them, laughing in their faces, and he’s not wearing a mask.

This is an annoying thing that Twitter does.

Who wrote that? Is there a person called Twitter who wrote it? Of course not, so who did? It looks like a diktat from god. That matters because it’s not neutral fact-reporting, it’s tendentious. The word “cisgender” is new jargon which is meaningless and redundant unless you buy into the nonsensical novel dogma that sex is not a matter of what body you have but of “identity.” Without that dogma there is no need for any “cisgender” in front of “man” or “woman” and it doesn’t mean anything when it is there. We might as well start talking about cis daffodils and cis squirrels and cis oak trees. A “cisgender male serial killer” is just a male serial killer. Male serial killers have featured in quite a few movies over the decades, and nobody ever felt any need to clarify that they were cis male serial killers as opposed to…um…that other kind, whatever that might be.

And who are all these reviewers who are saying what Twitter says they are saying? List them, link to them, don’t just anonymously announce them without any substantiation.

And what exactly is “an anti-trans plotline”?

And two uses of the word “community” in one sentence is overkill. The “cis” community says fuck off.

He did say it. And then laughed stupidly.

He also says all this shit, which is just…

There really aren’t.

President Dodo went to California and said the scientists are wrong about climate change – as he knows from his years of rigorous research on the subject.

“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump said at a Monday briefing with officials in McClellan Park, California, with a laugh.

Haha, yes, it’s hilarious.

He told Wade Crowfoot, secretary of California’s Natural Resources Agency: “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.”

Also the pandemic will go away, like a miracle. You just watch.

Also what is “it”? Much of the northern hemisphere will start getting cooler over the next few weeks, yes, because that’s the time of year it is. If “it” means the planet, one does wonder how he knows.

(Not really. He’s just bullshitting, as always.)

Trump was also directly confronted by the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who has been adamant about climate change’s role in the wildfires, bluntly telling the President: “Climate change is real.”

“We obviously feel very strongly the hots are getting hotter,” Newsom said. “The dries are getting drier. When we’re having heat domes, the likes of which we’ve never seen in our history.”

And who is Trump to bounce up and deny that, on the basis of absolutely nothing but his own contempt for people and knowledge and research and everything else that isn’t Donald Dodo?

News outlets need to stop adopting the language of trans ideology.

NBC News for instance:

“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling was hit Monday with renewed criticism calling her views transphobic as she releases her latest book, a mystery novel about a serial killer who dresses as a woman to prey on his victims.

The novel, “Troubled Blood,” is to be published Tuesday as the fifth installment in the “Cormoran Strike” detective series, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Strike’s latest mystery revolves around a cisgender man who dresses as a woman, according to a review from The Telegraph.

There’s no such thing as “cisgender.” Referring to “a cisgender man” makes about as much sense as referring to “a man with a head.”

I also don’t much like that “Rowling was hit Monday” in the opening sentence; looks too much like wishful fantasy.

The theme is being called out by those who have highlighted Rowling’s history of sharing transphobic opinions online

Aaaaand by the third paragraph we’ve tipped our hand: Rowling is assumed guilty and the people bullying her are assumed stunning and brave.

Some tweeted that although Rowling is still alive, her career is most likely dead, while others imagined Rowling gone so they could enjoy the “Harry Potter” series without associating the novels and films with her.

“in memory of jk rowling,” one user tweeted. “she ain’t dead, but she killed her own career by proudly hating trans people & no one would really miss her that much anyway #ripjkrowling”

All this is fine, apparently.

Actress Cynthia Nixon spoke about the impact of Rowling’s comments on her transgender son, Samuel, in an interview with The Independent posted Monday. Nixon said the author’s comments were “really painful” for her 23-year-old, who has loved the “Harry Potter” series throughout his childhood.

So Cynthia Nixon is encouraging her offspring to live a delusion, and also expects the world to do the same. Not a very reasonable approach.

The rest of the piece is all the usual guff. It’s pathetic.

Yes sure, this is fine.

But also –

Bitch Media calls itself “A Feminist Response to Pop Culture.” Nope, not feminist.

Today in disgusting: #RIPJKRowling is what they call “trending” on Twitter. That’s nice; that’s progressive; that’s humane; that’s decent.

I’m pretty sure Twitter could tweak something so that it would no longer be “trending” but Twitter of course has chosen not to do that, instead adding a smirky “no JKRowling is not dead.” No, she’s just being bullied and abused on social media for not agreeing that men who say they are women are literally women.

Perhaps this is what set it off:

Meanwhile –

The NY Times reports:

The top communications official at the powerful cabinet department in charge of combating the coronavirus accused career government scientists on Sunday of “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and warned that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election.

Michael Caputo, 58, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said without evidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was harboring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Trump.

That is astounding. It’s Nazi-level manipulation and lying and provocation.

This is the guy who’s been trying to force the CDC people to change their reports to match Trump’s stupid lies.

“You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” Mr. Caputo, a Trump loyalist installed by the White House in April, told followers in a video he hosted live on his personal Facebook page.

Very sane, very normal.

Mr. Caputo delivered his broadside against scientists, the media and Democrats after a spate of news reports over the weekend that detailed his team’s systematic interference in the C.D.C.’s official reports on the pandemic and other disease outbreaks. Former and current C.D.C. officials described to Politico, The New York Times and other outlets how Mr. Caputo and a top aide routinely demanded the agency revise, delay and even scuttle the C.D.C.’s core public health updates, called Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, that they believed undercut Mr. Trump’s message that the pandemic is under control.

The PR guy is fiddling the professional medical reports by the scientists to help his boss the warped murderous dictator. He’s apparently also lost his marbles.

Despite the criticism of his team’s interference with C.D.C., Mr. Caputo said he expected to remain in his post because Mr. Trump supported him. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I swear to God, as God is my witness, I am not stopping.”

He’s a hero! He’s Scarlett O’Hara!

His Facebook presentation comes as Mr. Trump has increasingly singled out federal government scientists as targets, complaining without evidence that they were deliberately trying to subvert his administration’s efforts to fight the pandemic for their own political reasons.

The government scientists are trying to do their jobs despite Trump’s efforts to contradict and silence them for his own political reasons.

Mr. Caputo echoed those sentiments, saying scientists “deep in the bowels of the C.D.C. have given up science and become political animals.”

No dude. That’s projection.

Then he babbled about a Trump fan who was killed in Portland, and said it was “a drill.”

The man suspected of the shooting, Michael Forest Reinoehl, was later shot dead by officers from a federally led fugitive task force in Washington State. He “went down fighting,” Mr. Caputo said. “Why? Because he couldn’t say what he had inside him.” He then spoke of “squads being trained all over this country” — a conspiracy theory unsupported by evidence.

No, no, it’s true, I’ve got 700 of them right here next to me.

Mr. Caputo continued his social media effort after the Facebook event, retweeting a conspiratorial post that hinted with no evidence that armed camps were being established in Washington, D.C.: “Occupants don’t look like vagrants. Looks like forward basing for militant street ops,” J. Michael Waller, a conservative provocateur, posted.

Nah, the forward basing for militant street ops is all at the Marriott.

Mr. Caputo has no background in health care. He worked on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign for a time but was passed over for a job early in the administration. He remained friendly with Dan Scavino, who oversees the White House’s social media and is among the few of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign aides still on the administration’s staff. Mr. Scavino played a role in reconnecting Mr. Trump and Mr. Caputo. Some of Mr. Trump’s allies heralded Mr. Caputo’s appointment at Health and Human Services, describing him as both media savvy and intensely loyal to the president.

They might as well have given the job to a circus clown.

[Caputo] accused officials at the C.D.C. and other government agencies — including the Department of Health and Human Services — of deliberately subverting the president’s efforts to contain the pandemic. The C.D.C., he said, was riddled with anti-Trump researchers who “walk around like they are monks” and “holy men” but engage in “rotten science.”

Which he knows how? Given the fact that he’s a PR guy not a scientist?

But he singled out Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the agency, for praise. He “is one of my closest friends in Washington,” he said. “He’s such a good man.”

Former and current agency officials have asserted that Dr. Redfield has allowed so much political interference with the agency’s work that some career scientists are on the verge of resigning.

Right; as he said, such a good man.

Mr. Caputo’s scientific adviser, Dr. Paul Alexander, was heavily involved in the effort to reshape the C.D.C.’s weekly reports on morbidity and mortality. The reports are widely read by the nation’s health professionals, who depend upon them for medical guidance.

Mr. Caputo acknowledged in a brief interview this weekend that it was unusual for a public affairs officer to hire his own scientific adviser. But he described Dr. Alexander, an assistant professor at McMaster University in Canada, as “a genius” to his Facebook audience, saying the public criticism had only served to make his position “permanent” as a watchdog over politically motivated scientists.

“To allow people to die so that you can replace the president is a grievous venial sin, venial sin,” he said. “And these people are all going to hell.”

Meanwhile Trump continues to do things that cause thousands of people to die.

The abuse continues.

This is not normal. It doesn’t happen in other intra-left disagreements. Why is this so different? I can only conclude that it’s because misogyny is the most deeply rooted hatred of all. We’re watching lefty men fall all over themselves in their ecstatic eagerness to rip lefty women to pieces because these lefty women refuse to agree that men – men – magically turn into women by saying they are women. If we did agree with that claim we would instantly lose the right and the ability to resist male hatred of women and its attendant injustices, because the men wouldn’t be men any more, they would be women. Our words would fall to the floor, useless.

Men like Adrian Harrop and Owen Jones are already making it ever more difficult for women to resist male hatred of women and its attendant injustices, and if we gave in it would be game over.

Not going to happen.

Ooh a rally in Vancouver. Too bad they too are having a hazardous air day, but when it’s for a good cause…

Join A Celebration of Freedoms and Rights, No New Normal, The Line, Hugs Over Masks, CLEAR, Liberty Talk Canada and Unify the People in this event for all of BC to attend!!!!!

This is where we put our feet down and declare “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.”

It’s a rally for DO NOTHING ABOUT THE PANDEMIC FREEDOM FREEDOM.

ANY topic you OPPOSE such as MANDATORY masks / vaccines, contact tracing, 5G, communism, social distancing, media lies, child trafficking, lockdown measures, curfews, etc.

Any “topic” I oppose? Anything at all? What if I oppose stupid people who refuse to follow medical guidance during a pandemic? What if I oppose conservatism? What if I oppose anti-vaxxers?

ANY topic you DEMAND such as informed consent, my body my choice, privacy rights, exposing child traffickers, democracy, freedoms and rights etc.

I DEMAND my body my choice so my body gets to live in your house and you have to go live somewhere else.

We will also be supporting Berlin’s efforts, Montréal’s efforts, Dublin’s efforts, the citizens of Melbourne as well as ANY other country where draconian lockdown measures are being implemented.

Yayyyyyy! Sounds like a partay!

Sure enough.

There are eleven thousand comments on Amy Hamm’s public Facebook post about the Rowling billboard. One particularly deep thinker says it’s about white women (wot no Karen?):

Imagine having this amount of money to actually help people in need and instead using it on a billboard to promote a hateful person. White women findings ways to make feminism exclusive to them and theirs is a tale as old as time though.

Yup yup yup that’s it, it’s nothing to do with men trying to take over being women from women, it’s all about white women taking over everything from everyone, the way we always have.

Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano wrote a book about the Paradise Fire. They tell us some things:

Prior to European settlement in the West, fire flowed freely, sparked by lightning or intentionally by Native Americans to encourage the growth of favored plants or clear areas for easier hunting. As much as 4.5m acres of California’s 105m acres might burn every year. These low-intensity fires did not kill large trees, and some plants even came to depend on fire to regenerate themselves. A shrub called chamise appears to encourage fire by releasing combustible gases in the presence of flames.

The shift to a different approach occurred after several instances in which wildfires became appalling urban fires. In October 1871, railway workers sparked a brush fire in northern Wisconsin, which swept into the city of Peshtigo and killed 1,500 people there and elsewhere across a gargantuan footprint of 1.2 million acres. And in the great fires of 1910, fires burning across several Western states killed hundreds and razed a number of towns. People escaped by train as the fires virtually licked at their heels.

So the US decided no more out of control fires.

Fire activity decreased, it is true, but with scouring flames removed from the environment, forests grew far denser and brushier than they had been before. In one Arizona forest, 20 trees per acre became 800 trees per acre. These forests can and will burn more severely. In addition the climate crisis is rendering vegetation ever drier, and by 2050 up to three times more acreage in Western forests will burn as a result of global warming. Meanwhile 60m homes can now be found in or close to high-risk areas where wildfires have previously burned.

Cue urban fires. The fire that obliterated Paradise on the morning of November 8, 2018 was sparked in a rural river canyon several miles to the east of town. As we describe in our new book, Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, it approached the community at speeds previously thought impossible, chewing through almost 400 American football fields’ worth of vegetation per minute. It hit like a hurricane. Strikingly, many of the hundreds of thousands of trees in the town were spared – it was the homes that became matches setting fire to the next. The fire was so quick, so hot, that people died seeking shelter under their cars, in the driveways of their homes while holding a hose, or huddled in their bathtub.

They go on to say it could happen anywhere, including in big cities.

This is a flattering photo.

Seen at the Guardian.

About those fires…

The death toll from wildfires choking the west coast of the US continued to rise on Sunday as authorities feared more bodies were likely to be found in the charred ruins of towns across several states, and politicians lambasted Donald Trump for his response to the escalating crisis.

It’s what he does so as not to panic us.

The White House announced that Trump would visit California on Monday for “a briefing”, a move that drew strong criticism from Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles.

“He’s going to come out here and probably tell us ‘I’m going to send you rakes’ instead of more help,” Garcetti told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the president’s claims that wildfires in the state are caused by poor forestry management and not fuelled by the climate crisis.

Not even send us more rakes but just shout at us for not raking.

Trump issued a disaster declaration in August but has been largely quiet about the wildfires since. At a rally in Nevada on Saturday night, he said: “I spoke to the folks in Oregon, Washington … they’ve never had anything like this. But, you know, it is about forest management … and other things, but forest management.”

That part is true, but the problem is not failure to “rake the forest floor.” The problem is failure to allow controlled burns, with the result that there’s way too much fuel.

I can hear the fog horns from ferries out on the Sound right now, because the smoke mixed with fog is so thick visibility is a few yards/metres.

It’s fine that Trump lied to us about the virus and that thousands of unnecessary deaths are the result. Totally fine.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, and Jason Miller, a campaign senior adviser, tried to mitigate the damage caused by Trump’s taped confessions to Watergate journalist Bob Woodward, for his book Rage, by playing up the president’s handling of a crisis that has killed more than 190,000 in America.

“The president was calm and steady in a time of unrest and uncertainty,” McDaniel insisted on NBC’s Meet the Press.

That’s not the Trump we know. He’s very volatile and he has the attention span of a gnat.

“What would it mean if the president came out and said, ‘The sky is falling and everybody should be panicked’? He presented calm and a steady hand and a plan. And that is what a president should do.”

False choice dingdingding! That’s not what he should have said. What he should have said is that everybody should follow the medical advice of people who understand the subject because the virus is a serious thing. That’s all. Nothing about the sky falling, nothing about everybody please panic starting NOW.

On ABC’s This Week, Miller said Trump had always taken the coronavirus “very seriously” and claimed: “We encourage people very strongly to wear the masks.”

And that’s why we’ve seen Trump in a mask only twice. That’s why we’ve seen him sneer at journalists wearing masks several times. Much encourage strongly, very seriously.

The majority of attendees at a Trump rally in Nevada on Saturday were neither distanced nor wearing masks. At another rally in North Carolina earlier in the week, the president mocked social distancing as a tool to prevent the spread of infection.

That’s Trump taking it very seriously.

McDaniel was asked if Trump’s downplaying of the threat was a political gambit, suggesting his dire warnings of anarchy and lawlessness in the wake of recent protests against racism and police brutality showed “this isn’t a president who shies away from trying to incite panic or trying to fire folks up”.

“Think what would have happened if he’d have gone out and said, ‘This is awful, we should all be afraid, we don’t have a plan’,” McDaniel said.

Again – that is not the suggestion.

Another Trump loyalist, trade adviser Peter Navarro, was challenged on CNN’s State of the Union over the administration’s assertions it had acted swiftly in response to the pandemic, specifically in shutting down travel from China.

“[On] 31 January [he] pulls down the flights, saves probably hundreds of thousands of American lives,” Navarro claimed, even though the “ban” was only a partial restriction that still allowed tens of thousands to travel, while travel from Europe was not shut down till later, allowing the virus in that way.

Navarro also attempted to claim Trump had been “straightforward” with the American people, even though the president’s own words on tape confirm he was purposefully withholding information. The Trump adviser also attacked CNN, saying without apparent irony it was “not honest with the American people”, before being cut off.

“The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population,” host Jake Tapper said, “and the United States has more than 20% of the world’s coronavirus deaths. That is a fact. It does not matter how many times he insults CNN.”

Yes but CNN has cooties.

The CBC reports – not honestly – on the Rowling billboard matter.

A billboard on a busy part of Hastings Street in Vancouver supporting author J.K. Rowling’s controversial views about gender identity was hastily covered over the day after it was put up.

That’s why I say “not honestly.” The headline is more honest:

I Love J.K. Rowling sign makes brief, controversial appearance in Vancouver

That’s fair, but the first sentence is shamefully dishonest. The billboard does not “support J.K. Rowling’s controversial views about gender identity.” All the billboard does is express love for Rowling. That’s it. “I heart [love] JK Rowling”; the end. Most people who see the billboard aren’t going to know that trans activists consider Rowling an Evil TERF, or that Rowling has views on what “trans” means and what it implies for women’s rights. That means that most people are not going to see a hidden message about the tension between women’s rights and the current version of trans activism. That means it’s just dishonest to claim that the hidden meaning is actually not hidden at all but explicitly printed out on the billboard. The hidden meaning is hidden.

It was a test, you know. They failed it, you know.

The test was “will they even suppress a message expressing love for Rowling, a message that doesn’t say a word about her views?” And in mere hours the answer was yes we will. FAIL.

Amy Hamm, who lives in New Westminster and Chris Elston, a South Surrey resident, paid Pattison Outdoor, an arm of the Jim Pattison Group to put up the sign on Friday around 6:30 a.m. PT.

They copied a similar sign that was erected in Edinburgh over the summer to support the famous author’s claims that having individuals self-identify their gender could pose a threat to women and children who are not transgender.

The Edinburgh sign was Posie Parker’s work.

Posts Elston and Hamm put on social media about the billboard attracted criticism including Vancouver City Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung who tweeted that it was “meant to to stoke hate, exclusion and division.”

Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung should take a look at the hate and abuse that was vomited out about Rowling over the summer.

Morgane Oger, a transgender advocate and a former B.C. NDP provincial candidate, said the sign is a devious way to push a message of hate about gender identity although many people would not understand what it means.

Actually it’s the other way around – the buzzwords around trans activism are a devious way to push a message that men can literally be women if they think they are say they are feel as if they are imagine they are fantasize they are. The devious pushing is from the trans “community,” not from feminists.

“The purpose of this sign was to harass the community, targeting them because of who they are and trying to get them to react through a message only they recognize.”

Says the misogynist guy who has been bullying a Vancouver rape crisis shelter for years.

The political hacks Trump hired have been forcing the CDC to water down its reports to make Trump look less like a mass murderer.

The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals.

By “health department” they mean HHS.

In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump’s optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.

That’s like the PR people for the fire department telling the fire trucks to slow down because all this rushing about with sirens going will undermine the mayor’s optimistic messages about the house fires.

Optimistic messages are all very well (unless they’re just lies, as Trump’s generally are), but they’re not the goal of HHS or the fire department. Use the right tools for the job. When there’s a catastrophe happening the goal is to mitigate or halt it, rather than cheering people up about it at the expense of mitigating or halting it.

The people at the CDC have tried to resist but they’ve given way a few times. That is not good news.

The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation’s public health work for decades.

But now the hoodlums in the employ of the biggest hoodlum are messing with that. Never mind the public health, it’s all about perpetuating Donald Trump’s reign of destruction.

[S]ince Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the Health and Human Services department’s new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump’s statements, including the president’s claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Nothing must be allowed to remain independent of the political needs of the criminal Donald Trump. The survival of 331 million people is worth nothing compared to the continued dictatorship of the criminal Trump.

Caputo’s team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that “the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks.”

So the CDC was prevented from saying that for a month. One wonders how many people took hydroxychloroquine as a result.

In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to “hurt the President” in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.

“CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration,” appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump’s push to reopen schools. “CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear.”

Well, yes, their aim is clear: to control disease. Trump’s aim is to boost Trump. We the people are more interested in avoiding COVID than making Trump dictator for life.

This crap again.

There’s a new billboard in Vancouver that says “I heart JK Rowling.” You can write the rest yourself.

A billboard in East Vancouver championing author J.K. Rowling, who has been widely accused of transphobia, was removed Saturday after drawing outrage and condemnation.

The billboard didn’t “draw” outrage and condemnation, people decided to direct outrage and condemnation at it.

Let’s remember that Rowling has never said she hates trans people, or wished bad things on them. Let’s remember that she doesn’t advocate violence or repression or revenge or anything of that kind. Let’s remember that her point is that women have rights too.

The billboard, which was visible from busy Hastings Street, was black with white text that read, “I (heart) JK Rowling.”

Not “I heart Hitler” or “I heart Stalin” or “I heart Mugabe.” Just “I heart JK Rowling” – the woman who wrote that popular series of kids’ books.

Vancouver city councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung said she was discouraged to see the billboard put up in her city, given Rowling’s controversial statements criticizing the trans rights movement. 

Rowling’s statements are only “controversial” because people like Kirby-Yung have accepted the propaganda.

Photos of the untarnished billboard were shared on social media on Sep. 11. But when CTV News Vancouver visited the billboard on Sep. 12, it had been marked up with blue paint splatter. About an hour later, a Twitter user posted a video of a person hoisted up in a cherry picker and covering over the billboard.

All because Rowling thinks women’s rights matter too.

Nicola Spurling, a trans YouTube personality and LGBTQ2+ advocate in Metro Vancouver, tweeted out her disapproval of the billboard before it was covered up. She asked for it to be taken down and questioned why the billboard company allowed it in the first place.

Probably because all it says is “I heart JK Rowling.” She’s not Stalin, she’s not Trump, she’s not Kim. She’s not evil and she’s not harming anyone.

The people claiming responsibility for the billboard issued a statement on Twitter Saturday insisting they aren’t transphobic, while also openly denying the identities of trans women. They described womanhood as “a biological reality, not a feeling,” which is a common refrain among opponents of transgender rights.

However common it is, is it true? Of course it’s true. Women are adult human females. We’re not fantasies or dysphoria or cosplay. We have a right to “exclude” men from claiming to be women, just as black people have a right to “exclude” a Jessica Krug from claiming to be black.

What Trump is planning.

And Roger Stone is in there.

More on that:

Roger Stone is making baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and is urging Donald Trump to consider several draconian measures to stay in power, including having federal authorities seize ballots in Nevada, having FBI agents and Republican state officials “physically” block voting under the pretext of preventing voter fraud, using martial law or the Insurrection Act to carry out widespread arrests, and nationalizing state police forces.

Stone, a longtime confidant of the president, made the comments during a September 10 appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars network.

…

Stone argued that “the ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshalls and taken from the state” because “they are completely corrupted” and falsely said that “we can prove voter fraud in the absentees right now.” He specifically called for Trump to have absentee ballots seized in Clark County, Nevada, an area that leans Democratic. Stone went on to claim that “the votes from Nevada should not be counted; they are already flooded with illegals” and baselessly suggested that former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) should be arrested and that Trump should consider nationalizing Nevada’s state police force.

On the one hand this is just crazy shit, on the other hand crazy shit is what Trump does.