Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • A half-empty arena

    The Tulsa tweets are interesting.

    https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1274484402899337216

    Also…I hate to say this, but…he drank from a glass of water. Yes really. Then he threw it across the stage, with a “You feelin’ lucky today punk?” look on his face. Stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.

    He threw a glass! What a macho man!

  • Plans

    Charming.

    Image

    As you can see, that’s Facebook and it’s public, so I found it. This is the nice lady who wants to murder Rowling:

    Image may contain: 1 person

  • Not my department

    Barr is every bit as evil as anyone thought but not as fiendishly clever. Not so clever at all really.

    President Donald Trump on Saturday denied involvement in firing Geoffrey Berman, the powerful prosecutor atop the Manhattan US Attorney’s office, shortly after Trump’s attorney general sent Berman a letter saying the President had done so.

    Who, me? Nah I didn’t. Pass the burgers.

    Attorney General William Barr told Berman, whose office has led prosecutions and investigations of Trump’s allies, that Trump had agreed to remove him after he refused Barr’s effort a day prior to oust him.

    “Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service,” Barr wrote in his letter to Berman. “Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so.”

    Rich coming from Barr, do admit – the guy who chooses Donald Trump’s ass over public service.

    Speaking to reporters shortly after Barr’s letter was made public, however, Trump said, “That’s his department, not my department.” He added: “I’m not involved.”

    AWKward.

    Berman said in a statement several hours later that he would exit his post. “In light of Attorney General Barr’s decision to respect the normal operation of law and have Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss become Acting U.S. Attorney, I will be leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, effective immediately,” he said.

    But it’s not going to be easy for Barr to slide a patsy into the job.

    The fast-moving developments seemed to catch by surprise Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump’s and Barr’s, who said Saturday he had not been told about the effort to fire Berman. And in a significant announcement Saturday, Graham said he would honor tradition to let home-state senators sign off on a replacement for Berman’s post, meaning that Democrats essentially have veto power over a replacement to a position considered the most powerful US attorney job in the country.

    Kind of a Friday night fizzle then.

  • Overflow canceled

    Hahahahahahaha

    The overflow where there is no overflow.

    Sir sir where are all the people sir?

  • Guest post: A hostile ultimatum

    Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at the Miscellany Room.

    People have always noticed that human beings have different innate physical traits. Furthermore, the distribution of these differences is not entirely random. Some of the most obvious (let’s call them “sex differences”) seem to cluster into two sets of traits that tend to go together far more often than expected by chance. One of these sets (let’s call it the set of “male” traits) is clearly more representative of fathers than mothers while the opposite is true of the second set (let’s call it the set of “female” traits). Roughly half the people on the planet have a strong preponderance of traits from the first set, and roughly the other half have a strong preponderance of traits from the second set. But since “Person with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits from the set of traits more representative of fathers than mothers”, or vice versa, is a rather awkward and cumbersome thing to say, most of us prefer a more convenient short-hand like “man” or “woman” respectively. As we might expect when dealing with physical reality rather than pure mathematics and idealized Platonic forms, there is going to be some fuzziness around the edges, and not every person ever born is going to fit neatly under any of these labels. Luckily, this is not a problem since they’re just short-hands for sets of physical traits anyway, not cosmic revelations about who you are on the inside.

    It remains a fact, however, that societies throughout history and all over the world have tended to put people with a strong preponderance of traits from the second set regardless of what you prefer to call them at a major disadvantage compared to people with a strong preponderance of traits from the first set (once again regardless of what you prefer to call them). The list is practically endless: Being granted the right to vote significantly later than the other sex (if ever), under-representation in position of power and influence, the pay gap, less chance of getting hired in the first place, objectification, getting judged by level of attractiveness or “fuckablility”, locker-room talk, “banter”, slut-shaming, cyber-bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault, groping, domestic violence, rape, hyper-skepticism towards claims of rape and abuse, victim-blaming, gaslighting, forced pregnancies, getting jailed for having a miscarriage, forced marriages, child brides, being forced to cover up, not being allowed to leave home without a guardian of the other sex, not being allowed to drive, being denied an education, being considered “impure” and having to isolate during period, female genital mutilation, acid attacks, honor killings, witch-burnings, stoning, getting burned or buried alive along their deceased husbands etc… etc…

    This system of oppression has been called the “patriarchy”, and the ideological life-support system upholding the patriarchy has been given various names like “sexism”, “misogyny”, “male chauvinism” etc. The movement working to debunk sexism and abolish the patriarchy has been called “feminism”. An essential part of the feminist struggle has always been combating the sexist stereotypes that portray women as naturally inclined towards everything that tends to please men and otherwise less suited for any role that men prefer to keep for themselves.

    There’s a complication, however. There are people – commonly referred to as “Trans” – who insist on being called “woman”, ”female”, “she” etc. despite having a strong preponderance of innate physical traits from our first set, which is exactly what it means to be a “man” / ”male” according to our working definition [1]. There is also a loud and outspoken group of activists – henceforth referred to as Trans Rights Activists (TRAs for short) – who may or may not be Trans themselves standing by and ready to gang up on anyone (especially if biologically female) who fails to treat the claim of these biological males as anything less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In order to make sense, these people obviously have to dispute that being a “man” or “woman” has anything to do with physical traits. On the other hand, they don’t want us to stop using words like “man” and “woman” (as if they referred to something real) altogether [2] (after all, how can one claim to be a “real woman” if there are no real women?).

    So while TRAs tend to reject the idea that our physical traits make us “men” and “women”, they pretty much have to insist that something else does, usually something about the person’s inner life, personality traits, way of thinking or feeling etc. Not only are “male” and “female”, “masculine” and “feminine” ways of thinking or feeling said to be a thing, but supposedly the only thing that makes a person “male” or “female”, “man” or “woman” in the first place. Thus referring to somebody as either “man” or “woman” in the lingo of these people is to make a factual claim about what’s going on inside his/her head. Exactly what’s being claimed is never made clear since all we ever get are tautologies (A woman is someone who thinks or feels in whatever way I happen to think or feel) and circular definitions (A woman is someone who identifies as someone who identifies as someone who identifies as… etc. etc. ad infinitum). In the rare event that any actual specifics are offered, the internal markers of with “womanhood” invariably turn out to be indistinguishable from the sexist stereotypes that feminist have been fighting to abolish.

    Calling unrelated things by the same name (in other words, the use of homonyms) is not in itself a problem as long as nobody’s laboring under the delusion that we’re still talking about the same thing. After all, few if any real-world problem are attributable to the fact that flying mammals and clubs for hitting baseballs are both referred to as “bats” in English. Words don’t mean anything in themselves, but get their meanings from us. If somebody wants to apply the word “fish” to what the rest of us call “bird”, and vice versa, they are free to do so. But then it is either disingenuous, or stupid, or both to go on talking as if everybody else were using these words in the same way, pretend we’re still talking about the same thing, and demand to have it both ways (e.g. insisting that “birds” can still fly).

    Unfortunately, the TRA use of language is very much of this latter kind. There is a reason why biological males who think or feel a certain way (let’s call them “women₂”) are so obsessed with being called the same as the people with physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers (let’s call them “women₁”): Because they want everyone to accept that they are the same. However, since they don’t in fact have innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, they have to argue that something else makes them the same as women₁, or – more precisely – that something else makes women₁ the same as them, hence the strong insistence on “female” or “feminine” ways of thinking/feeling that women₁ supposedly share with them, thus making them the same “kind of people”.

    From such a point of view it quickly becomes obvious that – despite the rhetoric – this is not simply about whether or not Trans women₂ have the right to define “who they are”, but whether or not they have the right to dictate who women₁ are as well (Basically saying: “Women₁ are whatever they have to be to make me one of them”). It is also obvious why the “certain way” that women₂ are supposed to think and feel is never specified. Most women₁ might not appreciate having all kinds of mental traits attributed to them (especially if said traits seem to be entirely derived from sexist stereotypes, pornography and male sexual phantasies). To keep the women₁ from protesting that this doesn’t apply to them at all and walking out in droves, better stick to tautologies and circular definitions and avoid specifics at all costs.

    I am sure we are all familiar with Daniel Dennett’s concept of “deepities”, but anyway: A deepity is an ambiguous statement with two possible interpretations. One of these interpretations makes the statement true but trivial, while the other makes it profound but false. There is something similar going on in TRA discourse except that in this case the statement in question is either true but irrelevant or relevant but false depending on the interpretation. Take the following sentences:

    • This toilet / sporting event / locker room / shower / domestic abuse shelter etc. is for women₁.

    • Misogyny is discrimination of / hostility towards women₁.

    • Feminism is a movement fighting the discrimination of women₁.

    • Straight men₁ and lesbian women₁ are attracted to women₁.

    • Bjarte Foshaug is a man₁.

    As written, these sentences are all true (for certain values of “this” in the first example) but also irrelevant to any point that TRAs are trying to make. Substituting women₂/men₂ for women₁/men₁ respectively might make the sentences relevant to their point but also false. In good Orwellian fashion, there is usually a strong element of having it both ways by taking credit for the truth of the first interpretation and the relevancy of the second interpretation at the same time. There’s also a strong element of “word-magic” involved. Much of TRA rhetoric seems to boil down to the idea that you can take whatever’s applicable to X and make it applicable to Y by renaming Y as X (renaming fish as “bird” makes it true that haddocks and halibuts can fly etc.).

    Since the existence of biological sex allows us to talk about women₁ as a group in its own right, regardless of what’s going on inside their heads, TRAs are at war with sex as a concept. At best, biological sex is said to be too complicated and messy to allow us to say anything in particular about the sex of individuals. At worst, the validity of biological sex as a category is denied altogether. In their war on biology TRAs have come up with an entire parallel vocabulary (I call it “Genderspeak”) in which every word pertaining to biological sex has a homonym (“man₂”, “girl₂”, “misogyny₂”, “feminism₂”, “lesbian₂” etc.) redefined in terms of “gender identity” or just “gender”. It has, of course, become quite common to use “gender” as a synonym for “sex” [3] (probably because the latter word has other denotations that are irrelevant in this context). It is important to note that this is not what TRAs mean by “gender”. Instead, “gender” supposedly denotes a perfectly real and vitally important [4] difference between sets of distinct and identifiable ways of thinking and feeling best left unspecified.

    Let’s pause for a minute and notice the double standard: If biological sex is messy and not everybody falls neatly into either the “biological male₁” or “biological female₁” category (once again, as you’d expect when dealing with physical reality rather than pure mathematics and idealized Platonic forms), that pretty much invalidates biological sex as a category. But if the supposed “gender” differences they’re talking about are so vacuous and ill-defined that most TRAs don’t even try to come up with a non-circular definition, that apparently makes them more firmly established than the laws of thermodynamics. If defining “man” and “woman” in terms of biological differences doesn’t meet their standards of accuracy and precision (despite describing the vast majority of people on the planet well enough to be quite useful), then you definitely wouldn’t expect any the circular non-definitions in terms of thoughts and feelings to meet those very same standards. Even if there were no basis for talking about biological sexes as distinct and identifiable categories, it still wouldn’t imply that being a “man” or being a “woman” is about something other than physical traits. What it would imply is that there’s no basis for talking about “men” and “women” either. If biological sexes are not a valid concept, then neither are “men” and “women”. If physical traits don’t make us “men” and “women”, then nothing does.

    According to gender ideology, however, most people’s ways of thinking or feeling really do make them either men₂ or women₂, thus establishing a “gender binary” that really does apply to the great majority of people on this planet. Besides man₂ and woman₂ there’s a vast number – or so we’re told – of other “non-binary” genders that only apply to a minority of people on the Trans spectrum. Everyone else is considered, by default, to be “Cis” (the binary opposite of “Trans”). It is important to note that “Cis woman” does not mean the same as “woman₁”. Genderspeak doesn’t have a name for women₁. “Trans women” and “Cis women” are both women₂ since thinking or feeling in a “female” or “feminine” manner (whatever that’s supposed to mean?) is the only thing that makes somebody a “woman” of any kind in the first place. Thus even the “Cis” label rests on an implicit claim about what’s going on inside other people heads. It’s just that the “Cis” people (allegedly) see themselves as the gender that society at large consider them to be while the “Trans” people do not. Suffice it to say that by those criteria I’m neither “Cis” nor a “man₂”.

    Not only are TRAs themselves using every word in the Genderspeak sense, but hardly anything they have to say makes sense without presupposing (perhaps the most disingenuous part) that everybody else is doing so as well. For example, when I have to fill out one of these forms that require us to tick off a box labeled “M” or “F”, I tick the “M” box. My passport also has the same “M” in it. When I have to take a leak, I go to the “Men’s Room” etc. All of this doesn’t involve any act of “identifying as a man” on my part. It’s simply is the case that I have physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers”, which is all it means to be a man₁. Yet to TRAs that “M” is taken as an admission that I do indeed embrace the whole ideological framework of “male” vs. “female” ways of thinking and feeling and personally subscribe to the former. In other words, that I’m a (Cis) man₂ as opposed to a man₁. It’s as if you were saying something about flying mammals (bats₁) and I started accusing you of talking about clubs for hitting baseballs (bats₂), claiming baseball bats can fly etc.

    On the same note, Gender-critical feminists (labeled by TRAs as “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists” – “TERFs” for short – and portrayed as a hate-group on par with violent white supremacists and neo-Nazis) don’t accept “gender” (in its Genderspeak definition) as a valid concept, and since there is no such thing as “gender” there can be no “gender binary”. Indeed, the closest we might get to an accurate representation of the gender-critical position in Genderspeak would be to say that everybody is “non-binary”, or “gender non-conforming ” [5], or even “agender”. As already mentioned, TRAs themselves are the ones who insist that there are distinct and identifiable “male” and “female” ways of thinking and feeling, thus establishing a “gender-binary” that really does apply to everyone except a minority on the Trans spectrum. Yet the gender critical feminists, who reject this whole framework, are the ones accused of “enforcing the gender binary”, “denying the existence on non-binary identities” etc.

    Likewise TRAs themselves are the ones who insist that some perfectly real and vitally important mental differences make certain people “female” to the very core of their being, regardless of any physical traits, thus justifying dividing people into separate groups requiring separate vocabularies, separate dress-codes, separate toilets, separate sporting events etc. Yet gender critical feminists, who take the position that being “female” doesn’t say anything about you other than the most superficial and irrelevant physical facts, are the ones accused of “gender essentialism”.

    Even the frequently repeated trope about gender being (arbitrarily) “assigned at birth” presupposes that everybody else is using words in the Genderspeak sense: When the nurse tells the expectant parents “It’s a boy”, I for one (and I strongly suspect most people) simply take it to be a mundane empirical observation regarding the child’s biological sex (meaning “It’s a boy₁”, not “It’s a boy₂”). “Gender” in the Genderspeak sense doesn’t enter into it all. According to the official TRA narrative, however, the nurse is pulling a factual claim about the child’s (future) inner life out of his/her ass and everybody else just goes along forever after. In the case of Trans people the nurse gets it wrong, and every evil ever to befall a Trans person goes back to this fatal mistake.

    It really cannot be stressed enough that TRAs are in the exclusion business as much as anybody, since their definition of “woman₂” by necessity excludes anyone who fails to think or feel the right way about themselves. When they speak of “inclusion” and fighting for the liberation of “all women” (as opposed to “only â€˜cis’ women”), clearly what we are meant to envision is taking the circle that already includes the ‘cis’ women and expanding it to also include the ‘Trans’ women. As always when it comes to alt-left slogans, we’re supposed to hear it, let it resonate just long enough to have some warm fuzzy gut reaction and then think about it no more. If you do think about it (and are therefore guilty of “transphobia”, “transmisogyny”, “denying the rights” of, or even advocating “violence” against Trans people), it quickly becomes obvious that redefining “woman” in terms of thoughts and feelings doesn’t simply “expand” the circle, but replaces it entirely. And this matters, since TRAs have made it abundantly clear that all of “women’s rights” are supposed to go with the name rather than the actual people. If they have their way, every right, every concession, every piece of progress that women₁ have managed to wrestle from the arms of the patriarchy throughout the ages will henceforth apply to people like them instead of the people for whom they were originally intended.

    We know for a fact that the old circle included roughly half the world’s population. How many does the new one include? It’s pretty much tautologically true that it includes the tiny minority of men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ since the Genderspeak definition of women₂ pretty much boils down to “whatever men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ happen to be” (or at least “people who think or feel in whatever way men₁ who prefer to be called ‘woman’/’she’ happen to think or feel”). How many women₁ does that include? I very much doubt that many women₁ would say they fit the definition of women₂ if they knew exactly how this requires them to think or feel. Indeed if you look past the warm fuzzy connotations of words like “inclusivity” and focus on what’s actually being said, the new circle is almost certainly going to be orders of magnitude smaller and more â€œexclusionary” than the old one.

    But it’s actually worse than that. As previously mentioned, the discrimination of people with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers is a very real problem in itself regardless of what you prefer to call them. Also, as many others have pointed out, there is absolutely nothing women₁ can do to “identify out of” the way they’re treated, and all the inclusive pronouns in the world are never going to make an ounce of difference. And yet, if you follow TRA logic to its ultimate conclusion, nobody at all will be allowed to stand up for the rights and interests of women₁, since even acknowledging the latter as an oppressed group in its own right with its own separate issues that are not entirely reducible to those faced by men₁ who prefer to be called “woman”/”she” is exclusionary to Trans women₂ and hence a hatecrime. So the Trans lobby’s ultimatum to women₁ everywhere boils down to “Shut up and let the oppression you face go forever unaddressed and unopposed, or have your name pulled through the dirt all over the internet”. A hostile ultimatum if ever there was one.

    Of course, few if any TRAs are going to come straight out and say any these things. I will inevitably be accused of attacking strawmen, misrepresenting the TRA position etc. Apparently, nobody is denying that biological sex exists, that discrimination of women₁ is a problem in its own right etc. My response is that most of the alleged “TERFs” whom they have already attacked and vilified, whom they have already tried (sometimes successfully) to get fired from their jobs, whose voices they have already tried (sometimes successfully) to silence, whose names they have already dragged through the mud all over the internet are guilty of nothing more than saying those very same things they now claim “nobody is denying”. If you look at who actually said what, it usually turns out that the only crime of the gender-critical feminists was refusing to give away all of women₁’s rights to people who are not women₁ while all the supposed instances of “transphobia”, “denying the rights/dignity/existence of Trans women”, perpetuating “violence” towards and even “murder” of Trans people etc. were put into their mouths by the TRAs themselves. In this respect, the latter are very much like the corrupt cops often portrayed in gangster movies who plant drugs or weapons on an innocent person and then go on to arrest him/her for finding what they themselves planted there in the first place.

    I also happen to know for a fact that even many of the “approved” feminists (the “trans-inclusive”, “intersectional”, “feminist₂” kind) have said things that could get them labeled as TERFs and demonized any time (in fact, things for which they themselves have already demonized others as TERFs). E.g. I have personally been referred to as both “man” and “him” by “Trans allies” who, in the absence of telepathic powers, couldn’t possibly know how I think or feel about myself. I have also heard people like that talk about the “Bechdel Test” and how this or that movie only had X “women” in it, when the movie in question didn’t offer any clue about these people’s “inner sense of self”. This goes to show that even the supposedly “good” feminists are unable to consistently live up to what’s required of them: When specifically talking about Trans issues, words like “man” and “woman”, “male” and “female” refer to an inner state, but for all other purposes they still talk and act as if these words referred to something physical. Even the Trans women₂ themselves do not in fact treat biological sex as a non-issue. After all, why would anyone need any surgery or hormone treatment to make their bodies “align” with their “gender identity” if bodies are completely irrelevant to gender and no body type is any more or less â€œaligned” with being a “woman” than any other?

    Although the TRA crusade to abolish biological sex and impose gender disproportionally hurts women₁ it doesn’t end there. Many have marveled at how quickly Gender ideology seems to have gone from utterly fringe to sacred truth across large a segment of the political left. One frequent explanation for the success of the Trans lobby is the way it has managed to attach itself to other social justice movements. One of the most disgusting examples is the appropriation of anti-racism as well as the conflation of “gender critical” and “white”, usually by people who are no less white themselves. When white people accuse other white people of “white feminism” it only ever means one thing:

    “I speak for all the non-whites”

    Because obviously people of color all agree with gender ideology…

    Probably the most impressive feat of the Trans lobby, and possibly the main reason for the sudden spike in the popularity of Gender ideology, is the way it has managed to get itself associated with – and ultimately take over – what used to be the LGB (then the LGBT and now finally the T) movement. Who would have thought just 10 years ago that we should live to see the day when the only approved “feminist” position was that women₁ neither deserve nor need any movement to stand up for their rights or interests, or when the only approved “LGBT” position was that same-sex attraction (as opposed to attraction to anyone who thinks or feels in certain ways, uses certain pronouns etc.) is the pinnacle of bigotry and evil.

    In the end, the only people to benefit from any of this are the Social Injustice Warriors (SIWs) of the far right. Discrimination of and even violence against Trans people is indeed a real problem. At least to an excellent first approximation 0 % of it is coming from feminists or even from people who have anything but contempt for feminism. The real enemy of both women₁, homosexuals and Trans people is toxic masculinity. If you fail to live up the cultural norms and expectations of what a real “man” is supposed to be like, it doesn’t mean you’re less of a man, let alone a woman. It means the cultural norms and expectations are bullshit and should be abandoned. For whatever it’s worth, every real transphobe I have personally encountered were men₁ who said things like “If I fucked someone and it turned out to be a guy, I’d fucking kill him” etc. These were not people who cared about feminism to say the least. They were raging homophobes and misogynists who were afraid of being tricked into acting “gay” and end up getting “fucked like a bitch” as only women deserve.

    ________________________________________________

    [1] There are also people who insist on being called “man” despite having a strong preponderance of physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers. By and large, though, their issues are not the battle ground on which the Gender Wars are being fought.

    [2] The same way most progressive, left-leaning people these days are uncomfortable with using any word to identify other people by their ethnic origin, the color of their skin etc. If that was the case they were making, they might have a legitimate point, but it’s not the point they are making.

    [3] Feminists sometimes use the same word, e.g. when talking about “gender roles”. It’s important to note that this has nothing to do with the TRA concept of “gender identity”. The gender roles that feminists are talking about are imposed from the outside and part for the sexist culture that needs to be changed. Gender identity is supposed to be an expression of a person’s true self, hence questioning it in any way is the real act of oppression.

    [4] So important, in fact, that “misgendering” a person is the most hateful act imaginable and comparable to actual violence.

    [5] Another term that “people of gender” have reserved for themselves while everyone else – even those who reject gender as a concept â€“ are assumed to be “gender conforming”. What does it even mean to be “gender non-conforming” if the only thing that makes someone a certain gender in the first place are the gender norms (s)he conforms to?

  • Felony T-shirt

    Apparently it’s a crime to attend Trump’s rally if you’re not a fan of Trump? Or if you’re wearing an “I can’t breathe” T-shirt?

    https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1274385086356631554

    So…they arrested her because shirt?

  • Three ways

    How murderous is this Tulsa rally exactly?

    Three items:

    An indoor event. Instead of holding the event outdoors, it is being held indoors in a center that regularly crowds people together for concerts and sporting events.

    No physical distancing. The president has touted that his campaign has already received more than one million requests for seats. And he has mentioned that only 22,000 people (or even up to 40,000 if he can get the adjacent convention hall) will be allowed to attend. Someone needs to check that math because 22,000 — already 2,800 people above capacity — signifies there will be no physical distancing in place.

    No masks. Trump has also reported that those attending the rally will not be required to wear face masks.

    In short it’s exactly what we’ve been told and told and told not to do: mash together in a huge crowd in an indoor space. It’s as if a mayor told everyone to go shop for groceries at the same time, without masks.

    Only it’s worse, because it’s a Trump rally, and what do those involve? A whole lot of screaming and cheering and laughing and excitement – so a whole lot of rapidly breathing out great clouds of droplets in a tightly packed crowd. It pretty much couldn’t be made any more lethal if experts sat down and tried for a month.

    And we know they know that, because of the waiver.

    Trump is committing mass murder in a few hours, because…he likes crowds yelling his name. That’s worth any number of lives, right?

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which created categories to evaluate the “riskiness” of activities, having a mass gathering in an indoor venue without wearing face coverings and being unable to practice physical distancing is the highest possible risk.

    Mass murder, for a couple of hours of ego-stroking.

  • Six new cases

    Oops, what was that again about go to the Trump rally but wear masks but have a fabulous time but stay six feet apart but jump up and down and scream?

    Wellllllll that’s ok, no problem, just whisk them away in a sealed box and never mention it again.

    The important thing is, don’t let anyone in who hasn’t signed that waiver!

  • Jump into the volcano but do wear gloves

    On the one hand – wear masks, maintain distance, stay away if you’re at risk – on the other hand, have fun, knock yourselves out, MAGA. Clear?

    Pam Bondi, one of Trump’s lawyers who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, downplayed concerns by public health officials about today’s rally in Tulsa.

    [That is: one of Trump’s lawyers, who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019. Trump doesn’t have several lawyers who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019. Commas exist for a reason, people.]

    “We hope that people are going to stay socially distanced, are going to wear a mask, (use) hand sanitzer and be respectful of each other,” Bondi told the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland on Saturday afternoon.

    …

    NBC News reported on Friday that both Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, and the White House coronavirus taskforce’s response coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx, had raised concerns about the wisdom of such a large event in the middle of a pandemic that remains undefeated.

    And no one paid the slightest attention.

  • No intention of resigning

    Oops. Trump tried to fire the SDNY prosecutor but he’s refusing to resign.

    Attorney General William Barr’s declaration he replaced Geoffrey Berman of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York renewed the debate over the extent to which Barr is acting [i]n President Donald Trump’s interests rather than the nation’s. The office of Berman, who is refusing to quit, is leading a probe into Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and associates and has also indicted a Turkish state-owned firm involved in an Iran sanctions-busting case which Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has raised with Trump.

    Scores of former Justice Department officials had already called for Barr to quit over a series of interventions that appear specifically designed to benefit Trump politically.

    So Barr decided to give them more of the same. He really wants to trash his own reputation.

    Last night Berman issued a statement.

    It doesn’t get much more bizarre than that. “The Attorney General said I have resigned; I have not resigned.” Basically: you’ll have to drag me out.

    Late on Friday evening — the traditional dumping ground for controversial news stories — Barr issued a press release announcing Berman’s sudden resignation that said that he would be replaced by Jay Clayton, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has never served as a prosecutor.

    On its own, Barr’s move was shocking since the Southern District of New York is one of the most prestigious and independent prosecutorial perches and typically handles highly sensitive financial, politically sensitive and terrorism cases.

    On account of how a lot of sensitive financial and political stuff goes on in Manhattan. It ain’t Boise.

    An already massive confrontation exploded further when Berman, in a stunning move, issued his own late-night statement rebuking Barr over his decision to oust him and refusing to go, arguing that since he was technically appointed by a panel of judges on an acting basis in 2018, Barr has no power to force him out and that he would continue to serve.

    “I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was ‘stepping down’ as United States Attorney. I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,” Berman said.

    “I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate. Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption,” he said. The chances of a new US Attorney for the Southern District of New York being confirmed much before the election seem slim and there is the possibility of legal battles over Berman’s tenure.

    Even Bolton’s book gets a cameo.

    CNN has reported rising tensions between Washington and Berman’s office, including over some cases including the indictment of Turkish bank Halkbank. In his new book, former national security adviser John Bolton said that Trump told the Turkish strongman he would take “care of things” when he had replaced the prosecutors in New York with his own people. The Justice Department and Berman did, however, bring a case against the Turkish bank in October 2019.

    Let’s hope we can “take care of things” in November 2020.

  • Pence says we’ve always cherished the ideal

    God what a tool.

    Mike Pence declined to say the words “Black lives matter” during an interview with an ABC affiliate in Pennsylvania, instead saying that “all lives matter.”

    “Let me just say that what happened to George Floyd was a tragedy,” Pence told ABC6 in Philadelphia, when asked directly if he would say that Black lives matter. “And in this nation, especially on Juneteenth, we celebrate the fact that from the founding of this nation we’ve cherished the ideal that all, all of us are created equal, and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. And so all lives matter in a very real sense.”

    Uh, sir, no, sir, that’s exactly not what we celebrate especially on Juneteenth, because it is not true that from the founding of this nation we’ve cherished the ideal that all, all of us are created equal, and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. That’s the whole point, you dumb fuck. Juneteenth celebrates the official end of slavery – of slavery. A nation that allows slavery is not one that cherishes the ideal of equality. It’s very much the opposite, sir. A nation that allows slavery is about as anti-egalitarian as it’s possible to be, short of making soup out of people. We allowed slavery until 1865, and after that we allowed something way too close to it for another god damn century. That’s the point.

  • Avoid crowds, or wear a mask

    It’s a personal choice.

    White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday she won’t be wearing a mask at the president’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Saturday, calling it a “personal choice.”

    So what if it’s a personal choice? What’s that got to do with anything? It’s a personal choice for people to cough in people’s faces on purpose, too, so what?

    She said not wearing a mask still complies with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control, telling reporters Friday that masks are recommended but not required. 

    But since they are recommended (and I don’t think the CDC has the power to require people to wear things anyway), why not wear one? What is the purpose of the “personal choice” not to? The CDC recommends them for reasons, so why decide “Oh well I just won’t, it’s personal”?

    That recommendation from the CDC reads, “Everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public.” And the CDC also “recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.” 

    The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CBS News in an interview Friday that the best way to avoid spreading the virus “is to avoid crowds.” But for those who will not be heeding that piece of advice, he counseled, “wear a mask at all times.” 

    And that’s not just to protect the wearer, it’s to protect everyone else too – so what right does Kayleigh McEneny have to make a “choice” not to wear one and thus increase the risk of everyone near her? What right does Trump have to do that?

    Asked why not, McEnany emphasized it’s a “personal decision,” even though an indoor rally without much social distancing would qualify as a highest-risk gathering, according to the CDC. 

    “It’s a personal decision. I am tested regularly. I feel that it is safe for me not to be wearing a mask. I’m in compliance with CDC guidelines, which are recommended but not required,” McEnany said. 

    But recommended. Why just ignore the recommendation? Why substitute her judgement for theirs?

    But the rate of daily coronavirus cases has been on the rise in Oklahoma. Attendees had to agree when they signed up for the rally that they bear responsibility if they fall ill from COVID-19 as a result of attending the event. In other words, they have to agree not to sue the campaign or any other entity.

    Even Kayleigh McEnany.

  • You’re the ONLY 1

    Huh. Don Junior is committing wire fraud.

    You’re the ONLY 1 – except all the others who got the same text.

    https://twitter.com/colin5392/status/1274093551790538754

    Norm Eisen also says – yep wire fraud.

    1. (Alan Rosenblatt, PhD [↩]

  • No statues bruised in Nuneaton

    So some people did protect a statue of a feminist woman writer (not exactly a poet), even though it didn’t actually need protecting. Story partially true. Literary Hub explains:

    Worldwide protests ignited by the death of George Floyd have continued, including in Nuneaton, Warkwickshire, where a group of locals thought they were protecting a statue of George Eliot over the weekend.

    Valiant defenders of this bronze effigy popped up following incidents in which Black Lives Matter supporters took down a statue of a 17th-century slave trader in Bristol and tagged a monument of Winston Churchill with the words “is a racist” in central London.

    The people guarding the Eliot statue in Nuneaton were presumably operating on the assumption that Black Lives Matter protestors despise all statues as much as they hate police brutality.

    An easy mistake to make. Here’s the deal: the problem isn’t the statue-ness, it’s the involvement in slavery or imperialist brutality or the like. George Eliot didn’t buy and sell slaves, nor did she admire or celebrate men who did.

    George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, was one of the Victorian era’s great writers and a supporter of the anti-slavery movement. She had a long, epistolary friendship with Harriet Beecher Stowe and questioned the morality of slavery in her 1862 novel Romola.

    She was way out on the left end of the Victorian political spectrum.

    H/t Richard

  • Why Trump hires dumb as a rock people

    Reporter: Yes but why hire a team of rivals who are dumb as a rock, overrated, way over their heads, whacko, and incompetent?

    KM: Wull sometimes those rivals prove those labels to be true.

    Me: If they’re all that it’s bound to be obvious just by chatting with them for a minute, so…

  • Statue of feminist poet in peril?

    Hmm.

    https://twitter.com/nnoyingnome/status/1274030459610189831

    Right now in my home city (in the UK) the statue of a feminist poet is being torn down simply because she is white… all because a black criminal was murdered by a white cop in the USA. This madness is tearing society apart. It has to stop. 2/2

    I tried Google News and Google – nothing. The closest Google can find to “white feminist poet statue torn down” is ” Bristol mayor: Colston statue removal was act of ‘historical poetry‘” from the Guardian…which is not close at all.

    The conversation started with Annoying’s annoyance at me for tweeting that Trump is threatening protesters, because hey, he didn’t say a word about threatening them.

    Right, and when a man says to a woman “I’m not going to treat you the way all those pussies you used to date did” she has absolutely no reason to think that’s a threat.

  • They have gallons of hand sanitizer

    It’s all just so bonkers.

    President Donald Trump on Friday, gearing up for his first campaign rally in months in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, threatened any protesters who show up outside or try to disrupt the event, saying “it will be a much different scene” than how they’ve been dealt with in “New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis.”

    “Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!” Trump tweeted Friday morning.

    It wasn’t clear exactly what Trump meant or what he could do to carry out his threat, but he has taken an increasingly hostile tone towards protesters in recent weeks, this time putting “protesters” in same category as “anarchists” “looters” and “lowlifes.”

    It’s a bizarre experience, seeing a constant stream of hostility and rage toward most of the population coming from the head of state.

    Tulsa itself is taking its cues from Trump.

    A curfew was imposed beginning Thursday night until Saturday at 6 a.m., according to Tulsa police, citing concerns abut organized groups coming to the city. After the rally, another curfew will be in place until 6 a.m. Sunday. The rally begins at 7 p.m.

    Totally normal, putting curfews in place because the president is going to be in town.

    Trump, in another tweet Friday, also said he views his rally in Tulsa as the re-launch of his reelection campaign, saying, “Big crowds and lines already forming in Tulsa. My campaign hasn’t started yet. It starts on Saturday night in Oklahoma!”

    The rally is expected to draw as many as 100,000 Trump supporters, some of whom had lined up outside the 19,000-seat Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa, days before the rally.

    Peak contagion! Awesome!

    Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt backed the rally when he met with Trump at the White House Thursday at an unrelated event focused on government assistance for small businesses. Stitt assured that the rally would be safe even as the city’s health official has called an event like the rally “a huge risk factor” for spreading the coronavirus.

    One wonders what Stitt was basing his assurances on. What does he know that the city’s health official doesn’t know? Some kind of magic shield around the Trump supporters?

    Trump campaign spokesperson Erin Perrine told ABC News the campaign “takes the health and safety of rally-goers seriously and is taking precautions to make the rally safe,” including checking the temperatures of attendees and providing them with face masks and hand sanitizer.

    Nope. Crowding thousands of people together at a rally can’t be “made safe” by masks and hand sanitizer.

  • A war of all against all

    Trump announces he will unleash violence on protesters.

    President of the United States, here, threatening protesters with violence.

  • A genuine request for information

    John Cleese seeks information.

    It’s like this, see – is the experience of being a woman inextricably linked to biology? Or is it just totally random and arbitrary and unpredictable?


    Well honestly – what can having the biology of a woman possibly have to do with the experience of being a woman? I ask you.

  • It was a mistake

    After that one I watched this one, on detransitioning.